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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Plants consume way _way_ more carbon dioxide than they produce.
“Capturing carbon” isn’t some abstract concept. When you look at a tree, what you’re seeing is basically all the carbon they’ve captured. The leaves, the bark, the wood. Most of that is made of carbohydrates of some sort, and all of the carbon in all of that comes from the carbon dioxide captured by plants.
Trees are primarily made out of carbohydrates. The carbon comes solely from the air (CO2).
The fact that trees grow means that they absorb net positive CO2 from the air.
The carbon that is needed for a tree to grow is from co2 and converted to useful carbon via photosynthesis during the day. Without trapping and using co2 a tree wouldn’t grow. Yes they put some back into the atmosphere at night as part of other metabolic pathways but it’s not a net zero exchange.
Think about this, what are trees made off?
They are made of essentially different compounds of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. They get the hydrogen and some oxygen from water, and the carbon and rest of oxygen comes from co2 in the air.
So as long as a tree is growing and thus accumulating more biomass, they are capturing co2 from the atmosphere.
They use some of that carbon to make more tree so there’s over all less carbon in the air and over all more tree. Carbon in a tree is good. Too much carbon in the air is bad.
The net difference between the intake and output of CO2 is equal to the mass of the tree.
Observation: to use trees to permanently remove CO2 from the atmosphere, you have to grow the tree then sequester the wood. For example, use the wood to build a house. If you burn it then the CO2 will be replaced. Likewise, if you leave it alone then organisms will eat the wood and fart out a tree worth of CO2.
A tree is roughly 50% carbon, by weight. They get basically all of that from the air. So, no matter what co2 they supposedly get rid of at night (hadn’t heard this before), they certainly stock more carbon than they release.
The short answer is that it doesn’t happen at the same rate. If the tree didn’t absorb more CO2 than it releases, the tree couldn’t become any bigger. The carbon in the tree comes from the CO2 it takes in
Because they use the carbon to grow, ever wonder how trees grow?
Put a plant in a pot and place it on a scale, the pot will gain weight as the plant grows
The plant takes in CO2 and takes the carbon to make itself.
The majority of a plant’s weight is carbon
You’re not realizing co2 isn’t a pollutant, it’s not even harmful. Reduced oxygen levels can be dangerous, but unless you’re in a sealed off room for days at a clip the tree will barely change levels at all.
Consider a jungle, there’s billions of plants sucking up oxygen and dispersing co2, but it’s far better for you than a city with no plants at all.
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