Call me stupid but I was told that while yes, Trees does absorb CO2 form the air and give Oxygen back during daytime. There’s also a reason to not have tree in your enclosed bedroom during night as it release all the CO2 absorbed.
So my question was that people are saying to plant tree to help purify the air in streets, city, or any dense population location. If the statement in first paragraph’s correct. wouldn’t that just result in that the trees would give the o2 and purify the air during day time and just flood the street with co2 during night? I’m confused…
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Trees undergo photosynthesis during the day, absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) and releasing oxygen (O2). At night, they respire, taking in oxygen and releasing a smaller amount of CO2. Overall, the net effect is a decrease in atmospheric CO2. The CO2 release at night is negligible, especially in the context of air volume in spaces like bedrooms. Beyond CO2 absorption, trees in urban areas also filter other pollutants, provide shade, reduce dust, and mitigate the urban heat island effect, making them crucial for improving air quality and combating climate change.
They don’t happen at the same rate.
Trees take in oxygen and give out CO2 nearly all the time. (not only at night). During the day it absorbs more CO2 than it releases so it is net positive for oxygen. At night, without sun, the plants do not absorb CO2 and therefore it is net positive for CO2.
For the tree to grow (ie to secure carbon) it will absorb far more CO2 than it releases.
There’s a few things you’ve been misinformed about or misunderstood:
– Plants don’t “release **all** the CO2 absorbed” during the night. CO2 is also used by plants to manufacture sugars and cellulose.
– Although their effectiveness varies between species and pollutants, plants are able to remove other pollutants from the air, such as formaldehyde and benzene molecules.
– There’s actually three different types of carbon fixation in plants: C3, C4, and CAM. It’s an incredibly complicated topic that can’t really be simplified for an ELI5, but in short plants with different types of carbon fixation are generally suited for different types of soils, temperatures, and rainfall patterns, although there are traits specific to individual species that are also a factor. What’s important here though is only C3 and C4 plants release CO2 at night, CAM plants continue to release oxygen at night.
– (You might already know this, but) Plants don’t produce oxygen from CO2, they produce oxygen by splitting H2O. There are no known biological mechanisms for splitting CO2.
Tress breathe in CO2 and breathe out O2
Humans breathe in O2 and breathe out CO2
It means that trees/humans have an internal process that concerts it from CO2 to O2 (or the other way)
So we both need each other. As far as day and night comment, it depends on the tree. It’s likely that certain trees need the sun to make the process; but it’s nominal.
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Regarding your pollution. Too much CO2 in the world is bad, so thats why we need trees. Not only that, trees also provide shade which helps reduce the urban heat island.
There’s also the deforestation. The fact we cut down a lot of trees to make paper, cardboard, houses, lumber, etc. and we’re cutting faster than the trees are being planted and growing. So if we don’t encourage tree planting, there’s going to be a lot of CO2; which means there won’t be as much O2 then humans won’t be able to breathe.
> There’s also a reason to not have tree in your enclosed bedroom during night as it release all the CO2 absorbed.
The real reason you shouldn’t have a tree in your bedroom is that they are usually to large to keep indoors /j
But in all seriousness, there is no reason you can’t keep plants in your bedroom. The rooms in your house aren’t sealed very well and gas transfer will still occur. So any oxygen used by you, plants, pets will be restored from outside and any co2 breathed out by you, plants, pets will escape.
Trees still can’t help with co2 pollution because all the co2 that the tree has is released when the tree dies so planting more trees will not solv the problem of global heating.
quite simple. trees DONT emit CO2 during the night, they just dont take in CO2 at night. There is no reason not to keep a tree in an enclosed bedroom, it just doesnt help much because the rate is fairly slow (you need about 8 trees to offset JUST your breathing).
As for using this to clean up the atmosphere, yah, that is the plan of #teamTrees. There are 2, first all that C02 is stored in the wood of the trees, and if that wood is burnt, the C02 is released again. and 2nd, 31 trees or so will offset 1 ton of CO2 emissions (per year), and we need to get rid of at least 20,000,000,000 Tons of CO2 (per year), that’s a lot of trees.
Trees are living and so respire to use energy. Instead of eating they have photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis brings in CO2 basically (cutting corner here) is their food. Their poo is O2.
Respiration is the same as ours and other animals. O2 in helps break down sugar for energy.
The part that has been missed is these two things are not equal in amount. Plants don’t do anything but grow. No movement for water just growth for water. No movement for food it’s in the air (corners cut here). No movement for anything (corners cut for at least one species I know of but still). So their energy requirement is fuck all so they respire very little but “eat” a shit ton.
You could think of it like this. Trees a fat fucks. They “eat” all day and do nothing. “That’s” why trees are so heavy (corner cutting again but it’s a good enough analogy).
On the apparent subject of enclosed spaces with plants/trees. The ISS has many in it to help air filtration. There is an article I forget where about their research into the best plants to filter out stuff. I was bought the top plant as a gift when my house burned down as a joke (you know filter out the smoke). It’s a live an kicking in the corner happily. We call “him” Tiddles.
Trees absorb co2 when they start growing leaves and release co2 come fall when their leaves fall off.
Some of the sugars from photosynthesis are used (especially in woody plants) to make new perminant plant materials- branches and roots. As long as the number of live trees increases we can use forests as a net store of carbon.
Alot of carbon gets perminantly sequestered into the soil, either by the roots or through the action of the soil biome when leaves or other plant materials die and drop off.
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