Carbon-dioxide and Planting Trees

Trees are the solution to our global warming problem and could even reverse the process and I have very good reasons to believe so. I propose this as a practical approach to make meaningful progress
to combat rising carbon levels and stabilizing climate change.

How effective trees will be we don't really know, plants have covered the land and sea before the first animal life for hundreds of millions of years that's how long it has taken us to get here, even so I think planting trees will help, if not reversing carbon-dioxide levels at least slowing down the increase because we are in a fine balance here. It could make the difference. Just do it. There is nothing to lose.

I don't think such mass tree planting will completely solve the global warming problem but it will definitely help it is the best option now. Ideal of course including other approaches as universal total changing to renewable (clean recycled) energy the only problem is the industry is very expensive on the short term.

Constituents of the Atmosphere

Atmospheric content in major components are molecular nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide, a variable component of water as well as noble gases and others in small amounts. The molecular composition is 78.08% diatomic nitrogen ; 20.95% diatomic oxygen ; 0.038% carbon-dioxide and abundant water vapour. That would be according to volumes. Clearly the CO2 levels are very sensitive.

Earth's first atmosphere lacked free oxygen. It has been five-hundred million years from the first biological production of oxygen by one-celled organisms to its current major component of the atmosphere, the source of oxygen gas is green plants. From the balance one can see fossil fuels cannot be exhausted. The only thing is to get to it cheaply and quickly as possible. A sad state of affairs.

Planting trees

A tree is the ideal carbon “factory”. Plants absorb light energy converting CO2 and water through photosynthesis into oxygen and as stored energy in carbo-hydrates, in effect removing the problem from the air and further replenishing oxygen in fact removing heat with useful by-products as many useful chemicals, medicines organic foods and wood for building material and furniture, shelter and such as water retention and preventing soil erosion.

What more do you want? As opposed to proposed dirty man-built factories trees give shade and are beautiful and without waste just runs for free all you have to do is plant it. Plant hundreds, plant thousands, plant millions but it should be with judgement of course. Plant trees with discretion. It is essentially free and needs no maintenance you just do it.

We have been doing exactly the opposite with fossil fuels for centuries, organic fuels of hundred millions years of plant life destroying nature and trees destroying forest and jungles polluting water changing abundant life and natural habitat into desert and wilderness.

Human engineering enterprises

Proposed man-made factories are being designed that would extract CO2 from the air which is then physically pumped and buried caught deep underground then to actually reverse CO2 levels by chemical processes in massive machines. This cannot be feasible you are more likely to contribute to the problem. At such low concentration you would just make things worse  Instead I believe you would not get the desirable effect at all considering the laws of thermodynamics.

By the way for electric cars it is the same but here you sit with something else very stupid too. If you plug your car batteries into the wall socket you use just as much power and just as much energy in the end, you only shift the combustion and atmospheric emissions from here to the coal power stations out 100s of km out into the low populated areas in Mpumalanga.

The massive batteries and electric machinery are extremely expensive not worthwhile, and please tell me, batteries have only a certain limited life how do you propose to dispose of so many used batteries? A bit bigger than a cell phone battery hey? At this stage these cars are definitely not practical. Never mind we cannot even keep the lights on.

The chlorophyll machine

Long before animals in primordial life the first plants were the oldest complex life form and animals have been dependent living organisms in harmony with green life for countless ages with plants enriching in atmosphere as the source of free oxygen with the sun ultimately the origin of energy on earth.

The forest and jungles and sea for 100s million years plants have thrived on earth and ocean long before any animal life it doesn't sound feasible reversing the process of burning in a few decades.

Plants are probably not enough to immediately make a real difference but the photosynthesis reaction actually absorbs energy too and removing some heat from the surroundings. In plants the burning process is reversed. Although one would imagine it must be that most of this does happen in the oceans, mostly by algae and simple cellular saltwater plants.

Algae is typically a single-cell organism as a very simple plant life form that lives suspended in water in the ocean. Could we accelerate algae growth? For many uses fertiliser or we can harvest food but don't poison the oceans. Probably the main contributor but oceans are being polluted more every day.

One could cultivate desirable strains of algae and genetically engineer for and select from them the best strains with properties for seeding thus farming and reaping foods from the ocean whilst removing CO2. You could grow food algae is potentially a vast source of food and a few cubic km of sea can feed millions of people.

Nature & Global warming

In principle fossil fuels cannot be exhausted if you assume all atmospheric free oxygen originally came from CO2 and water through chemical reactions, and is balanced with oxygen. It means fossil energy can only be finally depleted when there is no oxygen left. As saying free oxygen and fuel would run out about the same time and at the rate we're going now having produced a terrific amount of CO2 and dirty energy.

However if the global warming crisis and changing world climates depend on carbon levels note that even a very small amount of change in the actual amount of CO2 would make a large difference to the atmospheric presence since CO2 is only 0.04%  currently and thus is very sensitive.

Mass efforts of planting trees could actually make a difference. Note there are other possible contributors too of global warming that could make a difference we don't really know. Such as solar activity contributions and the gas giant planets disturbing the earth's solar orbit slightly or shifting magnetic poles and perhaps others perhaps even to affect climate change.

Photosynthesis

In the very basic chemical reaction CO2 and water reacts through chlorophyll which is a green pigment in plants, and carbohydrates are produced as organic foods and fuel while oxygen gas is released. With energy from sunlight absorption the balanced equation for the simplest carbohydrate is,

CO2 + H2O –> CH2O + O2 ^ .

While during the process of respiration oxygen burns carbohydrates into carbon dioxide and water releasing energy. It is the reverse process of photosynthesis and the equation is reversed.

Go clean Go green! Plant a tree today!

Carbon-dioxide is removed from the air by trees while global warming is apparently very sensitive to carbon levels. Nature has pre-designed the most practical method of controlling carbon levels. A tree is a factory with photosynthesis as possibly the most efficient method of all.