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Asked by fish238 to Clara, Daniel, Simon, Thomas on 20 Mar 2014.
Question: Why don't we use waste carbon dioxide to grow lots and lots of plants, which photosynthesise to produce oxygen?
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Thomas Elias Cocolios answered on 20 Mar 2014:
Actually, that would be something awesome! I do not understand why not either. Even worse, we keep on cutting down more and more trees in the Amazonian forest and that really hurts to think that profit overrules the environment.
On a different note, you have the biomass power (i.e. big power plants burning wood). Those are regulated in Europe with a cut-1-plant-2 kind of rule, so that we are regrowing our forests, little by little. The one example I know of is France: it has now 10 times more forests than in the 17th century!
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Simon Albright answered on 20 Mar 2014:
I’m not sure why either.
I think the problem is probably harnessing the CO2 in a usable way. When it comes out of power plants there’s always other stuff like soot and things in there as well so maybe they can’t risk poisoning the plants with them.
But that’s really just a guess, seems like a good idea to me.
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Clara Nellist answered on 20 Mar 2014:
One type of plant that would be good to use for this is actually algae. This is a pretty simple plant which can be seaweed, or it can be the green mush you sometimes see floating in ponds. A French scientist has been working on a form a street lamp that would use algae! This street lamp would not only be the source of light, but also take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at the same time! Pretty cool!
http://blog.ted.com/2013/10/02/a-streetlamp-powered-by-algae/
This obviously shouldn’t distract from the important work being done to save the forests and rain forests. These play an extended role in our environment – they’re not only take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and make oxygen, but also provide homes for animals to live in, and protect the soil from being washed (eroded) away!
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