New Improved Plants Will Save Us From Ourselves
Okay, Science: you got us into this mess. (Well, not really. You just made the discoveries. But what was Industrialism gonna do? Not exploit them to the detriment of the planet?) It's up to you to get us out of it. Make us some of those carbon-eating plants.
A new analysis published in the October issue of Bioscience suggests that by 2050 humans could offset between five and eight gigatons of the carbon emitted annually by growing plants and trees optimized via genetic engineering both for fuel production and carbon sequestration… Plants take up CO2 and store carbon in their biomasses. Carbon can stay for decades or centuries in leaves, stems, branches, seeds and flowers aboveground, whereas carbon allocated to underground root systems is more apt to be transferred into the soil, where it can stay sequestered for millennia. Therefore, an ideal bioenergy plant would produce lots of aboveground biomass for fuel as well as have an extensive root system. Preliminary research indicates that genetic engineering approaches could be employed to enhance both these traits.
Climate change expert Allison Thompson stresses caution in making predictions, saying, "You can't really say how much bioenergy we are going use if you're not also considering…" Yes, yes, yes. Fine, fine. Just please start making the plants that will save the world now. And also make it so they grow flowers that taste like bacon and are rich in the HDL "good" cholesterol and produce alcohol that doesn't give you a hangover. Thanks.
And then there's a crazy little thing called unintended consquences.
No experiment can fully capture how a plant like this would affect surrounding agriculture and ecosystems.
Do bigger and better boners fall under agriculture or ecosystem?
Depends on the type of, um, wood.
Though I didn't have time to comment when I first saw this item this morning, this was my concern as well. If we can't have great petrified forests in our pants, then what's the good of science, anyway?
Yeah! Y'alls worry about The Rise of The Machines, What about The Rise of The Plants?!?
Um, don’t they also have to like live forever. Because when they die (or, god forbid, burn), they release that carbon. My understanding is that growing plants does not sequester much carbon over the long term.
But then we just compress all the dead plants and shoot them to the moon.
It's called mulch. That's good for your garden.
Well, trees live for quite a while – a couple hundred years is certainly doable. And even after they die, it takes a really, really long time for them to give up all that carbon. Woody parts take decades to rot away, and as the article points out, the subterranean stuff, rotten leaves, etc, can continue to bind carbon for thousands of years.
Another interesting idea I read about: grow quick-growing plants like switchgrass. Convert switchgrass to charcoal, which produces a burnable gas as a by-product. Use the gas to make more switchgrass into charcoal, and produce electricity as a by-product. Plow charcoal into the ground, where it improves the soil and binds carbon essentially forever.