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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

#211

Post by NeedMoreTea »

matznerd wrote: post #51
pfdietz wrote: post #34

Dissolving olivine on beaches means releasing nickel into the environment. What is the effect of the release of many megatons of this element?

We are aware of potential issues with nickel contamination in olivine and will be testing/monitoring for it. Nickel is found in formations of olivine where nickel replaces some of the magnesium ions in their crystal lattices, however, if we do have a large reserve with high content of nickel, we have a technique available to plant nickel hyperaccumulating plants above the crushed olivine to phytomine the nickel conte…

I'm a little confused by this, though I see your link picks it out as still speculative.

You're planning to put the olivine on the beaches, the nickel accumulating plants will be planted above. So presumably they'll be as exposed to the action of the sea as the olivine. The document talks of use in poor soils, but no mention of coastal or beach. You've identified species suitable for that level of salt water exposure? If the plants are beyond the high tide mark, won't most of it get into the ocean first?

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

#212

Post by jordan801 »

My personal opinion is that, every time we try to do something that would not naturally happen, we're making things worse. Especially on a grand scale such as this.

You can't introduce a massive new variable to an environment, and not expect there to be some kind of negative effect. You're changing the environment this ecosystem has adapted to, in a radical way.

I think humans are still coming to terms with the possibility that we can't live like we do, with the number of individuals we have. And absolutely no one wants to hear that we either have to take their electricity, or let them die of cancer, metaphorically speaking.

You can't have seven billion lions, and expect there to be any gazelle. Exponentially so when the lions have laser guided ballistic missiles.

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

#213

Post by sigmar »

toyg wrote: post #189
sigmar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of The Simpsons episode where they let Lizards get rid of the pigeons, then plan to have snakes kill the lizards, then have gorillas eat the snakes. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9yruQM1ggc

Isn't that inspired by Australian experiences with introducing fauna for agricultural needs...?

Yea, I think loosely inspired by Australia's plot to kill sugar cane-ravaging beetles with cane toads (that then became a nuisance).

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

#214

Post by DenisM »

matznerd wrote: post #208
DenisM wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setup recurring donations as soon as you get around to it. It's a lot more money, and a lot easier to plan your budget since attrition is perfectly predictable.

Thank you for the feedback, you are right on the mark, as this is our plan once we have our first Impact Beach in operation. The plan is to sell a piece of jewelry for $XX-$XXX and then charge $25 per month, which is about the cost of 1 tonne of olivine. That 1 tonne of olivine placed in the person's name, will remove 1.25 tonnes of CO2 from the atmopshere/ocean, which is approximately equivalent to a US person's mon…

How about a signup-for-updates page/widget? I'd like to donate on a recurring basis, but I may forget to come back whenever you have that sorted out.

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

#215

Post by fastball »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #211
matznerd wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are aware of potential issues with nickel contamination in olivine and will be testing/monitoring for it. Nickel is found in formations of olivine where nickel replaces some of the magnesium ions in their crystal lattices, however, if we do have a large reserve with high content of nickel, we have a technique available to plant nickel hyperaccumulating plants above the crushed olivine to phytomine the nickel conte…

I'm a little confused by this, though I see your link picks it out as still speculative. You're planning to put the olivine on the beaches, the nickel accumulating plants will be planted above. So presumably they'll be as exposed to the action of the sea as the olivine. The document talks of use in poor soils, but no mention of coastal or beach. You've identified species suitable for that level of salt water exposure…

I read it as the olivine would be mined, plants would be used to extract nickel, and then the olivine would be moved to beaches.

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

#216

Post by flagfeedingusa1 »

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.

You hear that everyone? "QuickToBan" on ycombinator has officially put his stamp of approval that literally NOTHING can go wrong attempting a geo-engineering process of this magnitude! What a relief!

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

#217

Post by Aloha »

elil17 wrote: post #209
petra wrote: post #137

It costs about $1 to transport an oil barrel 1000 miles. 35 billion oil barrels are transported each year. So transporting that olivine rock will cost an order of $250B. This will compensate for the yearly co2 emissions , ~38B tons. With carbon offsets priced at $15-$40 per ton - so there's potential for profitability .

But olivine is a rock and oil is a liquid. That cost is so low because of pipelines, but you can’t build pipelines for solid things.

You can actually, they pump coal thru pipelines.

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

#218

Post by empath75 »

tempestn wrote: post #190
mc32 wrote: post #181

I skimmed through the site. I didn’t see how they convince countries to have their beeches altered. I can understand the assumption that countries would be eager to receive something which will benefit them directly, but they also know that they are serving as a “commons” as well and may want compensation for that.

If they're altering the beaches for free, the countries would enjoy a portion of the common benefit without any cost. In fact, the new 'green' (literally and figuratively) beaches would probably be a greater tourist attraction, so if anything I'd expect it to be beneficial, plus secondary economic benefits from the work being done.

Possibly but they’re not going to be particularly walkable.

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

#219

Post by Aloha »

credit_guy wrote: post #110

“To carry out this plan, it will take a volume of 7 cubic miles of olivine rock placed on 2% of the world high-energy, tropical shelf-seas each year.” To put this in perspective, the global annual oil production is about 1 cubic mile [1], and concrete production is about half a cubic mile [2], [3] (4.4 BN tons at 2.4 t/m3 = 1.83 cubic km = 0.44 cubic miles) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil [2] ht…

Enough to cover all of nevada with an even 4 inches

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

#220

Post by jtbayly »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #200
credit_guy wrote: post #110

“To carry out this plan, it will take a volume of 7 cubic miles of olivine rock placed on 2% of the world high-energy, tropical shelf-seas each year.” To put this in perspective, the global annual oil production is about 1 cubic mile [1], and concrete production is about half a cubic mile [2], [3] (4.4 BN tons at 2.4 t/m3 = 1.83 cubic km = 0.44 cubic miles) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil [2] ht…

Disappointing to see that Wikipedia page says we use 0.8 of a CMO (cubic mile of oil) in coal. Not clear how current that is either.

The oil number was rounding down from a 2005 number.

2014 number I found would be 1.3 cubic miles.

So take the numbers with a grain of salt.

https://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/627842?section=US&...

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