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Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

projectvesta.org

331–340 of 341 posts

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

#331
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Honduras or Nicaragua or Guatemala.

Never been there but how much coastline with beaches do these countries have compared to Mexico? I've been to Costa Rica and there is tourism in a large portion of its beaches. See this map for example on the Pacific Northern coast: https://news.co.cr/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/a-detailed-loo...

A lot of it is completely undeveloped or surrounded by malaria infested jungle or rocky.

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

#332
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Jared Diamonds extensively talks about it in his book "Collapse". A good book (not the best one in that category, but good enough to be worth a read).

An odd read that one. A huge distraction at the beginning with pages and pages of "why I bought a house in Montana", and pointedly avoiding any conclusion on Montana's issues. Just share everyone's lengthy perspective. A good book that felt it could have been a great book at half the length.

Out of interest what did you think were the better books in the category?

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

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good to know about it, for sure. But, at the end of the day, profit makes profit-driven things happen. It's important to know about and advocate for more important values than profit.

Profit is not a “value.” It’s a way of measuring costs versus benefits independent of value system. What measuring profit does, which many people hate, is reveal what people actually value. It’s hard to manipulate which leads many to call to “put it aside.”

>> What measuring profit does, which many people hate, is reveal what people actually value.

IDK. there are non-profits helping women and children who suffered domestic violence, and some of those activities are state supported.

People don't really donate and cover those expenses out of their free will.

Still, helping those women and children is objectively a very valuable thing.

So maybe, people shouldn't be the only ones determining what's valuable ? And hence, maybe profit shouldn't be the only thing determining what's valuable ?

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

#335
post #293
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for responding to my criticism and taking it seriously! The energy costs for this are indeed a lot less than I had imagined. I've seen plenty of appealing sequestration concepts where the numbers definitely don't work out, so I appreciate you doing the math on this! I would push back, however, on the land impacts of mining. Open-pit mining is exactly what I was referring to, and it doesn't have a good reputati…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glensanda This super quarry is in a very scenic area of the west coast of Scotland and supplies 6M tons of granite aggregate yearly and apart from the quay you would not know it is there, so it can be done reasonably sensitively.

That's a really interesting and well-done mine -- thanks for introducing it to me!

This project proposes mining at a scale that is cumulatively about 8,000 times greater than Glensanda. But if they could all be done so sensitively, then indeed, perhaps it could work.

I've still got a lot of cognitive intertia about the impact of open-pit mining, and would definitely need more convincing about this. But I'd be open to being convinced.

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

#336
post #335
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glensanda This super quarry is in a very scenic area of the west coast of Scotland and supplies 6M tons of granite aggregate yearly and apart from the quay you would not know it is there, so it can be done reasonably sensitively.

That's a really interesting and well-done mine -- thanks for introducing it to me! This project proposes mining at a scale that is cumulatively about 8,000 times greater than Glensanda. But if they could all be done so sensitively, then indeed, perhaps it could work. I've still got a lot of cognitive intertia about the impact of open-pit mining, and would definitely need more convincing about this. But I'd be open to…

Interesting so land area of world / 8000 gives 1 Glensanda per 18600km2. Area of UK is 242000km2 so we would need about 13 Glensanda sizes quarries in the UK. Of course it would be fairer if were weighted by amount of harm done to the climate per country, so we should have more per km2 than an undeveloped country, but even so doesn't seem like that large an impact.

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

#337
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most current governmental structures are innately intwined with the economic system.

Yes, which is why the government can fix what the market messed up, because market participants weren't charged for the costs of the externalities they are responsible for. Carbon taxes can change that.

At this point, carbon taxes are really pretty much ephemeral, something that is basically too little, too late. You're adding more tax to a pile that the company already doesn't pay.

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

#338
post #336
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really interesting and well-done mine -- thanks for introducing it to me! This project proposes mining at a scale that is cumulatively about 8,000 times greater than Glensanda. But if they could all be done so sensitively, then indeed, perhaps it could work. I've still got a lot of cognitive intertia about the impact of open-pit mining, and would definitely need more convincing about this. But I'd be open to…

Interesting so land area of world / 8000 gives 1 Glensanda per 18600km2. Area of UK is 242000km2 so we would need about 13 Glensanda sizes quarries in the UK. Of course it would be fairer if were weighted by amount of harm done to the climate per country, so we should have more per km2 than an undeveloped country, but even so doesn't seem like that large an impact.

I don't think land area is the metric to use here. Quaries need to be located close to the coast, in order to minimise shipping costs. There's a lot of land in the interior of continents which would not be suitable for this kind of operation.

So probably a better metric is total length of coastline. The UK has 12,429km of coastline, out of a world total of 356,000. So that would imply 279 Glensanda-sized quaries in the UK.

Good news for the UK (and bad news for everyone else): weighting by amount of harm done to the climate wouldn't work. In addition to being located near coastlines, the quarries need to be located in tropical and subtropical regions. So in fact there wouldn't be any quarries in the UK.

Looking at this source: http://chartsbin.com/view/ofv, it appears that there's about 275,000km of suitable coastline. The top 3 countries would be: Indonesia (1,592 Glessandas), Phillipines (1,056 Glessandas), and Australia (749 Glessandas). I'm not sure whether or not that's feasible. But at a smaller scale, as a partial solution to sequestration, it seems within reach.

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

#339
post #40

From the pictures it makes the beach look like its covered in algae or seaweed. I don't think people will be very receptive to the idea if it looks like that.

Those pictures are heavily edited. When I visited Papakōlea several years ago, the sand had a green tint but looked more like this picture: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/photocontest/detail/natural-w...

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

#340
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…

Indeed as Eric explaines, this isn't "THE" solution. We will need a portfolio of solutions. Of which mineralization of one of them. And all bigger projects need good guidance. Pol Knops
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