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Could seaweed be the 'fastest and least expensive' tool to fight climate change?

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Could seaweed be the 'fastest and least expensive' tool to fight climate change?

#111

Post by jansan »

marssaxman wrote: post #26
jansan wrote: post #22

No, blowing H2S and SO2 into the stratosphere is cheaper.

The probability that this will end up happening leaves me feeling glad to be mortal.

I do not understand this logic. Only because something has a certain probability of happening makes you glad to be mortal? If you could choose now between being mortal and immortal, would you choose mortality because there is a certain probability that SO2 and H2S will be blown into the stratosphere?

BTW, I am not advocating this approach. I just wanted to answer the question in the headline which can only be a clear "No".

Re: Could seaweed be the 'fastest and least expensive' tool to fight climate change?

#112

Post by atoav »

leesec wrote: post #87
nologic01 wrote: post #82

There won't be any ingenious, miracle carbon removal solution and various proposals may even be flirting with ecological disasters of planetary proportions. Anything that expands our footprint in order to mitigate our footprint is a dubious direction. Reminds of an apprentice wizard that panics and invokes a sequence of spells, each one worse than the other. Discussions and thinking around sustainability underestimat…

>There won't be any ingenious, miracle carbon removal solutions OK but I think there will be.

Yeah, but they won't matter because they will not be things that we can deploy at scale.

Re: Could seaweed be the 'fastest and least expensive' tool to fight climate change?

#113

Post by munificent »

variant wrote: post #65

What does success look like in the climate change fight? Is there a point where victory can ever be declared? Is that a "correct" temperature (what is it) or a CO2 PPM number (what's ideal)? When industry and scientists stop lobbying for money to fight it?

I think it's interesting that Homo sapiens evolved during the last ice age where the climate was significantly different than today's climate. We already "won" a major climate change once despite having a level of technology barely better than sharp sticks and pelt cloaks.

Instead of defining success based on climate stability itself, I think it makes more sense to define success in terms of what we care about: a thriving environment for humans and diverse other forms of life.

I think we'll be "winning" climate change, regardless of average temperature or CO2 level, as long as we're able to avoid catastrophic loss of human population and the rate of extinction is within some acceptable limit.

Re: Could seaweed be the 'fastest and least expensive' tool to fight climate change?

#114

Post by feoren »

Ingaz wrote: post #45

Hm. Is that seaweed is edible by other organisms? Then: more food -> more organisms -> more CO2 It's a level of middle school

> It's a level of middle school

Which should be a hint to you that it's not anywhere near that simple.

Re: Could seaweed be the 'fastest and least expensive' tool to fight climate change?

#115

Post by time_to_smile »

leesec wrote: post #87
nologic01 wrote: post #82

There won't be any ingenious, miracle carbon removal solution and various proposals may even be flirting with ecological disasters of planetary proportions. Anything that expands our footprint in order to mitigate our footprint is a dubious direction. Reminds of an apprentice wizard that panics and invokes a sequence of spells, each one worse than the other. Discussions and thinking around sustainability underestimat…

>There won't be any ingenious, miracle carbon removal solutions OK but I think there will be.

The problem lies with carbon's essential role as part of the energy cycle that powers the majority of this planet.

H2O + (Solar) Energy + CO2 => Useful hydrocarbons (everything form sugar to gasoline)

O2 + Hydrocarbons => Useful Energy + CO2

When you burn a log you're really using a solar battery that took potentially decades to charge and roughly 25x the energy you feel from the fire (photosynthesis is only 4% efficient).

The same process that feeds us powers the global economy, but at the cost of emitting CO2 in direct proportion to the energy we're using and benefiting from.

This is why "miracle" solutions are so unlikely. Because they require a major disruption of this process in a way that it's not clear is fundamentally possible. Anyway to massively remove CO2 from the atmosphere is fundamentally going to require energy. And because of the nature of inefficiency, will always be a poor use of any energy you used to create the problem.

This is obviously where things like nuclear fusion do provide the possibility of breaking this process because they create a lot of energy outside of solar powered carbon cycle.

Re: Could seaweed be the 'fastest and least expensive' tool to fight climate change?

#116

Post by mcguire »

mordymoop wrote: post #67
jansan wrote: post #22

No, blowing H2S and SO2 into the stratosphere is cheaper.

So many different cheap, easy options to at least partly remedy the problem and possibly reverse it, but the only possibility seriously discussed is a civilization-destroying and politically unrealistic austerity.

"For every complex problem, there's a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." H.L. Mencken

Re: Could seaweed be the 'fastest and least expensive' tool to fight climate change?

#117

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

nologic01 wrote: post #82

There won't be any ingenious, miracle carbon removal solution and various proposals may even be flirting with ecological disasters of planetary proportions. Anything that expands our footprint in order to mitigate our footprint is a dubious direction. Reminds of an apprentice wizard that panics and invokes a sequence of spells, each one worse than the other. Discussions and thinking around sustainability underestimat…

The core of the issue is that we are polluting and not managing externalities as we should right now. It means we need to fix what we are doing not that we have to go back to the pre-modern world.

The projection of multiple agenda only tangentially related to the the actual issue we are facing is not helping.

Re: Could seaweed be the 'fastest and least expensive' tool to fight climate change?

#118

Post by nologic01 »

developer93 wrote: post #109
nologic01 wrote: post #82

There won't be any ingenious, miracle carbon removal solution and various proposals may even be flirting with ecological disasters of planetary proportions. Anything that expands our footprint in order to mitigate our footprint is a dubious direction. Reminds of an apprentice wizard that panics and invokes a sequence of spells, each one worse than the other. Discussions and thinking around sustainability underestimat…

A quote from the book overstory comes to mind: "we're seeking technological solutions to a social problem."

yes, and the scale of that social problem is unprecedented and fractal in nature (repeating in all scales within and across regions and peoples).

the shape of humanity on the other side of this challenge (assuming it exists and we will somehow reach it) will be remarkably different from our current narratives and infatuations

Re: Could seaweed be the 'fastest and least expensive' tool to fight climate change?

#119

Post by sacnoradhq »

fosk wrote: post #72
analog31 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, fertilizer presently has a large carbon footprint

Can’t fertilizer production emission be compartimentalized?

Fertilizer isn't a singular thing or a hivemind.

Terrestrial ag fertilizers don't have to be produced by fossil fuels.

The Haber–Bosch process used to make ammonium nitrate can be solar powered instead of using methane.

Phosphate rock processing could greenified for a green "green" phosphoric acid wet process.

Potassium from potash is mostly a passive solar evap process.

For seaweed aquaculture, iron sulfate is used because iron availability is the most frequent limiting factor. It's frequently a byproduct of steel production, in much need of greening itself, and produced in large quantities. Volcanic ash is another abundant source.

Re: Could seaweed be the 'fastest and least expensive' tool to fight climate change?

#120

Post by toss1 »

leesec wrote: post #87
nologic01 wrote: post #82

There won't be any ingenious, miracle carbon removal solution and various proposals may even be flirting with ecological disasters of planetary proportions. Anything that expands our footprint in order to mitigate our footprint is a dubious direction. Reminds of an apprentice wizard that panics and invokes a sequence of spells, each one worse than the other. Discussions and thinking around sustainability underestimat…

>There won't be any ingenious, miracle carbon removal solutions OK but I think there will be.

There is a LOOoong... distance between "I think there will be" and "there is and it works"

Plus, climate change is not the most existential threat.

That would be the biodiversity apocalypse in every part of the bio-web being caused by a myriad of pollutants, pesticides, monocultrue farming, habitat destruction, light pollution, and hundreds of other scaled-up human activities, all leading to the breaking of the food web.

When the food web fails, it'll be nonlinear, and humans will not do well.

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