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Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)

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Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)

#151
post #46

Earlier 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.

The earth is not a superorganism or entity that prefers one state to another.

It’s always funny to me when people say “we’re killing the planet!” Uh no, we’re just making it uninhabitable for ourselves and some other species. Earth doesn’t give a damn either way

Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the comment you replied to seems to imply that the earth is an organism that seeks to maintain a particular balance. There may be homeostatic processes, but they're not part of a grand plan to preserve life on earth.

We are the grand plan. Let's just hope we fulfill our role.

If the role is "get the carbon, that was for hundreds of millions of yeas trapped in the crust, back to the atmosphere in just a hundred or so of years and perish," yes, we’re success up to now.

A recent comment of a recent article about who's the most responsible:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/nyt-mag-...

Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually not at all what the paper is saying. It's saying that a natural carbon-sequestration process we already knew about is more effective than we thought. It says nothing about the way seaweed growth changes with increased carbon levels.

In other words, it sounds like the above commenter is suggesting that seaweed might unexpectedly save us. But the actual point is almost the opposite: this means we’ve been relying on something all along that we didn’t know we needed to protect.

I hadn't thought about it that way! Although I'm actually not sure in which direction it changes their priors - I'm not sure if this adds to the negative-carbon side of the scales in models taking this into account, or if this was already factored into some kind of separate measurement of total natural carbon sequestration and so the loss of seaweed now adds a bigger positive-carbon term.

Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)

#154

Stupid question incoming. Does it really help us to trap even more CO2 under the surface? If something exposes that CO2 again, it will be back up in the atmosphere right? So it feels like this would be a "solution" like storing used uranium underground in lead containers - eventually it will become a problem. Or am I completely wrong here?

The carbon being released now used to be stored underground in oil and coal, or in trees and soil. We're not creating any more carbon. We're just releasing what was stored, and the solution is to put it back in storage.

"We're not creating any more carbon" Exactly.

"The law implies that mass can neither be created nor destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space, or the entities associated with it may be changed in form"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_mass

Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)

#156
post #46

Earlier 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.

This is surely the case. Nobody really thinks humans have the ability to wipe out all life on Earth do they? We might be able to destroy ourselves, but life will probably continue at least until the Sun turns into a red giant. Life on Earth has survived far more catastrophic events than anything we can manage.

>Nobody really thinks humans have the ability to wipe out all life on Earth do they?

'all life on earth' as in down to microorganisms, amoeba etc? No, I would hope not. Short of wiping out the atmosphere in it's entirety, PLUS destroying the surface of the entire earth do an as-yet-unknown depth sufficient to reach every existing colony of microorganisms etc, humanity's destructive abilities don't extend that far, yet.

But do humans have the ability to wipe out all sophisticated life on earth i.e. all plants, mammals, fish, and so on such to turn the clock back on a few billion years of evolution? Yeah I certainly believe that's within our abilities, and indeed likely if current activities continue uninterrupted.

Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we need to seriously approach an engineered solution We haven't tried the political solution yet. Since limiting carbon emissions is the cheapest and easiest solution to climate change, it would be a good start to have politicans serve the people's interest instead of the fossil fuel ones, don't you think?

What are the people's interests here? Selfishly, I happen to like driving my car. Cheap gasoline is in my interest. What needs to be served to tackle climate change politically is the global greater good. We don't have a great track record with global anything in politics, nor do we have a great track record on serving the greater good, so I don't like those odds.

What do you care about more, cheap gas or the types of lives your grandchildren or great grandchildren will be living?

Regulations solved the ozone issue, leaded gasoline, etc. It has also failed many times. It's tricky, I get it. But it can be possible to create effective regulations. Sometimes situations demand we try -- this looks like one to me.

Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The homeostasis might work in a limited range under which the biological world evolved in the recent past. Exceeding that range could quickly turn to a runaway geological event of rapid climate change, a state transition in a complex and unpredictable system. Take for example the great oxidation event happening 2.5 billion years ago. As oxygen excreting algae began to take over methane producing organisms, oxygen sta…

Is 3deg C or 10deg F until 2100 that massive of a transition event?

The last ice age (ie a sheet of ice covering a large part of NA) was about 4ºC or 12ºF colder.

So yes, that is a pretty massive thing, especially happening over a lifetime.

Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)

#159
There is a lot of the word "seaweed" repeated in the article, but they are talking about brown macroalgae. A group comprising a few families inside the huge diversity of extant algae.

Pointing this can seem pedantic, but the detail is important. Brown macroalgae evolved to live in cold waters. In the limit of their distribution you raise the minimum water temperature two degrees and the plant is unable to reproduce anymore. As they have short lives, at 25 celsius degrees they went locally extinct very fast. Is their kryptonite.

Moreover, they are adapted to live in a permanent state of guerrilla quiting warm areas on years with "The Niño" event, and massively recolonizing the area in the next year. This is the reason for their famous superfast growth.

In extensive areas of the south of Europe, entire submarine forests of the "european Kelp" Laminaria and Saccorhiza (comprising a huge biomass) went in an accelerate decay and are totally gone in the last few decades. They can't return because the local average temperature raised a few degrees in the coastal areas. We need to keep this in mind if we count in this creatures to store our excess of carbon.

Re: Seaweed could be scrubbing more carbon from the atmosphere than expected (2017)

#160
post #24

Also 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...

The name of the game in that case is overgrazing or at least a bad case of abusing the soil for entire generations.

Fires eliminate the shrubs leading to more pastures. After a cycle of repeating the process, all the fertile soil ends in the sea... And then your grandsons have a big problem.

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