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Posted by surprisetalk 2 hours ago

So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂(dynomight.net)
75 points | 39 comments
culi 1 hour ago|
Trees respire. They breath in and out. At night time, many trees emit more CO2.

And trees don't exist in isolation as these napkin calculation articles consider them (spherical cows and all that). Every single tree on earth relies on mycorrhizal fungi for the vast majority of its nutrients. Fungi break things down release CO2.

Most of our oxygen comes not from forest but from oceans (specifically from phytoplankton, algae, and photosynthetic bacteria). Between 50-80% of it in fact. Likewise, most of the CO2 that has been captured has been captured by the ocean not by forests. About 25-30% of all human emissions have been captured by the ocean.

Forests (and grasslands) are tremendously important for ecosystems and our health but I think this focus on CO2 and oxygen is simply misleading. If that's your concern you should really be focusing on the ocean. Which IMO is in an even more dire strait than our forests

Aunche 38 minutes ago||
The ocean breathes in and out too. Very little carbon sinks down to the sea floor. The ocean does happen to absorb a lot of CO2, but that's from acidification rather than photosynthesis.
msftgreed 9 minutes ago|||
Forests do net sequester carbon. But if you want to really sock away the carbon you harvest the trees and pyrolize it. It will give you energy (heat) you can use and elemental carbon (biochar). You could bury that a few feet under or innoculate it with microorganisms and work it into fields. Carbon in that form will sit in the soil for hundreds of years. Thousands or millions if you bury it.
theandrewbailey 37 minutes ago|||
> Most of our oxygen comes not from forest but from oceans (specifically from phytoplankton, algae, and photosynthetic bacteria). Between 50-80% of it in fact.

That fact checks out: about 70% of the earth's surface is covered by oceans. It follows that most photosynthesis, thus oxygen comes from oceans.

simonebrunozzi 29 minutes ago|||
> Which IMO is in an even more dire strait than our forests

I think you are probably right, but could you kindly elaborate and provide more details? Very curious to hear your view and learn more.

vizzier 15 minutes ago||
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/the-ocean-and-climate...

Has a pretty good overview. But in brief: Changes in biosphere due to heat and decreasing pH balance due to increased CO2 can leave species unable to adapt fast enough causing deaths.

feelamee 46 minutes ago||
If the ocean is the main hero there, why is the forest still important to our health?
davidkwast 41 minutes ago||
Rainfall

And at least the forest soil has the same amount of carbon stored.

tito 5 minutes ago||
I’ve always wanted to jam on how to create an indoor carbon dioxide removal system. (I think that’s what this article is about but perhaps it’s indirectly about the changing climate)

1 kg per day of material adds up fast but that assumes zero ventilation. If I simply wanted a system to keep my office below 500 ppm all day, I wonder how much material that would produce.

Anyone ever build a little carbon dioxide zapping system for indoor air quality? I’ve also heard that indoor CO2 isn’t actually all that bad but it’s VOCs that are what make me feel sluggish.

sephamorr 2 minutes ago|
I think what you really want is an Energy Recovery Ventilator. It cycles in fresh air and uses an intercooler to limit the heat and humidity loss.
asdfman123 29 minutes ago||
You can sequester carbon with plants, but you can't let them decay or it will release it back into the environment (it's called the "carbon cycle" of a reason).

A startup has solved this problem the following way (for example): grow microalgae near a very dry desert, and bury it in trenches. It never decays and thus never releases CO2 due to lack of water.

Basically, we'd have to permanently stick it back underground again.

t0mpr1c3 3 minutes ago||
You don't necessarily have to bury the plants to sequester the carbon. A lot of oceanic carbon just sinks to the bottom and is eventually covered over.
gamegod 10 minutes ago||
To me, this is great that demonstrates how ridiculous carbon capture and storage is. I just can't imagine us paying to do something like this at scale, when we have a much more straightforward alternative: Stop burning fossil fuels, and use clean energy instead. Right? Like why even both going through the effort of carbon capture, when we're still going to have to stop burning fossil fuels anyways, in order to fix the climate?
asdfman123 7 minutes ago|||
If you can find a way to get other people to stop burning carbon, let us know.

I know that sounds dismissive but I mean it. There's no magic wand.

arjie 2 minutes ago||||
Think of it like a battery. We pour sunlight into the plant at one end and then we take this gasoline from the other side of the battery and burn it. The end-result is that we have full fuel cycle powered by the Sun.
barbazoo 7 minutes ago|||
We'll have to do both I imagine by the time we realize it's too late.
t0mpr1c3 7 minutes ago||
The vast interior of the world's oceans are a nutrient desert. It has been proposed to grow algae by spreading silt, the same way that Saharan winds do.
ninefathom 1 hour ago||
The BBC did this in their 2012 documentary mini-series "How to Grow a Planet" with Iain Stewart. It was a lovely series; I highly recommend it.
moebrowne 1 hour ago||
What if the plants were algae?
sdenton4 7 minutes ago||
I did some of the napkin math on algae a couple years ago... The fun realization is that the physical carbon has to go somewhere. So if we're trying to sequester the average american's 14 tons a year of carbon or whatever it is these days, that means you're going to have at least 14 tons of dead algae to deal with. (And a lot more weight if the algae isn't dehydrated.). That's a lot of dead algae, which demonstrates the difficulty of the problem...

In other news, have you considered ditching your car and becoming a vegetarian? Not emitting the carbon in the first place is much easier!

alnwlsn 1 hour ago||
Here's a real world* example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAbyUaLN2QA

*youtuber

yjftsjthsd-h 1 hour ago||
Bamboo it is.
davidkwast 40 minutes ago|
Best comment
michaelfm1211 1 hour ago||
How is it that 132.5 watts is 3 light bulbs but 918 watts is 765 light bulbs? Is there a typo?
dynm 1 hour ago|
It might not be clearly worded, but 132.5 watts is the power used by 2 incandescent light bulbs, whereas 918 watts is the power present in the light produced by 765 light bulbs. The factor of 50 comes from the fact that incandescent lightbulbs are only ~2% efficient at turning power into light.
lrem 1 hour ago|
That one final number is all one needs as a reply for "but they help a little".
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