Climate change is a controversial topic if you don’t particularly like science or think arguing over goverment regulations is more important than avoiding drowning. While we aren’t going to start forcibly LARPing Waterworld anytime soon, there have been some pretty disturbing trends lately.
So, we need a solution that bottles up some of those greenhouse gases, preferably one that doesn’t have a fungus that can make things worse.
Enter the geoengineers, who have invented a plastic tree that’s a thousand times more efficient at getting carbon dioxide out of the air than the real thing.
And, if that wasn’t weird enough, it does it by turning it into baking soda.
It’s actually pretty basic. You put up a fake tree with “leaves” that are impregnated with sodium carbonate. When it interacts with carbon dioxide, the magic of chemistry kicks in. The sodium carbonate yanks a carbon atom for itself, turning into sodium bicarbonate, while leaving the two oxygen atoms to float free and unencumbered through the atmosphere.
Also, it doesn’t need solar power to work. You can pretty much just leave these things lying around anywhere and they’ll do their job, because chemistry is cool like that. It also means that you can cram many more “leaves” into the “tree”, meaning you can suck up a lot more atmospheric crap.
It does need to be scaled up, but it’s a pretty ingenious solution to the problem. Also, hey, free baking soda!
![[avatar]](http://p.uproxxcdn.com/photo/569/thumb)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/10-reasons-why-time-travel-is-no-good-according-to-glove-and-boots-150x150.jpg)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/feels-scroll-150x150.gif)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/Screenshot-from-2013-05-03-084021-150x150.png)
![[image]](http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/thumbnails/130/110/2013/05/boogers-150x150.jpg)
Sounds like that futuristic episode of The Simpsons where Lisa is getting married and they have that hologram of a tree.
Okay, it doesn’t, but hey! Baking soda! Also, science is awesome.
I don’t get how people are going to drown from the sea level rising less than an inch a year.
Coopdogg, do you plan to have kids?
It’s not about the rise that we will experience in our lifetime (provided it doesn’t accelerate), it’s about the future generations. THINK OF THE KIDS.
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
think of da chirrens! do it for da chirrens!
Cuz my kids will be short when they are young so they are more susceptible to drowning in rising water? I still don’t get it.
ThinkOfTheKids, have you ever had an ice cube in a drink? What happens when it melts…
A magical thing called displacement means that even if the entirety of Earths ice caps melt sea level will NOT rise… Hell there are even microbes frozen within the ice caps that process CO2 to produce organic isobutanol
You have my permission to get off my planet.
…but …but the chirrens. whos thinking of the chirrens
… Yes. In a drink.
Where 90% of the ice sits in the water, and only 10% out of it.
Which is not the case when talking about the landmasses scientists are actually concerned about, as opposed to say, icecubes. In a drink.
You have my permission to fully understand the topic at hand before deriding others.
Your argument completely misses the point. You are essentially correct that under the principle of displacement, ice that is floating in water and then melts will not cause sea level rise. However, you ignore the key fact that the majority of ice that would melt is not floating in or on the sea. Instead, the majority of the ice is ON LAND (e.g. Greenland and Antarctica). When that ice melts, the water will flow into the sea and the sea level will rise. You also ignore the fact that ice is incredibly reflective and returns solar energy away from the earth. In contrast, seawater is dark and absorbs solar radiation. Accordingly, as more and more ice melts, less solar energy is reflected back to space, and more solar energy is absorbed in the ocean. This causes the sea to warm up (basic physics). As the sea warms up, the water expands, causing sea levels to rise beyond what they would from the mere addition of water from the melting land based ice.
Basic physics, your example only works if the entirety of the ice caps are floating on the ocean, which they aren’t. There’s a continent under the Antarctic ice. There’s probably one under the Arctic ice too. There’s definitely land under the glaciers of Greenland. All of this will cause the sea levels to rise.
An additional problem with your analogy is that the ice caps aren’t added water. They’re part of the same water system, but are frozen. It’s more like taking an overflowing cup, freezing part of the water, and then acting surprised when it thaws and spills water everywhere.
We’re going to kick you off our planet.
the arctic has o land mass covered by snow and ice its ocean. so, plz think of the chirren. p.s. don’t for get the ice shelves in Antarctica they have no land mass underneath either. Chirrens!!!
Ok sounds cool, but what do we do with the baking soda? Throw it in a volcano or the ocean or something? Use it to cover the nuclear waste in? I only barely know how magnets work so please bear with me here and explain if baking soda is safe to pile up to our nipples like it probably will someday if this tree thing takes off…
I remeber vaugely putting it in a volcano back in second grade…
If you look at the molecular weights of sodium carbonate and carbon dioxide, it looks like it takes 2 grams of Na2Co3 to cap 1g of CO2. Quick google search finds a low price for sodium carbonate to be around $200/metric ton. So to capture 1 metric ton of CO2 you’d have to use 2 metric tons of sodium carbonate, or about $400. This excludes just how you distribute that much material efficiently and baking soda collection costs. At this price, it’s more economical not to put the CO2 in the atmosphere in the first place.
Compare that to solar. Random search of the web yields 377g CO2 not emitted / KWh. If you assume 15 cents/KWh (price of living in California), then $400 dollars sunk into solar would displace just about 1 metric ton of CO2. That’s not even accounting for the value of the electricity generated by the solar install.
Still an interesting idea, we never have enough. Maybe if they’re linked together in a “grove” with pipes to deliver it to the trees? All are welcome to blow up my numbers, I’ll hold the fuse