this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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[–] OnopordumAcanthium@lemmy.ml 28 points 11 months ago (9 children)

It's expensive and has only the advantage of catching CO2, while trees have more than just that. Produces O2, Cooling the near surroundings, are a save heaven for many species and therefore increases biodiversity, filters the air and soil, also makes the soil more healthy and probably many other reasons.

Humans really are weird. Trying to replace a perfectly fine bio-machinery that developed over Thousands of years with their own steel junk. I dont see why anybody would prefer that gadget over a tree.

[–] stranger@lemm.ee 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What happens when we go too far and remove all CO2 from the atmosphere?

[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Most plants would die because they rely on CO~2~ for photosynthesis.

Many sea animals would die. Oceans absorb CO~2~ which forms carbonic acid (H~2~CO~3~) in water. Oceans are slightly alkaline due to dissolved salts (bicarbonate and carbonate) and the carbonic acid from the absorption helps to create a stable pH. Many sea animals are highly adapted to a specific pH and would die if the ocean got either too acidic or too alkaline, so they are pretty doomed in either case.

Many humans would die because agriculture would collapse. Also breathing pure oxygen over a long period of time would be very bad because of oxygen toxicity. Yeah, pure oxygen is toxic for humans lol

Land animals, I'm not so sure, but I assume most of them would die too.

[–] Gabu@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 months ago

Your question isn't entirely a hypothetical - this happened at the dawn of time, when photosynthetic life forms first evolved. First, it won't ever happen again, no matter how good we get at scooping CO2 from the atmosphere. Second, the result is theoretically catastrophic for aerobic life forms, but it's also a negative feedback loop, meaning it self corrects.

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