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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?

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> catastrophic loss of human population At the same time, the population has been booming to the point that close to half of the humans who ever existed are alive on Earth right now. This is a significant part of the current crisis actually.

I remember reading, admittedly in a couple of science-fiction books, that the estimated number of humans that have ever existed is about 100 billion. Was that estimate wildly exaggerated? Or has it been dramatically reduced in recent decades?

No, it seems you are right and I am the one who misremembered. So it’s only 7% of the grand total. That sounds less impressive.

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> catastrophic loss of human population At the same time, the population has been booming to the point that close to half of the humans who ever existed are alive on Earth right now. This is a significant part of the current crisis actually.

I remember reading, admittedly in a couple of science-fiction books, that the estimated number of humans that have ever existed is about 100 billion. Was that estimate wildly exaggerated? Or has it been dramatically reduced in recent decades?

i've seen the same, the 100 billion stands afaik

https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived...

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

#143
post #122
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Unless you get a breakthrough with fusion, I just don’t see us finding the energy to make carbon removal feasible. You either need huge tracts of land to power forests, or massive amounts of energy from another source to do it with tech, and neither of those is going to be the easy fix people believe is coming.

There's a nice handy fusion ball in the sky; but that isn't sufficient for CO2 removal, and if we do have a genuine incentive to remove it, I wouldn't want to bet that the incentives stop at any particular level and thus would give equal a priori credence to us ending up with too much or too little atmospheric CO2 with such technology.

This is exactly where I sit too.

We currently have financial incentives for producing CO2, which are proving almost impossible to reverse.

But let’s say we reverse them and create incentives for CO2 removal.

How are we going to change the incentive yet again, when it’s time to stop? By the time this happens, the CO2 removal lobby will be strong. Think about the jobs! The taxes! The communities!

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

#144

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…

I'm dubious that we can do more with less or that doing less is actually even in the cards at all. I see no way to control that on a worldwide basis.

To me this implies the wizard spells (technology) are the only way out. We need to be able to control the climate through direct intervention.

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

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wait? Is someone really planning to do it? I just read 'Termination Shock' and it was big plot point. Didn't think anybody would really do it.

I don't know of any such plans, but it seems unlikely that global industrial civilization will reduce its CO2 emissions anytime soon, which means that very hard times are coming for billions of people's children. Someone will be desperate enough to try it.

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

#146
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does Betteridge's Law of Headlines Reveal a Lifehack For Climate Change? No.

> Does This "Law" of Journalism Mean You Never Have To Read an Article Again?

No, it means it's safe to utterly disregard clickbait articles whose titles ask stupid questions designed to entice you to read it so they can earn ad money.

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are these greedy people exactly? “Being greedy” is having food on the table, a roof over my head, and a few nice things?

Being greedy is declaring the food and the house is yours, and kick everybody accordingly. Then you offer as little food as possible in exchange for 18 hour shifts of housekeeping

I’m sorry, I don’t follow what you’re saying.

What percentage of people do what you’re describing?

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

#149
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the context of the post you're replying to, that's like believing there will be a miracle pill so you can eat whatever you want, however much you want, drink as much alcohol as you want, and the magic pill will prevent obesity, cancer, heart disease, and liver failure. And even if such a miracle drug did exist, if seems like the better solution is to simply lead a healthier lifestyle to begin with.

Fusion is the key. Replace all of our dirty energy, and produce enough surplus to sequester carbon. We should be pursuing fusion as if the survival of the planet depends on it…because it is likely that it does.

What if fusion is impossible though, from an engineering perspective? Why not continue to pursue fission using safer, modern reactor designs? It works. The timelines for fusion, if it ever works, are too long.

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

#150

I am skeptical of any remedy to climate change that’s not reducing emissions. Whatever you do, be it seaweed, carbon capture or other stuff, would have to be done on an insane scale to make a difference. Who knows what the side effects of growing that much seaweed would be ?

While I agree, how do you recommend we reduce emissions immediately, which is basically when it needs to happen. It seems like largely people just don't care about the environment on a "general global" scale. There are pockets are people/groups/countries that do. But on average people don't. So that leaves really one solution, which is attempting to reduce the amount of existing emissions to stop the rise to some deg…

As a possible alternative to teducing emmisions, I remember reading that the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo lowered the earths temperature by about half a degree for three years [1]. So maybe there is a way to trigger another volcano. Or a nuclear explosion?

I know... These are horrible, horrible ideas. And they really reinforce the "people don't care about the environment" thing, too. Maybe someone has better ideas?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo

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