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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

#221

Post by nostromo »

Symmetry wrote: post #159
nostromo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forrests hold carbon permanently.

No, trees grow, thrive, die, and then decay releasing the CO2 they'd absorbed in life as well as nutrients used by other life. You have to bury the lumber from a forest far from oxygen to get it to remove CO2 permanently. Also, forests only counter ~1 watt of gasoline combustion per square meter or so. That's only enough to sustain a pre-industrial standard of living as it did, in fact, do Back In The Day.

A single tree cannot hold carbon forever. But, yes, a forrest can.

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

#222

Post by empath75 »

pier25 wrote: post #150
matznerd wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our goal is not to cover up existing tourist beaches. You would be surprised how much coastline around the world is undeveloped and not even accessible by roads etc, those beaches are likely to be the places where we go first. That said, we believe that green sand beaches will become their own tourist attractions as the naturally occurring ones, such as Papakolea in Hawaii, are (which is the beach pictured on our sit…

> You would be surprised how much coastline around the world is undeveloped and not even accessible by roads etc True, but does that apply to tropical coastlines too? I live in Mexico, even lived in Cancún for a couple of years, the majority of the tropical coastline in the Riviera Maya there is used for touristic purposes. I don't know the pacific coastline as much but I've been there a couple of times and AFAIK mos…

Try Honduras or Nicaragua or Guatemala.

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

#223

Post by jtbayly »

matznerd wrote: post #185
nkoren wrote: post #146

I would be significantly less skeptical about this if it were significantly less ambitious. I'm sure there are low-hanging opportunities where this makes a good amount of sense. Places where there are olivine-rich mine tailings -- somehow uncontaminated by heavy metals -- adjacent to a tropical shoreline. In those instances, then yeah, I'm sure it makes good sense to just shove them over to the beach and let decompos…

We are not pitching this as "THE" solution, but as "a" solution that can scale up to and beyond the global level of yearly CO2 emissions. Even after the "low-hanging opportunities" it makes a good amount of sense, as mining olivine is not difficult and there are large reserves on every continent. You are incorrect that olivine mining at a large scale would incur tremendous energy costs, it will not. I would suggest y…

4% loss of what? I’m not following.

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

#224

Post by ThomPete »

fc_barnes wrote: post #123

Well jeez. I know it's not a popular thought on HN, but climate change is a problem of such scale that it's going to need government-level funding and oversight to find and validate geoengineering solutions, and global-level funding and coordination to implement them. This third-way aspiration to a non-government solution just seems like a pipe dream.

Can you point to a scientifically predicted and demonstrated (not just speculated) consequence of climate change we don't know how to deal with?

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

#225

Post by ThomPete »

usrusr wrote: post #182
goatlover wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also innovation.

The opposite of innovation is business as usual. Taxation always leads to innovation, sometimes they are not exclusively in the field of accounting.

If you by innovation means coming up with loop holes then yes. If you mean it leads to some fundamental innovation that improves the taxed subject then I am pretty sure you would be hard pressed to find anything backing that claim up.

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

#227

Post by erikpukinskis »

philipkglass wrote: post #53
erikpukinskis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reducing forest clearance and engaging in afforestation could be enough had anthropogenic CO2 emissions started dropping significantly in the 1990s. But they have continued to rise. Forestry changes aren't nearly enough to offset anthropogenic emissions from other sectors. They may be part of the solution but additional measures are needed. Geoengineering is on the table now not because it is an easy shortcut, but be…

A lot of assertions there. You lost me at “Forestry changes aren't nearly enough to offset anthropogenic emissions from other sectors”. Can you explain your math there? Is there a limit to how much carbon we can warehouse in trees (living and milled)?

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

#228

Post by erikpukinskis »

graeme wrote: post #42
erikpukinskis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Forests are helpful but not sufficient. The world was once covered in forests and all the oil/coal etc was in the ground. Now we have reduced forest cover and burned underground carbon. Reforestation only solves the former.

We can harvest forests without reducing canopy coverage and store the wood. You can even grow your forests on top of wood landfills.

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

#229

Post by baron816 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #175
baron816 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s to counteract for 100% of emissions, right? A more reasonable goal would be to go for 10%. Still very ambitious, but could be done and would have a pretty huge impact. Combine that carbon pricing, technological advancements, and other sequestration schemes, and targets for avoiding environmental catastrophe seem achievable.

Sorry, can you explain why you think counteracting 10% of emissions would have "a pretty huge impact"? The best science from the IPCC suggests we have to cut net carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 in order to have a moderate chance of avoiding the most catastrophic effects of the climate disaster. I'm not saying 10% isn't ambitious, but it's entirely insufficient to the scope of the problem.

I mean using this project to counteract 10% instead of 100%. We don't have to rely on a single tool to eliminate carbon emissions, we can use a bunch of them.

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

#230

Post by erikpukinskis »

supergauntlet wrote: post #82
erikpukinskis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd agree with you if we could do what we need with just forests. But unfortunately we can't. Some other form of reducing carbon is a core part of any long term plan. It's just bad enough now that forestry is no longer a valid option on its own.

Do you have data on the global capacity for intensive carbon storage forestry techniques? What are you basing that on?
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