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Comment by gpcr1949 | Hacker News Reader

gpcr1949

I understand it's fake (what is the carbon source? it is stated to be CO_2 neutral) but I guess I don't understand the point or punchline.

edit: as pointed out below and elsewhere, the carbon source is CO2, and I misinterpreted the way CO2 neutral is used here, my bad. However there are serious questions to ask about how they are representing and overselling their process. It is a complete misrepresentation to present this as protein synthesis out of air (in fact, the nitrogen source is ammonia [0], NOT nitrogen fixation).

[0] https://youtu.be/z8zuqR95fqA?t=136 timestamped video from solar foods

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The carbon source is CO2 in the air. Digesting the food creates CO2, which completes the cycle of carbon neutrality.

Yes, I read a bit on this (apparently real after all) business and I saw CO2 is the carbon source. It just confused me the promotional website does not even mention CO2. When they called Solein carbon neutral, I assumed they are talking about the product and process, not the entire cycle (in the same way you might call planting trees CO2-emission negative), though this makes sense. In any case, I still find it to be a pretty strong misrepresentation to call this protein synthesis out of "thin air".

Planting a tree is carbon neutral if you do nothing to sequester the carbon. It's negative in the short term, but neutral over the life of the tree (more or less).

Trees live long enough that that "short term" can still be 100s of years, and buying ourselves 100 years is probably the best we can hope for anyway at this point. And trees are capable of automatically spawning new trees, so a self-sustaining growing tree population should surely count as carbon negative...

...and then the drought, followed by the fire...

The amount of carbon in the atmosphere, that used to be underground in coal, oil, and gas.

More than 170 gigatons. (approximately, this is just the 40% higher concentration than historical high point, based on 412 ppm co2 in atmosphere vs 300 ppm historical high point, back of the envelope).

This seems like a lot of land, a lot of trees, and would have to include harvesting and storing the trees after 100 years.

Well I wasn't proposing we could solve climate change just planting trees (though I've seen that exact proposition made before). Genetically engineered trees that have a much faster CO2 processing time perhaps...

If something spills, do you soak it up with a sponge?

As someone who manages hundreds of acres of forest - most trees won't live that long because we'll harvest them or they'll die to disease and wildfire.

Reforesting an area would be carbon negative, and eventually the first will saturate. It's much much more carbon negative to produce biochar, biotar, or mass timber buildings.

Fair enough, good to know. Hadn't heard of bio-tar before.

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