←back to thread

Dead trees keep surprisingly large amounts of carbon out of atmosphere

(phys.org)
91 points PaulHoule | 1 comments | 14 Apr 25 14:23 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
hermitShell ◴[14 Apr 25 16:15 UTC] No.43682906[source]▶
In N Stephensons “Anathem” there are “fuel trees” and a couple paragraphs describing how they are ‘cooked’ for hydrocarbon fuels. I like trees and his vision of a future where genetically modified trees are the best way to collect solar energy and then harvest and store it. Solar panels are cool but one of the themes of the book is civilization over many millennia, and I can see how he arrived at his conclusion that most tech doesn’t work as well as trees.
replies(3): >>43683150 #>>43683367 #>>43690467 #
1. AngryData ◴[15 Apr 25 08:50 UTC] No.43690467[source]▶
It does work, but the problem is gasoline has distorted our view on how much energy we are actually using. Most people would shrug at using a single gallon of gas to drive to the store. But telling them they gotta cut down an entire tree just to drive to the corner store doesn't fly as well. Of course if we used all the energy in the tree instead of just what can be distilled off it would reduce the amount used quite a lot, but nobody is going to switch to steam boiler powered cars that they gotta fire up 45 minutes before hand.