Synthetic Trees

Just great. More reasons to chop down trees.

Columbia University -- A scientist has invented an artificial tree designed to do the job of plants. But the synthetic tree proposed by Dr Klaus Lackner does not much resemble the leafy variety. "It looks like a goal post with Venetian blinds," said the Columbia University physicist. But the synthetic tree would do the job of a real tree, he said. It would draw carbon dioxide out of the air, as plants do during photosynthesis, but retain the carbon and not release oxygen. If built to scale, according to Dr Lackner, synthetic trees could help clean up an atmosphere grown heavy with carbon dioxide, the most abundant gas produced by humans and implicated in climate warming. He predicts that one synthetic tree could remove 90,000 tonnes of CO2 in a year - the emissions equivalent of 15,000 cars. "It can be a thousand times better than a living tree," he said. -- BBC News

I only wished that he could also come up with a comment that's a thousand times less shallow than that.