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If carbon dioxide saturated water were the carbon source
plants would need to process only 462 liters of the solution through their root systems to make every kilogram
of plant products saving 96% of the water now used in agriculture. At
the present time they have to process 148,667 liters of air through
thousands of tiny stomata with pinhole sized apertures. This is a
ridiculous system and especially considering that our food depends on
it's function.
With SCAF and genetic engineering a huge improvement will be possible. SCAF will conserve water now lost to transpiration and in field evaporation. Where 70% of all the water is used for agriculture saving 96% of it is saving 67.2% of all water. This will bring an era of water abundance for man by tripling the amount available to people and industry with no new sources!
The implications of SCAF are profound. The direct application of carbon dioxide as fertilizer is the greatest opportunity science has ever had to advance agriculture because it converts ground water into something on which the plants can thrive as never before. Plants are already equipped to access carbonated water from soil which is ready to accept carbon dioxide gas if it is injected or piped to the correct depth.
Carbon dioxide has been in increasingly short supply for
green plants over 1.5 billion years. Early
Earth had a 12% CO2
atmosphere that gave photosynthesis the opportunity to
thrive before animals could
live in it. Carbon dioxide is not toxic, but it is suffocating and we
can
tolerate up to 1.5% of it in air, 15,000 parts per million.
Curiously, we use a lung concentration of 12% as the signal to
take a new breath, reducing the CO2 from that of geologic antiquity to what is today. Perhaps we are much more in tune with our origins than we know.
Green plants flourished converting CO2 to oxygen and
plant products. They were so successful CO2 has virtually vanished in air today. It
is an endangered molecular species with 99.68% of it having
vanished into plants and the abyssl depths of the seas. A major fraction of
this has been fossilized as hydrocarbons and man uses it to recover energy stored there
in geologic antiquity. Industrial activity has
raised the CO2
level to 380
parts per million with good effects but in turn has alarmed government
scientists, psycho-neurotics who have a need to be alarmed and politicians persuing power with panic promotion.
There are 380 parts per million (ppm) of carbon
dioxide in today’s air, 0.038%. Thus, green
plants must transpire huge quantities of water to keep stomata open and exchange
water for the carbon dioxide they need.
CO2 enters the stomata by chance as water vapor leaves. CO2 is only one of every 2640 molecules in
air, but it is favored to enter the plant as it is 54.2 times as soluble in water
as oxygen and 73.5 times more soluble as nitrogen. But, the relationship between
plants and CO2 in nature has become ridiculous given its’ importance to green plants. We change that.
More Food, Fiber and Wood
There are two reasons for improving the green plant
acquisition of carbon dioxide: increased
production of food, fiber and wood plus water conservation. The United Nations has declared water sources will
be the leading world problem after 2010. We believe the development
of SCAF technology
will then be critical to maintaining world peace. Nations go to war for what they need. Reducing needs contributes to world peace.
Carbon dioxide concentration in the Carboniferous Age
(360,000,000 BC to 300,000,000 BC) forests was on the order
of that in modern greenhouses. Known as “the era of
Demonstrations with tented fruit trees in atmospheres
boosted to 700 ppm CO2 (0.070%) result in young trees two to three times the
size of those growing in normal atmospheres have been done many times in the US,