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I understand what you're getting at, but I don't see it as being so simple.
Fossil fuels are essentially just ancient soil carbon, so in a way, we're talking about the same thing on different time-scales. My point was/is that the combination of deforestation and burning of the cut biomass actually reduces the amount of carbon that can be stored in the soil on a given area of land, not just releasing it once and then recycling it. To capture the same amount of carbon again would require a greater area under management than the area originally cut. On a finite planet, there is a limit to how much this deforestation for biomass production could be scaled up without net-positive emissions. (I'm tired, so this may not be the most articulate.)
The world's forests capture a substantial amount of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans, and extensive reforestation could capture even more. By reducing the carbon capture potential of forests, that's less carbon dioxide absorbed year after year. Over a very long period of time, "releasing it one time" is what burning fossil fuels does: it releases stored carbon once, and then trees and other plants recycle it. Deforestation reduces the recycling.
Even though mature forests can store more total carbon, it seems that young forests, with more small trees, may actually be able to absorb more methane, so there can definitely be some advantage to managing trees for wood production on a short cycle. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so this is one way in which the overall situation is complicated.
I'm glad that we agree on this point. It doesn't need to be one or the other. The most effective approach to addressing climate change would involve reforestation and eliminating dependence on fossil fuels by developing clean energy technologies.
Ultimately, carbon capture just needs to match carbon emissions (plus a bit extra at first to compensate for current overshoot), and realistically, it will take both reforestation and a reduction in emissions to achieve that. Ending animal agriculture makes the most progress toward both.
Again, the issue is that once you burn fossil fuel, you are not turning it into fossil fuel in any meaningful amount of time.
On the other hand, let's say that a field used for producing plants for biofuel does not capture any carbon at all to simplify. So deforesting an area releases all the carbon a forest held. The difference is that the fossil fuel gives you energy one time, while the field produces it yearly. We need energy yearly. So if you deforest an area for biofuel, you release CO2 from deforestation but all the CO2 released in the future is what was recaptured by the plants. It is one time CO2 release for perpetual energy delivery. If you go with fossil fuels, you will keep burning more and more every year until it is much worse than deforesting an area.
So reforesting can capture CO2 already released, but that only offsets fossil fuels for some period of time. Even if you cover the whole planet in forests, there is a finite amount of fossil fuels you can burn before it is negated. That is why eliminating fossil fuel use, and quickly, is far more important than protecting forests. Once you burn fossil fuel, you can't recapture it into fossil fuel and would have to increase fores area permanently to compensate.
I think that this is the crux of the matter, and of course you're right. The total amount of carbon stored in fossil fuels is (presumably, without searching for the numbers) much greater than the amount currently stored in living organisms, so there is a finite amount of fossil fuels that can be burnt before the carbon emissions exceed the capacity of forests/vegetation to capture it. Do you know what that "finite amount of fossil fuels" would be? From what I have seen, it is quite large, though humanity is rapidly approaching it. What's needed is for the rate of emissions to be reduced below the rate of capture, and so a reduction in fossil fuel use is urgently needed, but I wouldn't say that completely eliminating fossil fuel use is more important than protecting forests. All that's needed in the long term is for carbon capture to at least equal carbon emissions. In the short term, the planet is already close enough to the "point of no return" that reforestation is necessary in order to bring down levels of carbon dioxide, regardless of how quickly fossil use ceases. It has to be both. Burning fossil fuels is not a sustainable way to meet the energy needs of 8 billion+ humans. Cutting down forests for biofuel is not a sustainable way to meet the energy needs of 8 billion+ humans. Deforestation for biofuel would be sustainable for a much larger population than would burning fossil fuels (due to the extremely slow renewal rate of fossil fuels), but we're past that point. There's not enough land. Either energy consumption needs to drastically decrease, or non-combustion sources of energy are needed.
I get the impression that we are essentially "on the same side" and just quibbling over details. You make an excellent case against fossil fuels! Looking at it in terms of the broader carbon cycle makes the necessity of ending fossil fuel use very obvious even ignoring any concerns about pollution, destructive extraction practices, or other harmful effects.