On Fri, 16 Aug 2002 11:43:07 -0500, you wrote: >On Friday, August 16, 2002, at 11:09 AM, David Dymaxion wrote: >> Just to help me put things in perspective, how long does a person >> have to breath to produce the same CO2 as burning a gallon of >> gasoline? How many trees (or acres of trees?) would it take to keep >> up with the typical car's CO2 output to convert it back to O2? Thanks >> for the insights! > >I can't help with exact numbers, but I can tell you that trees actually >put out less O2 than grasslands do. Reforestation efforts in the US >have gone so far that we now have more trees than we did at the time of >our nation's founding. As a result our land's total efficiency in >converting CO2 into O2 has decreased. We would actually be better off >with more grassland than forest! Strictly from an O2 production >standpoint that is. :-)
And yet, trees or grassland, the amounts they put out are formidable, from some perspectives. It's just that it's not visible to the human eye, so we tend to not be aware of it. I am thinking of some drag races I saw a couple of months ago on ESPN 2 where they talked about the abundant tree growth near the track, and how this caused the oxygen levels in the area to be somewhat high, and how this in turn caused the race car mechanics and tuners to have to make extra adjustments to their vehicles or risk serious problems relating to basic fuel-O2 mixtures in the engine. It was implied that failure to adjust for this would make engine damage or car damage likely and would hurt your ability to win.
