[mech987876]

Most (all?) of the carbon sequestered by a tree that dies and rots on the forest floor goes back into the atmosphere. So the "fixing by all future generations" is just the same carbon sink as the current 1 alive standing tree for that spot of real estate.

[SamBam]

Regardless, the net carbon sink of a healthy forest is higher than the net carbon sink of a few houses that were built in its place.

Simply think of the number of tons of wood in an acre of forest, compared with the number of tons of wood in a housing development.

It doesn't matter that some trees die and release their carbon, other trees grow. Instead of thinking of individual trees, simply think of the entire biomass of the forest.

[bluGill]

A tiny amount is turned to coal (often via forest fires) which then isn't returned to the cycle. We are talking about -0.1C over thousands of years though, if we otherwise went carbon neutral - which seems unlikely for the long tail of small users but if we get the major uses of fossil fuels to something carbon neutral that would get us very close to stopping global warming at least.

[snowwrestler]

I’m talking specifically about when trees are used for lumber.