US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

Good for them, but there's already something out there that does it cheaper, and more efficiently, is readily available to all countries (rich and poor).

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

Looks prettier too, so as long as they are more cost and space efficient than these scrubbers... but if they are not, well... trees will always have a place in my heart. ;)

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

If you read the article you'd see it's not a CO2 coverter. The machine takes the CO2 from the air and seperates it. This requires a whole lot less energy than converting it, so it's much more efficient.

Either way, you'd need millions of these machines to effectively cancel out our effect on the enviroment, so it's still not a miracle breakthrough, but hopefully, they'll further develop this technology until it's so small you can mount it in cars...

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

They would require 60,000,000 of the things to compensate for worldwide CO2 pollution, with each one being fifteen metres high, two metres wide, and costing about £300,000,000,000 per year in total to maintain. And they don't convert carbon dioxide either, they just store it.

Not really a solution to anything, if you ask me.

Source: BBC NEWS | Wales | Giant trees 'to clear excess CO2'

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

Sorry Klaus, but storing separated CO2 on the ocean's ground or somewhere else could be a final solution for many people dying from unexpectedly erupting CO2 deposits...

And as mentioned before, trees are obviously more effective, pleasant and cheaper in the long run when it comes to actually solving the CO2 problem.

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

That statement (the one from the guardian) is quite... nonsense... CO2 has nothing to do with the effect of the greenhouse gases... and the area you'd have to take the CO2 from is not from the planet's surface! You'd have to take it from where it heats up: right beneath the ozon layer of our nice little blue planet!

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

Yes why use a stupid machine when a tree can preform a superior job, and look better while doing it

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

Agreed.

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

For the most part a tree is also self maintaining and needs relatively little maintenance. Its also solar powered so little energy usage. It also has limited self repairing capabilities too.

Its mean time between failures beats pretty much any machine too.

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

Obviously trees are better for all of the above reasons. But further development of this technology would be interesting, we may develop more efficient (useful) machines. We may in time even develop a machine that does a better job at converting then trees (though replicating, let alone surpassing nature is a huge huge challenge). So I say, interesting, lets see where this may lead us.

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

It's a good start, but it needs to be made a LOT smaller to be effective.

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

But where do you want to store the extracted CO2? Underground? On the bottom of the ocean?

Too dangerous in my opinion.

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

We really need some orbital elevators. :lookaround:

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

dump the CO2 in tree filled domes

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

Why just not the CO2 sponges and plant more trees out in the open? Oh, and stop raping the amazon.. :rolleyes:

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

Environmentalism ftw, I say.

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

The tree filled dome idea is pretty good.

Anyways, let them invent these devices. If this can lead to a true CO2 converter, imagine the possiblities, specially in space flight: unlimited oxygen.

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

Scrubbers/converters are nice for space travel, but I'd prefer trees, or more efficiently, bamboo. Carbon sequestration's the game, Bamboo's an excellent solution, it is strong, fast-growing, doesn't require many nutrients, and makes good scaffolding material/flooring material/paper/(acceptable) clothing material. Oh, and bamboo shoots are used in many Southeast Asian recipes, at least the ones that the people who took bamboo from our yard used.

To sum it up, bamboo:
stores carbon
grows quickly
provides food
provides clothing
provides shelter
provides education (paper, a bit of a stretch on my part).

Hey, beats the American prison system (required to provide food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention, last I checked). If only you could derive medicine from it, it's be a total knock out. Hmm, you could probably use individual chambers as vials or maybe IVs...

Basically, the bad thing about bamboo is that it grows so fast it tends to overtake other plant life. That's right, the bad thing about this plant is that it stores carbon(grows) at a speed faster than we like.

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

I think they should use trees for earth, and use a similar technogoly on mars one day to begin terraforming it.....

But can they do the reverse of this? Make a machine the can produce Co2 or Oxygen or nitgrongen? Then that would slove alot of other problems, but atleast this is a start....

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

Mars' atmosphere has the reverse problem - it is too thin to hold in much heat. Capturing CO2 there would make it worse, we need to release some to get a greenhouse effect going. However you may have hit a different nail than you intended - employ these devices to capture unwanted carbon dioxide from Earth's atmosphere, then dump the stuff on Mars.

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

and then when mars warms up, terraform it for life to survive

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

It still ain't gonna be a pleasant place to live though, you know. You've got to get some oxygen in there so that you can actually breathe, and the gravity is much lower than Earth's which presents a multitude of problems to long term habitation. Whether or not the intense, global dust storms would continue unabated after humans have mucked about with the atmosphere is open for discussion, but at the moment that's not a pleasant prospect either.

We're kinda going off-topic now though...

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

Yeah, they're called animals.
Not exactly, but some plants are very good at growing in nitrogen-poor soil and restoring the nitrogen.

Re: US scientists develop "CO2 converter"
 

LOL, right on.




__________________