Breakthrough In Artificial Photosynthesis Captures CO2 In Acetate 128
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from Berkeley Lab and the U.S. Dept. of Energy have created an artificial photosynthetic process that capture carbon dioxide in acetate, "the most common building block today for biosynthesis." The research has been published in the journal Nano Letters (abstract). "Atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at its highest level in at least three million years, primarily as a result of the burning of fossil fuels. Yet fossil fuels, especially coal, will remain a significant source of energy to meet human needs for the foreseeable future. Technologies for sequestering carbon before it escapes into the atmosphere are being pursued but all require the captured carbon to be stored, a requirement that comes with its own environmental challenges. ... By combining biocompatible light-capturing nanowire arrays with select bacterial populations, the new artificial photosynthesis system offers a win/win situation for the environment: solar-powered green chemistry using sequestered carbon dioxide."
They're called trees. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: They're called trees. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know how viable these devices are for mass production or what it takes to keep them running, but you could potentially use them in places (building roofs, taller light fixtures in parking lots) where there isn't enough space or it isn't viable to plant trees.
I do recall, however, someone pointing out to me that industrial hemp is more efficient at removing co2 than even some trees.
Re: They're called trees. (Score:5, Interesting)
I do recall, however, someone pointing out to me that industrial hemp is more efficient at removing co2 than even some trees.
Hemp is harder on the soil than its proponents would have you believe. Bamboo is even more efficient than hemp, you can harvest it and build stuff out of it every five years or so, sequestering carbon. And you can do it all with hand tools. You do need water, but it can be pretty crappy water.
The proper solution will be varied.
We already have a way to fix CO2 on your roof, it's called a green roof.
Not cutting down the trees is a useful step, because mature growth fixes more CO2 than new growth.
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Yeah, but what you are forgetting is topsoil depth is pretty lacking around the world, and when trees die, decay and go back into the global carbon cycle, a portion of them is converted into usable fertile black humus rich topsoil, which is undigestable to even the top digesting lifeforms. Topsoil by far is the ultimate form of carbon sequestration, and also the source of underground coal after millions of years if it undergoes tectonic heat and molten lava silicate phase separation.
On another note, the dia
Re: They're called trees. (Score:5, Interesting)
"...mature growth fixes more CO2 than new growth."
Only if your definition of "mature" is the peak-growth period of the trees and not a forest which has stopped growing.
Mature forests are as carbon neutral as an untapped oil deposit. Carbon release through decay balances with carbon capture from growth.
Using forests as a tool for carbon capture means either growing forests to maturity as carbon storage fields, or clearcutting new-growth forests and building permanent structures with a lot of wood, of course considerin the carbon-cost of processing the lumber and restoring soil nutrients.
Hardwood floors in shopping malls might be a good start.
Re: They're called trees. (Score:5, Informative)
Only if your definition of "mature" is the peak-growth period of the trees and not a forest which has stopped growing.
You've got to take it on a species-by-species basis. Take, for example, Sequoia Sempervirens. Right up until the trees fall down because they outgrow their root systems, older trees put on more mass and thus fix more CO2 than the same area filled to capacity with younger trees.
Even trees which aren't getting taller are often getting thicker, so the question for a given species is whether younger or older members put on more mass for a given area. Virtually all of the non-water mass of all vegetation is carbon, and nearly all of the carbon of all vegetation (even relatively high soil carbon users like corn) comes from the air.
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You've got to take it on a species-by-species basis. Take, for example, Sequoia Sempervirens. Right up until the trees fall down because they outgrow their root systems, older trees put on more mass and thus fix more CO2 than the same area filled to capacity with younger trees.
Then they die, and decompose, releasing nearly all that CO2 back into the atmosphere.
Even trees which aren't getting taller are often getting thicker, so the question for a given species is whether younger or older members put on m
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Then they die, and decompose, releasing nearly all that CO2 back into the atmosphere.
Again, that depends on the rate and type of decomposition. In fact, if you allow duff to build up, it sequesters carbon.
Yes, trees that are growing do take carbon out of the atmosphere. After they die, it gets released back.
Some of it gets released back. The faster it gets released back, the more of it gets released back. Some of the carbon is sequestered in the soil.
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drinkypoo, be honest. It essentially all gets released back in mature forests. Do you think that which doesn't goes somewhere magical?
There isn't new coal being created by trees at the moment, that we've seen, at any significant rate.
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drinkypoo, be honest.
Okay.
It essentially all gets released back in mature forests.
Wrong.
Do you think that which doesn't goes somewhere magical?
No, it's called topsoil. Maybe you should study up before you continue demonstrating your ignorance. Or are you just counting on my not responding? I now have done.
There isn't new coal being created by trees at the moment, that we've seen, at any significant rate.
Your logical fallacy is attacking a straw man.
Re: They're called trees. (Score:5, Informative)
The sun is _slowly_ brightening - this is happening on timescales of tens to hundreds of millions of years. The fact that CO2 was significantly higher tens or hundreds of millions of years ago is not super-relevant to today's conditions, but it helped keep temperatures bearable in the distant past, when the sun was fainter. We are adding CO2 at a rate that is essentially instantaneous compared to the effects of this solar evolution, they are even still extremely quick on the much shorter (tens of thousands of years) timescales of the Milankovitch-cycles (which are the orbital cycles which are the underlying cause of our glacial-interglacial variation in the past few million years)
What interests us at this time is what we are doing to our atmosphere over a period of tens to hundreds of years, and what effect that has on timescales of tens, hundreds and thousands of years - even if we humans stop all of our CO2 emissions (except breathing of course), the increased concentration versus "before" will be considerable thousands of years into the future, as will the effects of that increase on climate.
So stating "still at the extreme lower end of historic levels" is technically correct, but practically misleading, as it suggests there's nothing wrong with CO2-levels.
Re: They're called trees. (Score:4, Informative)
Current levels are not even "average" in the context of history.
What kind of timescale are we talking about? Hundred years? Thousand? Ten thousand? Millions? Hundreds of millions? Billions? You could be very wrong, or very right with that assertion. I'm going to assume you're right, and we'll talk hundreds of millions.
It's amusing you cite the Sun in any fashion because it wasn't all that long ago than any mention of the Sun with regards to climate change was dismissed out of hand.
I had assumed in the first quote, you were defining history as "a really fucking long time", which humorously enough, is the exact timescale where the Sun's variance over time starts to play a real part in the Earth's thermodynamic equilibrium game. Turns out solar evolution is a pretty slow process. Of course, now that you've asserted that short-term variations in solar output are driving climate change, I can see I you've just attempted to change the definition of "history" that you initially assigned to fit a contradicting argument. Seems legit.
What you are doing is making shit up on the fly and talking in circles just avoid the fact that the CO2 concentrations today pale with what the traditionally have been.
At least he isn't changing definitions every other statement to support his assertion. Ignorant, or trolling? Can't tell.
Re: They're called trees. (Score:4, Interesting)
it doesn't matter, because the earth has never been habitable to humans when the CO2 levels have been higher. We don't care if the current CO2 levels are average or not, it's completely irrelevant. What we care about is whether they are convenient for us. The earth has gone through numerous ice ages without substantial perturbation of the cycle. Now we've created conditions [skepticalscience.com] that may change the cycle upon which we depend for existence, and we've already seen negative effects which are attributable to this carbon release.
Atmospheric CO2 levels certainly have been this high before, but the last time coincides with the last great exinction, so that is in fact a spectacularly shitty argument for denialists to engage in.
Re: They're called trees. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, but it does solve the problem a bit. The old trees die and decompose, most of that organic matter sticks around long enough to be used by the next generation of plant, fungus, and animal. The soil is in turn enriched which supports more life that it previously could which in turn sequesters more carbon. It may be a pyramid scheme, but it is one that has worked for a very long time. Also, if enough organic matter is present it might actually recreate the fossil fuels that caused the problem in the fi
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And it doesn't need to be very deep or for very long. Not all the peat in bogs comes from the early Iron Age, some is less than a century old. Peat is just lignite in waiting.
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Haha - you can't see the wood for the trees! (this idiom has a double meaning here)
See the tree? The wood is almost all 'fixed' carbon.
And when it dies, a tree doesn't go 'poof' in a cloud of CO2. Instead, organic matter gets trapped in the ground and new topsoil is created (again, mostly carbon).
Recall a well tended urban 'nature strip' in an older suburb (a century or more)? Typically, the strip tends to 'pops out' from its concrete lining. That's a small version of the same effect.
Some interesting info I
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Thank you - this is very interesting to me.
Re:They're called trees. (Score:5, Interesting)
Trees. Quit cutting them down. Plant more. Problem solved.
Strangely enough, at least in North America, we've planted more trees than we've cut down, and have done so for around what, 100 years now? ( By way of example, here in Oregon, loggers are required by law to plant anywhere from 3-5new trees** for each one they cut down, and they have to survive for at least a year after planting.)
Mind you, this doesn't speak for the third world (where firewood for heat and cooking is an actual thing, farming is a growth industry, not to mention the exotic hardwood cutting), and definitely doesn't speak for Europe and Asia (where the former has few forests left, and the latter is largely ignored and therefore unregulated for the most part).
** the number depends on soil quality, slope, and other factors, but it's at least 3.
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Mind you, this doesn't speak for the third world (where firewood for heat and cooking is an actual thing, farming is a growth industry, not to mention the exotic hardwood cutting), and definitely doesn't speak for Europe and Asia (where the former has few forests left, and the latter is largely ignored and therefore unregulated for the most part).
Bob Taylor has done some wonderful work in making the "exotic hardwood cutting" sustainable [taylorguitars.com]. It's incredible what would happen before.
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It's encouraging that Taylor gets it, but the real problem is going to be convincing the the guitarists and violinists; there is a lot of superstitions involved in luthiery and especially in the classical markets. Currently most ebony available for reasonable priced instruments has had a coat of Lincoln black shoe dye [shoeshineexpress.com] applied to it, [fiddlehangout.com] but admitting it publicly would kill your market. Everyone who considers themselves an elite performer is going to think that B grade Ebony is OK for the masses, but they'll get
Re:They're called trees. (Score:5, Informative)
Europe and Asia (where the former has few forests left [...]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
Canada and the United States 26%
European Union 35%
And from
http://wdi.worldbank.org/table... [worldbank.org]
Europe it was 36.5% in 200 and 37.9% in 2012.
Not sure how good these statistics are, because it says 'Canada &United States = 26%' and then 'Canada =31%' and 'USA= 30.84%'... In any case, Europe has more forest area atm and amount of forest is growing rather than decreasing.
Or did you mean Europe has few forests left compared to situation from 2000 years ago? I can agree with that, but I don't think that global warming is THAT old - we used to have some mini ice age in meantime I think...
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That's an interesting Wiki page. But I'm afraid those figures say almost nothing about the actual number of trees or forest density in those countries.
For example, Spain has a higher forest area percentage than Germany, 36% vs 31%. Not sure what counts as "forest area" though, because while it is true that Spain has more untouched wilderness than Germany, most of the land is dry with very sparse tree density. In contrast, Germany has mostly moist, rich land and very dense forests. By these accounts I wouldn
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So, on that wiki article it says the percent of forested land area, by country is:
Canada: 3,101,340 km2 forested which is 31.06%
USA: 3,030,890 km2 forested which is 30.84%
But then Canada and USA combined is: 4,680,000 km2 or 26.00%
Obviously something is quite wrong with that article.
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There are two main sources on that page for forest numbers - the World Bank and an About.Com page. The World Bank numbers are what are being used for the individual countries. The US + Canada number is a misreading of the About.com page, which is about the entire North American continent (including Mexico). The About.com page gets its data from the UN Food and Agriculture (FOA) Forestry site, which uses a different method of determining forest cover as they are primarily concerned about forests as an agricu
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Interesting, but the important question is how much possible forest land is forested? About 1/3 of the US is desert and the top 1/3 of Canada is tundra. I don't think the EU has nearly as much as either. But I won't deny the good news that forests in those two continents are somewhere in the neighborhood of sustainable these days....
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Country - percent - forested - total
Canada - 31.1% - 3,101,340 - 9,984,670
United States - 33.1% - 3,030,890 - 9,147,593
EU - 36.0% - 1,577,190 - 4,381,376
Austria - 46.1% - 38,620 - 83,855
Belgium - 21.8% - 6,670 - 30,528
Bulgaria - 32.7% - 36,250 - 110,994
Croatia - 37.7% - 21,
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Mind you, this doesn't speak for the third world (where firewood for heat and cooking is an actual thing, farming is a growth industry, not to mention the exotic hardwood cutting), and definitely doesn't speak for Europe and Asia (where the former has few forests left, and the latter is largely ignored and therefore unregulated for the most part).
The Third World doesn't burn the wood for cooking/heat. It's cut and processed either to expand the agricultural frontier so more soybean can be grown and exported to the First World or to make paper in factories the First World bans and get relocated here.
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After you've clear cut an area, it only makes sense to try to restore it but the reality is that you can never put it back the way it was...
Plant 3-5 new trees (each weighing less than a pound) to replace a 20,000 pound tree is a joke. After 20 or 50 years, these trees might grow enough to begin to replace the carbon sequestration of the tree you cut down but don't delude yourself into thinking that this is a solution. It's still best to just not cut down the trees in the first place.
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If you burn the 20,000 pound tree after cutting it, then your complaint is valid. If, in an extreme example, you bury it in the Thames as pilings for the Roman bridge in Londonium (most are still down there) while the 3-5 new trees are growing (and sequestering) you are doing much better than leaving a huge tree to rot and hollow out.
Anyway, the high tech "solution" in the article is must better at sequestration than a mere tree, more than an order of magnitude better. The trick is whether it can scale to
Re:They're called trees. (Score:4, Interesting)
Strangely enough, at least in North America, we've planted more trees than we've cut down
What we care about is not forested area, although it's relevant to weather patterns, but forest mass. Older trees put on mass faster than young trees [treehugger.com], and most of a plant's non-water mass is carbon from the air [brynmawr.edu]. Strangely enough, this simple fact seems to go mostly ignored in discussions about global climate and carbon, and I have to bring it up in literally every discussion on this subject here on Slashdot. I can use the karma, but I'd prefer that more of you land-rape apologists would wake up and smell the burning.
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Unfortunately the majority of trees that we've planted are a monoculture meant to grow quickly and be harvested again for either pulp or timber. I've seen the result of clear cutting on the hills on Vancouver Island and it's terrible. Nothing living was left. Everything was brown with no green at all. Granted this was about twenty years ago but I doubt that things have changed except that they have gotten more efficient at it.
Re:They're called trees. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not sophisticated enough. The problem is we're taking eons of sequestered carbon and dumping it into the atmosphere all at once. Trees only sequester carbon for about 100 before they're broken down into CO2 and other stuff again. Think of it as time dilated burning. And planting the world over with trees cannot possibly capture all the sequestered CO2 we're dumping.
Re:They're called trees. (Score:4, Informative)
Trees only sequester carbon for about 100 before they're broken down into CO2 and other stuff again.
It's not even that simple. The percentage of carbon which is released instead of being fixed into the soil is related to the rate at which decomposition occurs. However, even tropical rain forests are net carbon sinks. As well, when you harvest timber and build things out of it, you keep the carbon fairly well-sequestered, at least until the wood gets successfully attacked by a fungus or set on fire, etc etc. But mature trees fix more carbon than young trees [nature.com], further complicating the issue. The truth is that planting the world over with trees is no substitute for not having cut them down in the first place, and no amount of wishing will make it so. That's not an argument against replanting, just an argument against any further cutting of old growth. It should simply not be permitted, unless those trees absolutely will fail regardless — and soon.
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"...solar-powered green chemistry using sequestered carbon dioxide."
Trees. Quit cutting them down. Plant more. Problem solved.
Actually, cutting down trees is a great way to optimize carbon storage, as long as new trees are planted to replace the ones cut down. It clears space for new trees, which grow faster and eat more carbon when they are young. The cut wood keeps the carbon locked up and is a useful building material. As long as the cut wood keeps the carbon in solid form it isn't going to affect the atmosphere.
I've actually seen plans where cut wood is dumped to the bottom of the ocean where it won't decay, then replanted
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With Peak Fossil Fertilizers and population growth it might not be such a good idea to put all those nutrients on the bottom of the ocean. You need to sequester the carbon without too much other valuable stuff.
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"...solar-powered green chemistry using sequestered carbon dioxide."
Trees. Quit cutting them down. Plant more. Problem solved.
Actually, cutting down trees is a great way to optimize carbon storage, as long as new trees are planted to replace the ones cut down.
Nope [nature.com]
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That article just says that old forests capture more carbon than was initially thought. They initially thought they captured none; that really isn't a high bar to get over. Young forest still capture more than old forests.
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Yes, you have to prevent them from oxidizing somehow. Dumping them in water or burying them raises a lot of questions though. Would the operation of cutting them down and either digging deep holes to bury them or transporting them to the ocean to be weighted down and dumped be carbon negative? The market need for building materials is presumably being filled with current operations, so I don't think you could store much additional carbon that way. Many logging operations also re-plant.
I wonder if someth
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I heard an idea that seems too simple and cheap to actually ever try but, if we do ever need to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, the proposed solution is to cut the trees and convert them to charcoal by pyrolysis, then bury the charcoal, of course plant new trees and repeat.
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I think you would fire the furnace with a carbon neutral source, like wood. I think you would fire it with the very vegetation that you are carbonizing. I think they just restrict the amount of air they let in to the chamber.
Also I believe the proposed solution is to apply the char to soil to condition it.
I did a quick google of "pyrolysis carbon sequestration" and then "biochar"
I would say that most of the carbon sequestration ideas I have heard of sound much more crazy than pyrolysis of vegetation.
Persona
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Chop down two trees, burn one to heat the other in low oxigen, this is a carbon neutral activity. Now take that biochar and bury it deep in the earth, or use it to condition the soil.
Plant two trees and let them soak up carbon.
I don't see any thermodynamic paradox there.
You could just bury trees, but I think the idea is the charcoal doesn't degrade back to carbon dioxide as quickly.
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Biochar [wikipedia.org] puts carbon in the soil, improves the soil, sometimes dramatically, and keeps it there for mostly likely millennia.
Re:They're called trees. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, cutting down trees is a great way to optimize carbon storage, as long as new trees are planted to replace the ones cut down. It clears space for new trees, which grow faster and eat more carbon when they are young.
What? [treehugger.com] I say, what [nature.com] did you say, son? A quick google search would have proven you wrong, but you didn't even do that. Or, you know, having paid attention to any of these discussions here on slashdot in ages, since I bring this point up every time we have one. I haven't been bothering with links and citations until now, but nobody has asked so I didn't feel it was important since I'm not the only person who knows how to use google, am I? I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking I'm smarter than everyone, but I have this sneaking suspicion that I've been giving the average slashdotter way too much credit — and it wasn't that much, in my estimation.
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Tree-by-tree comparison. Forest is what matters.
RTFA, it doesn't matter how you measure, mature trees win either way.
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I've actually seen plans where cut wood is dumped to the bottom of the ocean
What a great idea! We could weight it down with gold or uranium or something.
Or we could build furniture, houses or other long lasting useful stuff out of the good timber and use the charcoal made with the rest to improve the soil.
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And when the tree dies? Or stops eating up as much CO2 as it did when it started growing? That's the problem with pithy one-line answers to complicated questions - they're usually wrong, and make the giver look rather foolish :)
We need something far better than trees to store CO2 simply because we produce so much of it.
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I think you've hit on the problem. We do need to stop producing so much CO2. We need to stop digging up fossil fuels and burning them. We need to leave fossil CO2 in the ground. We can switch to renewables (solar, wind, etc.) and replace most of our fossil fuel consumption and the faster we do that, the less damage from fossil CO2.
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It seems awfully counterproductive to dig two holes, and take carbon (coal) out of one hole and put other carbon (wood) in the other one. Instead, you could just burn the wood, and dig up a little less coal.
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We don't have a hole, and we don't have much excess wood. The holes we get from mining coal are typically filled with the overburden.
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It's hard to get anything out of the trees without cutting them down and releasing the carbon dioxide. Also, trees are hard to grow on top of buildings.
It's OK-- most of the people commenting below didn't read the article either.
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..but all bullshitting aside: Mod parent up to 'Score:9.99E+36, Ultimate Truth'. Stop cutting down trees, plant MORE trees, do it NOW.
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Actually, cutting them down and storing the wood (call it a house or paper) while letting a new tree grow in its place would be much more effective at taking CO2 out of the loop than not cutting them down.
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solar-powered green chemistry using sequestered carbon dioxide
Sorry to disappoint you. A forest is carbon neutral. It produces as much CO2 as it consumes. Your suggestion will have no impact on CO2 removed from the air.
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Come on, dude. Certainly you understand that the addition of a forest where previously there was not is a carbon sink, and even if that new sink is neutral, it still represents a net decrease of unsequestered carbon floating around in the fscking atmosphere?
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but a car is carbon neutral as well. It produces as much carbon as it consumes
You really need to share some of the drugs you are taking. They must be awesome. So, what kind of photosynthesis does a car do?
the addition of a forest where previously there was not is a carbon sink
Yes, for a little while. In the fastest growing period. Once the forest is somewhat established, the rotting processes etc in that forest will produce as much carbon as the forest consumes. Sure, the growth stage is semi-long in human terms, but it is both far too slow and far too inefficient to do anything about our current emissions.
As for cars, putting any kind of restrictions on
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You really need to share some of the drugs you are taking. They must be awesome. So, what kind of photosynthesis does a car do?
It of course doesn't, but you knew that.
However, you feed it carbon, and it spits it back out. In, out. No sequestration of carbon. Neutral.
Building a trillion cars adds 0 carbon to the carbon cycle, only adds steps to the cycle. It's the extraction of carbon from outside of the cycle that is not neutral.
This is unlike a tree, which takes atmospheric carbon, and builds this stuff called wood out of it.
Sequestration.
Yes, for a little while. In the fastest growing period. Once the forest is somewhat established, the rotting processes etc in that forest will produce as much carbon as the forest consumes. Sure, the growth stage is semi-long in human terms, but it is both far too slow and far too inefficient to do anything about our current emissions.
You still miss the point. Sure the forest becomes carbon neutral. Who cares. A car is car
From TFA (Score:2, Interesting)
It appears to convert into acetate as opposed to capturing in acetate
"However, this new artificial photosynthetic system synthesizes the combination of carbon dioxide and water into acetate, the most common building block today for biosynthesis."
Could this save us from our doom? (Score:1)
Skating, not butthole surfing (Score:1)
Initiate countdown, T -60 years to "Oh my god, we're pulling too much CO2 out of the atmosphere! Plants are having a tough time growing! And it's getting too cold -- people are skating on the canals of Amsterdam again!"
A sarcasm or a prediction? You decide.
Re:Skating, not butthole surfing (Score:4, Funny)
In the future we won't need to worry, Systemd will properly attenuate global C02 levels to ensure optimum balance between human survival and the needs of other species.
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A sarcasm or a prediction? You decide.
Either it's sarcasm or you're an idiot, because it's easy to release carbon. What's hard is putting it back in the bottle.
I will choose to believe that you were being sarcastic, because it will make me feel better about the world I live in.
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Either it's sarcasm or you're an idiot, because it's easy to release carbon. What's hard is putting it back in the bottle.
No what's hard is convincing people that what was happening 18 years ago isn't happening now.
OMG is that actually a negative warming in the range of possibilities reported by the IPCC?
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Of course the United Nation's Intergovernmental Pannel on Climate would cherry pick data that could cost them $Billions in funding and the opertunity for Climatologists to attend conferences in exotic locations all over the world.
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My comment was poorly worded, the "them" was meant to be the IPCC and Climatologists in general, not specifically the IPCC alone;
Amazes me (Score:1)
I recall in the 70's and 80's it was ozone, at some point we shifted and now it's CO2.
Re:Amazes me (Score:5, Informative)
yet no one ever correlates the increase to deforestation of rain forests.
They do. Deforestation is a well known part of the CO2 problem. But fossil fuels are a bigger part.
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yet no one ever correlates the increase to deforestation of rain forests.
They do. Deforestation is a well known part of the CO2 problem. But fossil fuels are a bigger part.
True, and here is your citation. [epa.gov].
Re:Amazes me (Score:5, Informative)
We can very easily attribute what degree of co2 increase is due to fossil fuels because co2 from fossil fuels has a isotopic signature:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=384
In the 70s and 80s ozone was the big concern, and we changed some of the chemicals we use in our products because of it.
Now as we have learned more and as the world has changed there is a new concern.
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And we are gobsmacked by your simplemindedness. And it's means it is.
Re:Amazes me (Score:4, Informative)
Just as many are gobsmacked by those who assume they know all there is to know about the issues surrounding global warming, and then use their stilted, malformed knowledge of the subject to condemn those who take a more rational, rigorous approach as being hoaxers or charlatans or whatever other pejorative springs limply to mind...
Ozone was a different problem, which has been largely alleviated by international action.
You really should brush up on your knowledge before proudly telling everyone just how little you know.
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You know why ozone (presumably you're referring to the ozone hole) isn't a problem today? Because the international community agreed to address it and its fucking FIXED (fixed enough anyway). If you meant ground level ozone, we got you covered there too. Tougher emissions standards and the ensuing cleaner vehicles have significantly reduced ground level ozone in the past 30 years.
Yes deforestation is a problem but the CO2 we're currently releasing from coal is coming from a bank of 50 Million Years worth o
Efficiency (Score:4, Informative)
With this approach, the Berkeley team achieved a solar energy conversion efficiency of up to 0.38-percent for about 200 hours under simulated sunlight, which is about the same as that of a leaf.
That's lousy. It may be a breakthrough for this particular field, but compared to regular PV panels, it sucks. It would be much smarter to keep the carbon in the ground, and set up more photovoltaics instead.
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I wasn't expecting anything up to this point, but both the article and summary do a good job of raising the expectations, by using terms as "game changing breakthrough". It may be a breakthrough, but it's not changing any games just yet.
How much CO2 is generated.. (Score:2)
.. mining , transporting and refining the ores required to create these nanowire arrays and the surrouding support material for them and the bacteria compared to the amount they sequester before they need replacing? Its a rather important fact to know.
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Wow! With your half-thought-out idea you have overturned their entire field of research! Amazing! It's simply staggering that no-one thought of this before! Quick! To the rooftops!
Or, just maybe, they know more than you. I know, it's a concept you have difficulty accepting.
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Wow! With your half-thought-out idea you have overturned their entire field of research!
What idea ? It was just a question.
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You ever considered reading a post properly before replying? Try it, you never know, it might make you look less of a bell-end.
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"Artificial photosynthesis" is misleading (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's your idea of natural photosynthesis?
So... (Score:1)
because if you think about it, to end the increase of CO2 we're going to need to synthesize as much carbon into acetate as we are burning coal; which means we're going to need the nanowire system to produce at least as much energy as the coal burning is releasing.
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Fossil remains do not exist on the depth they now extract oil from. Therefore the fossil fuel term cannot be correct. With over 90 % of CO2 on earth contained in oceans, the claim of CO2 increase cannot be validated especially when measured only over some euro wacko agencies.
and not only that, petroleum is not a rock or stone, so the term petroleum cannot be correct.
and we have no proof that the increase in atmospheric CO2 measured isn't cause by CO2 coming out of the ocean, at a rate correlated with our generation of CO2 from burning carbon, which then disappears.
It could happen!