this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
69 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
85043 readers
2057 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You mean like algae?
Nope! These microbes eat CO2 and poop rocks. Algae like other plants take in CO2 but I believe it gets released back into the environment after the plant dies. Bring stored in a rock is a pretty big difference
But what about when the rock dies?
We make more rocks and bury the dead rocks in the new rocks
algae releases oxygen, but then consumes the oxygen again latter when the energy is needed. There is just a surplus that isn't consumes - everything that makes up the cell isn't recombined, also oils and such may result as well. Sometimes this surplus rots/burns thus converting back to CO2, but other things can happen (sink to the bottom of the sea where there isn't spare oxygen to recombine with). Not all recombining is perfect either, sometimes you get coal as a result. The vast majority is recombined, but there is a lot of algae and so just a little bit of difference makes for a massive amount that isn't. (not near enough to make up for all the fuel humans are burning - but overall the earth seems to have been slightly net negative in CO2 before humans started burning fossil fuels for energy)
Interesting, I had no idea.