It gives people a false sense of connection. How much oxygen does a small tree produce, over what period of time, what species of tree?
It's like someone saying, "hey I knew your cousin Dan". Nice, I have no idea of their relationship but they're trying to "break the ice" so to speak with an irrelevant tidbit.
I feel the goal of the comparison is to give people a quick heuristic, rather than a detailed breakdown. The article does say the device produces 6 grams of oxygen per hour.
In there any species of tree that would be intimately known to a global anglophone audience?
Well, that's the natural give and take when you need to address a global audience with unknown levels of background level knowledge on the topic, a tree is relatable and conveys a workable metric despite the values being unknown
It's like someone saying, "hey I knew your cousin Dan". Nice, I have no idea of their relationship but they're trying to "break the ice" so to speak with an irrelevant tidbit.