Comment on Very few people realise how environmentally devastating this game is.

• Fraylor@lemm.ee ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Hey fuck environmental diversity, we’ve got carbon sinks.

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• Aceticon@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Nothing can sink any more carbon than its weight plus any bits that fall or get taken and don’t rot. Worse, for most plants most of the weight is water, not carbon-containing organic compounds.

  So lawns might be “net” carbon sinks compared to the extreme case of leaving the ground bare, but only whilst they’re growing (they don’t really retain any additional carbon after grown and any grass mowned will just return the carbon back to the air when it rots and a lot of it will be Methane, a worse greehouse gas than CO2) and they’re a lot worse at it per unit of area than, say, trees or even just the natural ground cover in just about any land environment but desert.

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  • Duralf@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Asphalt is definitely a carbon sink though since it’s a petroleum product!

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    • Aceticon@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It is if one does not count the heavy hydrocarbons taken from raw crude and used to make asphalt in the maths of carbon pulled out of the Earth originally when the oil is pumped out - in other words, if one blames the lighter stuff used in fuel for the actual oil extraction and then just goes with “well, now that we have this stuff out, might as well use the heavy stuff for asphalt”.

      Otherwise it’s adds up to a carbon source because even though the extraction of the fraction of crude oil that ends up used for asphalt is offset by that stuff ending up back on the ground as asphalt, the actual processes between one and the other do emit CO2 and some light hydrocarbons.

      Sure, nowhere as bad as fuel and gas, but still a net negative.

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  • nBodyProblem@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s why I dig up my lawn every year and bury it underground inside sealed plastic bags

    I’m doing my part!

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• Alterecho@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I mean if you want to talk about sequestering carbon, there’s all sorts of natural lawn options that aren’t actively planting an invasive species that has proven to be really bad at doing any sort of water filtration or absorption. In fact, I’d wager that planning (and letting grow) prairie or whatever your native biome supports probably sequesters more carbon, assuming your native ecosystems aren’t straight up desert. If they are, you’re now using so much less water that it’s a huge net win there.

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