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That's approximately as much CO2 as a person breathes out in a day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Human_physiolog... says about 1 kg, which works out to about 560L CO2 http://www.umsl.edu/~biofuels/Energy%20Meter%20labs/How%20mu...)
So yes, it provides a little bit of power, and no, it isn't likely to scale up to planet-wide CO2 reductions - one per person on the planet just to cover the CO2 we breathe?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because evolution is random, and not directed. 10x efficiency is what you get when you really have a designer.
And a single fitness function, not an environment.
500L CO2 per day, to make 2kwh of electricity (per day) That's approximately as much CO2 as a person breathes out in a day ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide#Human_physiolog... says about 1 kg, which works out to about 560L CO2 http://www.umsl.edu/~biofuels/Energy%20Meter%20labs/How%20mu... ) So yes, it provides a little bit of power, and no, it isn't likely to scale up to planet-wide CO2 reductions - one…
It depends first on what is done with the ~1kg of CO2 captured.
If humans get their carbon from sources that are removed from the air, we don't have a net addition.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And a single fitness function, not an environment.
Small nitpick, but you can have a 'single fitness function' represent an entire environment. That's the entire concept of a fitness function: to simplify the merit of solution within an complex environment (or set of constraints/inputs/etc.) into a single figure. Obviously nature has a much complex fitness function than the efficiency of this one CO2 process. I think its more correct to say a "simpler fitness functio…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Small nitpick, but you can have a 'single fitness function' represent an entire environment. That's the entire concept of a fitness function: to simplify the merit of solution within an complex environment (or set of constraints/inputs/etc.) into a single figure. Obviously nature has a much complex fitness function than the efficiency of this one CO2 process. I think its more correct to say a "simpler fitness functio…
Correct, I should have said, "single dimension fitness function"
>But if hydrogen from the leaf can combine with CO2 to make alcohol fuel, the fuel can be used the way diesel is now. Hmmmm....so bacteria breathes in CO2 to make fuel....so we can burn the fuel and release the CO2 back in the atmosphere? Not to take away anything from this impressive scientific achievement but this application is just depressing.
Human energy use will have a zero net effect on CO2 levels, meanwhile, the oceans and rocks and the world's flora will gradually bring the concentration back down to a more desirable level.
FWIW, “This isn’t solving your CO2 problem,” he said. ”I’m taking CO2 out of the air, you burn it and you put the CO2 back. So it’s carbon neutral. I’m not going to reverse 400 ppm of CO2. But you’re not going to use any more stuff out of the ground.”
I think he's selling it short. Imagine if all 1 billion+ cars used this fuel instead of diesel/gasoline. Even if all the carbon ultimately ends up as CO2 again eventually, at any given moment there would be a whole lot of it temporarily sequestered in fuel tanks. The "base load" of atmospheric CO2 would be lower. I don't know enough chemistry or climate science to estimate whether the amount of carbon in ~5 billion g…
"The leaf hasn’t lived up to its promise, Nocera said, because the world isn’t ready for hydrogen fuel." And probably won't be for transportation because battery tech is improving. But if this proves to be an effective way to produce liquid biofuel that can replace gasoline/diesel with simple engine conversions, then we can repurpose our existing liquid fuel infrastructure and existing cars instead of building a whol…
Hydrogen fuel is indeed really difficult to manage. The Hindenburg accident come to mind, or the weight problems of fuel cell cars...
Yay. Now we don't need plants to reduce the greenhouse gas CO2. We just need to turn loose this bacterium and build an economy around alcohol fuels. No need for systems thinking that involves the environment when we can create a bacterium which is more efficient in one aspect of the environment it is replacing. So long as we can extend this reductionist framework to provide us with the nitrogen we need. And the globa…