We learned that trees can turn CO2 to O, so why can’t trees reduce the ammount of CO2 ( the biggest greenhouse gas) and solve the problem?
Edit: But if there is more CO2 the plants grow faster so they can aborsb more too.
In: Biology
This is like asking the question, “If garbage men can collect garbage from the trash cans, why can’t they solve the littering problem?”
Trees don’t lock CO2 away long term they store it only temporarily. At the end end of thier lives most trees will rot or be burned releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere. There are exceptions but they’re rare and endangered environments due to human activity.
Trees die. They then either burn or rot and release greenhouse gases. This idea particularly true i. The great rainforests. The soil layer is poor. It stores minimal CO2.
However peat marsh and mangrove forests do lock CO2 away. The problem both is that they’re rare environments. The peat has been dug up for millennia as fuel and the mangrove forests are sensitive to pollution.
That’s not to say it doesn’t play a role but most trees store CO2 for a little over thier lifetimes and forests as a whole release the same CO2 at a similar rate.
They do this already in a natural carbon cycle. Trees take in carbon dioxide, die or drop leaves that decay and release the carbon back into the atmosphere.
The problem is that we are releasing sequestered carbon – that is carbon that has been stored away in the form of fossil fuels – that is “extra” and is larger than the current carbon cycle can handle.
Because people are burning them to make room for cattle. Also you’ll need a whole lot of trees to compensate the burning of oil, gas and coal.
I am no expert on this, but trees do exactly that. There are simply not enough trees compared to the amount of CO2 we are producing.
Well they can but
1. CO2 emmissions are greatly overpowering the capacity of foliage, particularly in areas where it has be stripped away and industrialized.
2. Some CO2 escapes the immediate earth into the atmosphere, changing the structure of the earths protective layer & hence holding in heat/warming.
3. By far, the majority of the earth is covered in water – where there are no plants. CO2 in coastal regions is slowly turning into carbonic acid and destroying plants, coral, and sealife everywhere.
Trees do not convert CO2 to O2. The CO2 is converted to sugar and is stored in the plant to be used for energy. The oxygen they release comes from breaking water molecules.
When they die that carbon is then transferred through the carbon cycle with some making it back into the atmosphere.
Trees however are only responsible for a small amount of carbon capture. Most is done by algae in the ocean.
Because CO2 is not necessarily the limiting factor on all plant growth. Most plants are limited by nitrogen, as only a few types can fix their own. Nitrogen is very abundant in the atmosphere but plants rely on nitrogen fixing bacteria to convert molecular nitrogen (N2) in the atmosphere to the usable form, ammonia (NH3).
In fact, without the Haber process that was developed in early 20th century (which converts N2 to NH3 on an industrial scale, primarily for use in fertilizers), we wouldn’t be able to produce enough food to prevent mass starvation.
Besides, the vast majority of CO2 fixation is done by photosynthetic algae. All in all it is just inadequate to compensate for the increased CO2 production caused by humans. It was already in balance before the industrial revolution, there is a finite limit to the amount of CO2 that can be absorbed by natural processes.
Picture a sink and faucet. The faucet is the production of CO2, the drain is CO2 absorption. Before industry came along, the sink remained about half full, with the faucet replacing the water draining out. But then humans started using fossil fuels, it’s a drop in the sink, but the sink was already in equilibrium, so each drop raises the level in the sink. And unlike gravity assisting the drain, the faucet gets turned up higher as the level in the sink rises since increased CO2 causes increased temperature, which warms the oceans, releasing more CO2. This is the runaway greenhouse effect, it’s what will quickly turn Earth into Venus if we don’t reverse it.
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