Artificial Trees to Save the Environment

The BBC has reported on the development of artificial trees as a way of reducing carbon dioxide in the air:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8223528.stm

Presumably billions will be spent on research and development, not to mention mass production and deployment. I think its a good idea, but I have a better one.

Why don't we look to see if there is such an object that largely looks after itself, is aesthetically more pleasing than a big metal structure, and is fully biodegradeable when it comes to the end of its useful life. Perhaps such an object could be made out of something like wood instead of metal, and maybe it could be solar powered, but using completely biodegradable solar cells.

It would be great if we could find a way to make it take the materials it needs to maintain itself from something natural, maybe in the ground, but put back those materials when it is finished. We could have whole plantations of these things. It would an extra bonus if we could make it so that they blend in with the countryside, and even maybe support various wildlife.

If we could make it so it is a nice green sort of colour, and with lots of nooks and crannies in it for birds to build nests in and insects to hide in, then we're onto a real winner.

I even thought of a way of installing them. If we could make them so that they start off small, and all we have to do is dig a small hole and put them in, and then they get bigger once installed, and secure themselves by some sort of underground system of supporting tendrils, that would save lots of engineering effort and cost.

We could have them in different shapes and sizes, and have different ones to suit different conditions. I even thought of a name for this product, I'm calling it a "tree"

 

For a moment there I thought it was April 1st!

I get the idea in principle, but the earth can only sustain a certain amount of development/population, this could mean by taking away extra carbon we could go producing excesses forever.

Nice idea, but I wouldn't be supporting it!

 

Sounds like they're over complicating the issue...as you say, just plant real trees!

 

Or better still find some way of cutting down on the world human population.

Without doing that everything else will fail.

I wonder how much CO2 will be generated in making and maintaining such a stupid idea.

I think Dr Fox is probably a very clever con man, who expects to make millions out of this scam.:D

 

I dunno is he?

 

I watched a program about saving the environment the other night. One of the scientists on there made that point. However the obvious problem is how do we reduce world population in a legally and morally acceptable way? This scientist answered that with a surprisingly simple answer. He said that the parts of the world that tend to have huge families are the same parts that are in dire poverty and don't have access to education and health care. He gave an example of one such country that was becoming increasingly prosperous, and their birth rate was falling as their income and access to education and health care was rising.

Reducing human population is not the only thing that needs to happen. First up, the media and governments of the world need to stop equating greenhouse gases = CO2. Methane is 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2, and nitrous oxide is, I believe, more potent too. Methane is produced in huge quantities in landfill sites, where stuff decays in an oxygen poor environment. It is also produced (I've read) in large quantities by ordinary farm beasts. Now I'm not saying we get rid of all the cows and pigs, but that takes me on to the next point. Greed and complacency both result in production having to far exceed requirements. If people in general (and certain parts of the world are better or worse for this than other parts) wasted less and consumed less, then it would make a big difference. On the nitrous oxide bit, our cars produce it as a byproduct of petrol combustion. Car manufacturers, driven by environmental policies, boast about their low CO2 footprint, but the way they achieve that with catalytic converters and carefully metered fuel injection actually results in an increase in nitrous oxide.

Back onto the tree thing, the scientists have once again misled the public via the media. They talk of one of their artificial trees removing about 1000 times more CO2 than the equivalent real tree. What they don't talk about is how much CO2 is produced in the manufacture, shipping, installation, and ultimate disposal of the finished product. They also speak of storing the captured CO2 in empty oil wells. What happens when they're full? When a real tree dies the captured carbon is naturally deposited in the soil, the way nature intended.

Another point they've neglected to consider is that when talking of the carbon capturing capability of a real tree vs an artificial one, you can't just consider the tree. In a typical natural woodland, there are many layers of vegetation. As a fallen trees rots, it will release some CO2 back into the air. The ivy and other ground level plants will work on that. What they miss will be picked up by the brambles, wild rose, and other such plants. What they miss will be picked up by the small trees, then the larger trees and so on. Its all interconnected, and its that interconnected nature that the scientists and/or the media always seem to miss.

 

What the whole lot seem to miss is that the world is over populated.

That is the problem, but no one wants to tackle it.

Whatever is done without tackling that problem is a complete waste of time.

Third world countries are now getting the kind of things that we have been using for years, fridges, microwaves, cars etc.
The thing is there are so many more of them, and their populations are increasing at a very high rate, much faster than developed countries.

Its unstoppable, especially by a few million in this country.

Then there is always the fact that whole thing may just be political, and a very good way of hiking up taxes.

 

No politician will ever stand up and say over population needs to be controlled. It sounds too much like eugenics which isn't exactly a vote pleaser! Unfortunately, there are too many people now, especially as Pete says in developing countries, all expecting the standard of living that the developed world have enjoyed for years.

 

I don't think there's too many people. I do think there are too many greedy, wasteful people.

If every person on the planet was to cut their resource usage by an average of 50%, then it would be the same as reducing the human population by 50%.

I remember when I was very young. Once a week we'd go and see my nana and grandad. Both had obviously experienced hardship for most of their lives, from generally being working class (which used to mean poor) all their lives, then the war came along and rationing made life even harder, so they were used to it.

Nothing went to waste in their house. They were so used to the idea that everything is valuable in some way, that waste was a word that practically wasn't in their vocabulary. On sundays, the gravy for the dinner was made by boiling up all the gross bits of whatever animal we were having. If it was beef (a luxury) then the the some of the dripping was used. If it was chicken, then it would be the gibblets. The chicken carcass would go back in a pan and be boiled for ages to get stock for the barley soup for the next day.

Clothes that ripped were mended and saved for knocking about in. Any garment that was finally declared past it went into the rags chest to be used for making stuff, filling cushions, canibalised for patches, or just for cleaning.

I could go on and on. I don't think my grandparents were out of the ordinary, I think everyone in their generation lived like this and just took it as the norm, and they were happy.

Compare that to how we live now.

For most people I know, if you wear the elbow out on your shirt, it doesn't get patched up and saved for knocking about in, it doesn't even get used as a cleaning rag. It goes in the bin and we buy a new one. Some people buy brand new garments and then never get round to wearing them, or wear them once and then abandon them. A lot of people would shun perfectly good garments in a charity shop and buy the same item brand new for ten times the price (or more).

How many people these days would have a beef drippin sarnie for supper? Or boil up the stripped carcass of a chicken to make stock for soup, and then add dried barley plus whatever veg was threatening to go off in the fridge?

Just so I don't seem like a hypocrit, I must point out that I don't do most of these things, I'm as bad as many (although less wasteful than some of the folks I know). My point is just that our wasteful nature is doing us no favours.

It is usually folk from richer, more wasteful nations that claim that the world is over populated. What they're really saying, probably without even realising it, is 'I want 100 less poor, but resourceful people in the world, so that I can feel less bad about everything I have'.

 

As long as WE all believe that it's someone else's fault, someone else's problem, someone will come along and fix it, then it means WE don't need to do anything. Because WE all think that, nothing will change.

Because WE won't change our dirty habits, We will continue to destroy the very planet that we all need .

 

People will always strive to better their standard of living, one reason for the large influx of workers from poorer countries wanting to go work in richer countries.

We cant turn back the clock, it wont work.

If we did, how far back do we turn it.

We could all live in caves, I suppose that might solve the problem.:D

A bit like conservationists, always wanting to conserve a particular period in time.

A very modern phenomenon and not very realistic.

 

... and pumping so much pollution into the atmosphere that the climate changes is?

The only realistic way forward is to reduce emissions, It's no good thinking we can carry on as ever, we can't!

 

So what year would you like to stop the clock at then?

Maybe when the world population was only half of what it is now?