Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Why bother with natural trees when you can construct a forest of mechanical trees to remove CO2 from the air?
How do we solve a problem like climate change? With innovations like Mechanical Trees
Opinion: With the right investments, Arizona could be the home of a flourishing carbon dioxide removal sector. Mechanical Trees are a good start.
Klaus Lackner
Jan 1, 2021…
Researchers like myself in Arizona and across the United States are advancing carbon dioxide removal, a diverse suite of innovative strategies with support growing among industry leaders, across the business sector and in Congress. Much of the recent focus in the media has been on natural techniques, such as planting trees.
These solutions are necessary, but not sufficient.
To truly change the game and solve for climate change, we will also need technological solutions, such as direct air capture (DAC) machines that pull excess carbon dioxide out of the air.
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I am proud of the work on such innovation taking place at Arizona State University. At ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, we’re exploring how we can efficiently and economically have the wind deliver carbon dioxide to Mechanical Trees. Envision a forest of these trees removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – several times more efficiently than real trees – which then can be stored deep underground or used in products from cements to fresh, carbon-neutral fuels.
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More breakthrough innovation requires more funding. The federal government is best positioned to do that and make the United States a leader in developing and deploying this climate-saving technology.
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Klaus Lackner is director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions and a professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University. Reach him at Klaus.Lackner@asu.edu.
Read more: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2021/01/01/mechanical-trees-innovative-way-address-climate-change/4027597001/
Mechanical trees may be one of the less damaging climate ideas. At least they probably won’t mass cremate wildlife like California’s solar collectors or strike endangered eagles out of the air like wind turbines. A forest of mechanical trees might even have some minor value as a robotic art installation.
The center for negative excellence, sorry, carbon removal. In ten years time Klaus wil wonder how he could have been so stupid in thinking that this a good idea.
I wish I could read the op-ed. too many redirects error.
How can we stop this madness?
“How can we stop this madness?”
The conservatives in Congress need to fight it every step of the way. As far as I can see, way too many of them go along to get along. A few years ago I thought that “Climategate”, “The Pause”, “Peter Gleick”, “McKitrick & MacIntyre” “Healthy Polar Bears”, “Decade long Hurricane drought” – – – – I could go on, would turn the tide, but it’s not going to happen. A generation has been brainwashed and it’s not going to stop. People born in 1980, they’re in their 40s now, have to wake up and generally they are not.
Now that Democrats know they can stuff the ballot box with blessings from The Supreme Court of the United States of America, we can look forward to a veto proof super majority in Congress and draconian legislation.
I’m 76, and I might die in a re-education camp the way things are going.
We are up against human nature : the opinions of brainwashed people are not changed by rational arguments – only by opposing brainwash.The huge majority of human beings, sad to say, are born brainwashable only – a minority are born sceptics. You and I are in that minority.
You are dreaming if you think they will ever “wake up”. They haven’t got the brains for it.
People… a person is not a color bloc. Think of an individual as a constellation of physical and mental attributes. In this constellation, some vectors are fixed, perhaps biased, or even prejudiced (“inertia”), while others are dynamic and reactive. The point is that not everyone can be reached on every issue, but everyone can be reached on some issue, and there are complex dependencies that affect their dynamic range. People may be morons (i.e. bad judgment). People are rarely stupid. Appeals to authority when we lack confidence. Appeals to emotion (e.g. empathy, violence) when vulnerable. These appeals influence or suppress our character.
A lovely bit of wordplay, but why should I bother trying to persuade you, for example, to adopt my point of view on a political point?
The “conservatives in the congress” are useless for anything other than tax cuts. Is there any other issue they have won? Abortion? Immigration? Energy? While gun rights theoretically exist, if you use a gun properly and legally to defend yourself, you will be in such legal trouble that your gun rights cannot effectively be exercised.
I’ll save you a bunk Steve. Let’s hope it takes a few more generations.
“The center for negative excellence, sorry, carbon removal. In ten years time Klaus will wonder how he could have been so stupid in thinking that this a good idea.”
Not gonna happen, the climate slush fund puts money in his bank account, not stupid thinking from his point of view.
What about oxygen ?
The moron would be happy to trap the oxygen in the CO2 in concrete instead of allowing it to be recycled back to the atmosphere by plants.
Who needs oxygen?
Once we sequester carbon in sufficient diversity (e.g. Planned Parent/hood, Planned Population) a.k.a. “great leap”, “social progress”, there will be no need for oxygen to sustain our lives, and the environment will be gray… Green for the inclusive minority.
Vuk, this guy should contact all the folks who purchased tracts of land on Mars. It’s a great investment for those who plan to move there. 😎
That will all depend on how much money Klaus makes using this scheme during those 10 years.
He’s not stupid. He is going after tax payer money. What I think is crazy is that people have to make up stupid stuff to get the money!!!
He is not stupid. He tried to persuade the large corporation where I worked to invest in his “innovation.’ He also pitched his ideas to the government of the UAE in the early 2000s.
In Academia, unlike the private sector, the perks are in the work schedule:
Come in “around” 9am, then reading emails at your desk for an hour and chatting in the dept. break room, 10am-11am lab meeting or departmental meeting, 11am-12noon more chatting in the hall and reading emails and the news, 12noon-130pm lunch and jog around the campus, 130pm – 3pm actual work, 3pm-330-pm departmental coffee-tea, 330pm-430pm read more emails and surf the web, 430 pm go home. The Life in academia. Don’t rock the boat and ride the gravy train.
You got that right Joel! I was full time at UCLA in the 70’s and I went part time because I couldn’t stand so much of doing nothing.
Most likely, he thinks he’s wonderful.
He’s probably laughing his butt-off every time he gets his monthly ASU pay stub.
In ten years he’ll be far away in some sunny villa with the carbon capture money safely banked away.
He makes it sound nice – until you realize he would be devestating huge swaths of land that are already natural life havens for thesee monstrosities. How much energy would be required to make “plant ” and maintain these things? And why would we want to reduce the co2?
No; if there was an ounce of integrity in the “green’ movement they would full on support nuclear, the only workable zero co2 producers possible at this time.
But it never was about climate was it…
The Green blight progresses with wind turbine gauntlets, photovoltaic ground cover, and anthropogenic trees to replace natural trees.
Monstrositrees
Oh, very well done. 👏
No carbon or environmental cost to creating all of these mechanical trees? Presumably powered by solar, too.
It’s obvious for marketing purposes why they are calling them “trees” even though they are nothing like trees. Nothing is simulating photosynthesis or respiration. They’re just carbon capture devices.
Centralized storage seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
There is no harvesting method mentioned for the CO2 recovery. Upkeep is never a cost for these projects. Return on investment is no problem with government subsidies.
Yes, the shape and size of these are redolent of phallic obelisk monuments.
Maybe Klaus is trying to compensate for something?
Clearly Klaus can’t see the wood for the “trees”
According to climate researchers, nature sequesters over half of anthropogenic emissions already. It’s unlikely that any artificial process could be significant compared to what nature is already doing.
I’d like to announce the development of an unprecedented (well, it has got a few small dents !) new green & sustainable energy production machine,
0% fuel in converts to 100% energy out, Ga ran tea’d Honest
Send $10,000 for plans 97% off for WUWT readers.
Note: I still have some bridges for sale.
Bargain! I was just looking at my bridge title deed collection and thinking about adding to it.
At first I thought “ASU’s Center for Negative Carbon Emissions” was a joke, a spoof, but it’s not! Actual money is going to actual crazies to do insane stuff. It’s not funny.
Klaus Lackwit is a net CO2 emitter and so should be corked and bagged before he warms the planet to Thermageddon.
Except that CO2 is the basic building block of life, without which Klaus Lackwit would not exist at all, and Thermageddon is a hoax, and warmth is vastly preferable. ASU should be locked down before they infect others with mass insanity.
Too late. But at least some researchers are asking what the optimum CO2 level should be, and for an enhanced biosphere and agriculture production it’s a lot higher than it is today.
https://bmcplantbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12870-018-1243-3#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20Xu%20%5B23%5D,total%20biomass%20and%20leaf%20photosynthesis.
What is the optimum CO2 level overall for forest growth? Research has shown that forests in the east are growing up to 20% faster due to the CO2 fertilization effect but the effect could have an upper limit due to soil fertility.
How do we solve a problem like climate change? Let’s imagine that there where never any climate alarmists. No James Hansen. No Al Gore. No Greta Thunberg. No IPCC. No crazed media trying to make a buck promoting one crisis after another. No money-loving academia that knows a goose laying golden eggs when the see one. Just imagine a world were no one ever even mentioned global warming or man-made climate change. Would you are anyone else come to the conclusion that there was something terrible wrong with the climate based on the actual weather over the last 40-50 years? If anything, the weather is much better today than it was 40 to 50 years ago. It is certainly better than it was in the 17 and 18 hundreds! In other words, if a large group of people were not being payed handsomely to constantly cry wolf, we would not be fearing wolves because we haven’t seen any in the last 50 years.
We solve the problem of climate change by not talking about, because it is not a problem. There are actual problems that could be quickly address and make people more resilient to actual weather and climate in the process. All actions taken to address the non-existent problem of climate change, will make everyone’s life worse (except those profiting off the false paradigm) and have no discernable benefits to humanity or the biosphere.
Canadians would still fly south in the winter.
Jim, right on!
Why Richard Lindzen said climate science needs a 90%+ defunding.
Artificial trees that starve real trees brilliant! … not. I wonder how many trees will be chopped down to make room for these things.
Considering that there is absolutely no empirical evidence supporting the idea that our CO2 emissions are harmful … but are instead causing plant life to flourish, this project is a pointless waste of resources.
“Carbon” capture seems like a fool’s errand, an ideal project for the latest crop of brain dead AGW true believers. When will our universities return to evidence based science?
This is similar to putting diapers and fart catchers on domestic and wild mammal.
Hey there, Buster: Leave my C02 be…
I think we should all make a concerted effort to find ways of increasing our CO2 output. 🙂
more beer?
200 head of cattle per person.
Just brought a nice eye steak t for this evening.. 🙂
But do remember….
Cattle are CO2 neutral….. Like wood chips etc. 😉
Don’t wear masks?
In the illustration it doesn’t look as picturesque as a real forest, not sure I’d like to go for a walk there although I would let my dogs pee on them.
I am so tempted to actually use that mail address and tell him what a frigging idiot I think he is.
…and he’ll still laugh all the way to the bank with my tax money…
plus all the money he’ll get from polluters buying his “carbon credits”, remember
Is it April 1st already?
For certain climate “scientists”, April first is all over the year 😀
When it comes to the CACA scam, it is always April 1 and taxpayers are the April Fools.
Every day, it seems.
More breakthrough innovation requires more funding. The federal government is best positioned to do that and make the United States a leader in developing and deploying this climate-saving technology.
…
Klaus Lackner is director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions
… and depends for his continued salary on large amounts of federal (taxpayers) money…
In my short time on wuwt I’ve learned about two people called Klaus that we should beware of, one wants a share of your tax dollars to fund a mad idea the other is mad enough to want the whole world along with everything you own. The maddest thing of all is the latter seems to have made more progress thus far.
Real trees are free and don’t require rent seeking. Plus they self replicate, and there are a LOT of them in the Boreal forest (Taiga). Many more than we could ever replace with expensive machines, that would require manufacturing and potentially maintenance and periodic replacement.
Just more cronyism
The building of each one of these stupid Klaus Lackner CO2 removing devices would preclude the planting of a genuine living tree. This stupid idea is in line for the top Shonky Award of 2021.
Interesting… So now the Green movement is anti-nature and pro-industrial growth.
Solyndra 2.0
Here comes the Al Gore National Forest.
The scammers couldn’t make enough money using real trees, so they had to invent something more investment intensive.
How many real trees will be cut down to make room for these?
Real trees are rapidly increasing in number and size. ( Clearly this entire scam project would never be more than a drop in the bucket to the natural increase in CO2 uptake from real tree growth.)
I prefer greening trees, they are much nicer, and a lot of animals like to live in.
And they produce oxygen, not sooo unnecessary and much more imprtant than removed CO2