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.

I discovered when I joined a volunteer litter-picking group in my town that some people really hate trees. And I must emphasise HATE. They hate the shade they cast in summer, the way the leaves block the all-important View. They hate the fallen leaves in autumn. They hate the bare branches in winter. They hate the risk of branches falling in storms. They hate the racket the birds make. I was astonished - it never occurred to me that people would feel so strongly.

Turns out I'm a bloody tree-hugging extremist.

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/

Trees don’t attract VC funding the way some dumb new invention does.

I guess this could be useful in places trees don’t fit but I think there are other simpler solutions.

People really like vandalizing trees, diseases exist, and they are less efficient carbon sinks

Like how we found it’s better to feed cattle seaweed than grass but nobody wants to because it’s different

Trees don’t create shareholder profits

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.

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.

This is missing out on likely the most important part of trees in urban areas. Shade. They give you a cooler place to stand or walk through.

even your trees will be slop. nice.

I recently learned that there's a group dedicated to planting 1000 trees in the city of Trenton, NJ, USA. I'm really glad to see a city working to bring back a little nature!

"Why do you say this is stupid? You're so negative." Run of the mill conformist toxic optimist tech bro dildo

Like I always think that people don’t get one thing about trees in a city. There purpose is is not about co2. The co2 reduction of city trees is neglectable. The reason you need them in a city is temperature regulation, shade, air quality, mood, the local eco system and maybe solidifying unsealed ground. Putting these tanks in a city is laughably inefficient w.r.t. co2 conversion if you compare this to any effort to do this in instustrial capacity ( which is is also still laughably inefficient)

A few reasons: Trees need a lot of space and the space underneath a sidewalk isn't enough for long term life. They can die after like 30 years? This is tree dependent and location dependent.

Tree roots can destroy sidewalks making it harder for people to go over them. (Think people in wheel chairs)

Liability in terms of damage (have you seen trees after a storm?)

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.

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