I saw a youtube video about how Japan burns materials that can’t easily be recycled to produce energy and captures the CO2 produced from the process. The CO2 is then sold to some local factories to produce various things like fire extinguishers, and some algae farms (I googled this and algae is used to produce food and oil).
I googled that at sea level, CO2 in the atmosphere is at 350 PPM, but certain plants thrive at 1500 PPM.
It got me thinking – why can’t we pump CO2 into indoor farms, plantations or forests to sequester more carbon?
Would that even work? Is the carbon just released into the air again once the plants are eaten or broken down?
In: Biology
Once the plants break down its back out again, yeah.
If you can add a bunch of standing biomass, like a forest where there wasn’t one before, then yes you can capture a bunch of carbon. Plants will die, break down and release it yes but there will also be new ones growing taking carbon back up and the cycle is much slower than farmed crops.
Thing is that just about worldwide any bit of land that would easily grow and forest is also in demand for other uses.
The other problem is we’re releasing a bunch of carbon that WAS in long term storage for lack of a better term. Things like coal. Coal…can’t form anymore. The only reason it could was that in the carboniferous period organisms that xould break down that kind of plant matter hadn’t evolved yet. So we’re letting that all out AND cutting down living stores like forests/jungles.
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