So I think the general idea is that you can convert more CO² to carbon in the form of sugars and O² molecules per square foot with algae than with trees. Trees would totally do the same thing if we ripped up all the concrete and buildings to replant a forest, but that process would take decades.
This can be added into existing infrastructure and helps I guess. Kinda a neat concept.
Shade, cooler Air in summer, better protection against rain… 🤷♂️ Trees are 😎
Exactly man… fewer floods, more biodiversity, they look nice which is better for mental health and reducing hypertension (the number one risk factor correlated with deaths), some of them give you fruits or nuts to eat… Trees are awesome.
I think any city should strive to have at least as many trees as the number of people living in it.
…if we ripped up all the concrete and buildings to replant a forest…
You say this like it’s a downside, we’d better get started!
It would be. Cities and urban areas aren’t the problem. Suburbs, with 20+ Minute commutes, on hot swollen rivers of concrete and asphalt flowing from them, with every individual in their own metal/polymer box burning hydrocarbons is the bigger problem. Cities might be a solution.
Conversely these algae tanks can go lots of places a tree wouldn’t be practical. They’ll never need to be trimmed out of power lines etc. Or tear up sidewalks, streets or foundations. That’s not to say we shouldn’t have trees. Just more green overall.
On this note, think of all the benefits if we filled all our public swimming pools with algae!! I’m sure nobody would notice the difference
But why not just like… Do that somewhere where the mass actually makes a difference? You’d be better off dumping acres full of this shit instead of regrowing a forest. Doing it in individual tanks, sparsely within a city, is both an inefficient use of resources and fucking ugly.
Trees only purpose in a city is not to clean out CO2. It’s not even their primary purpose in a city. If it was, they’d be selecting specific species etc.
Alright I’m just going off of what I learned in environmental science class this summer, not an expert here. There was something about algae blooms (usually caused by fertilizer runoff) being a really bad thing for local ecosystems. I’m not sure if this is relevant to what you’re saying, just throwing it out there lol
I mean ideally we would flood the ocean with Fe³ and spark a mass breed of this shit where it belongs. The biomass could work it’s way up the food chain as an added benefit too.
But we won’t 🙃
If history taught us anything it is that purposely messing with an ecosystem seldom has the effect we want to achieve.
If they didn’t just breath oxygen and give off CO² at night, maybe, but trees actually undo much of their oxygen creation overnight… 😅
While it’s good to be skeptical, algae tanks like this are actually a good idea for the use-cases for which they are designed. Places where trees would be difficult and expensive to grow. The tanks more efficiently capture carbon, require less maintenance, produce fertilizer as a byproduct and the solar panels on the tank produce enough extra power for there to be a USB charger on the bench. The goal isn’t to replace trees with tanks but to use them where it makes sense to do so.
This was my thought as well. They should be used in addition to, not as a replacement for, trees, bushes, and grass.
It does make me wonder, though, whether or not we could use these to help capture more carbon than we’re creating.
To echo what some other people have said, these algae tanks absolutely should not be used instead of trees. If I see a tree get chopped down and replaced with one of these, I’ll be sad and angry. However, these can go in places where trees can’t go, like rooftops. And you don’t have to either wait for a tree to grow for a decade or take a tree from somewhere else to install one. It also serves as both a seating area and can mount a solar panel on top. These and trees both have their place and should both continue to be used.
For the conversion of Carbon Dioxide into Oxygen? That was the main point of these, the algae does that and is actually even more efficient at it than a tree. Trees do have other benefits hence why they shouldn’t be replaced, but these should go in places where trees can’t.
Nah, I just think it’s really silly.
If growing algae is effective at anything, why do it in a small sealed tank in the middle of a street? Most of the oxygen we breathe is produced in the ocean, regardless of where we personally are. Why would we need to stand vaguely near a rather sealed looking algae tank? If simply growing algae is effective for oxygen replenishment and carbon capture, surely we’d be better off simply growing massive ponds of it away from city centers? Like, out in the open?
It seems like green-washing bullshit to me.
Trees provide a lot more than oxygen. They provide shade, habitation for animals, and psychological well-being for humans. Dirty fish tanks don’t provide any of those things.
People are seriously in this thread complaining about roots like they’re a reason to replace trees with algae boxes. Getting some big plant-based NFT cryptobro carbon-credit nonsense vibes.
It’s actually hilariously ignorant that you people are pretending this is a cost effective idea for carbon capture. It will, in fact, just make a bunch of dirty fishtanks that are abandoned or thrown away almost immediately.
Well Trees don’t make as much money for rich people who own everything and Trees make hot days more comfortable for homeless people
Algea is a much much better oxygenator with lower maintainence, people don’t seem to notice how fast cities can kill trees.
You don’t need to put algae in cities. They can be basically anywhere to absorb CO2.
Trees in cities tend to be carefully chosen for the environment. Are we in a climate where we need to put salt on the road in the winter? Choose trees that can tolerate some salt in the ground.
Maybe stop putting salt down in winter??? Who does that still they need to stop.
And the oceans are incredibly vast, so they provide most of the world’s oxygen! Obviously it’s hard to get a precise number but 50-70% is the accepted range.
There are many reasons to plant trees in the city but local oxygen supply isn’t one of them. Mostly trees look nice, and make people feel better by their presence. They also have a significant cooling effect, something a steamy tank full of warm algae definitely won’t help with on a summer day.
My first thought is you can embedd this inside buildings rather trivially
I think it has more to do with the fact trees require more maintenance, like raking up leaves and fruit, and having to saw off branches.
Also those roots can break pavement and pipes.
You really think those massive, experimental water tanks won’t require more maintenance, because you have to trim trees once ever few years? Or because their roots might grow too much?
Well of course, you can’t give working class people any money for working, you can only give them a slave-wage. That’s why all manufacturing was outsourced to very underdeveloped countries when NAFTA was first put into place.
You can easily get away with exploiting people who have no other choice but to work for a dollar per year, but it’s much more difficult to do that to someone’s neighbor in their community.
Street trees aren’t car-supremacist enough.
Let me explain what I mean by that: when a driver fucks up and his car careens off the street and hits a tree, the tree stops the car very abruptly. That’s great for, say, an innocent pedestrian who was saved by hiding behind the tree, but can apply rather serious consequences to the negligent driver. Car-brained traffic engineers see it as their mission to protect drivers from any and all consequences, so they insist on ripping out all the trees to create a gigantic “clear zone” so that the car is free to careen wherever it wants without hitting anything solid. Squishy things within the clear zone, such as pedestrians, don’t enter into consideration.
In other words, one important “advantage” of these “liquid trees” over real trees is that they can be mounted on breakaway stands, so that they yield (and therefore provide no protection to any hapless bastard who might’ve been sitting on the bench at the time) when a car hits them.
Source: I’m a former traffic engineer. But don’t take it from me; watch this confession from a much more experienced and credible engineer explaining it in even more stark terms.
