Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Is the artificial tree the solution to climate change? There have been a number of stories advocating artificial trees recently. Proponents of artificial trees believe that normal trees haven’t got the capacity to deliver the CO2 reductions they want. They insist we should try to improve on nature, by replacing natural respiration, with industrial scale absorption and disposal of CO2.
For example, consider the following story;
Is an artificial tree part of the solution to climate change? These guys think so.
… What if we had a way to suck that excess the CO2 right back out of the sky?
Well, actually, we do, says Chris Jones, a chemical engineer at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
“These are our best ways of capturing CO2 from the air,” Jones says as he walks under a canopy of trees on the school’s campus. “Trees evolved over millions of years to do this very efficiently.”
Physicist Klaus Lackner stands beside a miniature greenhouse in his lab at ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, in which he’s testing out the properties of his “artificial tree. Lackner says he expects a square mile of artificial trees could suck as much as ten million tons of CO2 a year out of the atmosphere. Credit: Ari Daniel Thing is, we just don’t have enough trees to fix our CO2 problem. In fact, the earth has fewer acres of trees every year. But Jones says that even if we planted trees everywhere we could, they still wouldn’t be able to pull enough CO2 out of the air to offset our emissions.
Which for Jones means one thing. “We have to come up with a chemical tree that can effectively extract CO2 out of the air,” he says.
Essentially mimic nature, only do her one better.
Is it just me, or is there something deeply unsettling about the modern green movement, and its infatuation with technological monstrosities? They build bird frying solar collectors, and bird and bat chopping windmills, to save the birds and bats. They ignore devastating industrial pollution in China, to ensure the supply of Rare Earth elements required to build their wind turbines and electric cars. And now they want to build artificial trees, because they think natural trees aren’t up to the job.
How much of the natural world do greens intend to bulldoze, dig, pave over, pollute, incinerate or slice up, in order to save “nature”?
Every time a new insane Green geo-engineering proposal comes out, you think that there could never be a more insane one unveiled, but suddenly, yet again, one is surprised by the depth and extent of the insanity of the Greens. The mechanical tree takes its place beside, dumping iron filings in the sea, erecting bird-chomping windmills, and bird-frying solar arrays. There seems to be a grand competition for Green Insanity of the Year. This may be awarded at the GreenFest in Paris in December.
As a chemical engineer I know that this is a stupid idea. Adsorption is the most costly technology to remove low concentration molecules from air. More energy is needed as saved, and in a very short time nano channels are plugged.
Agreed, it seems unlikely the idea would be practical if implemented in the real world on an industrial scale. However I doubt this would stop them trying – you could say the same thing about wind turbines and solar.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/26/bearings-the-achilles-heel-of-wind-turbines/
Even if it is difficult, I think it is more important to note that carbon capture (or CO2 capture that is) in a power plant is always easier than CO2 capture indirectly from air.
There is absolutely no point to create an both cost and environment ineffective device to collect CO2. Much better would be to plant trees at the hot and arid regions of the Earth, and water them. And develop a way to store CO2 after some has been produced. Putting it mildy, buying a machine to do the collecting is just beyond stupid.
These CO2 businesses appear to be not ways to solve a real problem, but ways to empty my wallet by selling a perpetuum mobile (or a development process aiming to build one) to our always gullible polical leaders. Just how many green people swallow these ideas because they lack basic engineering and economic skills.
“It seems unlikely the idea would be practical if implemented in the real world …..”
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Being practical in the fake world doesn’t seem very practical to me.
Where are the birds nests and perches? Where are the flowers for the bees?
Artificial Trees? Land is only about 27% of the planet’s surface area. Why even think about `artificial trees?’ The ocean plankton and foraminifera are extremely efficient CO2 gobblers. Where did all the chalk and limestone come from?
(Hint: it used to be CO2 …)
Maybe these mental midgets should be set to designing and building an artificial brain, for themselves. It might be more effective than their present one.
Doubtful their artificial brain will be functional.
After all, it was built by them.
This stems from the man who read a child’s science book, “discovered” that sodium hydroxide absorbs CO2 and invented the artificial tree. Crisis solved. Unfortunately he didn’t delve in to where the sodium hydroxide comes from. I mean, nobody would anyone expect any unfortunate by products from the electrolysis of brine. Would they? Lots of wind power at the sea shore where the brine is, this practically designs itself, he must be a millionaire by now. /sarc
Why just not plant a normal tree? It’s almost free.
Efficiency of modern agriculture outpaces demand for food by far, so agricultural land area would have started to decline two decades ago in spite of increasing global population and improving nutrition, but for a single critical issue: biofuels (by the way, although global population keeps increasing due to increasing life expectancy, population explosion was over 20 years ago, at which time global population under 15 stopped increasing and is steady since then somewhat below 2 billion).
Therefore there would be plenty of room for forests on marginal croplands, if we put an end to this biofuel craziness.
That’s how greens are perpetuating problems instead of solving them.
So the proposal is to build at enormous cost machines that require large amounts of external power to extract CO2 at a rate of 10 million tons per square mile. The CO2 still has to be fixed in some unspecified way.
Meanwhile in the real world plants extract 550 BILLION tons of CO2 every year with no external energy inputs and fix that CO2 in beneficial ways that make human and animal life possible.
I think a career change for these clowns is in order. Stoop labour on a farm would be favourite.
I’m ok with artificial trees as long as they grow good tasting nutritious mangoes.
They desperately need the problem.
They need the “this changes everything” problem. (Subtext: now we can justify our envy motivated anti-capitalist agenda).
They need the problem. And that is why they must fight people who observe that there is quite possibly no problem. And also why they must fight people who, assuming that there is a problem, present real solutions, such as expansion of hydropower and nuclear.
There are only two rules, first you must be permanently hysterical about the oncoming crisis, and secondly you must believe that the crisis can only be averted through the govt. promotion of insanely expensive and mostly useless guff. `
No alternative position will be tolerated.
The worst thing that could ever happen, would be if somebody solved this imaginary problem whilst leaving capitalism intact!!
Yet another idiotic suggestion to deal with a non-existent problem. Are the people that come out with these ideas, sniffing, smoking, injecting something they shouldn’t or just plain stupid?
What problem? There is no CO2 problem. You guys have exaggerated the effects CO2 may have on the climate and you do not want to acknowledge any of the benefits of increasing CO2 levels, Among those benefits are an increase of crop yields and an increase of wild life.
On the contrary, if you remove CO2 from the atmosphere, by “planting artificial trees” or otherwise, you are removing the source of carbon and oxygen plants need to make sugars and oils.
Oh, really? Source, please? Last time I checked, that was not the case in the USA.
If we plant trees everywhere we could, we will be destroying other types of habitats. If we build artificial trees and solar plants everywhere, we will be destroying ALL natural habitats. And what for? to try so solve something you misinterpreted a sa problem?
I’m with you.
Thee is NO seeohtwo problem.
The idea of artificial trees trying to compete with real ones isn’t quite as disturbing as the fact that Arizona State University apparently has a Center for Negative Carbon Emissions.
Yes. Precisely.
let’s do the math.
10 millions tons / square mile = 3 863 kg/ m²
10 kg/m² a day.
heck. no energy required, seemingly (the don’t tell about energy)
I just wonder why such a miracle is not already used where CO2 is indeed a trouble : space station, submarines, and the likes.
even more funny : this can be used in some sort of perpetual motion engine. put it (empty) at the top of a wheel, let it fill with CO2 (and get heavier) so that it moves the wheel down, empty CO2 at the bottom, it gets lighter and returns top. 3x more energy than the same with rainwater, and far more steady (2-3 kg/m² a day on year average, but with considerable variations).
We do have a thing there …
Essentially such methods HAVE been used in submarines and space habitats. The shuttle was equipped with scrubbers that used an absorbent material. The scrubber could be regenerated by heating which released the CO2 which could be vented. Nuclear submarines have a CO2 scrubber that works in much the same way with the CO2 being vented. Note that the proposed solution does NOT address what they would do with the CO2 they extracted any more than it details where the energy required would come from.
Submarines also run O2 generaters….aka ….”widow makers”…..
so how are these nuts going to “make” O2 ?
Plants can remove the entire mass of CO2 from the air column above them
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/got-wood/
25 tons of wood per acre is far more CO2 than needed to be removed. A stand of bamboo scrubs all CO2 above it in one year.
the assertion they are not enough is a lie. Air leaving the USA on the east coast has LESS CO2 than that entering in the west despite our cars and industry due to our mass of plant growth. That was an embarrasement to the Villify The USA mob, so promptly burried.
Air leaving the USA on the east coast has LESS CO2 than that entering in the west despite our cars and industry due to our mass of plant growth.
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http://www.gosat.nies.go.jp/jp/img/XCO2_L2_201308010831average_v02_21.png
The earth continues to defy the notion that CO2 increase is due to humans. Both the Japanese and US space missions are clear. The industrialized nations are not the source of the CO2. The CO2 is being produced in the tropics. Africa, Australia and South America are the culprits. They need to stop whatever it is they are doing.
I think those are more reflective of air currents than anything else, Ferd. I wouldn’t read too much into that chart.
Ben, how is it exactly reflective of air currents? It seems the most CO2 is concentrated over the areas with the most vegetation.
Two things spring to mind:
1. I don’t believe that most of the CO2 is swept up by trees. I think some sea creatures top the chart. Perhaps efforts would be better concentrated there.
2. If these trees soak up more CO2 that is going to make them bigger, right? Where are these super-sized trees going to be planted?
Would it not be useful if some tech savvy nation could launch a satellite that would measure CO2 concentrations and the changes in distribution around the globe in order to answer some of the questions and comments raised above .
A pipe dream alas . until perhaps the Chinese get round to it.
a satellite that would measure CO2 concentrations
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already done. JAXA and OCO2. the findings are a disaster for the notion that industrialization is the cause of rising CO2. they are nothing like the CO2 computer models expected. So don’t expect a whole lot of publicity.
the CO2 models expected CO2 levels to peak over the Northern hemisphere. The sats are finding that Co2 peaks over the equator. This strongly suggests that warming is causing CO2 rather than CO2 causing warming, which is consistent with the ice cores.
http://m4gw.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/SatellitePoster2.jpg
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width/public/mainco2mappia18934.jpg?itok=YvwIG4w9
http://www.gosat.nies.go.jp/jp/img/XCO2_L2_201308010831average_v02_21.png
This is no surprise as human CO2 emissions are WAY down the list of global sources
To put things in perspective global CO2 emissions are believed to be as follows
Oceanic Respiration 90 billion tons per annum
Terrestial Plant respiration 60 billion tons per annum
Microbial emissions 60 billion tons per annum
Total Human emissions (fuel, cement and land usage ) 9 billion tons per annum
But human emissions are held to have magical properties that mean they cannot pass into the general carbon cycle like other CO2 emissions. This is of course a religious belief not science which is why unbelievers must be treated as heretics and ritually excommunicated by the main stream media.
thanks Ferd…
Wish I could understand why?
NASA;s new CO2 satellite will not show a newer graphic, because it doesn’t jive with the government stats – it will be altered when it is finally released – sad to say…
Done. Search NASA’s OCO-2. I have only seen one map from last Dec. They were to publish monthly maps starting in March of this year. The first map does not support NASA hype. I suspect that they need to do a bit of programming if they wish to use OCO-2 to support their position. Don’t hold your breath for more info.
I went to the subject article’s site and was about to comment there but got this message:
“You have asked Firefox to connect securely to login.pri.org, but we can’t confirm that your connection is secure.”
How long will it take for the mainstream media to admit that climate change is non scientific? What will happen to the fear mongers like Al Gore or Bill Maher when this goes down? My fear us that these self proclaimed do gooders will get giddy and laugh it off and blame it on bad science not themselves then somehow turn it around on the skeptics for being too anti liberal or something. The problem I see with these type of liberal do gooders is they can do a lot of harm and there never seems to be any checksand balances or consequences for false science, history or statistics. Climate change is only one of many phony issues made into hysteria.
Remember the old song:
“I talk to the trees, but they don’t listen to me”.
No bloody wonder.
Or, I talk to the trees, thats why they put me away!
Oh what fun. Another in a long line of mind-bogglingly stupid, wasteful, expensive, ugly, environmentally-destructive, and very likely dangerous ideas to “fix” a “problem” which doesn’t exist.
The insane do appear to have taken over, and are running the asylum. If there are aliens out there in space with bad intentions, now would be a good time for them to make their move.
“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”
Wrongly attributed to Euripides
Is it true his last name was “pants”?
I wonder who holds the patent for these things? Or who would be granted the maintenance contracts?
SO let me get this straight, 10 million tons a year is 20 billion pounds a year. Spread over a square mile, this would be 717 lbs per square foot. I f successful, we would have to have a foundation under these things that resembles an 8 story building. I find it hard to swallow that there exists, outside of nature, a storage facility capable of multi-year operations. we would be titling the Earth (or something) after a few years. My God, think of the potential collapse of the crust of the Earth after a few centuries of operation!
I suggest the new title of the Earth be “Water”.
Oh, tilting!
Got it…sorry.
So, if we power these fake trees with wind energy, would the CO2 be tilting at the windmills?
I think this represents in a nutshell why the whole AGW scare is being kept alive; if there is a ‘problem’, goods and services can be supplied to address said ‘problem’. If there is no problem there is no business in it.
(Alfred) Joyce Kilmer, call your office.
http://www.poetry-archive.com/k/trees.html
CO2 is NOT a pollutant
CO2 is NOT a pollutant
CO2 is NOT a pollutant
Got it yet!?
CO2 Matters !!
It is required as plant food…so matters mucho to Man and critter… Ice?… not so much. GK