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Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

projectvesta.org

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Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#21

Post by billars »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #8
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #2

Mine olivine rock, spread it on a small percentage of tropical marine beaches with high levels of tide energy, remove CO2 from the atmosphere. What could possibly go wrong? Edit: not sure why the downvotes. Perhaps I should have explained my skepticism more clearly? Any geo-engineering initiative almost always fails to predict the unintended consequences for the environment - e.g. perhaps one day we'll discover that…

> What could possibly go wrong? As the water level rises we're gonna need to lose some of the cynicism around geo-engineering. Unless you're convinced that society will somehow value the stability of our climate over economics? I feel like there's more evidence (given our snail-like progress over the past few decades) to demonstrate that's a not gonna work out compared to attempting _some_ form of geo-engineering.

I think we as industry and society know nothing about geo-engineering, am I wrong? if yes doesn't this create big changes of failing and create more damage? If no can we point on geo-engineering to substain what we are doing wrong in terms of waste production and environment destruction?

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#22

Post by numakerg »

matznerd wrote: post #13
cupofjoakim wrote: post #3

I'm sceptical. Are there calculations on shipping for the olivine? If it's primarily mined in certain parts of the world it's going to have a big cost in shipping - there's a reason why regular sand is sourced as locally as possible. It weighs a lot, which means that it's expensive for both the wallet and the environment to ship.

Hi, co-founder of Project Vesta here. Based on a CO2 life cycle assessment, to minimize CO2 created during transport, the idea is to utilize mines within 300 km (186 mi) of the destination beach. Including mining, milling, and transport, we can hopefully maintain only a 4% efficiency loss in terms of CO2.[1] This paper has a few examples of models where it is 93% efficient for mines within 1,000 km. [2] Fortunately,…

Hi Eric,

How do you plan to compensate countries who own the beaches or waters targeted by the project? Do you have an estimate of how receptive a community will be to having their beach turned green, especially if they rely on it for a portion of their income?

A country outside of the world's economic powers might want financial insurance in the event that the the project causes ecological damage and hurts their economy.

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#23

Post by NeedMoreTea »

6d6b73 wrote: post #19

"The Last 3 Ice Ages Were Caused By Volcanic Rock Weathering Near the Equator [...] Project Vesta seeks to mimic this natural process but to greatly accelerate it because we do not have millions of years to wait." I'm afraid that too many these proposed geoengineering projects will actually take place, and nobody will really know how much of the CO2 is removed from the atmosphere. If that happens we will end up with…

We have ways of measuring CO2 in the atmosphere in ppm. It's recorded daily.

30 billion tons of rock is needed per year. That's non trivial in logistics and cost. You think if it turns out to work too well they'll just keep going year on year until no CO2 is left, and not maybe slow down or stop instead?

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#24

Post by loons2 »

QuickToBan wrote: post #4
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #2

Mine olivine rock, spread it on a small percentage of tropical marine beaches with high levels of tide energy, remove CO2 from the atmosphere. What could possibly go wrong? Edit: not sure why the downvotes. Perhaps I should have explained my skepticism more clearly? Any geo-engineering initiative almost always fails to predict the unintended consequences for the environment - e.g. perhaps one day we'll discover that…

> What could possibly go wrong? Nothing. It already happens in nature, but at a far smaller scale. It is not a self-renewing or runaway process. The point is to distribute the correct amount of olivine to stabilize CO2 at ~200 PPM which is close to its pre-industrial level.

> It already happens in nature

4000 ppm CO2 was found in nature far before pre-industry came along. Does the fact that anything "happened in nature" make it "ideal?" What is the globally "ideal" level of CO2 anyway? Certainly 200ppm is an order of magnitude low when considering the ideal for plants.

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#25

Post by erikpukinskis »

supergauntlet wrote: post #17
krisrm wrote: post #12

This actually seems to have some promise - I'd be worried about other side effects (another article I was reading mentioned possible effects on marine life due to dissolved iron and nickel), but it seems like a technology that merits further exploration and rollout on at least a small scale.

I think I get the worry and skepticism about geo-engineering but to be completely frank we've been (inadvertently) geo-engineering the planet at least since the industrial revolution, so I don't really think we have much of a choice, especially since we need to go carbon negative, not just neutral. This olivine solution doesn't really look any less viable than CO2 scrubbers, if I'm being honest.

I would rather we strengthen our forests than add more pollution. I guess if forestry is considered geo-engineering then I support it. But I don't think "we're already adding pollution, so we might as well add more pollution to try to net out carbon" is a sound argument.

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#26

Post by aphextim »

aphextim wrote: post #16
Quarrelsome wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What could possibly go wrong? As the water level rises we're gonna need to lose some of the cynicism around geo-engineering. Unless you're convinced that society will somehow value the stability of our climate over economics? I feel like there's more evidence (given our snail-like progress over the past few decades) to demonstrate that's a not gonna work out compared to attempting _some_ form of geo-engineering.

I'm all for Geo-engineering if it is done in the right way to further benefit all of society and the planet. Sadly as humans we have never all come together for the benefit of the planet yet, and I am doubtful we will in the near future. My fear is that once people figure out how to Geo-engineer things with fine tuned results that it will eventually be used as a weapon. Imagine if you could turn up the temperature of…

Technically you cannot use weather modification as a weapon but when has the rule of law stopped crazy people.

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

To restate I am all for being able to help the planet, mitigate our impact using new greener technologies and changing our habits, however this needed to be done a long time ago and trying to fix our current problems with the band-aide of Geo-engineering I personally believe is a futile effort.

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#28

Post by erikpukinskis »

debt wrote: post #20

If you work backwards, climate change is a giant man-made disaster that literally can only be countered by a just-as-big man-made solution. Green sand on a beach is like, not as big as millions of cars on roads.

That's not logical. Just because a disaster was made by machines doesn't mean machines are the solution.

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#30

Post by Accujack »

groby_b wrote: post #7
astazangasta wrote: post #5

This seems like it would fail energetically; the amount of energy required to mine and transport a bunch of rock to a beach would surely exceed the amount of CO2 sequestered.

It seems like you didn't read the paper, or really anything on this. But, to make it easy for you: * 1 ton of Olivine will absorb 1.25 tons of CO2[1] * Transportation cost is 161.8 grams of CO2 per ton mile[2] * They are looking at mines within a 300km[1] (or ~190 miles) radius. That's a maximum transportation cost of ~31kg CO2. That's a rounding error. * Mining cost for a ton of Olivine is ~$30/ton right now. Let's…

Mines or potential mining sites for extracting Olivine on this scale don't exist within short distances of these tropical beaches. Many of the beaches are on islands which are essentially coral heads above the water. Digging down to any deposits of other rock are going to require either significant effort in terms of dewatering, caissons, and equipment or else mining underwater.

This is a good idea that's probably not practical. It sounds ok if you accept that that much rock can be mined, processed, and moved within the constraints given, but they're probably not even close with these estimates.

On top of that, you're talking about completely changing the composition of the beaches in much of the tropics, displacing the existing beach materials and probably causing mass die-offs and disruption in the ecosystems attached to them.

Plus, you'll have to keep hauling sand. Beaches in active areas like the tropics aren't static. The sand migrates down them and out into the ocean. Sometimes islands like the Bahamas even have to dredge sand back out of the water to rebuild beaches.

Underwater sand isn't going to absorb much atmospheric CO2.

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