Have any scientists created a "super tree" or bacteria that could take the CO2 out of our atmosphere?

Question

Has any body been working to find a bacterium that could deteriate a small amount of the greenhouse gases? An if so how long would it take to go into affect? I would like also like to know where one could find this information so I could look at it first hand. THX!

Answer 1

A 'super tree' as such isn't particularly viable. Going from memory I think it's 67% of a tree which is carbon so it doesn't leave much scope for extanding the carbon sequestering capabilities of a tree. Through careful breeding and genetic modifications it may be possible to create a super fast growing tree but it's the number or size of trees that's important so much as the overall total mass of them.

Imagine you flood your floor and you need to soak up the water, it won't make a lot of difference if you use one large or two small sponges - they each have the same total soaking up capacity and so it is with trees. Rather than engineer super trees it may be more practical to simply plant a larger number of existing species.

What we do know now through research is which trees grow fastest, which sequester the most CO2 and which climate zones are best for tree planting schemes.

There is something called a 'synthetic tree' which has been researched and developed in prototype form. In reality it's not a tree at all and has only been given this nickname because, like real trees, it removes CO2 from the atmosphere and vaguely resembles the shape of a tree. It's actually a device which sequesters CO2 through a chemical reaction with sodium hydroxide. More details here http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/recycleco2.html and a technical white paper here http://www.centre-cired.fr/perso/haduong/files/Keith.ea-2005-ClimateStrategyWithCO2CaptureFromTheAir.pdf

I'm not aware of any schemes that are looking into using bacteria to remove carbon dioxide but there are schemes along these lines which use minute plants to sequester carbon dioxide with phytoplankton and algae being the favoured options. More about this scheme http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/6369401.stm

Other similar schemes - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/6298507.stm and if you follow the links from the first website mentioned there's lots of information available

Answer 2

For some reason this very weekend I searched Wikipedia to read about "iron", of all things. In the process I blundered into an online discussion of an experiment with "iron seeding" of seawater. This invloves adding trace quantities of iron which is used to encourage the growth of plankton, which take CO2 out of the atmosphere.

I found an online article in Scientific American.

EDIT: I'm going to describe one I saw on TV news. A physicist at Berkeley and his students are looking in to bioengineering organisms or maybe it was enzymes that would facilitate the growth and yield of switch grass, which in the report was touted as being superior to either corn or sugar cane in its potential to produce ethanol fuel efficiently. Sorry no links on that, but it was close to what I think you want.

Answer 3

the only reason biomass has no longer been used to make each and every of the oil human interest demands is that oil has been decrease priced and abundant interior the previous. in fact oil could properly be created from biomass for a less high priced cost than the cost of pumped from the floor precise now. And extra oil could properly be created from biomass than human beings could have the skill to apply devoid of poluting the international if good engineering is utilized to the priority. examining the posting in this question that's obvious good engineering is unknown to maximum human beings. that's beacuse good engineering has under no circumstances been used and that's yet another results of historic decrease priced oil. Now virtually all human beings believes oil is undesirable and unnatural yet its no longer so. Oil is nature's photograph voltaic ability storage equipment and this methodology must be progressed with the help of enviromentalists.

Answer 4

We don't need to. Algae in the oceans do a great job at this. We just need to stop polluting the oceans to keep the algae alive.