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CO2 Researchers Are Now Hacking Photosynthesis (chicagotribune.com)
Remember that story about the "artificial leaf" solar cells? Long-time Slashdot reader
managerialslime quotes the Chicago Tribune: University of Illinois at Chicago researchers have developed a way to mimic plants' ability to convert carbon dioxide into fuel, a way to decrease the amounts of harmful gas in the atmosphere and produce clean energy. The artificial leaf essentially recycles carbon dioxide. And it's powered entirely by the sun, mimicking the real photosynthesis process.
But meanwhile, in Germany: Biochemists led by Tobias Erb at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology...have developed a new, super-efficient method for living organisms to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. Plants, algae, and other organisms turn CO2 into fuel. Erb and his colleagues reengineered this process, making it about 25 percent more energy efficient and potentially up to two or three times faster... Erb hopes that one day the CETCH cycle could be genetically engineered into living organisms, helping them more rapidly reduce atmospheric CO2 while producing useful materials.
The researchers created their new CO2-transforming cycle using 11 carefully chosen enzymes.
But meanwhile, in Germany: Biochemists led by Tobias Erb at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology...have developed a new, super-efficient method for living organisms to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. Plants, algae, and other organisms turn CO2 into fuel. Erb and his colleagues reengineered this process, making it about 25 percent more energy efficient and potentially up to two or three times faster... Erb hopes that one day the CETCH cycle could be genetically engineered into living organisms, helping them more rapidly reduce atmospheric CO2 while producing useful materials.
The researchers created their new CO2-transforming cycle using 11 carefully chosen enzymes.
If this technology escapes the lab this would be the ultimate weed. Sucking out all of the CO2 out of the air and killing off crops. This is an Interstellar type disaster scenario. Finally the Global Warming alarmists have gone too far. Till now they were only threatening our economic wellbeing. Now they are going to kill the planet.
Time to finally get rid of the Global Warming alarmists.
**Life is too short to be serious**
The total carbon footprint. What does it cost to create the enzymes? Odds are they are derived from hydrocarbons. This could be another scam like ethanol and the "hydrogen economy".
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
....have developed a new, super-efficient method for living organisms to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Yeah, let's genetically engineer plants and microbes to be unnaturally efficient in removing atmospheric CO2. It's not like the biosphere has spent millions of years achieving a balance or that the balance is important.
"What could possibly go wrong?"
This could be a plot for a sci-fi novel or movie. One of those that predict a not-happy outcome for humans due to their own shortsightedness and hubris.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
There is yet another environmentalist faction that's obsessed with fresh water usage. How much water do these synthetic flora need?
To avoid killing plants due to a lack of C02 at ground level, this technique would have to be done in the upper atmosphere perhaps in aircraft ? Perhaps aircraft could manufacture their fuel as they fly along ?
A great SF on more-or-less this theme: Greener than you Think. The protagonist's fecklessness rivals Ignatius J. Reilly.
Instead of bio-engineering an organism which collects sunlight and uses it to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, why don't we just plant more trees?
I understand that you're upset that we're not doing more about CO2 emissions. But you have to understand that we're directly in control of those CO2 emissions. If we wanted to, we could stop all our CO2 emissions tomorrow. The problem isn't the capability, it's the desire. We already have the capability, we just lack the desire.
Releasing a self-replicating bio-engineered organism which extracts CO2 from the atmosphere is an order of magnitude more reckless than wantonly emitting CO2 to generate energy. Because once you release a self-replicating organism, you no longer have any control over it. If it turns out our calculations and predictions are wrong about the effects of reducing our CO2 emissions, we can modify our behavior in response because we control our CO2 emissions. But once you release that organism, that's it. It's out of our control. If our calculations were wrong about what the steady state response of the ecosystem will be to the introduction of that organism, we won't be able to stop it even if we desire to do so.
At least with trees, you have an organism which has been around for millions of years so its steady state effect on the ecosystem is pretty well understood.
Of course when that fuel is burned, or when those super-efficient plants die and decay, the CO2 is released again.
Face it, someone is going to find something to bitch about. Until the western economies regress to a pastoral existence (with about 90% of us starving to death on our way there), they just won't be happy.
Have gnu, will travel.
Wouldn't it be easy to plant more trees.
I saw a few YouTube videos where people from the US Navy described a system that took seawater and electricity to create jet fuel. The intention is to use this system on a nuclear powered vessel so that it can produce the fuel for the aircraft it carries. Obviously a modern aircraft carrier carries a lot of aircraft, and is nuclear powered, but there are lots of other ships that could use this technology. Most every ship in the US Navy and US Coast Guard will carry one or two helicopters for the purposes of search and rescue, carrying in supplies, moving crew to and from shore or other ships, etc. These ships could use this technology to fuel those helicopters and/or any small boats used for similar purposes.
This seawater to jet fuel process doesn't have to be driven by nuclear power, I'd guess, but that's the way to go. It could be powered by sun, wind, or water, but nuclear power doesn't care about the weather. Powering it from coal or other fossil fuel is just stupid. This process doesn't have to be on a ship either, if it can be made cheap enough then it could compete with fossil fuels.
I've mentioned this before and I get stupid responses on how this is a bad idea. One reason given that it is a bad idea is because it still involved burning hydrocarbons, and burning anything is somehow bad. Another reason given that this is a bad idea is because the CO2 is taken out of the water, not the air, and therefore still contributes to global warming. First thing is that by taking the CO2 from the water the cycle is closed, any hydrocarbons it produces is from CO2 in the environment, not from deep in the ground. Second, the CO2 in the water got there from the air. Any body of water exposed to the air will reach a CO2 equilibrium with the air, any CO2 pulled from the water will then get pulled from the air.
The US Navy has demonstrated this technology and it works. All it needs is some funding so that it can be developed further and deployed.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
On one hand you say global warming is destroying the earth because of ... an excess of CO2. It comes out that scientists are literally working on a way to turn that excess CO2 into power, and you're AGAINST it!? So either this puts the lie to Global Warming, or you're all just freaking idiots.
Massive amounts of efficient carbon-dioxide digesting bacteria in the the wild?
Well, it's great that we'll have spontaneous oil slicks everywhere to offset the new ice age we are bioengineering. Clean water will likely be hard to come by, though.
On the climate change front, it is of little help to remove CO2 from the atmosphere to make fuel that will be burnt again.
I wonder if at some time we will be able to use sunlight, CO2 and nitrogen to make aminoacids.
Why simply the govt doesn't enforce the capture of CO2 to the companies which profit from selling CO2 emitting products?...maybe the govt IS formed by those companies.....silly me.....
We'd have problems with fires - which would get massive - before we had problems with crops dying off due to lack of CO2. Also, the ocean's pH would change and that'd be quite bad news indeed.
Please help metamoderate.
If it worked, maybe we end up with a high oxygen atmosphere that's hostile to food crops.
1. Mutation hops across into wild species.
2. ???
3. Triffids!
One strain of one plant could easily take over a huge swath of land, displacing hundreds of diverse plants and commensal insects, fungi, etc. Then one disease could wipe out the entire patch, erosion would set in... fun times!
Sugarcane is dead easy to grow, given the jetstream shifts in the US, it could currently be grown during part of the year throughout much of the country, although most areas would eventually lose the rootstock due to frost/freezing temperatures.
Sugarcane is a much more efficient source of ethanol than corn, grows multiple stalks per root, and is easily cloned to expand your harvest area.
It does have some downsides, like much sharped leaves than corn, a variety of pests that can ruin a crop (although nothing quite as bad as the fungus that can ruin a corn crop.) As well as a tendancy not to seed within a single season unlike corn and sorghum.
Unless this reaction process can produce ATP or Glucose as an output, it will be useless to try and 'embed' in plant cells. From the, very sketchy on details, article, it seems that the output is a compound that is relatively inert. To be useful and scale-able, any improvements to the Calvin Cycle need to have glucose and oxygen as outputs and sunlight and CO2 as inputs.
Not just answers, the correct questions.