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So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

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Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#71

Post by prhn »

OK, so we can’t use plants.

What are the options, then?

In my apartment I’m running 2 AirGradients. One in the bedroom and one in the main room.

Awesome little devices, btw. They monitor temp, humidity, CO2, TVOC, and various particulate matter metrics. They expose prometheus metrics for scraping, and can be configured through a REST API to never phone home. I’ve got grafana alerts set up to push notifications to my phone when things get to “bad” ranges.

Anyway, the big issue is that the only way I’ve found to clear CO2 and TVOC is to open windows. However, windows open means increased humidity and particulate matter, even with air purifiers running aggressively. Also, opening windows at night kind of sucks for obvious reasons. In the summer it also sucks to lose that cool air.

I found these devices you put in your window, sort of like window fans, that can open/close airflow completely, but they don’t fit in my side-opening windows.

The only other thing I can think of is some kind of home automation with a little gadget that cracks the window until the metrics are back in an acceptable range. My AC unit unfortunately does not have a mode where it takes air from outside. I know some things like this exist for opening blinds, etc, but haven’t gone down that rabbit hole yet.

Anyone find a good way to solve this problem?

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#72

Post by marcusarmstrong »

prhn wrote: post #71

OK, so we can’t use plants. What are the options, then? In my apartment I’m running 2 AirGradients. One in the bedroom and one in the main room. Awesome little devices, btw. They monitor temp, humidity, CO2, TVOC, and various particulate matter metrics. They expose prometheus metrics for scraping, and can be configured through a REST API to never phone home. I’ve got grafana alerts set up to push notifications to my…

Challenging in an apartment setting, but the state of the art here is an Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) installed in your home to continuously refresh the air.

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#73

Post by throwawayffffas »

randomImmigrant wrote: post #70

Or… you could go outside? But the analysis rests on 0 ventilation, which doesn’t work at all. I think the main thing to keep in mind is plants really aren’t industrial carbon sinks. They were never evolved to be. Their biological functions are about growing and thriving, and the soil they grow in are net carbon producers. In a broad open system, they are net carbon sinks over the long term. But any analysis in a clos…

Outside it's not much better it's 430 ppm. Supposedly that's not enough to impact cognition.

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#74

Post by bartread »

OK, this was fun.

But I think the real problem is that we’re pushing carbon into the atmosphere that has hitherto been sequestered for upwards of millions of years deep underground and under the oceans. I.e., nothing that’s been a part of a plant, or involved in any ecosystem, on the surface or underwater for a very long time.

Do we even have enough land on the planet to grow enough plants to sequester all this additional carbon? If we reforested the whole earth, would that be enough (and over what time period)? Can enough plants grow in the oceans without turning them all into a giant algal bloom?

I don’t know but I certainly would like to see the maths that answers those questions.

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#77

Post by cineticdaffodil »

Aunche wrote: post #27
culi wrote: post #3

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,…

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.

You could induce artificial algea blooms. All that needs is iron and light + water soluble co2 and / or o2. If you are greedy you pump light down into the depths , go cubic instead of quadratic?

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#78

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

msftgreed wrote: post #35
culi wrote: post #3

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,…

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.

> Carbon in that form will sit in the soil for hundreds of years. Thousands or millions if you bury it.

And what is the scale that global climate change works on?

Trees do jack shit for carbon on the scale that is important.

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#79

Post by b112 »

guybedo wrote: post #67
culi wrote: post #3

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,…

it looks like i'm guilty of having never really thought and done some research about this and i'm a bit ashamed to admit i fell in this trap and used to think forests and trees are the most important pieces in the system. I don't get why media has been fixating so much on trees and forests (Amazonia!) without even mentioning ocean's role in this.

Click bait sells, therefore outrage sells. And how do you film an ocean absorbing(or not) CO2.

But you can film people cutting trees, and protests, and you can blame companies.

And the average person won't understand much about the chemistry of the oceans, the average person can barely read.

(UN literacy numbers are the equiv of a grade 6 reading capability. And again, average grade 6, not bright students).

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#80

Post by wizzwizz4 »

t0mpr1c3 wrote: post #46
gamegod wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Carbon capture is already done at scale because CO2 is commercially valuable. The proposed carbon storage is permanent in the form of carbonates. This is a variant of the Solvay process used to make washing powder. Chalk cliffs were once the shells of sea creatures. That's a whole load of sequestered carbon right there.

I was under the impression that commercial CO₂ was produced by mining chalk.
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