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Entrepreneurs Fight Air Pollution With CO2-Reducing 'CityTrees' (cnn.com)
CNN is reporting on "CityTree", a unique 10-foot tall mobile installation which removes pollutants from the air." An anonymous reader quotes their report:
Berlin-based Green City Solutions claims its invention has the environmental benefit of up to 275 actual trees. But the CityTree isn't, in fact, a tree at all -- it's a moss culture. "Moss cultures have a much larger leaf surface area than any other plant. That means we can capture more pollutants," said Zhengliang Wu, co-founder of Green City Solutions.
The huge surfaces of moss installed in each tree can remove dust, nitrogen dioxide and ozone gases from the air. The installation is autonomous and requires very little maintenance: solar panels provide electricity, while rainwater is collected into a reservoir and then pumped into the soil... "We also have pollution sensors inside the installation, which help monitor the local air quality and tell us how efficient the tree is." Wu said. Its creators say that each CityTree is able to absorb around 250 grams of particulate matter a day and contributes to the capture of greenhouse gases by removing 240 metric tons of CO2 a year... Wu also argued that the CityTree is just one piece of a larger puzzle. "Our ultimate goal is to incorporate technology from the CityTree into existing buildings," he said.
So far they've installed 20 CityTrees -- each of which costs about $25,000.
The huge surfaces of moss installed in each tree can remove dust, nitrogen dioxide and ozone gases from the air. The installation is autonomous and requires very little maintenance: solar panels provide electricity, while rainwater is collected into a reservoir and then pumped into the soil... "We also have pollution sensors inside the installation, which help monitor the local air quality and tell us how efficient the tree is." Wu said. Its creators say that each CityTree is able to absorb around 250 grams of particulate matter a day and contributes to the capture of greenhouse gases by removing 240 metric tons of CO2 a year... Wu also argued that the CityTree is just one piece of a larger puzzle. "Our ultimate goal is to incorporate technology from the CityTree into existing buildings," he said.
So far they've installed 20 CityTrees -- each of which costs about $25,000.
This begs the question of whether CO2 is actually a pollutant or not.
No, it raises the question. Begging the question means something completely different.
CO2 is not a pollutant in the normal sense of causing a specific problem where it is concentrated, but in excess it does cause global problems regardless of what you call it.
Except for the whole lying through his teeth part, which makes up the bulk of both that post and the implication from yours. Look into Svante Arrhenius, the father of physical chemistry. He wrote about the exact chemical processes causing anthropogenic climate change and they are explicitly tied to burning hydrocarbon fuels. Here is a translation of the detailed paper he wrote in 1906 which is an elaboration on his original one in 1896. These mechanisms are the same ones acting now. There is zero ambiguity on the mechanism, and the direct as well as increasingly increasing role of human activity in accelerating global warming.
Chances are those who are far more educated than you or I on this topic have done a lot more than simply assume what design is more efficient, to include the long-term financial aspect.
You would think so, but in the real world there is a vast history of government projects that demonstrate a lack of foresight and dumb thinking (or no thinking). Especially on the local/state level.
I'm not talking about hundreds of years ago either. Just last year in 2016 the state of California decided to cover up the surface of a large reservoir to reduce evaporation (they were in the middle of a big drought). They decided on floating thousands of plastic balls on the water since it was easier and cheaper than covering up the lake with a tarp. Well and good.
So the day came and they released all those plastic balls and the TV cameras were rolling and what did we see? BLACK BALLS. Black plastic balls rolling into the water.
No one involved with the project had the foresight to consider the color of the balls. Black balls absorb a lot more sunlight and get hotter and increase water temperature, leading to more water evaporation. It would've been trivial to add white pigment to the plastic balls and the cost difference would've been negligible.
Alright, time to drive a stake through the heart of this brain-dead water vapor meme.
There's one important fact about water which you are overlooking: it is wet. That is to say it can exist as a liquid (or a solid) at normal atmospheric temperatures and pressures. This means it can't diffuse throughout the entire troposphere like CO2 can before it exits the atmosphere as rain, snow, or dew.
And this is a good thing, because water is a potent greenhouse gas and all things being equal higher temperatures means more evaporation. If evaporation could drive warming the way CO2 does, we'd be looking at a runaway positive feedback loop that would end with the oceans boiling away.
Still, water doesplay a key role in anthropogenic climate change models. That's because CO2 can increase water evaporation in a global way that water vapor itself cannot. Water vapor basically doubles the impact of anthropogenic CO2.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The ozone problem and greenhouse gas problem are separate issues. Ozone is a comparably minor greenhouse gas compared to CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and (yes) water.
Ozone depletion in the stratosphere was and is still a major problem, driven largely by part per trillion levels of halocarbons from a variety of man-made emissions. The reason it's not being talked about so much anymore? Because Montreal Protocol regulations worked. CFC concentrations are down and the ozone hole is slowly repairing itself:
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas, and so is water. The difference is that water concentrations are limited in the atmosphere: too much and it becomes a cloud and then rain. CO2 concentrations, on the other hand, can just keep rising.
Without rises in other greenhouse gases, the water concentration is such that the short term global temperature trend would be stable. Instead, since other GHG's are causing further warming, it's allowing more water to be stable in the atmosphere. That's driving global temperatures even further up, resulting in positive feedback. There's a nice ACS article about it here:
https://www.acs.org/content/ac...
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
I see a lot of project related analysis in your post except for the only one that matters: Did it work?
Yes it did.