One giant redwood is enough to power a steam locomotive across California from North to South.
So 2,000 years to produce enough fuel for an 8-hour trip. Not bad.
If you think about it, it took 2,000 years for humanity to create the infrastructure necessary to make the trip in the first place. Here we are creating thousands of miles of rail in 20 years. The producers in humanity do remarkable things, they have to carry weight like Atlas when he handled the globe.
Let’s please not cut down a redwood for that…
But that would be one trip every 50-100 years. I'm hoping for something with a faster turnaround time. How about some kind of faster-growing tree, like pine or something?
Lodgepole pine. Very fast growing, straight with small limbs, easy to cut & stack. Western BLM land has vast forests of lodgepole.
The giant redwoods are 1,500 years and older. The get tall fast, but if you want the 10-foot thick or more trunks, you're gonna have to wait a lot longer than 100 years.
Why not just use coal?
Because the hypothetical scenario is "power stuff with 'captured solar energy' (wood)", not "run things on coal". I'm wondering how it all compares to solar+batteries that the greenie-meanies harp on about.
Besides, we already know we can build a technological civilization on coal.
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