‘Wood vaulting’: A simple climate solution you’ve probably never heard of

9 comments

1. Wrote about it on reddit several years ago. 🙂 My own idea, but as always, someone else beat me to it. Fairly simple idea tho.

   Also mentioned it in r/climatechange a few weeks ago.

2. Honestly it bugs me so much they come up with a new buzzword every couple years for thousand year old practices.

3. My first thought was, “are they going to mention bio char?” They do. It seems like the advantages of this process rely on pretty specific conditions over a long timeline. Seems like bio char’s disadvantages may be overridden by it’s less stringent conditions for success? Anyone who’s not just some jackass like me know?

4. The math gets a little fuzzy when you factor in using heavy diesel powered equipment to bury it. If the wood rots it will produce methane which is a worse greenhouse gas than co2, which also turns back into co2 when it oxidizes.

5. So like hugelkultur? Lol

6. How much gas is this using????

   That’s probably No helping.

7. I would rather see it turned into biochar and used to increase soil fertility.

8. I remember several years ago in a thread about technology and whether it’ll save us from climate change or not I threw out the idea that we’ve had the technology to stop climate change for millions of years, basically from stone tools.

   Because the most simple way would be to just bury trees. It’s just not done because it’s an absolute money pit because it doesn’t produce value, and when people say they are waiting for the day that technology saves us from climate change they really mean that they are waiting for the day when technology creates value primarily and as a side effect also happens to handle climate change.

   Anyway this article brought me back to that. Hopefully the value in preventing wildfires can be seen immediately enough to make people invest in this. An ounce of protection is better than a pound of cure.

9. In the 1980s during Montana’s roadless-are vs wilderness designation battles, a USDA report made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion of clearcutting old growth forest, pickling (yes, pickling) the timber, then sinking the pickled logs in the subduction trench off the West Coast. Alas, I did not save the citation