Dried up wooden building material is pretty stable and a fairly common (even commercialized) suggestion for a carbon sink. If you let it rot/burn, then no, it is not a carbon sink.
Sure, but the way we build buildings, there's no way that's actually the case. Transport alone to the sawmill, then the lumber yard, then the job site might actually release more carbon than the tree is storing.
A 25 year old maple will sequester 400 pounds of co2 in it's lifetime. An average commuter car will emit that in 2 weeks. Hauling all that carbon out of the forest will likely emit far more than that.
> Transport alone to the sawmill, then the lumber yard, then the job site might actually release more carbon than the tree is storing.
If we're building the buildings anyway, we have to compare with alternative building materials. That is, how much more would transporting that lumber emit, compared to transporting for instance brick?
