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[Trojita]

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a23938/fix-carbon-dioxide-useful-products/

By tinkering with the process that plants use to breathe in carbon dioxide, a team of German scientists has just discovered a far more efficient way to get rid of it. Biochemists led by Tobias Erb at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg, Germany, 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. The study appears in Science.

The only bummer right now is that this is an estimate as noted here

Erb says that it's hard to estimate how much faster the CETCH cycle would be compared to Calvin if it was working in an organism, but because it uses less steps and faster enzymes than the Calvin cycle, it could potentially be up to two or three times as quick. "But right now the speed is speculation. It could even be slightly slower," Erb says. They just don't know for sure.

To explain this simply, the current way plans turn CO2 into energy isn't efficient and often fucks up. For every 4 CO2 units a plant absorbs they accidently absorb a unit of oxygen too. This doesn't just make the plant miss 1 potential unit of CO2, but makes the intake of CO2 again slower. Scientists found a way to combine a bunch of different enzymes together (One from humans!) to make a more efficient process. The applications for this could be putting the enzymes in artificial leaves, possibly algae, and possibly regular plants.

SCIENCE!

Fuck you global warming!

 

[Jarmel]

Wouldn't this lead to plant overgrowth as they would have to do something with that energy?

 

[grumble]

Dude the tonnage required would be in the trillions of tons

 

[How About No]

Wouldn't this lead to plant overgrowth as they would have to do something with that energy?

We won't need shitty regular plants anymore. Cut them down.

 

[Sinfamy]

Just drop ice cubes in the ocean.

 

[squidyj]

2-3 aint gonna cut it

call me when it's 2-3k

 

[Trojita]

Wouldn't this lead to plant overgrowth as they would have to do something with that energy?

I was going to put a joke in there about how we'd fuck this up into a horror movie scenario.

I could see the Algae being a problem if it allows them to grower faster, but we'll have to see what the scientists say.

 

[The Technomancer]

Growpiercer

 

[poodpick]

Wouldn't this lead to plant overgrowth as they would have to do something with that energy?

Faster growing crops and reforestation sounds nice at least

 

[Trojita]

2-3 aint gonna cut it

call me when it's 2-3k

2-3k would eventually kill us and mostly all other life that relies on oxygen.

 

[Air]

Ill definitely give this one a SCIENCE! out of 10

 

[Antiwhippy]

2-3k would eventually kill us and mostly all other life that relies on oxygen.

I mean our death is probably the best way to ensure we don't fuck up the planet anymore.

 

[Gnome]

I mean our death is probably the best way to ensure we don't fuck up the planet anymore.

I mean sure, but nobody cares about the earth that much.

 

[wenis]

Wouldn't this lead to plant overgrowth as they would have to do something with that energy?

I'm all for Mother Nature to take it back again

 

[SourBear]

We won't need shitty regular plants anymore. Cut them down.

Taken to this extreme, we would end up in a reverse situation. Too little CO2 and too much O2. And too much O2 is also bad

 

[Byakuya769]

Sounds like GMOs. We must stop this in its tracks!

 

[sazzy]

This is the equivalent of getting rid of all the food in your fridge by eating it to help you with your weight loss.

 

[Mathieran]

I'm starting to truly believe that technology to reduce atmospheric CO2 is our only hope in the long term. So many people don't accept in it, and there's a lot of people that do who in my opinion do very little to help. They use disposable plates when there's real ones they could use then wash, they buy gas guzzlers instead of the most efficient vehicle they can, etc. Its so frustrating. I do what I can. I can't in good faith waste when I worry about my children's future.

 

[DragonSworne]

No thanks, GMO is dangerous.

 

[Enduin]

Wouldn't this lead to plant overgrowth as they would have to do something with that energy?

Feed me Seymour. FEED ME.

 

[Damaniel]

This article admits that climate change exists and offers a possible solution. Republican ban on this kind of research incoming...

 

[LaNaranja]

Sounds like GMOs. We must stop this in its tracks!

No thanks, GMO is dangerous.

Wait this has DNA in it? GROSS!

 

[MGrant]

Feed me Seymour. FEED ME.

I don't know. I have so many strong reservations.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

This is the equivalent of getting rid of all the food in your fridge by eating it to help you with your weight loss.

...huh? I don't understand this analogy at all.

This is cool, but it's much too early to get excited just yet. I applaud the scientists behind this research though!

 

[Plumbob]

This is the equivalent of getting rid of all the food in your fridge by eating it to help you with your weight loss.

We can bury the plants!

 

[DragonSworne]

This is good news for the lumber business. No they can chop as many trees as they like.

 

[Noisy Ninj4]

What could possibly go wrong?

Spoiler

Honestly, though, judicious use of GMOs could save our collective asses.

 

[Lunar15]

If the government isn't going to address it, I just have to really fucking hope that science does.

 

[Robot Carnival]

with who we'll end up having in Washington DC in the next 4 years, I think these would be pretty handy, at least for the short term.

 

[Spectone]

...huh? I don't understand this analogy at all.

This is cool, but it's much too early to get excited just yet. I applaud the scientists behind this research though!

If you want to lose weight you don't buy the food in the first place. just like we should lower our emissions not emit it and then try to take it out of the air.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Wouldn't this lead to plant overgrowth as they would have to do something with that energy?

Considering the amount of plants we've killed, that's a win-win if you ask me.

 

[Retsudo]

This article admits that climate change exists and offers a possible solution. Republican ban on this kind of research incoming...

Well they can try but this is being studied in Germany in this case.

 

[grumble]

Taken to this extreme, we would end up in a reverse situation. Too little CO2 and too much O2. And too much O2 is also bad

We would not. We'd run out of co2

 

[Brianimaniac]

This article admits that climate change exists and offers a possible solution. Republican ban on this kind of research incoming...

If the problem could be solved without impacting the interest groups paying people off, Republicans would stop denying it.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

If you want to lose weight you don't buy the food in the first place. just like we should lower our emissions not emit it and then try to take it out of the air.

Ah, thanks, now I understand where he was going with that at least.

I still don't think it's a very good analogy though, because if the earth were overweight from carbon emissions, now would be the time to look into gastric bypass surgery.

 

[Bitanator]

I always thought Biotech is Godzilla

 

[squidyj]

2-3k would eventually kill us and mostly all other life that relies on oxygen.

point being that we only need 1/2000th of the biomass to do the work. It was a number I pulled out of my ass and is probably locally dangerous but only getting 2-3x isn't that good because it'd be a hell of an effort to replace all that biomass to achieve even 1.1 overall.

 

[Amirai]

I think that atmospheric scubbers/carbon recapture technologies are our only hope. The fossil fuel industry is the most powerful lobbying force in the world, and countries aren't pulling away from them fast enough. Carbon recapture allows them to keep polluting, but at a vastly reduced rate by implementing the tech at the sources like coal plants.

The good news is that a lot of people are working on next-gen carbon capture methods, and this one in particular sounds seriously impressive:
http://newatlas.com/bubbles-memzyme-co2-capture/45253/
https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/co2_bubbles/#.WC7DPtTyt4n

Some snippets:

The Department of Energy has set a goal for a second-generation technology that captures 90 percent of CO2 emissions at a cost-effective $40 per ton by 2025. Sandia and UNM’s new CO2 Memzyme is the first CO2 capture technology that could actually meet these national clean energy goals.

It’s still early days for the CO2 Memzyme, but based on laboratory-scale performance, “if we applied it to a single coal-fired power plant, then over one year we could avoid CO2 emissions equivalent to planting 63 million trees and letting them grow for 10 years,” said Susan Rempe, a Sandia computational biophysicist and one of the principal developers.

Altogether, the team claims their design is 10 to 100 times more selective for CO2 over nitrogen in passing flue gas than existing carbon capture membranes, and it performs 100 times faster. At the other end, the CO2 that's produced is 99 percent pure, which can be used in a variety of ways, like manufacturing concrete or producing biofuel from bacteria and algae.

Even better, this tech can apparently be used to pull methane out of the air as well, so maybe, just maybe, there might be some hope for us after all.

 

[ZackieChan]

I think that atmospheric scubbers/carbon recapture technologies are our only hope. The fossil fuel industry is the most powerful lobbying force in the world, and countries aren't pulling away from them fast enough. Carbon recapture allows them to keep polluting, but at a vastly reduced rate by implementing the tech at the sources like coal plants.

The good news is that a lot of people are working on next-gen carbon capture methods, and this one in particular sounds seriously impressive:
http://newatlas.com/bubbles-memzyme-co2-capture/45253/
https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/co2_bubbles/#.WC7DPtTyt4n

Some snippets:







Even better, this tech can apparently be used to pull methane out of the air as well, so maybe, just maybe, there might be some hope for us after all.

They talked about this in Super Freakonomics, iirc. Did any of that stuff pan out? Is this looking like a workable solution?

Because limiting emissions at the source ain't gonna happen.

 

[G.ZZZ]

Those kinds of things are way too dangerous imho. Plants growing faster sounds great until you realize that you could very well have ovegrown into mass extinction. We need systems that you can turn off at will. You can't really do that with plants.

 

[ZackieChan]

Those kinds of things are way too dangerous imho. Plants growing faster sounds great until you realize that you could very well have ovegrown into mass extinction. We need systems that you can turn off at will. You can't really do that with plants.

I feel like once you get to the point where you can create these things, you can figure out how to control them.

But that's probably wrong and we'll all die

 

[G.ZZZ]

I feel like once you get to the point where you can create these things, you can figure out how to control them.

But that's probably wrong and we'll all die

We're still at a very amateurial point of understanding how cells works. What are we doing now is like adding and removing things to a mechanism that we barely understand. See the TED on how CRISPR works for example, she explain pretty nicely that we largely work on petri dishes simple cells and oftentimes they do things we don't understand, now apply it on a large organism? Large isolated vats of algae could work, but you'd need so many of them, i wouldn't be that confident. Dead ducks genes could be a workaround too, but with the amount of algae that you need to actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere, you can't be certain that casual mutation wouldn't alterate that gene.

I'm not willing to bet on those odds tbh.

 

[A Fish Aficionado]

We're still at a very amateurial point of understanding how cells works. What are we doing now is like adding and removing things to a mechanism that we barely understand. See the TED on how CRISPR works for example, she explain pretty nicely that we largely work on petri dishes simple cells and oftentimes they do things we don't understand, now apply it on a large organism? Large isolated vats of algae could work, but you'd need so many of them, i wouldn't be that confident. Dead ducks genes could be a workaround too, but with the amount of algae that you need to actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere, you can't be certain that casual mutation wouldn't alterate that gene.

I'm not willing to bet on those odds tbh.

The precautionary principal is not scientifically valid.

https://www.geneticliteracyproject....iple-nonsense-and-warped-gmo-pseudo-category/

 

[ZackieChan]

We're still at a very amateurial point of understanding how cells works. What are we doing now is like adding and removing things to a mechanism that we barely understand. See the TED on how CRISPR works for example, she explain pretty nicely that we largely work on petri dishes simple cells and oftentimes they do things we don't understand, now apply it on a large organism? Large isolated vats of algae could work, but you'd need so many of them, i wouldn't be that confident. Dead ducks genes could be a workaround too, but with the amount of algae that you need to actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere, you can't be certain that casual mutation wouldn't alterate that gene.

I'm not willing to bet on those odds tbh.

Let's all just be happy that "I" have nothing to do with this. Because clearly I know nothing 😉

 

[A Fish Aficionado]

Let's all just be happy that "I" have nothing to do with this. Because clearly I know nothing 😉

I transformed bacteria in in undergrad biology courses. I must be a monster.

 

[Funky Papa]

Wouldn't this lead to plant overgrowth as they would have to do something with that energy?

Make it CO2-glutton hemp and you've got something going.

 

[itwasTuesday]

Its like the sea-lice in MGS2.

 

[Amirai]

They talked about this in Super Freakonomics, iirc. Did any of that stuff pan out? Is this looking like a workable solution?

Because limiting emissions at the source ain't gonna happen.

This specific tech is still new and hasn't been implemented yet. Limiting emissions at the source already is happening though with older technologies. That's what 'clean coal' is (and why it isn't really clean, it's just not as bad as regular coal). Current tech only is able to capture about a third of the CO2 emitted, and this tech might capture 90% at a cost-effective price.

 

[StayDead]

This is how we get Triffids right?

 

[Harmen]

No thanks, GMO is dangerous.

Human lifestyle is far more harmful than some edited DNA, might as well try to compensate for how much we fucked up and are fucking up out planet. What kind of danger do you think a GMO poses specifically?