I don't know about rain forests (other than the one we have) but I do know that we now have more forests than we did 100 years ago https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=do+we+have+more+forests+now+than+in+1900%3F

the biggest problem, as far as co2 is concerned it turns out that agriculture is one of the biggest contributors of greenhouse gasses. (google co2 agriculture)

I noticed that he wasn't talking about increasing soil carbon content directly by adding carbon, but rather changing the entire soil biome which resulted in increased carbon but also a lot of other beneficial changes. I wonder if skipping right to increased carbon gets you any of those things or actually suppresses them.

He told us they had an improved composting method that reduced salinity, but did not mention how they did that, or where the salt went. I would have liked to know that.

I've been to Asilomar many times for conferences. Lovely place. Highly recommended.

Plants are generally not good for carbon sequestration. The carbon goes into the plant, mostly from the atmosphere, but later returns to the atmosphere when the plant burns, rots, or is eaten. The exception is plant carbon that enters the soil. This was actually the source of all that sequestered carbon in the form of oil and gas that accumulated over millions of years.

This happens in the oceans as well, with a certain amount of carbon capture always happening, moving through plants, shells, deposits on the sea floor, subduction, and carbonate mineral production (like chalk). Both of these are the main compartment of long-term carbon sequestration on Earth.

Rain forest is very poor at carbon sequestration because all the nutrients are in the standing plant biomass. Burn that, and the soil is pretty barren. Plant a few years of crops and take away the nutrients and you end up with very infertile soil. Going through an enrichment process with grasses, nitrogen fixers, cattle, compost, etc. might make the rain forest -> agricultural land conversion work.

This is a very interesting lecture by the Professor pioneering high temperature liquid metal batteries for grid-level energy storage:

Lecture

It's pretty entertaining too! Which is pretty rare in such a topic. The really cool thing about these cells is that they can be cycled many thousands of times with no loss of capacity at all. My favorite quote:

I thank you guys, which proves you are never too old to learn.

More on what money is: