Isn’t spirulina more effective for capturing carbon than trees? And also you can eat it in the way you don’t normally eat trees? Trees are great and all but why do you want me to be angry about algae?
this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Gooooood Morning Night City!
Algae in water doesn't burn like trees
Checkmate commies !
Let's go for a walk in the park - they just cleaned the algae tanks!
homeless people find sitting in the shade of trees to be comfortable, and the city whole point of urban design is to make them uncomfortable and to suffer
I had the same reaction until I read this.
TL;DR: it's 10-50x more efficient at cleaning the air and actually generates both electricity and fertiliser.
Yes, it would be better to just get rid of all the cars generating the pollution in the first place and putting in some more trees, but there are clear advantages to this.
How long does it take to break even from the pollution and electricity spent to make and install these?
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I appreciate Rebecca Watson's opinion. Watched the 6min video, now convinced 👍
Also learned a new term: kneejerk cynicism
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(3 replies)
I think it’s probably cheaper in the long run to self host a tree instead, unless you live in an apartment with absolutely no green space. But I’d rather get a VPF and host a tree there if I had too
Problem with VPFs is irrigation throttling, or lack thereof. Most people are cool, but I've heard of people hosting exotics which just max out downstream 24/7. Plus everyone has root access which gets abused frequently.
I like how everyone is acting like it is normal to have this in self hosted
I love this about lemmy.
Like someone stumbling into the wrong house and still being welcomed.
It's a lot more informal and relaxed than on the piss page of the Internet.
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Wrong community, maybe? Lol
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iirc, algae are better oxygen producers per units of mass and volume, so a tank full of algae might actually be better than a tree. One issue though is that trees can grow on open ground, while algae require a tank to be built, most likely negating the economic benefits. Also, trees are more aesthetically pleasing.
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Short answer: the bank won't give your shiny new tree-planting business a loan as easily as it will to a "liquid tank tree replacement" one.
Long answer:
- Trees take time to grow
- Trees need to be planted
- Trees make shade
- Animals like birds and insects like bees and mosquitos like to live next to them
- Trees don't need electricity
- Trees take in heat radiated from the pavement
- Trees don't look cool
While algae are more efficient at turning CO2 into oxygen in theory, in practice algae don't have a good climate in such a tank (no oxygen without ventilation, i.e. constant electricity and they get cooked through the glass).
All in all, more of a gimmick than anything.
Roots limit where they can grow without messing up infrastructure.
Yeah this is a big problem I see often. You have underground utilities? Tree planting becomes a huge thing. And in a lot of these walkable areas, places you'd want trees, folks tend to also prefer not to have the wires overhead with telephone poles everywhere, and so they've been backed into a corner.
I did just sit through a presentation by my local environmental commission where they addressed the issue. The solution seems to be trees bred for the specific environment: deciduous provides shade but doesn't drop a lot of leaves; can grow tall but the root ball grows in a certain way so as not to interrupt sidewalks and utilities; hearty and resilient. I can't recall the trees, but they were described as essentially not naturally occuring.
Ginkos are very common. They're ancient trees, and almost went extinct, but they're tolerant of the rather extreme conditions of an urban environment and very pollution resistant
Yeah, I need to remember if it was ginko or something else. I'm not the greatest rememberer, so I'll go back and check the recording. Perhaps not natural meant not native, but I recall being surprised at the description. We shall see, always interesting.
- Trees take time to grow
Sure, of course not removing literally all of them in the first place is preferable but hindsight is 20/20 I guess. And good things come to those who wait.
- Trees need to be planted
True, planting a tree seems a bit easier than installing a weird tank though, despite time to grow.
- Trees make shade
Good.
- Animals like birds and insects like bees and mosquitos like to live next to them
Good.
- Trees don't need electricity
Good.
- Trees take in heat radiated from the pavement
Good.
- Trees don't look cool
Bullshit.
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(3 replies)
Does this count too?
I already posted this on [email protected]. .
I'm purposefully growing duckweed on my balcony.
I'm doing [email protected], and by doing that, I have lots of waste water with still good fertilizer in it.
Duckweed is one of the fastest growing, nutrient densest and least demanding plant out there, and you can just scoop it out with a strainer.
It's exponentially growing and if you don't wanna eat it, it makes great organic fertiliser or animal feed with lots of protein and micronutients!
Because there's no serious answers being given even though there are at least 2:
- trees have roots, roots ruin any nearby human infrastructure. You'll note this says "in urban environments" and that there are trees nearby, so this is probably the big reason
- trees need maintenance, which costs money. this is a stupid reason imo, but it's one nonetheless
- algae is cool, ok?
Algae is also more efficient per cubic meter, if I understand correctly.
Not just more efficient, vastly more efficient. Algae is 10-50 times faster at processing CO² than trees are. Some algae can be up to 400x as efficient.
It's just not as "nice" to look at, we usually associate algae with growth in unsafe bodies of water like bogs, etc. versus a nice clean pool or even a maintained pond.
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(18 replies)
How do I self host these? I tried docker run liquidtrees it didn't work
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(9 replies)
It's not an either/or thing, the tank in the picture is literally sitting under a tree
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