By contrast reddit's front page is trending a Vice article with the opposite sentiment
Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)
81–90 of 166 posts
Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well presumably we could still collect, dry and burn what accumulates on the shore, and the rest would fall to the seabed. If the alternative is a hothouse Earth, with large sections of the planet rendered uninhabitable, geoengineering schemes like this are going to be necessary. We can start with iron fertilisation experiments - Australia has a lot of it, and is near oceans.
> the rest would fall to the seabed And kill a ton of sea life?
What sea life will be left after a few more decades of acidification?
Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
What specific baseline do you pick, and why? are there multiple variables involved in that "baseline"? have these variables changed over the 10k years preceding the Industrial Revolution? together or separately? what about these same variables over the last 200k years?
Good questions. You also have to consider the variables that have changed since the Industrial Revolution. There are more people on earth to feed and provide a modern standard of living. We should work to reduce the costs on the planet for these things, but we can't eschew the progress we've made in order to return to some arbitrary baseline. See: ecomodernism
Yes, one would most likely have followup questions once the baseline and its variables are made explicit.
Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar production is one approach to this that is low-tech and doesn't require organism engineering. It's kinda counter intuitive that burning a rich source of carbon would keep it out of the atmosphere, but turning organic material into charcoal stabilises it and renders it inedible and insoluble, and it's really useful as a soil amendment in a lot of places, and it's very likely safe…
Wouldn't this biochar be the charcoal mines of tomorrow? What I'm saying, is that if it's cheaper than regular coal people will buy this to burn. So you still need an incentive to not burn fossil fuels.
There's nothing wrong with burning a renewable resource. You're still at net 0 carbon emissions.
Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.
For a shorter period of time [1] > The lifetime in the air of CO2, the most significant man-made greenhouse gas, is probably the most difficult to determine, because there are several processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Between 65% and 80% of CO2 released into the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years. The rest is removed by slower processes that take up to several hundreds…
My understanding is that the majority of Methane molecules end up as CO2 anyway (Methane -> CH3 radical -> Formaldehyde -> CO2):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Removal_pr...
So the underlying CO2 ~100 Yr+ effect is still there, but you also get a 500x benefit from Methane while it is persistent in the environment.
Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Gaia theory suggests that the world is full of these stabilizing systems. Earth may have tricks to save its ecosystem, one of them could be temporarily increase temperatures and sea levels, just enough to end humanity.
Something I think of often when people say things like "we need to stop climate change and save the world!" The world will be fine, it's not going anywhere: humans and the species we like on the other hand...
"The world" is a synecdoche in that context. These people don't literally think we're going to make the earth disappear.
Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)
#87Most of what I've read lately seems to indicate climate change can't be mitigated through societal restraint at this point. I think we need to seriously approach an engineered solution akin to terraforming. I'd love to know what efforts are being made in this direction.
They've studied SO2 injection in the atmosphere but I'm not sure it's a good idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...
A less dramatic thing to try would be a carbon tax of say $50/ton combined with a similar credit for sequestration efforts like seaweed farming.
Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)
#88Really interesting. Makes me think of Daisyworld and the Gaia Hypothesis. Daisyworld is a model Earth covered in black and white daisies, that either absorb or reflect light. In the model, black daisies need less light because they absorb more, increasing the Earth's heat absorption. White daisies absorb less so need more light, but also reflect more light back, increasing the surface albedo of the planet and lowerin…
>> Gaia theory suggests that the world is full of these stabilizing systems. Earth may have tricks to save its ecosystem, one of them could be temporarily increase temperatures and sea levels, just enough to end humanity.
Like a fever :)
Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)
#89Also relevant: Feeding dairy cows seaweed mitigates the amount of methane they pass. Irish famers are beginning to do this because seaweed is easy to come by in Ireland. https://phys.org/news/2018-05-seaweed-relieve-gassy-cows-dai...
On a different note, i recently read that adding charcoal to the feed may help as well...
Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)
#90Also relevant: Feeding dairy cows seaweed mitigates the amount of methane they pass. Irish famers are beginning to do this because seaweed is easy to come by in Ireland. https://phys.org/news/2018-05-seaweed-relieve-gassy-cows-dai...
Hackernews loves these articles that give some kind of hope for a magical solution to climate change. It's easier than the thought that it will require a huge concerted effort across the world and changing the habits of millions
Solutions like this are preferable than complete upending of our quality of life and economic systems. The anti-capitalists would prefer “huge concerted effort” as opposed to simpler, less economically disruptive solutions. I often feel like people on the far left actually don’t want simple, market-based solutions and would prefer instead to use fears of catastrophe as a means to enact their social and economic agendas. It’s no different than 1984 where the perpetual war with Eurasia (or was it Eastasia?) is used to hide totalitarian aims.