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> Technology changes quickly, but trees grow slowly. When you phrase it like that, it sounds like all we need are faster growing trees. Cue grey goo scenario,

> Technology changes quickly, but trees grow slowly. When you phrase it like that, it sounds like all we need are faster growing trees. Cue grey goo scenario, but with trees.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
I'm sitting here, half-way through Nick Lane's "The Vital Question", and I keep wondering - why can't we grow chloroplast in vats, force-flow CO₂ through them, and dump the resulting products into a mine shaft?
- nine_k 7y ago
  You would also need to dry up the product, and preferably burn out most of the hydrogen out of it, to form coke (the black, not the white powder), and then dump it. Else you'll quickly run out of empty mines' space, and likely contaminate the water table around them.
nine_k 7y ago
Not just that: we need fast-growing trees that don't let the carbon back into the atmosphere. For that, the trees may not rot, may not be used as firewood, and may not be processed into paper or other products that eventually get incinerated in a waste-processing plant. Ideally we should play artificial Carboniferous, and let these trees sink in lifeless bottomless oxygen-depleted bogs where they get preserved for millennia, and turn eventually back into coal deposits, to replace the ones we've depleted for last 300-400 years, putting the carbon from them into the air. This takes much more than just fast-growing tress, or more land allocated to growing them. We also need these carbon burial grounds, that likely won't look (and likely smell) as pretty as a nice pine forest. Drowning in a carbon burial bog would be a hazard for hikers, too. We also need economic incentives to bury the carbon from these carbon-fixating trees, and not to use them productively in the economy. A genetically engineered plant that grows fast, does not require a lot of water, accumulates lots of anti-microbial and anti-fungi substances that prevent rotting, and produces timber which is not nice and desirable timber, to avoid the temptation, which is also heavier than water to make drowning easier, could be helpful.
- gdubs 7y ago
  Along these lines, Biochar is a promising technique as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
- stordoff 7y ago
  > and produces timber which is not nice and desirable timber, to avoid the temptation Why is this necessary? Wouldn't using it as timber still capture the carbon, albeit not as completely as the scenario above?
  - nine_k 7y ago
    If that timber stays a wooden structure for several centuries, it would, for that time! Maybe we should start to build more long-term things from timber, likely we would fire-proof them well. But steel, concrete, and plastics are still much easier to use for long-term structures like large buildings, bridges, roads, etc. If it's used to produce paper, or wooden packaging, or for making chopsticks, etc, it would likely not. All these things are expendable, and most likely will end up either burned or rotted, releasing the carbon as CO2. Recycling helps this, of course.

> Technology changes quickly, but trees grow slowly. When you phrase it like that, it sounds like all we need are faster growing trees. Cue grey goo scenario, but with trees.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

I'm sitting here, half-way through Nick Lane's "The Vital Question", and I keep wondering - why can't we grow chloroplast in vats, force-flow CO₂ through them, and dump the resulting products into a mine shaft?

nine_k 7y ago
You would also need to dry up the product, and preferably burn out most of the hydrogen out of it, to form coke (the black, not the white powder), and then dump it. Else you'll quickly run out of empty mines' space, and likely contaminate the water table around them.

nine_k 7y ago

Not just that: we need fast-growing trees that don't let the carbon back into the atmosphere. For that, the trees may not rot, may not be used as firewood, and may not be processed into paper or other products that eventually get incinerated in a waste-processing plant. Ideally we should play artificial Carboniferous, and let these trees sink in lifeless bottomless oxygen-depleted bogs where they get preserved for millennia, and turn eventually back into coal deposits, to replace the ones we've depleted for last 300-400 years, putting the carbon from them into the air. This takes much more than just fast-growing tress, or more land allocated to growing them. We also need these carbon burial grounds, that likely won't look (and likely smell) as pretty as a nice pine forest. Drowning in a carbon burial bog would be a hazard for hikers, too. We also need economic incentives to bury the carbon from these carbon-fixating trees, and not to use them productively in the economy. A genetically engineered plant that grows fast, does not require a lot of water, accumulates lots of anti-microbial and anti-fungi substances that prevent rotting, and produces timber which is not nice and desirable timber, to avoid the temptation, which is also heavier than water to make drowning easier, could be helpful.

gdubs 7y ago
Along these lines, Biochar is a promising technique as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
stordoff 7y ago
> and produces timber which is not nice and desirable timber, to avoid the temptation Why is this necessary? Wouldn't using it as timber still capture the carbon, albeit not as completely as the scenario above?
- nine_k 7y ago
  If that timber stays a wooden structure for several centuries, it would, for that time! Maybe we should start to build more long-term things from timber, likely we would fire-proof them well. But steel, concrete, and plastics are still much easier to use for long-term structures like large buildings, bridges, roads, etc. If it's used to produce paper, or wooden packaging, or for making chopsticks, etc, it would likely not. All these things are expendable, and most likely will end up either burned or rotted, releasing the carbon as CO2. Recycling helps this, of course.