I’ve been following the interesting discussion on the Measuring CO2 or Carbon thread and have a related question. If all new UK and EU? housing were built using timber or timber based products and there was no concrete or bricks used in their construction, would the sequestration of carbon and the reduction of CO2 from reduced cement and brick production have a significant effect on CO2 levels both in the short and long term?

Pete

Good Man
We can try and put numbers to it.

Would have to know how many tones of timber have been used, how that resources was managed, what the processing was, the expected re-growth was, how long the building will stand, what the decommissioning policy will be.
A good place to start would be with ICE, has most of the info needed.

Sequestration is just the tip of a v big iceberg, that I hope we may begin to realise exists and must be reckoned with.

Even extreme sequestration as posited above is just a drop in the ocean (to mix metaphors). However it's a first step towards thinking of our buildings, motorways, agriculture etc (everything large-scale that we do with the land) as an opportunity to do it in a way that actually assists nature, the planet, Gaia or whatever, in clearing up the mess we've made (rather than just, at best, minimising the additional damage that the project/activity does).

Fussing about carbon is again just the tip of the iceberg - there's all the other finite resources and planetary environmental services that we should understand and co-operate with, too.

Posted By: PeterStarckFostertom, so that's a, not worth bothering with, then is it??

That doesn't follow. If we are actually to make any significant inroads into our CO₂ emissions, fossil fuel consumption and general messiness then there's not going to be a single “silver bullet” solution - we're going to have to make a lot of small changes. What we need to do is make sure that the changes we make all tend to go in the right direction which means taking care to fully account for the overall effects of any given course of action. I think sequestration of carbon is one of the things to consider when, for example, deciding on how to build new houses (concrete, timber, straw, ...) or whether to knock down and replace existing ones. The answer isn't obvious - you have to do the arithmetic. And you can only do that when you've understood the principles of what does and doesn't matter.