So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂

lrem

That one final number is all one needs as a reply for "but they help a little".

culi

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, algae, and photosynthetic bacteria). Between 50-80% of it in fact. Likewise, most of the CO2 that has been captured has been captured by the ocean not by forests. About 25-30% of all human emissions have been captured by the ocean. Forests (and grasslands) are tremendously important for ecosystems and our health but I think this focus on CO2 and oxygen is simply misleading. If that's your concern you should really be focusing on the ocean. Which IMO is in an even more dire strait than our forests

michaelfm1211

How is it that 132.5 watts is 3 light bulbs but 918 watts is 765 light bulbs? Is there a typo?

metalman

no, we are useing solar PV to eliminate the excess carbon bieng added to the atmosphere, and plants, rocks, and many other natural processes will return CO² levels to a more moderate level.

yjftsjthsd-h

Bamboo it is.

tantalor

> Real plants do photosynthesis through a physical process (nit) it is more accurate to call this a biological process, or chemical process Saying "physical process" makes me think of inclined planes, free-body diagrams, and EM fields.

JTbane

Sadly I am a bit hopeless about climate change. Even if every person on earth dropped everything and started making biochar to be buried it would not sequester enough carbon to make a difference.

ninefathom

The BBC did this in their 2012 documentary mini-series "How to Grow a Planet" with Iain Stewart. It was a lovely series; I highly recommend it.

moebrowne

What if the plants were algae?

benced

This seems trivial: if you could add enough plants to your room to reduce CO2, we could easily do the same thing at planet-scale and global warming wouldn't be an issue.

stavros

I don't really understand this. First of all, you can just weigh the plant, and tell how much CO2 it has captured, right? Second of all, what does it matter how much CO2 I produce? What's harmful is the additional CO2 that goes into the atmosphere for burning fossil fuels. All other CO2 is just in the same cycle that's been happening for ever. EDIT: My child comment is dead and vouching doesn't resurrect it, but now the post makes sense, thanks for the clarification.

asdfman123

You can sequester carbon with plants, but you can't let them decay or it will release it back into the environment (it's called the "carbon cycle" of a reason). A startup has solved this problem the following way (for example): grow microalgae near a very dry desert, and bury it in trenches. It never decays and thus never releases CO2 due to lack of water. Basically, we'd have to permanently stick it back underground again.

t0mpr1c3

The vast interior of the world's oceans are a nutrient desert. It has been proposed to grow algae by spreading silt, the same way that Saharan winds do.

tito

I’ve always wanted to jam on how to create an indoor carbon dioxide removal system. (I think that’s what this article is about but perhaps it’s indirectly about the changing climate) 1 kg per day of material adds up fast but that assumes zero ventilation. If I simply wanted a system to keep my office below 500 ppm all day, I wonder how much material that would produce. Anyone ever build a little carbon dioxide zapping system for indoor air quality? I’ve also heard that indoor CO2 isn’t actually all that bad but it’s VOCs that are what make me feel sluggish.

dynm

(Author here) I've added the word "indoor" to the title, which will hopefully make it harder to miss that this is not about climate change or carbon sequestration.

modeless

This guy actually built an algae farm to test how much you need to breathe. https://youtu.be/AAbyUaLN2QA

chrisweekly

Related tangent: I recently bought an inexpensive consumer CO2 monitor for under $40. It confirmed my suspicion about air quality in my home office; after a few hours, levels rise above 1000ppm unless I leave a window partway open. Mid-afternoon mental fog cleared right up.

mherkender

Get an HRV/ERV if you can't open a window.

throwawayffffas

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.

JoeAltmaier

Of course, do it with vats of plant cells in floating oceanic CO2 factories. Not in your living room. Or, just let the oceans recover, let the mollusks return to the bays and shores, let them do their efficient thing.