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Comment by sndean | Hacker News Reader

> bioengineered E. coli or whatever, which you're hoping evolution will make work even more efficiently, leaves your carbon-sequestering vats and starts reproducing in the wild? Eventually you reach a point where we're getting record low CO2 levels.

Normally, if you want to create something like this, it's an auxotroph. So it shouldn't survive outside of the carbon-sequestering vat.

Or it's all on a plasmid, so once it's out of the vat plasmid won't be maintained.

Or these will be created in "Synells" [0] that can't really replicate.

Though that's a really interesting thought. If we find a technology to do anything about CO2 levels, it seems plausible that we're going to accidentally go too far in the other direction.

[0] http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nchem...

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I know it sounds far-fetched, but if someone develops a technology that can rapidly grow a wood-like material out of atmospheric carbon in such a way that entire buildings can be grown in single digit years, we could start seeing countries fighting over who is using too much CO2 and consuming too little

Future environmentalists:

We need to drill in the ocean in order to flare more CO2 into the atmosphere or sea levels will drop to catastrophic levels!

Not exactly what you're asking for, but intriguing nonetheless:

http://inhabitat.com/phillip-ross-molds-fast-growing-fungi-i...

I've been meaning to try and do an estimate related to this. Just how much CO2 could be pulled out of the air by _extensive_ farming of fast growing trees. We could find ways to use as much of the wood as possible (construction materials, etc.), and just sink the remaining wood in cold water where the carbon would stay locked away for 100+ years.

Nvmind, ran the numbers... this plan sucks.

Then again, if my numbers are right, if humankind dedicated <1% of land used worldwide for food to growing trees and locking away the cellulose, we would cancel out worldwide CO2 emissions. Since most of that land is used as pasture, there is more than enough play to keep the world fed, and I could see up to 10% being tasked to this purpose , which seems doable in an emergency.

I'm confused...the numbers sucked for extensive farming in order to cut CO2, but only 1% of arable land would cancel CO2? What am I missing?

I initially thought it didn't look good when looking at the amount absorbed yearly per tree, but then was surprised by some estimates on how many trees you can fit per unit area. A more accurate estimate needs to be done though, different numbers I found put the final range at about an order of magnitude.

Also, most farming and stable forests are mostly carbon neutral. This would require continual seeding, harvesting and sequestration of the cellulose. Maybe it will be a good thing though that cellulose+lignins are so hard to breakdown.

Still plenty of room at sea. Is there a fast growing mangrove?

Have you accounted for moving the trees from where they grow to where they can be used? (E.g., milling, planing, curing.) That will take energy that likely offsets some of the benefits.

Likewise, moving the lumber or finished goods to consumers will also require some energy that might offset the carbon removed.

Normaly - nuclear plants are safe.

But on humans, they aint. Humans & Technology- not even once.

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