Toyota Develops New Flower Species To Reduce Pollution

teko_teko writes "Toyota has created two flower species that absorb nitrogen oxides and take heat out of the atmosphere. The flowers, derivatives of the cherry sage plant and the gardenia, were specially developed for the grounds of Toyota's Prius plant in Toyota City, Japan. The sage derivative's leaves have unique characteristics that absorb harmful gases, while the gardenia's leaves create water vapour in the air, reducing the surface temperature of the factory surrounds and, therefore, reducing the energy needed for cooling, in turn producing less carbon dioxide."

Plants eventually die

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great but it may be a surprise to some people to learn that cherry sages do eventually die, and decompose and thus re-release that which they have absorbed.

Carbon offset, one of the greatest scams in history. Pay us to plant some trees, which we can later cut down and sell.

Re:Plants eventually die

[AniVisual]

Not really. That's where coal came from. Plants inhale the carbon dioxide in the air, make 'em carbom, die, decompose, get buried in the ground, and 100,000,000 years later become coal and oil.

Re:Plants eventually die

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah? Have you SEEN plants turn into coal? I bet not! God put the coal there to test your faith!!!

Re:Plants eventually die

[noundi]

Obligatory Bill Hicks quote:

I think God put you here to test my faith dude.

Re:

[Jarik C-Bol]

woosh.

he's purporting that, oil deposits, in the form and structure they are in at this stage, could not be over 10,000 years old. He is saying, that, if the oil deposits where really millions of years old, that there layout, format, and structure within the ground would be fundamentally different
(at least, thats the impression i got from his statement).

Re:Plants eventually die

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in places experiencing significant subsidence (think of the Mississippi delta), where plant materials at the surface will eventually be deeply buried. The fraction of plant material that does ultimately get buried for the long term is minuscule compared to the amount that gets promptly recycled by decay processes, right back into the atmosphere. The chances the scenario you describe is happening at the site of a Toyota plant are small indeed unless it is built on a subsiding swamp.

The part I don't get is "while the gardenia's leaves create water vapour in the air" What? Don't ALL plants produce water vapour in the air?

Planting *any* plant would have the rather minor effects they describe. Getting rid of a lawn and allowing a genuine forest to grow might have a net positive effect, but only to a limited degree (as it grows). It's a fluff piece. The only thing innovative here is their public relations department.

Re:Plants eventually die

[afidel]

Actually the buildup of soil is in direct contradiction with your assertion that the majority of the carbon is re-released into the atmosphere. A good example of this process in action is right here where I live along the Great Lakes, the last glacial period ended only 12,000 years ago and as the glaciers retreated they completely scoured the bedrock yet today there are feet and feet of soil built up.

Re:

[afidel]

Lots of it. According to this [scijournals.org] paper 10.2 ± 2.8 kg m^2 in the upper 1-m depth.

Re:Plants eventually die

[wasmoke]

Close. Most coal came from the Carboniferous period where there was an explosion of plants, many of them in boggy areas. When plants die in bogs they fall in the water and bacteria can NOT decompose them. This is why the carbon was sequestered and turned into coal.
Today, there is very little chance of this happening, especially at a plant in Japan. In all likelihood these flowers will decompose when they die and release all their nitrogen oxides back to the environment.

Re:Plants eventually die

[Ginger Unicorn]

Wouldn't the nitrates in the soil act as a fertilizer for plants, as opposed to leaving it floating in the air for humans to breathe in?

Re:

[RivenAleem]

We have this field down by my folks place in the country that is mostly left fallow (used for light sheep grazing) but it fluctuates repeatedly between grass and clover depending on the amount of nitrates in the soil. When the nitrates are low the clover wins out growing up strong, taking nitrogen out of the air and putting it in the soil, but then the grass comes back and chokes the clover until the nitrates are used up.

Re:Plants eventually die

[Quothz]

Wouldn't the nitrates in the soil act as a fertilizer for plants, as opposed to leaving it floating in the air for humans to breathe in?

Both. Some bacteria make ammonium from nitrogen, which keeps it in the soil. Others dump it in the air as N(2) and N(2)O. Local conditions limit how much gets mineralized into ammonium naturally. If there's enough oxygen around, other bacteria make it into nitrates, which then feed more plants. I reckon if they're planted sparsely, removed regularly (and composted properly), or rotated with nitrate-hungry plants, quite a lot would stay in the dirt. So, yeah, fertilizer and stuff, although some nitrogen is gonna float away no matter what.

Re:

[jackspenn]

What can't Toyota periodically replace sections where the plants are? $Counter = 0; 1). Cut down section of plants 2). Bury plants to trap chemicals just like a bog would 3). plant new plants in cleared section 4). $Counter++ 5). If $Counter >= 10,000 then recover coal/oil, $counter = 0 6). Goto line 1

Re:Plants eventually die

[Anonymous Coward]

Plants may produce coal, but I have it on good authority that oil comes from dinosaurs:

First the Earth cooled...and then the dinosaurs came...but they got too big and fat...so they all died and they turned into oil...and then the Arabs came...and they bought Mercedes Benz's...and Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di's clothes...I couldn't believe it...he took her best summer dress out of the closet and put it on and went to town....

Re:

[BlackSnake112]

+1 funny. Most of Slashdot readers are too young to remember Airplane!

Re:

[MobyDisk]

Yes, but that is not what is happening here. From "Coal" on Wikipedia:

Coal starts as layer upon layer of annual plant remains accumulating slowly that were protected from biodegradation by usually acidic covering waters that gave a natural antiseptic effect combating microorganisms and then later mud deposits protecting against oxidization in the widespread shallow seas

Unless Toyota intends to bury the plants every year then they are not doing anything to help sequester carbon.

Re:

[Quothz]

Unless Toyota intends to bury the plants every year then they are not doing anything to help sequester carbon.

Nor are they trying to. So that works out pretty well.

(The plan is to reduce carbon emissions by keeping the area near the plant nice and cool.)

Re:

[Truekaiser]

incorrect. coal did not come from year to year decomposition of plants in temperate climates. Coal was formed mostly during the Carboniferous era in earth's past. at this time allot of the dry land was peat bog's and everglade's like swamps. year after year of leaf litter pressed down on the previous year's leaf litter preventing decomposition of the plants, add in a few million years of heat and pressure and the organic matter is carbonized thus forming coal.

give the current leaf litter in these area's tod

Re:

[The Wooden Badger]

If by re-released you mean the process of photosynthesis (C02 + H2O = Carbohydrate + O2) produces food for animals and the animals then exhale CO2, then yes, most of the CO2 is re-released into the atmosphere.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:FRAUD ALERT -- Slashdot sucked in again?

[Mathinker]

Plants cannot metabolize nitrogen directly.

You are correct. However, the article talks about nitrogen oxides, not molecular nitrogen. The nitrogen in nitrogen oxides is already "fixed" and can be absorbed by many different kinds of plants [wiley.com].

Why do you think you put nitrogen fertilizers to plants, if the atmosphere is > 70% nitrogen?

As you probably know, we'd all be dead if the atmosphere were ~70% nitrogen oxides.

Re:

[TheKidWho]

Seems to me like we wouldn't have evolved the way we did if the atmosphere was primarily Nitrogen Oxides, but something would be there!

Re:

[mpe]

However, the article talks about nitrogen oxides, not molecular nitrogen. The nitrogen in nitrogen oxides is already "fixed" and can be absorbed by many different kinds of plants.

This the question becomes "Are these plants significently better at adsorbing the oxide mix produced in vehicle exhausts compared with other plants?"

Re:

[sarahbau]

While I agree that it does seem like this will do little, from the article you posted, it sounds like nitrogen can normally only be absorbed by the roots of plants, and only by means of nitrifying bacteria. The article says the plants can absorb nitrogen oxides directly through the leaves. I'm no botanist, but I think that's the key to the article, not that they can metabolize nitrogen.

Re:

[mpe]

While I agree that it does seem like this will do little, from the article you posted, it sounds like nitrogen can normally only be absorbed by the roots of plants, and only by means of nitrifying bacteria.

Certain plants form nodules on their roots which contain bacterial symbiotes which "fix" nitrogen. This arrangement being of mutual benefit to both the plant and the bacteria.

Where did you leave your critical thinking today?

[nietsch]

Dubious claims that sound scientific, but not made in a scientific journal, not peer reviewed and making 1st grade biology errors in the title, and you still think there is some truth in that article?
'Species' is a fundamental term in biology. For instance evolution depends on the definition of a species. If they would have truly created a new species of plant (utilising a different nice and unable to interbreed) then that would be news. Making a cultivar and planting that on a factory grounds is just not t

Re:

[jc42]

Dubious claims that sound scientific, but not made in a scientific journal, not peer reviewed and making 1st grade biology errors in the title, and you still think there is some truth in that article?

And to make it even sillier, the article is illustrated by a face (female, of course) sniffing three flowers from the Compositae family. The Sage (genus Salvia in the family Lamiaceae) and gardenia (genus Gardenia, family Rubiaceae) have flowers that are radically different from composite flowers.

I did especia

Re:

[fugue]

CO2 isn't warming the planet, because it is incapable of warming the planet in the concertrations we're emitting

Really? Your research supports that claim? If so, you're just about the only climatologist in the world with that opinion. Please link to your papers (and, of course, make sure you make clear who paid for the research). Or do you somehow think that you're more knowledgeable than the people who have the training, the data, and the supercomputers?

What?

[abigsmurf]

"while the gardenia's leaves create water vapour in the air, reducing the surface temperature of the factory surrounds and, therefore, reducing the energy needed for cooling"

Doesn't pretty much every plant with leaves do that? Hence the need for watering...

Re:

[Yo_mama]

And if they release MORE water, does that mean they increase the dependency on reservoirs and the environmental impacts of dams and water shortages?

Re:

[wizardforce]

Good point. Their heating costs go down bu the amount of water they're using probably goes up. Is it worth sacrificing water conservation for power conservation?

Re:What?

[TheRaven64]

Note that plant water doesn't need to be particularly clean, just desalinated. You can water plants with drain water in a lot of situations. Japan isn't a desert, the only water shortages that they are likely to have will come from overloaded processing and treatment plants, not from supply of rain.

Re:

[jrumney]

Well, this is Tokyo.

Asia is not all city states like Singapore and Hong Kong, you know, Toyota city is near Nagoya, over 200 miles West of Tokyo.

Re:

[Zerth]

Seeing as water vapor is the largest greenhouse gas(by volume, mass, and % of warming caused), could one say that this is like opening the fridge to cool the kitchen?

Re:

[palegray.net]

No. You're only telling part of the story; here's an excerpt from the easily digested Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] dealing with the topic:

"Because water vapor is a greenhouse gas and because warm air can hold more water vapor than cooler air, the primary positive feedback involves water vapor. This positive feedback does not result in runaway global warming because it is offset by other processes that induce negative feedbacks, which stabilizes average global temperatures. The primary negative feedback is the effec

Re:

[captainpanic]

They should patent the evaporation of water. And patent photosynthesis too, for good measure. they obviously made a great invention.

p.s. Don't tell them that they found nothing new. This is just like a biologist finding out that cars exist (carrus automaticus gasolinus). Quite exciting really, and certainly worth a publication or two. :)

Re:

[Yvanhoe]

Well, I am a bit confused. Plants do perspire and release water vapour but they also usually release heat (they have a metabolism and show on infrared). I think that once agains one has to dismiss the sensationalist journalism and get at the real science. My suspicion is that the only new thing here is the absorption nitrogen oxide and that Toyota also reminded the journalist the other advantages a plant offers in a workplace.

Let me try...

[denzacar]

First of all, what do you think releases more heat through its metabolism. A meadow or an automobile factory?

As for the effect these bio-engineered flowers have...
Think sprinklers. That require no power source but the water they are fed and ground they are planted into. Plus, they look like pretty flowers.

Did that help?

Re:What?

[jc42]

Well, I am a bit confused. Plants do perspire and release water vapour but they also usually release heat (they have a metabolism and show on infrared).

It is a bit complicated. ;-)

It's true that plants give off IR radiation. But they also release water vapor, and the evaporation process is endothermic. This cools the plant tissues slightly, and conductance cools the air at the leaf surfaces. There's a lot of energy conversion and transfer going on around a functioning leaf. The "bottom line" of it all is that the air among masses of plant life is usually a few degrees cooler than the outside air, unless the air is cold, when the plants may somewhat warm the air. You can feel this when you walk into a clump of trees, even if you're still in the sunlight. Much of this effect is due to inefficiencies in the plants' techniques for controlling their own internal temperature.

It is interesting that plants can be giving off IR while being cooler than their surroundings. Part of the explanation is that the photosynthetic process involves a lot of frequency shifting. Photons are absorbed at one frequency, electrons bounce the absorbed energy around a bit, and another photon is radiated at a lower energy level. Most of this is significant to the plant's metabolism, but there are inefficiences. Thus, chlorophyll absorbs best in the green/blue part of the spectrum; a quick google found a graph at http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Chlorophyll [statemaster.com]. Note the complexity of the graph, with a lower peak in the red. To increase its absorbency, chloroplasts surround the chlorophyll with frequency-shifting molecules that absorb photons at other frequencies and reradiate the energy as photons that the chlorophyll prefers. But chlorophyll molecules don't intercept all these green/blue(/red) photons, explaining why leaves are greener than the incoming light. The whole process is impressively complex, and we're not very close to fully understanding it all. But much of the accidental reradiation is at low-energy frequencies, in the IR part of the spectrum.

Some interesting research reports a few years ago involved some tiny temperature sensors that could measure the temperature inside leaves. They reported that a wide variety of plants tested, over a wide range of atmospheric conditions, the internal leaf temperatures were close to 21 Celsius. This is somewhat cooler than our body temperature, and generally different from the air. The "higher" plants seem to have evolved some impressive temperature regulation methods, presumably because chemistry is simpler and cheaper if you can control the temperature. So at cooler temperatures, leaves tend to absorb lots of photons that they don't need for photosynthesis, but which function solely to warm the leaf to its operating temperature. The leakage from this process mostly loses low-energy photons, i.e., infrared. At higher temperatures, leaves can both radiate more energetic photons, and also release water vapor, which cools the tissues rapidly. In this case, most of the inefficiency is in heat absorbed from the surrounding warmer air, which is the main reason that clumps of plants are cool. But it's not really that the water was vaporized to cool the air. It was vaporized to cool the internal leaf tissues, and the air cooling is due to poor insulation at the leaf surface. The plants are trying to keep themselves at operating temperature, and cooling of surrounding warmer air is an inefficiency in this process.

Anyway, it's complex. And it's impressive how much control can be done by critters that have no muscles or nervous system and are stuck spending their whole life in one spot. It's almost entirely complex chemistry, including some very sophisticated control of photons and passing energy via electrons along chains of carbon atoms. Understanding what's known of it takes years of study. But you can find a lot of summaries by googling for someth

All plants transpire

[treeves]

thereby reducing the surrounding temperature, don't they? Gardenias do smell nice though.

Bad reporting

[AxeTheMax]

Lots of bad science reporting there, just what you would expect from a motor journalist talking about botany. New species??? All plants absorb gases, including any nitrogen compounds in the air. Any nitrous oxides would be absorbed within the leaf, since they are nutrients and plants have an ability to absorb nutrients through the leaves (foliar feeding). All plants give off water vapour. I suspect most trees would be better at cooling the factory surrounds than gardenia plants, since by their size and nature they are faster growers and thus can transpire more water, and (for most species) they have more leaf area per unit of ground area.

Re:

[CrashNBrn]

Apparently, they've done the tree planting thing too.

Even the grass has been specially developed to grow more slowly than conventional lawn. As a result, it only requires mowing once a year, compared with three times for the grass it replaced. In 2008, Toyota planted 50,000 trees to offset the factory’s CO2 emissions.

Re:Bad reporting

[TubeSteak]

October 6, 2005
Toyota Develops Shrub that Greatly Improves Air Quality
--New Cherry Sage Better Cleanses Air, Reduces "Urban Heat Island Effect"--
http://www2.toyota.co.jp/en/news/05/1006.html [toyota.co.jp]
"TMC started selling its Gardenia plant, known as the "Wald", which has a very high atmospheric-cleansing ability, in October 2003."

The grass mentioned in TFA linked by /. is a breed of "zoysia grass" known as "TM9"
I read about it on page 40 of Toyota's 2009 sustainability report [toyota.co.jp] (8MB PDF) and it has been on sale since 2006.

Nothing in this story is new except for the positive PR that Toyota is getting.

Re:

[rvw]

Nothing in this story is new except for the positive PR that Toyota is getting.

And even that is not new.

Re:

[hallucinogen]

Actually there are no plants at all that can fix nitrogen by themselves. If the summary was even half right this would be THE biggest news of the year.

Nothing can go wrong here!

[assemblerex]

Let's cross breed with kudzu! We can always just pull it up. I mean, Kudzu is so easy to get rid of, right?

Re:

[Adambomb]

cmon, the universe needs a true daiseyworld as a warning to others!

Re:Nothing can go wrong here!

[Sparr0]

Kudzu is trivial to get rid of. Just let a herd of goats loose. Not only do they eat kudzu, they PREFER it, and will eat it before almost any other human-desirable plants. There are companies that rent out goats specifically for this purpose.

If you think Kudzu is bad, read up on Cogon Grass.

Re:Nothing can go wrong here!

[Rogerborg]

What do the goats eat once they've finished the kudzu?

Ask Africa. They eat everything. Then you get desert. Then come the sandworms. Nice, you've doomed us all.

Re:Nothing can go wrong here!

[Alcari]

But with sandworms comes spice and He who controls the Spice controls the universe. I'd like to rent some goats please.

Re:

[stupid_is]

Presto!! [mapmate.com]

Re:Nothing can go wrong here!

[mpe]

What do the goats eat once they've finished the kudzu?
Ask Africa. They eat everything. Then you get desert.

Only if the people involved are too daft to eat the goats (and turn their skins into leather).

Re:

[db32]

With sandworms comes spice! With spice comes prescience. Prescience brings the Kwizats Haderach. The Kwizats Haderach makes it rain. The rain kills the sandworms and then plants can grow again... Come on now, don't you know anything?

Re:

[Chris Mattern]

What do the goats eat once they've finished the kudzu?

Well, that's when we bring in the mountain gorillas.

Re:

[Dragonslicer]

Then come the sandworms

Then you have to spend your entire afterlife worrying about the next sandworm attack.

Re:

[dodobh]

It only dooms you puny humans who cannot live in the desert. Now, on to the sandtrouting.

Re:

[Gilmoure]

Or release Dingos to deal with all the goats running amuck!

New tag should be....

[thatseattleguy]

whatcouldpossiblygrowwrong

Re:

[jrumney]

My first thought was this [imdb.com].

Availability

[Sarten-X]

Ignoring naysayers for now, and assuming this plant is the benefit the article claims: What about me?
Does Toyota plan to release these plants for sale at my local garden store?
Can I get a nice slow-growing lawn that I don't have to mow?
Can I get some extra-cold flower gardens?

Re:

[Gerafix]

I wish our society would just get over the green grass lawn. It's absurdly wasteful, especially in dryer climates.

Some of us

[Kupfernigk]

Live in areas with a metre of rainfall per year, like to have somewhere to go outside in summer, have children and grandchildren, and are aware of the problems of runoff from concrete surfaces, decks and so on. Our lawn requires no fertilizer, no watering, and by next year the robot mower will be recharged from a solar panel. And it provides foot access to the vegetable garden and the fruit trees.

You insensitive clod!

Having said which, you are totally right. Lawns belong in places where the climate is suita

Ob. HHGG reference

[Kupfernigk]

You are right, but as a good HHGG follower, I don't use swear words on Slashdot.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

You can already get excellent air cleaners at the local nursery. Buy a Ficus.

Re:Availability

[TubeSteak]

Ignoring naysayers for now, and assuming this plant is the benefit the article claims: What about me?
Does Toyota plan to release these plants for sale at my local garden store?

Not at your local garden store, but they are for sale through "Toyota Roof Garden Corporation".
AFAICT their sales are entirely out of Japan, so good luck with ordering.
http://www.toyota-roofgarden.co.jp/ [toyota-roofgarden.co.jp]

Progenitor Virus

[mister_playboy]

Umbrella Corporation (from the Resident Evil series) cultivated some funky flowers in Africa which led to their biological weapon development... zombies, Majini, etc. were the result.

Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?

Re:

[canajin56]

This isn't genetic engineering as in gene splicing, it's genetic engineering as in selective breeding. Fucking fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Just like those cows bred to produce less methane. whatcouldpossiblygowrong. Well, the same things that could always possibly go wrong, I guess? A random mutation between one generation and the next turns their meat into poison? Which would happen with or without selective breeding. When that article got posted about women getting shorter and heavier due to natural

What could possibly go wrong...?

[primesuspect]

Feed me, Seymour... :-/

Re:

[srussia]

Feed me, Seymour... :-/

Actually, if the plant eats pets, it'll save the environment!

The PR machine is go!

[RudeIota]

This is all obviously for attention and is merely a token to the public of Toyota's commitment for being 'green'. The actual 'good' done by planting even an infinite number of flowers around their manufacturer facility is infinitely negligible even on a regional scale.

Perfect Timing!

[adamchou]

I'm finalizing work on a new species of cow that eats unnecessary grass that has been dried. It then produces plenty of methane and CO2 to feed these plants.

Re:

[value_added]

IANACE, but how is that an improvement over a cow that naturally grazes on fresh grass?

And then?

[VincenzoRomano]

What are the long term plans for the foliage disposal?
Once those leaves will be stuffed with the bad gases, they will die. And then?
Back to the soil and the athmosphere?
Nice solution then!

Re:

[Arlet]

Only the oxides are harmful. When nitrogen is bound in other compounds, it works as a fertilizer. Plants need nitrogen, but they generally can't get it from the air, but they will readily absorb it from the soil.

Water Vapor?

[dreamchaser]

Water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Talk about feel good marketing ploys!

Re:

[Arlet]

The amount of water vapor is also more or less constant. If you try to put more vapor in the atmosphere, it will just rain out somewhere else.

Re:

[canajin56]

Actually, it's less potent by 5x. It has a bigger effect on the atmosphere because there is 40 times as much of it in the air...also as the other poster pointed out, it falls out of the air all of the time. You may be familiar with the effect, even if you live in a desert. And the article is about NOx. That's 1500 as strong a greenhouse gas as water vapor. Still so absolutely positive that gardens are the true and only cause of the greenhouse effect? Your argument makes sense, right? Who uses greenho

DNA* headline

[codeButcher]

That's what happens when you are too stressed at work to properly read. You develop faux dyslexia. So that headline read:

Toyota Develops New Flower Species To Reduce Pollination

And then I run around claiming that everything I know I've learnt from /. headlines.... Scary.

(* = National Dyslexia Association, for those who've never heard the old joke.)

Water vapor is ALSO a greenhouse gas.

[EWAdams]

You don't necessarily want to be making more of it in large quantities, although presumably as 7/10ths of the planet is covered by water, the amount generated by some flowers won't be terribly significant.

On the other hand, the forthcoming fuel cell cars should really include condensers so the water coming out the tailpipe is liquid rather than gaseous. One downside: the roads will ALWAYS be wet. We can presumably expect a certain increase in accident deaths from that cause, although it will be offset by th

Boooooooooogus

[CFD339]

This is as bogus as the whole "clean" concept of the Toyota Pious. These cars are dirty as hell to make, dirty as hell to recycle, and only provide real benefit for city driving. VW and Audi have done much more important work with their "clean diesel" engines that get mileage similar to that of the hybrids without massive dirty batteries, and those cars get high mileage on long haul trips and long country roads like we have here in the US.

Shameless drivel

[jandersen]

It is a load of shameless and deceptive nonsense; and does make it better that it is wrapped up in florid language, if you will excuse the pun, hur, hur. "Create a new species"? Even highly educated plant breeders haven't been able to do that, but a car manufacturer manages to do it with a gesture and a lorry-load of hype?

For a plant species to work well as carbon-capturer, it ought to grow fast (thus producing large quantities of biomass) and it should break down slowly, so the CO2 isn't released quickly again. Gardenias and sages don't really fit the bill - grasses might, some trees might and green algae, perhaps. But I understand, of course - surrounding the offices with a few hectares of slimy ponds isn't as pretty.

The real mystery is - how on Earth did this make it as far as being mentioned here?

Re:

[xelah]

It is a load of shameless and deceptive nonsense; and does make it better that it is wrapped up in florid language, if you will excuse the pun, hur, hur. "Create a new species"? Even highly educated plant breeders haven't been able to do that, but a car manufacturer manages to do it with a gesture and a lorry-load of hype?

I'm not so sure that 'species' is so well defined a concept when it comes to plants and hybrids that everyone agrees on what is and isn't a new species. However, I distinctly suspect that 'hybrid' got turned in to 'species' somewhere between the grower's mouth and journalist's article. Science journalists in particular seem to love writing complete bollocks that sometimes even flatly contradicts their only source.

For a plant species to work well as carbon-capturer,

No-one has said anything about them capturing carbon. They were chosen to capture and degrad

Our New and Improved Toyota Prius

[Kreeben]

...with virtually no impact on environment!* * except for huge fields of Toyota Gardenia (TM), and who doesn't like gardenias?

Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors

[Migraineman]

Mutated plants with wheels ... [wikipedia.org] I swear I've seen this somewhere before, but I thought it came out of France.

They're called Triffids...

[clickety6]

...and they eat people, thus reducing pollution.

It's a rather radical solution.

Toyota Eco Claims

[Sponge Bath]

Toyota is clearly making an effort to appear eco-friendly, but examine their claims closely. I heard squirrels are unharmed when run over by a Prius. As a Prius owner, I tell you that is not true. They pop like furry little grapes.

In the U.S. ...

[rnturn]

Some company like Monsanto will come up with plants like these (available only from them, of course) and patent the whole idea just so they can make a buck off of saving the planet.

Dear Greenpeace

[The Yuckinator]

"How do you like GMO's now?"

Hypocritical bastards!

[fugue]

So they can claim to be "green" while still producing 4Runners and worse. Assholes.

Re:If they want to reduce pollution

[robfoo]

Because cars are awesome, hippy.

Re:

[Rogerborg]

Presumably they like to earn enough to enjoy the luxuries of life, like putting their kids through college, health care, food, that sort of thing.

Re:

[aussie_a]

I agree. They could also get into the assassin business, so they can stop people like you from polluting the internet.

Re:If they want to reduce pollution

[L4t3r4lu5]

GM tried, but the government just won't let them stop. Even when nobody is buying them.

Re:If they want to reduce pollution

[Virak]

Your clever plan has one slight flaw, namely that Toyota is not the only company on the planet making cars. If they stop then people will just buy cars from elsewhere that are probably less environmentally friendly, resulting in more pollution overall.

Environmentalists could do with a lot more pragmatism and a lot less "durr I'm going to vehemently oppose anything short of ceasing all pollution overnight".

Re:

[TubeSteak]

Your clever plan has one slight flaw, namely that Toyota is not the only company on the planet making cars. If they stop then people will just buy cars from elsewhere that are probably less environmentally friendly, resulting in more pollution overall.

Naw dude. You missed the clever part: once Toyota stops making cars, we just move onto the next care company and keep asking them "Why don't you stop making cars?" until they finally give up.

"First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then they stop making cars."
-Ye Olde Buggy Whip Monthly Newsletter.

Re:

[Devout_IPUite]

But when you have fewer car companies, the existing companies will be making more profit on worse cars due to lack of competition. Would you really expect Ford to close it's doors when it had a monopoly and could make cars that got 15 mpg and trucks that got 2 mpg?

Nah, then they'd enjoy their money and we'd all be worse off for it.

We shouldn't be encouraging companies to stop making cars, we should encourage people to stop buying cars. Fix demand, not supply. There will always be supply for anything that ha

Re:

[TheKidWho]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH

Re:

[afidel]

Because then people would buy more cars from their former competitors who are not so focused on sustainability?

Re:

[canajin56]

So...you're advocating cutting down every plant on the entire planet? If you take the Wikipedia numbers, Michael Moore style, the maximum effect of water is 72% from 2% of the atmosphere. The minimum effect of CO2 is 8% from 0.04% of the atmosphere. So, CO2 gives 1/9 the effect, but from 1/50 the amount. If you make 5 tonnes of water vapor and lock away 1 tonne of CO2, you come even. Also, water vapor precipitates out of the air very fast, while CO2 tends to just sit there. Also, the article isn't a

Re:

[afidel]

Well, they sort of already are part of an umbrella corp or keiretsu [wikipedia.org], they are part of the Toyota Group [wikipedia.org].