| A quick google suggests that this is an active research topic. I have only skimmed this paper, but they find that logging is net emitter of CO2: https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13021... Interestingly, they account for carbon emission from the wood produced by logging ("sawnwood"): Sawnwood decay is approximated with an exponential decay [with a half-life of] the normal distribution truncated at zero with mean equal to 30 and standard deviation equal to 15, according to IPCC guidelines. So far, no life cycle analysis has yet been done for woody products in the tropics and adapting the framework developed in Europe and North America in tropical countries remains challenging. So they assume that the average bit of timber lasts thirty years before giving up its carbon, and only about one in six lasts longer than 45 years. I suppose the lifecycle of wooden manufactured items tends to end with them being burnt when they're worn out. If i am reading the graphs correctly, then wood going to the sawmill is only a small part of the carbon emitted by forestry, and they mention that only one-third of the wood entering a sawmill leaves as sawnwood, the rest being lost as sawdust, so even if you could preserve wooden items for ever, it might not move the needle much. On the other hand, if you could collect all the sawdust from the mill and bury it, or make it into biochar and then use it as a soil amendment, that might. Anyway, that is one paper amongst many, go forth and read if you're interested! |
That seems like a pretty bizarre set of assumptions. Wood doesn't just disappear in 45 years unless you leave it in the open untreated.