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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?

#181

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

sokoloff wrote: post #180
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a sector breakdown of emission. That doesn’t address my point at all. Everything human is people related at some point or we wouldn’t be doing it. As you can see the most emitting sector is energy production. That’s mostly driven by countries using coal as energy source and countries with significant oil and gas reserves. It is a lever at the strategical and political level. Same with industry where gains are…

May be worth noting that the US burns more coal today than China on a per-capita basis.

Per-capita is not an interesting number here. We need to curb absolute emission and China doesn't get a pass because they pushed their population to 1.4 billions for hegemonist reasons.

Not that the US shouldn't also stop burning coal, mind you. Same with Germany.

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

#182

Post by sokoloff »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #181
sokoloff wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May be worth noting that the US burns more coal today than China on a per-capita basis.

Per-capita is not an interesting number here. We need to curb absolute emission and China doesn't get a pass because they pushed their population to 1.4 billions for hegemonist reasons. Not that the US shouldn't also stop burning coal, mind you. Same with Germany.

At the same time, we don’t get to talk down to or look down upon other countries who are doing less damage per-capita even as they (quite reasonably and entirely expectedly) seek to improve the living conditions of their people, even while making products (and the associated emissions) for our people to buy and outsource emissions counting to another country.

We’ve been burning coal for hundreds of years and around 150 to make electricity. To suggest that others should do much less than we did and continue to do is, IMO, unreasonable to the point of being absurd.

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

#183

Post by Vecr »

sitkack wrote: post #29
Vecr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nukes. Already paid for, so no more cost. Faster, should stop most emissions in a few weeks, after the fires go out.

Isn't apparent that a Nuclear Winter would actually occur. Now if we could nuke the moon and cause a dust ring to form ...

I'm not talking about nuclear winter, I'm saying if you directly nuke the emitters they go away.

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

#184

Post by munificent »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #154
munificent wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but that curve is flattening out. The UN predicts human population will peak 10.43 billion in 2086 and begin to decline from there: https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth (Obviously, the error bars for a prediction like that are large.) Many developed countries are already losing population: https://www.worlddata.info/populationgrowth.php An even larger fraction of developed countries would be losi…

Yep and there is broad disagreement regarding when the peak will be. I remember at least one analyst for a large found implying it would be much sooner that what the UN model predicts. It’s apparently surprisingly hard to give good long term prediction for population growth. I think it’s a bit late for what you are proposing however. Most of the world population is quite young.

I mean, the entire shape of that graph changed radically with the invention of the Pill, so it's probably very hard to predict going forward when we have no idea what upcoming technological innovation or cultural change will affect birthrates.

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

#185

Post by GreenWatermelon »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #127
dubcanada wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It seems like largely people just don't care about the environment on a "general global" scale. The issue is not really people. The worst emitters are out of reach from us. It’s good to make people more conscious of their environmental impact but what good does it really make when what is saved is a minute of energy production by the average Chinese coal power plant.

The average chinese power plant powers a factory that produces products demanded by western populations.

A carbon tax could be imposed on companies selling products made using manufacturing processes that result in emitting CO2, regardless of where it's manufactured

e.g. American company C developed Phone P, sent it to china for cheap manufacturing costs, and sells ot to US people. C should pay a carbon tax to be allowed to sell that device.

Whether the company will pass that tax on the consumer or not or irrelevant.

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

#186

Post by thechao »

selimthegrim wrote: post #157
thechao wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My argument is that we're probably going to kill the Gulf of Mexico, anyways, with global warming; so, let's go ahead and dump 34 gigatons/year of serpentine in it. That'll 0-out the CO2 we're releasing, at the cost of dramatically changing the Gulf's ecosystem. At this point, I really do think we (humanity) are going to have to make some pretty hard trade-offs.

What changes do you anticipate?

I don't know — I'd just assume that if we began dumping, say, 35 billion tons of serpentine into the Gulf per year, it might changes things?

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

#187

Post by marssaxman »

jansan wrote: post #111
marssaxman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The increasing probability that humanity will become desperate enough to stave off climate change by pumping sulfur into the atmosphere follows from our ongoing failure to stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It's going to be a hell of a mess, and I do not envy the people who will have to deal with it.

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

#188

Post by sitkack »

Vecr wrote: post #183
sitkack wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't apparent that a Nuclear Winter would actually occur. Now if we could nuke the moon and cause a dust ring to form ...

I'm not talking about nuclear winter, I'm saying if you directly nuke the emitters they go away.

Ok, tactical vs total solution. That really could work. Folks would quickly find a new solution that replaces the problem that your solution causes. I could see this working.

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

#189

Post by worik »

pvaldes wrote: post #175
selimthegrim wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes tell us more about the notably clean bays of Rio de Janeiro

This is not about being clean or not, is about being previously occupied by another activity that is economically much stronger so you just can't compete or displace them. All the good places near the coast are heavily occupied yet so, where do they want to culture all this volume?. The other companies have enough money to buy you off of the road and build an hotel, or are the only remaining place suitable for the lo…

> All the good places near the coast are heavily occupied yet so,

A bit tiresome repeating myself...

The dry bits are populated, not the wet bits

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

#190

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

sokoloff wrote: post #182
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per-capita is not an interesting number here. We need to curb absolute emission and China doesn't get a pass because they pushed their population to 1.4 billions for hegemonist reasons. Not that the US shouldn't also stop burning coal, mind you. Same with Germany.

At the same time, we don’t get to talk down to or look down upon other countries who are doing less damage per-capita even as they (quite reasonably and entirely expectedly) seek to improve the living conditions of their people, even while making products (and the associated emissions) for our people to buy and outsource emissions counting to another country. We’ve been burning coal for hundreds of years and around 1…

> We’ve been burning coal for hundreds of years and around 150 to make electricity. To suggest that others should do much less than we did and continue to do is, IMO, unreasonable to the point of being absurd.

Well then I’m being absurd because we are sharing the same planet and the fact remains that they are stupidly burning coal. The fact that they are late to the party doesn’t magically make it stop affecting all of us.

There is no place for virtue signalling here. At some point, some serious pressure will have to be put on countries which are not sorting their shit out or we will all pay the price.

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