Scientists develop tree that can remove 1 ton of CO2 per day.

[cubby]

The only problem is that CO2 emissions in the USA are also increasing at a rate of about 3% per year. Both yours and my calculations don't take this into account.

That's why I limited my already rather generalized solution to current output, rather than future output. Because you're right, it would only account for what we produce now, not in 10 years. Also:

In addition, we also didn't take into account electricity costs. I'd imagine these trees would have a sizable requirement, and since the vast majority of our electricity comes from fossil fuels (and renewable is currently expensive) we would most likely be exacerbating the CO2 issue a bit before we could bring it down.

Extremely valid. And your 3% doesn't include the amount of energy we'd have to produce to create, maintain and clean the carbon from the "trees". Short sighted solution would be to have the carbon output of the "tree" factories calculated and then have them neutralize their own emissions first (including future "carbon output" of maintenance too). Not the best solution, but at this point we're just spit-balling.

However . . .

The article says they passively remove CO2, which leads me to believe these are unpowered "trees." You might need some electricity to rinse off the resin that captures the CO2, or to initially construct the trees, but I don't think it's an ongoing requirement.

If they are unpowered and require only a small amount of maintenance for cleaning (and aside from the carbon collection/recycling - what can we do with collected carbon btw?) they may have a very insignificant carbon footprint.

[openair]

In addition, we also didn't take into account electricity costs. I'd imagine these trees would have a sizable requirement, and since the vast majority of our electricity comes from fossil fuels (and renewable is currently expensive) we would most likely be exacerbating the CO2 issue a bit before we could bring it down.

Electricity costs? Electricity costs to produce the trees and leaves is most likely already factored into the $20 000 figure. The plastic trunk standing there and the chemical reaction on the leaves, fueled by the CO2 itself, do not require electricity. Cleaning the leaves is done with "water vapor."

So the only electricity cost i see, is that maybe if it doesn't rain, or some particular leaves are indoors, you might have to run a water pump for 15 minutes to spray them down with a hose.

[cubby]

Electricity costs? Electricity costs to produce the trees and leaves is most likely already factored into the $20 000 figure. The plastic trunk standing there and the chemical reaction on the leaves, fueled by the CO2 itself, do not require electricity. Cleaning the leaves is done with "water vapor."

I hear you on the sentiment of what you're saying, but there is going to be some production carbon cost, along with the electricity for powering the "water vapor" to clean the trees on their maintenance cycle. Plus, the carbon cost of transporting them to various locations, etc., although the actual footprint might be pretty minimal, all things considered.

[Deleted]

Interesting, we should commercialize this and subsidize it, surround China and India with them.

Why? its the US who refuse to sign up to any climate deal.

[Deleted]

there are tons of project going on about reducing CO2 emission, one of them is even creating a "negative CO2 emission" bio-fuel.

It still emit the gas but it is made by cultivating en mass a specific kind of algae that "lock down" CO2 there's an interesting article on newscientiest about it.

he main problem with these projects at the moment si feasibility both in logistical terms and in price

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...n-neutral.html

the article need registration but it is free for who's interested

There are also tons of articles on Global warming: http://www.newscientist.com/search?q...rs=&rbissueno=

They're treated in a good scientific way, so it is always explained when things are controversial, and they're a good read.

[Hyve]

Plastic trees don't nearly replace a forest in terms of habitat and whatnots.

This is an important point, but you can't please everyone all of the time.

My concern with this would be though, that now we can have "machines" off-set our carbon footprint, logging will increase, because the need for trees will be seen as redundant!

[cubby]

there are tons of project going on about reducing CO2 emission, one of them is even creating a "negative CO2 emission" bio-fuel.
It still emit the gas but it is made by cultivating en mass a specific kind of algae that "lock down" CO2 there's an interesting article on newscientiest about it.
he main problem with these projects at the moment si feasibility both in logistical terms and in price
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...n-neutral.html
the article need registration but it is free for who's interested
There are also tons of articles on Global warming: http://www.newscientist.com/search?q...rs=&rbissueno=
They're treated in a good scientific way, so it is always explained when things are controversial, and they're a good read.

I'm not as well informed on this subject so excuse the ignorance, but why can't we use captured carbon as fuel?

[Arlon]

Why not invest into genetic engineering and try to reach comparible results? The produced research could potentially be used for a much more diverse range of aplications.

[Deleted]

I'm not as well informed on this subject so excuse the ignorance, but why can't we use captured carbon as fuel?

I'm interested in science but I'm not techie enough to answer this question. As far as the article about the bio fuel go the problem with that is that the estabilishment for producing it would be huge and do not produce enough ;( so basically still extremely inefficient with current technology

Hypotesis on your question that spring to mind, is that CO2 can't really be used directly into current engines so it need to be synthetized into something else, and this may still be not efficient. For the moment another "challenge" is also being able to capture this CO2 in the air with cost-effective systems

the main point sadly is, more than finding a solution, is finding one that is cost effective si that someone will be willing to invest in it ;(

---------- Post added 2013-01-18 at 10:11 PM ----------

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...perplexed.html

this is an awesome article that links to tons of others. usually on newscientiests its not unusual to also find link to actual research papers that can be read

[Lynarii]

Actually, reading the full article says that there's already a known and workable way to turn the CO2 into usable fuel. The problem, however, is that the cost of the tree has to come down by anywhere from 50-75% (depending on whose numbers you use) before the whole thing would be cost-efficient enough to be valuable in that sense. Also, the conversion process is not net-positive from an energy standpoint, so you'd need another power source of some sort to run the reaction.

Ergo, if you're already using these trees, it's possibly worthwhile to use the trapped CO2 to make fuel. But it is not (yet) economically viable to buy the trees for that purpose, and it is not a solution to current dependencies on various power production methods.

[Valiea]

Googled "How many square miles of land on Earth" and got this

"There are approximately 57.5 million square miles of land on earth, only 29.2 percent of the earth's surface." Basically if we need 100 million trees to completely get rid of all CO2 emissions we could have 2 tree's roughly every square mile. OBVIOUSLY this is only "generalization" since we can't really have a tree in the middle of the Sahara desert or Death Valley because who is going to clean it right? But still, there's quite a lot of room for these tree's and it's not like they need roots (as far as I'm aware).

The issue becomes the $20,000 per tree, and if we would even have enough raw materials to make 100 million of these plastic tree's. Really minor issues when it comes to the future of our society / planet but hey, that's just my thoughts.

This is amazing stuff.

[Herecius]

Plastic trees don't nearly replace a forest in terms of habitat and whatnots.

Nobody in their right mind would uproot a forest and 'replace' it with these. They don't even really require photosynthesis like most trees, so can be placed much more densely up against one another to boot, and can be put in places where trees wouldn't otherwise really grow.

---------- Post added 2013-01-18 at 03:02 PM ----------

Googled "How many square miles of land on Earth" and got this

"There are approximately 57.5 million square miles of land on earth, only 29.2 percent of the earth's surface." Basically if we need 100 million trees to completely get rid of all CO2 emissions we could have 2 tree's roughly every square mile. OBVIOUSLY this is only "generalization" since we can't really have a tree in the middle of the Sahara desert or Death Valley because who is going to clean it right? But still, there's quite a lot of room for these tree's and it's not like they need roots (as far as I'm aware).

The issue becomes the $20,000 per tree, and if we would even have enough raw materials to make 100 million of these plastic tree's. Really minor issues when it comes to the future of our society / planet but hey, that's just my thoughts.

This is amazing stuff.

Well, actually, as it says in the article CO2 is a very good atmospheric mixer. CO2 produced in the US can be soaked up by a tree across the planet. The trees don't have to blanket the planet (which would be impractical anyways), and even then, we do NOT want every single ounce of CO2 sucked out of our atmosphere. That would be even more catastrophic than doubling the current amount of CO2 in it.

[Valiea]

Well, actually, as it says in the article CO2 is a very good atmospheric mixer. CO2 produced in the US can be soaked up by a tree across the planet. The trees don't have to blanket the planet (which would be impractical anyways), and even then, we do NOT want every single ounce of CO2 sucked out of our atmosphere. That would be even more catastrophic than doubling the current amount of CO2 in it.

Ya I was just adding to the fact that even if we had to spread it out 100 million trees in the space the size of our planet is a non-issue. I have no idea how a tree in Michigan can soak up CO2 emissions in Japan, that baffles me. I can see how a tree in Michigan can take CO2 away from the surrounding area, but does the CO2 in Japan spread to the empty space? I just don't understand it, I'm not doubting it at all just... confounds me!

[Destruktion]

I'm not as well informed on this subject so excuse the ignorance, but why can't we use captured carbon as fuel?

I think the OP described a fuel creation process that utilizes CO2 in the first step. The byproducts are CO and H2O, which can somehow be converted to hydrocarbons. I'm not knowledgable enough to analyze the pros, cons, and impracticalities of this process though.

[Reeve]

Ya I was just adding to the fact that even if we had to spread it out 100 million trees in the space the size of our planet is a non-issue. I have no idea how a tree in Michigan can soak up CO2 emissions in Japan, that baffles me. I can see how a tree in Michigan can take CO2 away from the surrounding area, but does the CO2 in Japan spread to the empty space? I just don't understand it, I'm not doubting it at all just... confounds me!

Air moves around the planet pretty constantly. It's why we have wind and weather. At high altitudes, wind can travel very fast, upwards of 300 MPH in the jet stream, which means the wind in Tokyo can bring air to Los Angeles in approximately 18 hours. Average wind speeds at 70 km above the surface of the earth are around 150 MPH, which would travel from Tokyo to LA in 36 hours. The CO2 would move with the wind.

[Laize]

1 ton/day sounds like a lot, but considering how much we pump into the atmopshere it's cost prohibitive to solve our problems.

However, using something like this in conjunction with alternate enrgy sources and conservation is fine. We really need to find a way to do it cheaper though.

One suggestion would be to make small versions that removes only a fraction of that amount, but make it affordable enough (say, $500) that thousands of environmentally-conscious people and companies could afford to buy them and operate them on their own. Would I pay $500 for a machine that could remove say 50 pounds of CO2 from the air daily? You know, I just might.

It doesn't have to be all at once. A five year buying plan would be more than enough to accumulate tons of these leaves. There's not even enough production to get it all in one year anyway.

[Sunseeker]

Indeed, but we need to make sure that we do not let the mentality that these are some sort of permanent innovative replacements get into our heads.

While these trees may not be a replacement, this could trend in that direction. That could be good or bad depending on your point of view, but cybernetic trees that are 1000 times more efficient than natural trees makes for an interesting sci-fi narrative.

[Gheld]

Seriously though. Every G20 country should split the bill to build the 100 million cyber trees, and then stfu about the greenhouse effect and let me burn my fossil fuel in peace.

The price tag literally works out to be peanuts compared to other solutions. It's literally chump change compared to any other climate initiative.

If temperatures keep rising after then I guess agw was wrong. If they stop rising it was right. No need for a debate. And it literally would only cost a few billion per g20 country.

So it would be retarder not to do it.

[Rukentuts]

Seriously though. Every G20 country should split the bill to build the 100 million cyber trees, and then stfu about the greenhouse effect and let me burn my fossil fuel in peace.

The price tag literally works out to be peanuts compared to other solutions. It's literally chump change compared to any other climate initiative.

If temperatures keep rising after then I guess agw was wrong. If they stop rising it was right. No need for a debate. And it literally would only cost a few billion per g20 country.

So it would be retarder not to do it.

It would be hundreds of billions for 100M trees.

[Valiea]

Air moves around the planet pretty constantly. It's why we have wind and weather. At high altitudes, wind can travel very fast, upwards of 300 MPH in the jet stream, which means the wind in Tokyo can bring air to Los Angeles in approximately 18 hours. Average wind speeds at 70 km above the surface of the earth are around 150 MPH, which would travel from Tokyo to LA in 36 hours. The CO2 would move with the wind.

Ah, thanks Reeve.

---------- Post added 2013-01-18 at 09:28 PM ----------

It would be hundreds of billions for 100M trees.

2 trillion to be exact (approximate?) If you build exactly 100 million trees at a $20,000 cost it would cost 2 trillion dollars.

A small portion of what the US debt is at. So ya, not that much.