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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

#91

Post by tito »

quickthrowman wrote: post #84
tito wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During World War II, the United States spent 40% of its GDP on the war. So we can spend big on things when we decide to. That would be the equivalent of $12 trillion per year today, and we would clean up the climate in a jiffy with that. It would be a huge opportunity for job creation, manufacturing, innovation. It’s wild as a society we’ve convinced ourselves that stabilizing the climate is a cost instead of a massi…

> During World War II, the United States spent 40% of its GDP on the war. So we can spend big on things when we decide to. The United States wasn’t the only one spending that much on war, that’s why we were able to do so. What incentive do countries have to spend money on carbon capture? Any money spent on that is money not being invested in generating more wealth, so there is zero incentive to move first, you’ll jus…

Agreed! My point is that it’s possible financially, but yes the incentives are messy.

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#92

Post by tito »

jonahbenton wrote: post #81
tito wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, I wonder if there’s some missing conversation in the hacker news community about climate. Seems like some people really wanna talk about it even off topic. I get to spend plenty of time working on climate already, so I was particularly interested in the indoor air pieces. Someone below suggested there’s a ventilation system alternative. I wonder what you could do with a little miniaturized direct air captu…

Long ago I ordered an indoor algae system from a couple of CMU PhDs. It is very cool, it looks cool and has a nice water flow backgroundy sound, the algae grows quickly, allegedly doing the co2 consumption equivalent of 20 houseplants. Space efficient! But immaterial relative to human co2 production.

If it was circa 2010 I think I remember those guys. It was partly for people who wanted fresh algae smoothies? How big a tank do you need to remove 1 kg of CO2 per day…

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#93

Post by perrygeo »

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 and grasslands are critical for the climate because of the carbon they lock away. So long as the plants stay alive, they store carbon in the cellulose structures of roots and stems.

Conserving these ecosystems is less about their daily respiration and more about keeping existing carbon out of the atmosphere. It's a defensive strategy. Not "carbon capture" per se but more "avoid loosing the carbon we've already captured". We're interested in the sink, not the flow.

Of course when the plant dies and decomposes or burns up, it all goes back. Long term, it's almost exactly net zero. The ONLY way to use plants for long term carbon sequestration is to make sure that plant matter gets treated or literally buried so that aerobic microbes and fungi can't break it down.

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#94

Post by 0manrho »

frankus wrote: post #90
frankus wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Residential CO2 scrubber" seems like the sort of gadget eccentric rich people would buy, sort of a distributed DAC system.

Honestly this seems like a super long-shot but at least semi-plausible avenue for putting DAC on the sort of learning curve that took lithium batteries from "high-end camcorder" to utility-scale storage.

What does DAC stand for in this context? My brain is stuck on Digital-Analog Converter and I'm pretty sure we aren't talking about using those, but if so I'm even more fascinated by this discussion

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#95

Post by throwawayffffas »

nate_meurer wrote: post #86
throwawayffffas wrote: post #61

I have had the same impulse to reduce CO2 to about half(Close to pre-industrial levels 200 to 280 ppm). Of course my first thought was CO2 scrubbing by chemical means, plants are obviously silly. But was convinced not to pursue given the fact that 1. Cognitive decline starts above 600 ppm according to air quality studies. 2. Levels below 200 ppm are actually dangerous.

> Cognitive decline starts above 600 ppm according to air quality studies. According to an older, small study of short duration (Mendell and Fisk at LBNL), the results of which are heavily disputed. Since 600 ppm isn't too much higher than the current level of 400+ ppm, this study is the one most commonly cherry-picked in order to instill fear in people that climate change is getting ready to damage our brains. Just…

As far as I am aware astronauts that were experiencing concentrations above 3000 ppm for presumably weeks to months reported mental viscosity(brain fog) and headaches.

A definite global health concern is the increase in blood bicarbonate levels which chronically impact available calcium and phosphorus levels.

Additionally the higher CO2 levels increase plant growth which impacts the plants mineral absorption, there are less naturally occurring micronutrients in our crops than there used to be just 20 years ago.

These things are far from apocalyptic but have to be taken into account going forward when updating existing food enrichment programs.

I believe you are conflating hyperbaric oxygen treatment with CO2. I could not find references to concentrated CO2 treatments. While exhaled air is about 4% CO2, breathing air with CO2 at these concentrations is immediately dangerous.

Additionally I do not believe that has been any study comparing relative cognitive performance of continuously operating in different low concentration environments, all studies focus on short term, high concentrations and for obvious practical reasons treat the atmospheric level as the baseline.

As far as we know operating in pre-industrial levels of CO2 280ppm improves, deteriorates or has no effect on cognition compared to modern levels.

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#96

Post by roughly »

vitally3643 wrote: post #18
roughly wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all physics at the bottom. Nature doesn't have APIs.

Yes, except parent is correct. Physcial and chemical mean very different and specific things in this context. Calling photosynthesis a physical reaction is flatly incorrect no matter how you want to look at it. It is a physics reaction, sure, but "physical reaction" specifically means a Newtonian mechanical, reversible process at the macro scale. A "chemical reaction" specifically means a (trivially) irreversible qua…

Ok yeah, that’s fair. I missed the distinction.

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#97

Post by Terr_ »

0manrho wrote: post #94
frankus wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly this seems like a super long-shot but at least semi-plausible avenue for putting DAC on the sort of learning curve that took lithium batteries from "high-end camcorder" to utility-scale storage.

What does DAC stand for in this context? My brain is stuck on Digital-Analog Converter and I'm pretty sure we aren't talking about using those, but if so I'm even more fascinated by this discussion

I'm guessing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_air_capture

That said, it seems intrinsically wrong-headed to me, a kind of trojan-horse technology for getting everyone else to spend money cleaning up the mess the polluter keeps spilling out into the commons.

Every dollar spent trying to extract low-concentration CO2 from ambient atmosphere is probably better-spent trying to grab it from a high-concentration source (e.g. exhaust, smokestacks) before it gets diluted.

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#98

Post by pstuart »

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…

NASA is working on it: https://www.nasa.gov/spacecraft-oxygen-recovery-scor/

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#99

Post by tenuousemphasis »

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…

If it wasn't an apartment and you could cut holes in the wall, I would say a ductless HRV.

Re: So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

#100

Post by culi »

perrygeo wrote: post #93
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 and grasslands are critical for the climate because of the carbon they lock away. So long as the plants stay alive, they store carbon in the cellulose structures of roots and stems. Conserving these ecosystems is less about their daily respiration and more about keeping existing carbon out of the atmosphere. It's a defensive strategy. Not "carbon capture" per se but more "avoid loosing the carbon we've alread…

This is true but I have to admit I despise the reductionism inherent in arguments for valuing forests in this way. There are so many important ecosystem services played by forests and "wildlife" that is missed when focusing solely on carbon sink capacity. Not to mention the rights of nature itself to exist.

We would be dealing with so many more diseases if it weren't for vultures, opossums, etc. Our soils would not have the capacity to hold top soil if it wasn't for the critical microclimates plant roots create for mycorrhizal fungi. Landslides, floods, and desertification would all simultaneously be more common. Biodiversity would plummet leading to even more fragile ecosystems. Rainfall would be reduced while flooding increases. Temperatures would rise and food systems of humans and more-than-humans would collapse.

I just think the carbon sink capacity of forests and grasslands are a minor point compared to everything else they do for us

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