I'm not particularly strict on the terminology of whether a carbon sink is permanent or not (in my usage above it is not permanent). But yeah we are on the same page regarding the life cycle of a tree now so it is clear.
Plant matter dies and rots and the carbon escapes to the atmosphere.
Ever since microorganisms evolved to eat dead plant matter the conditions to make coal on planet earth (and to create a carbon sink of buried coal) have been gone.
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.
About the only thing I agree with you in terms of repurposability would be the vertical column. And even then, you have to find the right buyer. For everything else, my intuition is the shredding it down for recycling is by far easier than repurposing. I haven't done any math on it though.
I've been thinking about the AI gains a lot. If individual developers became, say, 20 percent more efficient at coding, the organization would potentially see even more gains, because all of the reduction in time spent coordinating between people. I.e. a 2-man task that needed 20 man-hours of work, 8 of which hours of work were just communicating, becomes a 1-man 10 hour task. Kind of an extreme example, but communication and coordination is extremely inefficient a lot of the time!
As far as I understand, the most common achievable choice is between staffing a hospital with 3 8 hour shifts per day or 2 1w hour shifts per day. Studies have shown the 12 hour shift system has better outcomes.
It also makes me wonder how different the packing efficiency would be- gas station fuel dispensers have short hoses and lots of safety features related to avoiding a spill, and it all takes up space. A fast EV charging station might still look more like a parking lot.
The majority of energy expenditure is not acceleration and deceleration (especially on an EV with regen braking). At moderate and high speeds wind resistance dominates. At slower speeds rolling resistance is a largish factor.
I had an engineering colleague who previously worked at a company that reconditioned Prius batteries. It involved cycling powe in and out of the battery several times. Where did all that power come from? Another battery.