4 ms·

Question, beacause i'm not familiar enough with how trees "suck" co2 out of the air. This study is saying it would take something like 100 forests the size of

by swalsh 7y ago

Question, beacause i'm not familiar enough with how trees "suck" co2 out of the air. This study is saying it would take something like 100 forests the size of France to solve the climate change problem by tree growth alone. Would it be possible to genetically modify a tree to consume C02 100x more than a regular tree so we would only need 1 france of mutated trees?

joelhoffman 7y ago
Sounds like you would end up with 1 tree the size of France. Worth doing!
lemoncucumber 7y ago
The reason trees pull CO2 out of the atmosphere is that they turn that carbon into, well, the tree. It doesn't just disappear. So consuming 100x more CO2 would result in a tree that's 100x as large.
- NikkiA 7y ago
  Or grows 100x as fast.
teraflop 7y ago
The Wikipedia article on photosynthetic efficiency[1] is informative. TL;DR: since extracting carbon from CO2 is energetically unfavorable, it needs to be powered by sunlight. Typical plants are 1-4% efficient in their overall usage of solar energy to generate sugars, and it's not possible to get above ~11% without using some totally different biochemical process. Some plants are adapted to be more efficient than others, but I think we can be pretty confident that there are no simple tweaks to radically increase efficiency that billions of years of evolution haven't already stumbled on. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency
Symmetry 7y ago
What would be really nice to invent is some superior alternative to existing photosynthesis that can better convert sunlight, water, and CO2 into organic matter than existing plants can. Once you've got that it might not matter whether they plants are trees or algae, so long as the organic matter can be buried.
- zeristor 7y ago
  They're looking at GMing Nitrogenase into plants so that they're no longer limted by the lack of Nitrogen, they're also working on copying C4 photosynthesis into C3 photosynthesis plants so they can more efficiently use CO2. A superior form of photosynthesis isn't easy to imagine, the one we've got seems to use nifty quantum effects to be very efficient, I think about 80%. Earth cycles carbon, there's been a few spells when it has run out of carbon and turned it a snowball, seemingly saved by carbonate rocks being recycled by volcanoes. I think there'll run out of phosphate before then though.
- perilunar 7y ago
  Burying it is a waste. Better to grow trees (and bamboo) to make timber, and use it to replace concrete and steel (which are responsible for huge amounts CO2).
8bitsrule 7y ago
This short (4m) video surprised me (I always thought tree mass came from the soil). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KZb2_vcNTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KZb2_vcNTg
- perilunar 7y ago
  A good companion video: When you lose weight, where does it go? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOSCs-yLwno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOSCs-yLwno

by swalsh 7y ago

joelhoffman 7y ago

Sounds like you would end up with 1 tree the size of France. Worth doing!

lemoncucumber 7y ago

The reason trees pull CO2 out of the atmosphere is that they turn that carbon into, well, the tree. It doesn't just disappear. So consuming 100x more CO2 would result in a tree that's 100x as large.

NikkiA 7y ago
Or grows 100x as fast.

teraflop 7y ago

The Wikipedia article on photosynthetic efficiency[1] is informative. TL;DR: since extracting carbon from CO2 is energetically unfavorable, it needs to be powered by sunlight. Typical plants are 1-4% efficient in their overall usage of solar energy to generate sugars, and it's not possible to get above ~11% without using some totally different biochemical process. Some plants are adapted to be more efficient than others, but I think we can be pretty confident that there are no simple tweaks to radically increase efficiency that billions of years of evolution haven't already stumbled on. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency

Symmetry 7y ago

What would be really nice to invent is some superior alternative to existing photosynthesis that can better convert sunlight, water, and CO2 into organic matter than existing plants can. Once you've got that it might not matter whether they plants are trees or algae, so long as the organic matter can be buried.

zeristor 7y ago
They're looking at GMing Nitrogenase into plants so that they're no longer limted by the lack of Nitrogen, they're also working on copying C4 photosynthesis into C3 photosynthesis plants so they can more efficiently use CO2. A superior form of photosynthesis isn't easy to imagine, the one we've got seems to use nifty quantum effects to be very efficient, I think about 80%. Earth cycles carbon, there's been a few spells when it has run out of carbon and turned it a snowball, seemingly saved by carbonate rocks being recycled by volcanoes. I think there'll run out of phosphate before then though.
perilunar 7y ago
Burying it is a waste. Better to grow trees (and bamboo) to make timber, and use it to replace concrete and steel (which are responsible for huge amounts CO2).

8bitsrule 7y ago

This short (4m) video surprised me (I always thought tree mass came from the soil). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KZb2_vcNTg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KZb2_vcNTg

perilunar 7y ago
A good companion video: When you lose weight, where does it go? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOSCs-yLwno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOSCs-yLwno