General Question

JLeslie's avatar

Is it true tree farms pump CO2 into the air to help the trees grow faster?

Asked by JLeslie (65714points) March 13th, 2014

I saw this on Facebook. A conservative friend of mine was bitching about liberals wanting to make laws regarding CO2 that harms business. He doesn’t believe CO2 emissions cause climate change.

This Q is not about whether climate change is real or whether CO2 affects climate change.

I tried to google information on tree farms using CO2 and I didn’t find anything. I have a hard time believing it myself, but thought I would ask the collective.

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6 Answers

thorninmud's avatar

Free-air enrichment is done, but it’s not a common practice; most of the programs are experimental in nature. More common is enriching the atmosphere of greenhouses with added CO2 to get young plants established.

LuckyGuy's avatar

If you already have a clean source of CO2, why not? No matter how ineffective it might be it does not hurt and might even help. I can’t believe they can do it outdoors though. That would be useless.
Where would you get free CO2? A natural gas fired heater that is used to heat the greenhouse can be vented inside. Ideally the heater only puts out CO2 and water vapor.
However, I would not want to work in there in case it was putting out a little CO as well.

Cruiser's avatar

This pot growing guide says it works well can even double the growth rate or more.

Coloma's avatar

Interesting, never heard of this. I used to have a tree farm on a property I lived on and the trees grew quite well all on their own. Truth is stranger than fiction. haha

RocketGuy's avatar

We would have to grow plants in every nook and cranny to absorb all the CO2 that we are generating.

ARE_you_kidding_me's avatar

@RocketGuy At least the trees and plants that are left will be healthy. If we still had good soil.

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