Forest fires carbon math

[JTEX]

Inquiring minds can't help but wonder what's the point of going nuts about reducing our individual carbon footprint when just one massive forest fire, such as the one currently in progress in Canada, releases as much carbon as the total annual emissions of a major developed country. Our individual contributions seem like a drop in the ocean in comparison. Thoughts?

 

[Mentaltossflycoon]

Because "fuck it" is how we got here.

 

[jcpst]

Inquiring minds can't help but wonder what's the point of going nuts about reducing our individual carbon footprint

I’ve thought this for years. I used to try and push the limits- like 250kW/hr per month, most of that being my fridge.

But later on I came to realize that individual responsibility is something pushed by the worst offenders. If we’re all trying to reduce, then it feels like it’s on us. The ones doing the real damage keep stealing the globe’s resources for profit while we’re driving an electric car to the store with cloth bags.

I still do it anyway? I guess the greenwashing runs deep. I’m driving a 6.2L V8, but I rarely eat meat, so that’s my balance.

Also, I read that automobile tires could be the worst offender with a car.

Whatever. I’ll just stock up and have my go bag ready for the time all this brittle infrastructure that people can’t live without collapses.

 

[darwin999]

It's always tough to compare one person's impact against a large event, so part of the answer is that each of us should be part of the overall solution as all of us have to step up here..

But for a simpler answer, in 20-30 years those trees will grow back and thus take back ALL that CO2 they released in the fire. So that forest fire's
CO2 release is TEMPORARY.

But in 20-30 years, the CO2 created by your car and electricity usage will still be CO2 and thus still warming the earth. THAT CO2 release is more likely to be permanent.***

*** Yes, there may be future carbon capture release technology, but who will pay for it as it will be hugely expensive. Tens to hundreds of trillions of $ to take back what humans have released in the last century.

 

[darwin999]

At the low-end estimated future price of $20/ton** for carbon capture from the air, the cost of the world's total annual CO2 release (roughly 60 billion tons per year) would be $1.2 trillion dollars. In the last century, humans have dumped something like 3 trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere - cleaning that up would be $60 trillion at this very low estimated carbon capture price (which has NOT been reached, not even close). So clearly it is far cheaper to reduce CO2 release now, than pay for its capture some time in the future.

** Present carbon capture schemes from the air are presently more than an order of magnitude higher in cost (like $300/ton).***. At $300/ton, just last year's CO2 would cost $18 trillion to capture. That's $18,000,000,000.00. And the last century's output would cost $900 trillion... With a world population of say 10 billion, that's still $90,000 per person (if everyone pays). Just not happening at that price.

*** When possible, it's much cheaper to capture carbon "at the source", e.g., for a power plant where the exhaust is closer to 100% CO2 versus only 0.000003% in the atmosphere. However, clearly you can't do capture CO2 at the source for your car (it's moving) or at your home, because you'd need your own very expensive deep well and high pressure pump + you need to have favorable geology in the ground beneath you. There are other schemes, but again they don't work for personal use, just for large sources where the economics and chemistry works out ok.

Edit: corrected a numeric fluff, sincerely oops...