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[Spongebob]

The idea is not to eliminated atmospheric carbon altogether (which would be disastrous), but to reduce or - ideally - to reverse the rate at which CO2 is added to the atmosphere. The goal is to balance the carbon cycle between releasing and sequestering carbon.

And I really do think that maintaining forests would be a helluva lot cheaper, both in economic and environmental terms, that the absolutely nutty idea of burying trees for tens of millions of years and hope they turn into oil.

Boru

As usual you missed the point entirely.


Trying to sequester carbon in trees is just kicking the can down the road. 

Every gram of carbon in a tree will eventually make it right back into the environment when the tree dies.

Even nonstop planting of trees won' t make a difference - you will just make a bigger pile of dead wood in the future.

Yes burying it is not really a viable option - but it is the only scenario that would actually make a long term difference. In order to reduce environmental carbon you need to capture it in something that won' t biodegrade.
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Waiting for the " you hate trees" idiots to chime in.

This isn't true at all.  Not all plants that die rapidly degraded and return their carbon to the atmosphere.  A good many have been buried in the past and this is where fossil fuels come from.  All of that oil and gas are ancient plants buried deep underground.  And if you are talking about trees, many specie of trees can live for hundreds of years and, once felled, may last for decades more depending on conditions.  Increasing forestland increases the carbon stored.  And if humans harvest the trees and build things with it, most of that carbon stays locked in the wood for as long as it is in use.  Think about all of that wonderful peat in Britain, that's stored carbon but of course we can't help but dig it up to make awesome whiskey.  Permafrost also contains a huge amount of biomass.