• Question: would trees die without carbon dioxide

    Asked by merlindavid98 to Aggelos, Andrew, Eileen, Naomi, Shane on 16 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Andrew Jackson

      Andrew Jackson answered on 16 Nov 2012:

      yes. Plants require Carbon Dioxide to make energy. The use the suns rays to grab the carbon molecules from the air which they pull apart from oxygen, both of which are stuck together as Carbon dioxide (one carbon atom, and two oxygen ones). They do this during the day, and the waste product is oxygen which is then used by all the animals on Earth to breathe.

      without this very important chemical process, there would be no life, and is why plants, including trees, are essential to support all living things on earth, including ourselves.

    • Photo: Eileen Diskin

      Eileen Diskin answered on 19 Nov 2012:

      Yep they would! Trees absorb and store carbon dioxide in their trunks and in their leaves. This storage of carbon dioxide is called a ‘carbon sink’. Big forests store a lot of carbon dioxide: since an average tree can store about 13 pounds of carbon dioxide, a forest full of trees can store lots!

    • Photo: Aggelos Zacharopoulos

      Aggelos Zacharopoulos answered on 22 Nov 2012:

      @merlindavid98,
      to our benefit, trees and plants do need CO2 to survive! They need it to produce their energy during the photosynthesis. So they capture a lot of it from the earth’s atmosphere which is a great thing if you want to prevent global warming. Unfortunately our human activities at the moment put so much CO2 in the atmosphere which is impossible for plants and trees to absorb it all!

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