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.

Wake me up as soon as some goofy ass startup found out how to arrange the algae to display ads.

let me introduce you to this: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/robo-bees-could-aid-insects-with-pollination-duties/

humans are crazy. You want to know whats wrong with trees and bees? It's pretty hard to make a profit of them

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.

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.

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.

Welp, all the trees are gone but at least there are these cloudy stinking tanks of goo everywhere. Does anything not dystopian happen anymore? Like these things are a set piece from Blade Runner FFS.

When I was visiting Europe, seeing all the trees so well integrated into urban areas was so nice.

Then we git our flight back to Toronto. Concrete jungle.

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/

Few things about trees in cities: (1) tree roots ruin sidewalks because they upend that stuff; (2) tree roots get into and ruin infrastructure, (3) not every curb can sustain a tree, so these could fit where a tree could not; and (4) they damage stuff when they fall over in storms.

Trees don’t create shareholder profits

Trees take ages to grow, and their root systems damage buildings and pavements.

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"

These algae also produce biogas that can be used for heating or producing electricity.

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

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.

Back when I was a kid, trees still lived under water.

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

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.