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Genetically Altering Trees To Sequester More Carbon
An anonymous reader writes "Forests of genetically altered trees and other plants could sequester several billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year and so help ameliorate global warming, according to estimates published in the October issue of BioScience. The study, by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, outlines a variety of strategies (PDF) for augmenting the processes that plants use to sequester carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into long-lived forms of carbon, first in vegetation and ultimately in soil."
When we've turned all the carbon in to trees?
The human body has a large amount of carbon. Long story short, the trees will start hungering for us!
We burn the trees, get some energy, releasing the carbon back into the air
then have Al Gore make another movie of course.
The price of the wood.
Cattle tastes better than trees, so the choice was obvious.
... 'course, I'm thinking they'll just turn around and complain that humanity should instead modify its own behavior.
I for one am ready to pay my air breathing tax to Monsanto.
How to use the Pay As You Breath (PAYB) Calculator:
To predict your monthly PAYE tax, please enter: "Total lung capacity (TLC) is measured by adding together Inspiratory Reserve Volume (IRV), Tidal Volume (Vt), Expiratory Reserve Volume (ERV), and Residual Volume (RV) to come up with the formula, TLC=IRV + Vt + ERV + RV. Tidal Volume is the amount of air normally inhaled or exhaled. Inspiratory Reserve Volume is the amount of additional air that could be inhaled in order to completely fill up the lungs." Please enter these values from you spirometer readings, along with your age, weight, and physical condition - then hit next.
Pretty sure I'm below average on all of those metrics. Finally it pays off to be a smoker.
Those carbon-heavy logs will burn great in my fireplace.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
While America seeks to shrink the waist lines of its population apparently we intend to raise some really huge trees. Or as an alternative maybe we could just encourage kudzo vines to grow. We can blanket America with Kudzo with almost no effort at all.
Didn't the police kill you when you held those people hostage at the Discovery Channel?
Cattle tastes better than trees, so the choice was obvious.
McDonalds cut out the middle man and bred cattle to taste like trees. Now if they can just engineer them to suck carbon ...
Excess co2 is a non problem, precisely indicated in the article premise. As we have more co2 in the atmosphere, the existing plants, including food crops, will suck it up. It may lag a bit, but this is what will happen. We don't even need super trees, just more "regular" trees. Excess wood can be turned into biochar to be provided to the planet's farms, for deep plowing in.
CO2 is not a problem, it is an ASSET, a valuable resource. Having a war on carbon is the stupidest thing humans can do right now. That so many greenies have been faked out by this latest wall street cap and trade SCAM is astounding. That is what is behind the war on carbon, those looters want the entire planet to pay for non existent carbon problem "credits" so they have trillions more in free money handed to them. It is a huge con, designed by ENRON, and then run with from the likes of goldman sachs, etc.
Wake up before it is too late, do your own research, see where the war on carbon came from, go find your own links.
I almost modded you up, but then I realized that simply re-quoting you was more effective. Your ideas are worth exploring by anybody who is a little vague or confused by the whole global warming scam. The most loudly marketed idea is generally guaranteed to be a lie. This one faked us out because Al Gore seemed like such a nice and earnest guy, but his science and his connections demonstrated that he is a liar or a fool or both. Putting a believable and apparently trust-worthy leadership figure at the head of a con job, (Obama being another example), is enormously effective.
-FL