Often called the 'element of life' every single living species is based upon the presence of Carbon. So it's a bitter irony that an element that originates from the Big Bang and is found in all life on Earth (humans are 18% Carbon) could bring an end to civilisation. The problem however, isn't naturally occurring carbon, it's the emissions from industries such as fossil fuels, animal agriculture and transport! Currently sitting at 68ppm above the safe threshold of 350ppm, Carbon Emissions have accumulated in the earth's atmosphere to such a degree they're preventing heat from radiating back into space and causing global warming. Thankfully there's a magical machine that's cheap and absorbs CO2 around the clock, hooray for TREES. Let's take a look at why trees are the No.1 Natural solution to our Climate Crisis.
Photosynthesis
TRADING CARBON DIOXIDE FOR OXYGEN
Plants create sap by absorbing water & minerals from the soil.
The sap travels to the leaves which absorb CO2 and light.
The leaves use chlorophyll & the suns energy to convert CO2 and water to glucose.
The plant releases oxygen and the glucose helps the tree grow.
A tree can absorb anywhere between 10 and 40kg of CO2 per year depending on the species, soil conditions, environment and climate. But how do we know this, well let's imagine a tree with a weight of 1000kg, we know this tree is 500kg water and 500kg dry wood. And we know that 50% of the dry wood is carbon, which is 250kg. Thanks to molar mass ratios, we can can break CO2 down and discover that it takes 3.67kg of CO2 to produce 1kg of carbon in the tree. So for our tree example, 250 × 3.67 = 917kg of CO2.
Tree weighs 1000kg
500kg of Dry Wood
250kg of Carbon
917kg of CO2 Absorbed
So If we want to calculate how much the tree absorbed per year, first we need to know its age and If the tree weighs 1 ton we can assume it's around 35 years old, 917kg / 35yrs = 26kg of CO2 per year. Okay we're impressed, you guys deserve a coffee!
