I guess the “problem” with trees is obvious: it takes decades for them to produce the desired cooling effect in urban areas. You plant a dozen young trees today, you can begin to reap the cooldown 10 years later at best. Also, they need a lot if water, and many of them just don’t make it - urban surroundings are just much hotter and more stressful (smog, salt…) then standing with other trees in a forest. I fail to see though how these artificial “trees” provide any kind of benefit at all.
I think the problem is putting them in those dumb tanks where a tree would be, as if to say “do this instead”. The principle would be fine if they got a bit more creative with it and played to its strengths, e.g. if you make a train platform out of it, or the railings of an overpass, or the external wall panels of buildings etc.
Ofc OOP didn’t actually provide a source so we’ve no idea what the creators were actually thinking…
A cursory search for “liquid trees micro algae” led me here: https://liquidtrees.org/urban-solutions
Thanks for that. It looks from that like a relevant detail OOP missed out is that these thing (purportedly) claim to produce as much oxygen as 15 trees, which isn’t nothing.
The amount of water required is trivial compared to most other water uses. Especially if correct species are selected.
The London plane tree is particularly suitable for urban areas, it’s resistant to air pollution.
True, but unfortunately, this species is way over-planted in many cities. I would not recommend them unless they happen to be uncommon in your local area. Urban forests need to be as diverse as possible to resist the constant barrage of pests and diseases being introduced by global trade.
In California we have a relatively new pest called shot-hole borers which are killing off many of the London planes, so we’re scrambling to plant other species that can resist them.
Also, resistance to air pollution isn’t as crucial as it once was due to better emissions technologies.
In Vienna, we actually import Australian species because of their strong resistance to heat. The very commonly used native buckeye trees have been eaten away at by pests for decades now, and I’m surprised they do not actually seem to die off, but they just stand there with brown leaves for most of the year.
Also, resistance to air pollution isn’t as crucial as it once was due to better emissions technologies.
Tell that to the recently defunded EPA…
The roots destroy sewer systems etc too. There’s a bike path I take to work where the pavement is all distorted by the roots, making it very unsafe, but I still prefer that the trees are there.
That’s why you have to properly select the species that will be planted, there are many different species which have roots that won’t cause this type of damage and you can most likely get by with native plants for better adaptability
While I don’t want to spoil the joke (but I will) and I hate techno-optimist solutions that displace actual solutions for our biosphere as much as the next person: supposedly, Belgrade is such a dense concrete hell that trees aren’t viable solution (at least in the short term).
There is some rumbling that liquid trees are not the solution to the real problems caused by large-scale deforestation, nor does it reduce erosion or enrich the soil. However, much of this wrath is misplaced as Liquid tree designers say that it was not made as a replacement for trees but was designed to work in areas where growing trees would be non-viable. Initiatives like Trillion Trees are laudable, but there is something to be said for the true utility of this tiny bioreactor. The fact that they can capture useful amounts of carbon dioxide from day one is another benefit for them. Such bioreactors are expected to become widespread in urban areas around the world as the planet battles rising carbon levels in the atmosphere.
They seem to be focusing on CO2. Trees in cities are going to capture a negligible amount of CO2 and for relatively high cost versus doing things outside a city. The point of trees in cities is shade and looking nice (good for mental health). Liquid trees solve neither of those.
And ameliorating the heat island effect.
But mainly quality of life.
Also, trees are surprisingly difficult to keep alive if they were artificially introduced to a location. Turns out they don’t thrive in a concrete hellscape super well.
Which is why native species are always recommended
There are places with no native trees. A majority of the earth’s land area is naturally treeless.
And for people who think that the trillion tree idea is anything else than just the oil lobby running with a feel good solution, I have a great podcast episode for you
Spotify doesn’t work on my phone. Care to link the podcast page on a platform not trying to corner the market, please?
I listen to it on apple podcasts if that helps
How, if I can’t find out which podcast it is?
You can click the spotify link and it literally tells you what it is
I already said thatspotify doesn’t work on my phone (the homepage crashes)
It’s an episode of “The Climate Denier’s Playbook” entitled “Let’s Just Plant a Trillion Trees.”
Much obliged.
They can thrive in tap water and can withstand temperature extremes.
So maybe they can be used in regions that are too hot for trees, like desert cities
ITT: People who looked at some random headline, didn’t bother looking further and assumed they knew everything.
It’s a stupid headline. These tanks, are to directly affect air polution/quality in urban areas. Trees are terrible at that. The microalgae is 10-50x more effective in cleaning the air.
They aren’t going to rip out trees for these. It would have taken you 10 seconds to find the source of the image and the article from 3 years ago to find out, the social media post was misleading. You spent more time making incorrect and wild accusations.
Even with the misleading headline, has nobody commenting about how bad it is ever seen how many trees die when set up in low light conditions? These can be used in places trees wouldn’t be effective, and that’s before the whole “they’re better at cleaning the air” bit.
Even with ideal light conditions, there’s still more to consider.
I lived in Louisville for many years. It’s fairly green as cities go. In older parts of the city, trees had been planted between the streets and sidewalks … definitely a long time ago, maybe 30 to 50 years? Maybe longer?
Every spring, we lost a number of those trees to thunderstorms. Enough rain, followed by strong winds, would topple multiple trees. Every single one that I saw had a root ball that was exactly the size of the opening where it had been planted, so maybe two square meters and maybe a meter or two deep. (For those keeping score at home, that’s not enough root volume to support a full-sized tree.)
So we’d lose those lovely trees and on a good day, we’d lose the use of the street for a while. On a bad day, someone would lose a car or a chunk of their house.
“Just plant more trees in the middle of the city” is not the brilliant fix that many people seem to think it is.
The issue with trees is you need to adapt the city to them, you can’t adapt them to the city. And people have proven once and again that they would invent anything to not move by an inch when our way of life is put in question.
So we push forward with absurd solutions one after the other: carbon capture, atmospheric geo-engineering, a damned nuke in antarctica, and now “liquid trees”.
Because the alternative is to change our ways, and we can’t face that.
Deja Vu
The problem with trees is they are used as lumber. The national parks has always been protected. But Trump has unprotected parts of the national parks to be cut down for lumber.
The problem with trees in an urban setting is trees have roots, and these cause issues. The can damage pipes and other underground objects. And many trees that are designed to not have these issues, end up with stunted/damaged roots which severely effects the trees growth. Planting trees in urban settings take quite a lot of pre-planning, and aren’t drop in solutions, and if the areas weren’t originally designed with trees in mind, you are likely to cause more problems than solutions.
https://greenblue.com/gb/avoid-root-heave-pavement-damage-caused-urban-trees/ https://tiptoptreeandgroundcare.co.uk/2025/01/06/tree-roots-in-urban-spaces/
In Australian temperate climate areas we have the brush box whose roots do not cause these problems. Unfortunately evergreen, casting shade in winter.
I would support legislation that mandated these be used around the highest carbon emitting facilities. Maybe a few very well designed structures (algae tanks) in very densely populated cities.
These would be in no way a replacement for trees in a community but, I could see forcing the corporations to use them. Such as those that must pollute because, they can not manufacture these products without polluting.
What happens when one of these breaks and drains into the sewer system? Algae blooms cause noxious odors and would proliferate quickly in the nitrogen-rich environment of human waste water, potentially building up as clogs in the sewer lines. And if the system drains into a natural body of water, the algae can have devastating toxic effects on the natural wildlife. If it doesn’t drain and instead gets recycled, then the water treatment process becomes much more difficult and expensive.
This just makes me think it’s an aquarium that needs to be cleaned.
even your trees will be slop. nice.
All these braindead silicon valley tech bros trynna reinvent existing solutions to problems in very expensive and unnecessary ways, marketing it as “revolutionary” and “groundbreaking”
The majority of our oxygen comes from algae, they aren’t reinventing existing solutions they just put a tank of them in a city and blow air into it so that a city can use the same more efficient
faunaflora that is available in coastal citiesI believe algae are flora, not fauna
You are absolutely correct and that was a stupid on my part
Mistakes aren’t stupid, they are human. Hell we are even making our AI in our own image now…
If it’s actually more efficient then trees, could be a good idea. Saw a 51/49 video where he explained the urban development in the US requiring only male trees be planted leads to increased pollen levels and has made the “allergy season” 30+ days longer over the past 50 years or so.
While I would hate to lose actual trees, I’m medium on the idea of this on it’s own. People need lots of things and space, which causes the removal of trees. If we can replicate some of their functions, such as CO2 absorption with this tech, then that seems good. If upkeep is the same as a tree, I don’t see a downside to the overall concept.
My thought would be that this shows up on top of the buildings instead of at ground level, though… Plant real trees and put these on the roof. The real loss would be if we stop making green spaces because these things meet the need for O2. Green spaces in cities do way more than just clean the air, though, so I’m not sure we’re that dystopian yet.
The photo looks like it doubles as a bench too, so maybe that helps justify its footprint. Make them a mini-light show with varied colors and it can become a functional art installation. How long until it has spikes to prevent someone from taking a nap on it, though?
Yeah completely agree, I like trees and don’t want them completely gone or anything.
I still want the trees outdoors, but this would be cool for indoor spaces. Each mall or parking lot could have a solar panel overhead and slime-tanks to produce useful byproducts.
Maybe it could be mixed with and aquaculture like fish and sea plants to create cool scenery
Can’t they just put the algae in the ocean?
There are algae in the ocean. The problem with ocean algae is not that they aren’t there, but that their requirements (sunlight, oxygen, acidity, temperature, etc.) prevent them from expanding any further.
If we put the algae in the oceans, then sink all of our cities underwater, all of our problems will be solved.
Keep in mind that tree roots can brake through anything
Not all do. That’s an oak thing really. Pines, most stone fruits, etc, take a path of least resistance, unlike oaks which are more “I am going that way, and NOTHING will stop me!”
You can’t charge a subscription fee for trees.
That’s where youre wrong.
What you can do is take all the trees and put them in a tree museum and charge the people a dollar and a half to see them.