Scientists Discover Efficient Process to Turn CO2 into Ethanol

Re:Scientists Discover Efficient Process to Turn CO2 into Et... by weatherlight on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @10:27AM (#12734649)

I do agree wholeheartedly, but the problem with trees is that they die and then they rot releasing all that carbon back into the atmosphere. It's a good start though! It be awesome if we had some sort of technology that sequestered carbon (where it be in the form of CO2 or wood chips, and sorted that carbon in a solid form effectively indefinitely. for trees to be a permanent solution, we would have to convert 50% of the land we use agriculturally to woodlands and and then better utilize the remaining land for food production. /shrug

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Re:Scientists Discover Efficient Process to Turn CO2 into Et... by Gatsky on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @04:37PM (#12738436)

This is a problem with 'organic' sequestration. However, trees are relatively long lived and take a long time to fully decay. Suitably harvested and treated wood also lasts a long time. Young growing trees sequester the most carbon, so you could have a cycle of logging older trees and replanting shrubs to maximise the sequestration. Some types of bamboo grow incredibly fast, as much as 90cm a day.

I did some back of the envelope calculations. It would take something like 240 billion extra trees to return us to pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels. This sounds like a lot, but it certainly isn't physically impossible. The Amazon has 400 billion trees. Finding suitable land mass for this purpose is an issue. But trees are remarkable, they grow in many inhospitable places. Mangroves for example survive in very difficult conditions with salt water and changing tides. So there is not necessarily an overlap with arable land. There are always more ambitious things you can try, like GMO trees that can grow in the desert, or giant floating forests in the Pacific

Also, if we could stop deforesting the Amazon currently, that would be a good start

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Re:Scientists Discover Efficient Process to Turn CO2 into Et... by ju-st on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @10:36AM (#12734773)

The co2 released by a dead tree is captured again by the next tree. So don't look at single trees but at whole forests.

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Re:Scientists Discover Efficient Process to Turn CO2 into Et... by larvyde on Wednesday October 19, 2016 @12:40AM (#12741113)

Which means less atmospheric carbon that we actually want to scrub gets captured by that 'next tree'...

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Re:Scientists Discover Efficient Process to Turn CO2 into Et... by ohyes on Tuesday October 18, 2016 @10:32AM (#12734721)

Charcoal?

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