Scientists Discover Link Between Trees and Electricity 173
An anonymous reader writes "Everyone knows trees give us all oxygen so we can breathe, but according to Australian scientists, they also affect the concentration of positive and negative ions in the air. A team from the Queensland University of Technology's International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health ran experiments in six locations all over Brisbane and found that positive and negative ion concentrations in the air were two times higher in heavily wooded areas than in open grassy areas, such as parks."
Re:Avatar (Score:0, Insightful)
Obviously you have not read about the Gaia [wikipedia.org] hypothesis. If there is a global consciousness then it would make perfect sense that vegetation could be akin to dendrites. And further to that wind could be akin to a chemical neural transmitter that stimulates ionisation in the atmosphere which is the realm of the highest level of earth as a being. If you think of it we might be akin to serious a virus infecting a higher being...and climate change causing huge atmospheric disturbance might just be in reality an extremely sophisticated immune response, that in killing off the infection does only temporary damage to the host.
Just posting this to scare the hell out all the "global warming" GOP sponsored sudo science freaks that post here on ./ on a regular basis.
Re:And yet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trees aren't equal. Fast-growing trees drain nutrients but absorb little CO2,
Citation needed.
1) One would think a fast growing tree would have to absorb CO2 (and nutrients) in order to build all that cellulose quickly.
2) If that tree is subsequently harvested (and a new one replanted) and converted into timber, or paper that ends up in archives or landfills it means more CO2 locked up for years (yes paper manufacturing is normally environmentally unfriendly but it doesn't have to be so)