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How is the answer to “carbon removal” not just “turn deserts into plant areas” or “encourage algae blooms” or something? It seems implausible to me that any chemical carbon extraction process has superior externalities to just planting more trees or something.
TL; DW: planting 20 million trees would equal roughly the CO2 emissions of the USA for half a day.
Here's my proposal, take that $100M and find a Saudi/Venezuela oil well operator. Give him the $100M in exchange for not pumping $100M worth of oil out of the ground.
How is the answer to “carbon removal” not just “turn deserts into plant areas” or “encourage algae blooms” or something? It seems implausible to me that any chemical carbon extraction process has superior externalities to just planting more trees or something.
Algae can be >100 times as efficient at that than terrestrial plants, so there might be a there there, but even still, fracking basalt probably beats that by a couple of orders of magnitude.
How is the answer to “carbon removal” not just “turn deserts into plant areas” or “encourage algae blooms” or something? It seems implausible to me that any chemical carbon extraction process has superior externalities to just planting more trees or something.
'What the heroin industry can teach us about solar power' - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53450688
The satellite images show the green areas over the desert increasing.
They're pumping water from underground to irrigate the poppies using electric pumps and solar panels.
I wonder how quickly the water table will be depleted though.
Here's my proposal, take that $100M and find a Saudi/Venezuela oil well operator. Give him the $100M in exchange for not pumping $100M worth of oil out of the ground.
How is the answer to “carbon removal” not just “turn deserts into plant areas” or “encourage algae blooms” or something? It seems implausible to me that any chemical carbon extraction process has superior externalities to just planting more trees or something.
At least for terrestrial plants, the math just doesn't work out. Plants are really not fast or efficient enough to suck up carbon in meaningful quantities. Algae can be >100 times as efficient at that than terrestrial plants, so there might be a there there, but even still, fracking basalt probably beats that by a couple of orders of magnitude.
> Certain species of bamboo can grow 910 mm (36 in) within a 24-hour period, at a rate of almost 40 mm (11⁄2 in) an hour (a growth around 1 mm every 90 seconds, or 1 inch {2.54 centimeters} every 40 minutes).
At least it's better than no trees at all.
Here's my proposal, take that $100M and find a Saudi/Venezuela oil well operator. Give him the $100M in exchange for not pumping $100M worth of oil out of the ground.
How is the answer to “carbon removal” not just “turn deserts into plant areas” or “encourage algae blooms” or something? It seems implausible to me that any chemical carbon extraction process has superior externalities to just planting more trees or something.
I do not have a complete well-sourced answer, but the common argument against your suggestion is that such a carbon sink would work for only a couple of decades until it reaches a steady state, and these couple of decades do not seem to be enough to make a dent. Also, it is difficult to plant trees in a desert. Also, algae blooms are dangerous for other life forms. However, there are some startups working with super-…
The trees grow. We cut them down. We make houses out of them, which are wrapped to prevent deterioration. The sunk carbon becomes our buildings.
Other uses of the wood are also usually carbon sinks. Paper either gets recycled (the carbon is preserved) or it gets buried in a sealed landfill where is takes decades or longer to break down.
It'd be cool to calculate how much carbon Weyerhaeuser sucks out of the atmosphere each year.