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New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively

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Re: New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively

#11

Post by aeternum »

lainga wrote: post #6
tantalor wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineer a more efficient diatom. Release it into the wild. What could go wrong.

I guess there would be a silicate famine in the seas, that seems to be the limiting factor for diatom presence overall among plankton [] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatom#/media/File:Diatoms_Egg...

Perhaps silicate is already the limiting factor and thus we simply need to add silicate to the sea in ratio with the amount of carbon we want to capture.

Similar has been tested with iron + algae and seems to work well.

Re: New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively

#12

Post by asdfman123 »

bamboozled wrote: post #7
incompatible wrote: post #3

"The discovery of the PyShell could also open promising avenues for biotechnological research aimed at combatting climate change ..." I wonder. Given that the oceans are already full of these diatoms, and the numbers must be gigantic, would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?

Think about how much plastic we produced ? When we want to do something at scale we can.

When individuals want products we're capable of incredible things

Re: New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively

#13

Post by phs318u »

incompatible wrote: post #3

"The discovery of the PyShell could also open promising avenues for biotechnological research aimed at combatting climate change ..." I wonder. Given that the oceans are already full of these diatoms, and the numbers must be gigantic, would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?

Am I the only one that saw this and thought, "What's a python shell got to do with it?"

https://github.com/JoelGMSec/PyShell

Re: New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively

#14

Post by arj »

whaaaaat wrote: post #8
incompatible wrote: post #3

"The discovery of the PyShell could also open promising avenues for biotechnological research aimed at combatting climate change ..." I wonder. Given that the oceans are already full of these diatoms, and the numbers must be gigantic, would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?

You have made a subtle misalignment of figures here. Yes, these existing diatoms fix 20% of the Earth's CO2 and are present throughout the entire ocean. However, we don't need to compete with that volume. We don't have to do the same order of magnitude to meaningfully impact the carbon cycle. The Earth's carbon cycle manages about 750 gigatons of CO2/year and humans are emitting ~30 excess gigatons a year on top. The…

I was looking into the numbers and what I could find was that is more like 350 than 750. Source: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does.... Still interesting fact not often cited.

Re: New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively

#15

Post by ThrowAaaaway »

aeternum wrote: post #11
lainga wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there would be a silicate famine in the seas, that seems to be the limiting factor for diatom presence overall among plankton [] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatom#/media/File:Diatoms_Egg...

Perhaps silicate is already the limiting factor and thus we simply need to add silicate to the sea in ratio with the amount of carbon we want to capture. Similar has been tested with iron + algae and seems to work well.

Sahara is full of silicate. Just make it green.

Re: New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively

#16

Post by Qwertious »

incompatible wrote: post #3

"The discovery of the PyShell could also open promising avenues for biotechnological research aimed at combatting climate change ..." I wonder. Given that the oceans are already full of these diatoms, and the numbers must be gigantic, would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?

Extracting CO2 from the air likely requires some energy, and seafloor organisms are almost certainly energy-constrained. We could beat the seafloor simply by providing more energy, if we get within the ballpark of their efficiency. We have plenty of deserts and solar panels.

Re: New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively

#17

Post by adornKey »

whaaaaat wrote: post #8
incompatible wrote: post #3

"The discovery of the PyShell could also open promising avenues for biotechnological research aimed at combatting climate change ..." I wonder. Given that the oceans are already full of these diatoms, and the numbers must be gigantic, would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?

You have made a subtle misalignment of figures here. Yes, these existing diatoms fix 20% of the Earth's CO2 and are present throughout the entire ocean. However, we don't need to compete with that volume. We don't have to do the same order of magnitude to meaningfully impact the carbon cycle. The Earth's carbon cycle manages about 750 gigatons of CO2/year and humans are emitting ~30 excess gigatons a year on top. The…

When looking into the physics of infrared-absorption of CO2, I found papers about that quite interesting. Maybe climate change is not a political problem and not a technology problem - maybe it's a mental issue.

Around my place people burned witches for 400 years - to fight lightning strikes.

Removing gigatons of CO2 is maybe on the same level - only more stupid - and bad for plants. Arguments against witch burning didn't have much data to process. For CO2 there's quite some number crunching out there available...

Emotions, despair, anger, ... these are a lot of emotional arguments in the media out there. People should be more cool and only care about the physic and mathematics... And actually read some papers - not this emotional science fluff from the media.

Re: New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively

#18

Post by [deleted] »

arj wrote: post #14
whaaaaat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have made a subtle misalignment of figures here. Yes, these existing diatoms fix 20% of the Earth's CO2 and are present throughout the entire ocean. However, we don't need to compete with that volume. We don't have to do the same order of magnitude to meaningfully impact the carbon cycle. The Earth's carbon cycle manages about 750 gigatons of CO2/year and humans are emitting ~30 excess gigatons a year on top. The…

I was looking into the numbers and what I could find was that is more like 350 than 750. Source: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does... . Still interesting fact not often cited.

[deleted]

Re: New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively

#19

Post by zigzag312 »

phs318u wrote: post #13
incompatible wrote: post #3

"The discovery of the PyShell could also open promising avenues for biotechnological research aimed at combatting climate change ..." I wonder. Given that the oceans are already full of these diatoms, and the numbers must be gigantic, would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?

Am I the only one that saw this and thought, "What's a python shell got to do with it?" https://github.com/JoelGMSec/PyShell

Python seems to be embedded everywhere nowadays :D

Re: New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively

#20

Post by tzot »

phs318u wrote: post #13
incompatible wrote: post #3

"The discovery of the PyShell could also open promising avenues for biotechnological research aimed at combatting climate change ..." I wonder. Given that the oceans are already full of these diatoms, and the numbers must be gigantic, would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?

Am I the only one that saw this and thought, "What's a python shell got to do with it?" https://github.com/JoelGMSec/PyShell

No, you're not; however, since there weren't any comments here condemning PyShell's (lack of) speed and stating the absolute need for rewrite in another language[1], it was easy to deduce that Python-the-language really wasn't mentioned in the article.

[1] with the obvious advantage of improving performance by 2 orders of magnitude thus solving Earth's carbon cycle issues

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