I thought (maybe i'm wrong?) that they still respire... so taking in Oxygen, and breathe out CO2... and that photosynthesis is a different mechanism that extracts CO2 from the air and produces O2
Pretty sure I read somewhere that some trees can take around a decade to grow to the point where they become net extractors of CO2?
You are correct, but unless a photosynthesising plant is killed when it's ridiculously young it will end up consuming far more CO2 through photosynthesis than it produces through respiration over it's whole lifetime.
EDIT: And vice versa for O2; it will create more than it will consume.
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u/cheeseybees 2d ago
I thought (maybe i'm wrong?) that they still respire... so taking in Oxygen, and breathe out CO2... and that photosynthesis is a different mechanism that extracts CO2 from the air and produces O2
Pretty sure I read somewhere that some trees can take around a decade to grow to the point where they become net extractors of CO2?