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”?
Recall there was a serious proposal at one time to dump billions of tons of some kind of iron material into the oceans to stop global warming. I don’t recall the reasoning behind the proposal but it is terrifying to think these people might actually do something like that. This is the height of gross negligence. Now they want to “improve” on trees to remove an excess of something no one has established irrefutably *needs* to be removed? These are not serious people and certainly not serious scientists.
It’s called iron fertilization. The idea is to stimulate the growth of phytoplankton.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
it’s already been tried on a small scale ( and possibly illegally).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haida_Salmon_Restoration_Corporation
This is beyond surreal. Anybody remembers the movie Brasil? In the context of this proposal one would think Brasil was a documentary and this just satire.
But what about those of us that WANT more CO2 in the atmosphere. Why is CO2 considered bad? Aren’t the levels pretty low? Couldn’t we do with a boost in carbon dioxide? Wouldn’t the plants love it? Why not just let the earth react and the existing plants flourish? The longer this goes on the more foolish it becomes. Just let the CO2 be – and let the earth breath deep in this life giving gas.
Reminds me of Species 8472 from Star Trek Voyager, which destroyed every other living thing in its path. (S3E26 & S4E1)
They could wind up being more like Fred Saberhagan’s Beserkers.
Berserkers
Artificial trees are about as impractical and stupid an idea as solar highways.
Solar highways are highways and roads paved with solar panels. The practical limitations of such an idea you might think are obvious. Even solar advocates understand implementing a technology with narrow payback capability in the worse possible way and environment is stupid. Yet they were able to dupe people and the federal government into “investing” $3.1 million in prototypes.
The Netherlands invested in building a 70 meter solar paved bicycle path, which based on its measured energy output will pay for itself in a little over 1,500 years. A few more energy investments like that and the Netherlands can expect to be back to wood burning and candles in the not too distant future.
I guess there will always be the ideologically blinded and gullible to fund any fairy tale.
That is Solar Freaking Highways to the likes of you.
As a retired forester, I have a question: Do artificial trees make artificial 2×4’s and artificial toilet paper?
I guess you can’t chip them either and use them to fuel Drax
Just another confidence scheme by the same kind of grifters who promote windmills and solar panels as the answer to a problem that doesn’t exist. As PT Barnum once said, “there’s a sucker born every minute.” We’re the suckers if we allow this nonsense to continue.
You’ve got to think of the future. A world with forests of artificial trees will be highly appreciated when the robots take over.
How many real forests do they plan to chop down to make way for these monstrosities ?
Next there will be mass hamster-wheels that can generate enough electricity to power a city.
Anyone fancy setting up a Hamster farm ?
Are you serious ?, I once read that a domestic cat has the same carbon footprint as a small family car, it was in the Guardian so it must be true, it therefore follows that a hamster, or a bird, must have the same carbon footprint as a small motorcycle, or at least an outboard motor.
As the domestic cat kills a number of birds and small rodents every year for an average lifespan of 17 years, I venture to suggest that breeding cats and feeding birds and hamsters to them may actually work as a net carbon sink, and we wouldn’t need all that complex wheel/gearing system that your idea requires.
This also has the benefits of a readily available source of fur when the ice age arrives and all our power stations are turned off. I am a hamster skeptic i’m afraid.
Go green, go Cat
Just think of the poetic possibilities though;
I think that I shall never see
An idea as stupid as artificial trees
And
Whose carbon installations these are I think I know
His mansion lies behind immense gates though
And many more.
He will not see me from his Leer
As his green pockets fill with dough.
But they are saving earth from the ABC predicted apocalypse
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/29/flashback-abc-news-envisioned-apocalyptic-world-triggered-by-climate-change-video/#ixzz3kPQs4zn0
The artificial tree: the “green” replacement for real trees?
The artificial climate: climate models, the “green” replacement for real world?
The artificial mankind: avatars, the “green” replacement for real humans / shut off the gadget when fed off with them / ?
The artificial ‘our children won’t know snow anymore’:
the “green” replacement babyphone app repeating
‘daddy, whats them snow’
for real kids?
Thanks, Eric. An eyeopener.
Hans
They could avoid cutting down trees by just mounting them on those stupid looking “misting boats” out in the ocean. Then when they collect enough CO2 they’ll sink and “stimulate” the economy over and over. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/22/geoengineering-china-climate-change
I’ve seen the future. It’s true, trust me. The future has talked to me. And, this is what I’ve seen:
A mother, father, and their child are standing on a barren landscape. (Or, it could be two mothers and a child – Johnnie has two mommies. Or, it could be two fathers and a child – two daddies. Or, it could be one mother, and another mother who was a father who had a s•e•x change operation, and a child. Or, it could one mother, and one transgender mother/father, and a child. Or, if the Middle East has its way, it could be one father, a harem, and a child, but it definitely wouldn’t be two mothers and a child, nor two fathers and a child.) Ok, I’ll stop, but I’m just trying to cover all bases here.
Anyway, this mother et al., and father et al., and child are standing on this barren landscape. The child looks up at the mother, or father, or whatever, and asks solemnly if there’s anything else alive around them. The mother, father, or whatever, responds solemnly that they are the last living things on Earth. The child asks why. He, she, he/she, she/he, it, responds: “That’s because our primitive, boneheaded, superstitious, pea brained, idiotic, non-insightful, moronic ancestors elected an equally primitive, boneheaded, superstitious, pea brained, and so on, leader who never built anything in his life. And this leader who was known as the big ‘O’ (and we’re talking about the letter of the alphabet here and not a zeroe: although it actually could be either) decided that the level of carbon dioxide (which this idiot referred to as carbon) in the atmosphere, even though on geological time scales was perilously lower than it was in the past, still wasn’t low enough. So, in between golf games he sucked all the money and vitality out of the society he ruled (which, as a servant of the people, he wasn’t supposed to do but did anyway) to lower this perilously low level of CO2 to a level that was actually insufficient for green plants to continue to live.”
this just in – Mohammed has come to the mountain!
And that was the day, in the presence of faux marble columns, that the rising of the sea stopped.
And, so did the economy.
I made a similarly far sighted analysis about a decade ago, shortly before the evident unravelling of the “victory” in the middle east. Here’s what I cobbled together at the time:
And the tribe of the Moron went forth and they did freely multiply. And they became very great in number.
And yet the tribe of the Smart who were possessed of a moderate level of common sense looked on and said; “Verily, No!! I shall refrain from bringing more children into this world. For this is indeed a shitty place for every man and every woman and every child that liveth”.
And so it came to pass that whilst the number of the Morons did greatly increase, the number of the tribe of the smart did decrease. Such that soon there were not enough smart people to save the people of the tribe of moron from their own foolishness.
And so it came to pass that a dark cloud of stupidity and confusion descended upon all the lands. And men did forget to laugh or to say silly things or to play frisbee. And each man grew angry with every other man over a number of trivial and falsely imagined slights.
And then in the west the great power of the Unbelievably Stupid [known as U.S.] threw all it’s might into the systematic smiting of the people who explode themselves, and who are the thieves of passenger jets, who are also known as the wearers of sandals and pyjamas, who are also known as the eaters of cous-cous, who are the worshippers of the automatic rifle of kalashnikov.
So the great power smited [smote?] many errant goat herders and their wifes using the missiles that are precision guided and the drones that are without pilot.
However, the exploding pyjama wearers had rightly reckoned that the great power would run out of cash long before they ran out of sandals.
So, inevitably, the whole thing went on and on and bloody on with no obvious end in sight.
And, seeing this, the people of the tribe of the smart did no longer ask the question; “what is the world coming to”.
For, to them, it was by now, perfectly freakin’ obvious.
We had to destroy the trees to save the trees. I seem to remember a similar situation with a village. Either one is kind of ludicrous.
my dinglish, sigh:
The artificial tree: the “green” replacement for real trees?
The artificial climate: climate models, the “green” replacement for real world?
The artificial mankind: avatars, the “green” replacement for real humans / shut off the gadget when fed UP with them / ?
The artificial ‘our children won’t know snow anymore’:
the “green” replacement babyphone app repeating ‘daddy, whats A snow’
for real kids?
Thanks, Eric. An eyeopener.
Hans
____
ME is really fed UP with them realtime green avatars in their baseless virtual ‘environments’.
All kidding aside, a treebot would actually be a cool idea for a high tech new age toy to have inside. Its edumacational. Sort of like those old electronic pets. I wish I would of thunk of that.
Come on it’s just the Engineers wanting to get on the gravy train as well. Next electro-mechanical grass and then onto the animals. You can hear the sales pitch more reliable (they don’t die), more predictable (they are programmed) and they come in a range of your favorite colours.
It it is adopted as another policy reach and diversionary tactic of the ethanol lobby and ethanol states with early political caucus pull, then it will proceed much like cellulosic ethanol advanced in order to buy more time for the larger food for fuel scam. I’m sure we have a few more billion taxpayer dollars for “experimentation.”
Do these mechanical trees produce a product? How do we collect it effectively – is it a liquid? Trees grow and collect the carbon as their body structure. Ultimately we can cut it down to build a house or pick its fruit, etc. When they say there is no room for trees to plant them. FCS plant them where you were going to plant the tin trees.
I like the CO2 in my little corner of the world … I actually need it.
Please don’t take my CO2 away.
If this thing gets any traction I might to have to resort to finding a bunch of naïve little teenagers to take them to court.
We had to destroy the village to save it
In 2115, the people of planet earth may choose to remove some of the CO2 from the atmosphere.
Who knows what they will be concerned about in 2115.
Just as the concerns of 2015 could not have been sensibly predicted by the people of 1915.
Back in 1915 the people of Europe were mostly concerned with an utterly fruitless and highly costly pan-European state subsidized project.
Now Europe is at war – with the sea level.
At the current rate of development, then in 100 years from now, technologies will exist that allow mankind to – if it desires – remove a significant proportion of the CO2 from the atmosphere.
They may well choose to do this.
They may well choose not to do this.
Let us let the people of 2115 engineer their own world.
I’m quite grateful that the people of 1915 didn’t set about planning for 2015.
This obsession with an imagined 100 year away future catastrophe has become the prime delusion of our age.
Can we not now focus on real problems which exist now.
We don’t have a shortage of currently existing pressing needs.
We don’t have a CO2 problem. We have a problem with people who are paranoid delusional about CO2 – and I’m not sure what the solution is for that.
Gospel would work to cure them of their insecurity if only they’d give it a try but I guess they’ve now become so accustomed to basking in their desperate neurosis that they’re afraid that their life would have no meaning at all without something to worry about.
Let’s say we could build enough of these to reduce CO2 to 0. OK, “nonsense, we need CO2 for some things!” OK, so what level would be the “optimum level?” has the Climate Science community even produced such a number? It was alarming at 280 (1880), and it’s now catastrophic at 400 (2015).
I don’t get this at all.
What year was Woodstock again?