[reportingsjr]

Does no one else see the irony in cutting down forests, some of the very things we are trying to preserve by reducing atmospheric CO2, as a means to reduce CO2 emissions? The phrase "can't see the forest for the trees" seems very apt here.

See also: clearing land (including fragile desert ecosystems!) for solar farms vs residential/urban solar, biofuels in general, subsidizing EVs which encourage poor land use and sprawl vs legalizing denser housing and building better public transport, etc etc etc.

[hannasanarion]

Forests are recyclable. Natural gas is not.

When you burn wood, the CO2 released into the atmosphere gets re-absorbed by the next batch of trees that you're gonna burn next year. The overall process can be carbon-neutral, neither increasing nor decreasing the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Once gas comes out of the ground, it's guaranteed to get into the atmosphere one way or another, and it's never going back down in there.

[reportingsjr]

> Forests are recyclable. Forests, like many other ecosystems, take hundreds of years to stabilize and mature. Clear cutting an area destroys far more than just the trees in that area.

[hannasanarion]

Nobody is chopping down old-growth forests for firewood.

Fuel wood comes from farmed forests that re-plant every tree they take down to recycle the forest every 25-30 years.

[reportingsjr]

No, but when second growth or plantation forests are cut down for heating/electricity it puts pressure on more mature forests for timber products, wood pulp, etc. The plantations/farmed forests could be instead used for these products.

[hannasanarion]

You can use managed forests for those too. This isn't an either/or problem.

Deforestation is bad, but it doesn't happen because people want timber. Deforestation happens because people want to use that land for something other than growing trees, the most common reason being to make room for cattle pasture.

If you want to save the trees, don't stop burning wood, almost all wood products available today come from sustainably farmed managed forests. If you want to save the trees, stop eating beef. Also palm oil.