I had a nightmare where we bred some super plankton to capture CO2 and it quickly colonized and killed the entire ocean and we doomed the world. On the bright side, if this were possible, plankton would have already done it right?
Natural experiments prove phytoplankton carbon removal works
11–20 of 31 posts
Re: Natural experiments prove phytoplankton carbon removal works
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard of capture technologies that literally pump organic matter down far enough that it sinks to the seabed (high enough pressure collapses air bubbles and results negative buoyancy). The problem is that your pumps need to operate using less carbon than you capture (easy with solar?) and that they need to be durable enough to pump billions of gallons of seawater with low maintenance (much harder, salt is terrib…
Why can't we make pumps that withstand salt, dammit. It seems pathetic. How about like a medical pump? Have a flexible polyurethane tube that's squidged by cams to pump the seawater through it. The cams stay in the dry.
It has to handle solids. Something more like a sewage pump.
Re: Natural experiments prove phytoplankton carbon removal works
#13I had a nightmare where we bred some super plankton to capture CO2 and it quickly colonized and killed the entire ocean and we doomed the world. On the bright side, if this were possible, plankton would have already done it right?
Yup. I'm sure they tried at some point and got beaten into equilibrium by other slimy things that were also trying to proliferate.
Re: Natural experiments prove phytoplankton carbon removal works
#14> [People think we] couldn’t possibly know what the consequences would be. > It’s not true, though. We have quite a precise understanding of what happens Ah, man, the hubris to see a long history of human interventions with unexpected knock on consequences, and think, “but this time we know.” It’s comical, even. We’re talking about an intervention large enough to reverse decades of climate change, of course there wil…
Yep at this point we just have to do whatever seems least risky. It's not like we have a pristine planet. We have to balance the unknown consequences of phytoplankton (and other mitigations) against the known and unknown consequences of a >50% higher CO2 level and >1.4C higher global temperature.
Re: Natural experiments prove phytoplankton carbon removal works
#15I had a nightmare where we bred some super plankton to capture CO2 and it quickly colonized and killed the entire ocean and we doomed the world. On the bright side, if this were possible, plankton would have already done it right?
Yup. I'm sure they tried at some point and got beaten into equilibrium by other slimy things that were also trying to proliferate.
Not without first filling the oceans and atmosphere with toxic amounts of oxygen, driving all slimy things that couldn't adapt fast enough into extinction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event
On the plus side, since we descend from slimy things that survived the carnage, we have fairly good oxygen tolerance and completely removing all CO₂ might not even hurt all that much.
Re: Natural experiments prove phytoplankton carbon removal works
#16This article shows that we can reliably cause phytoplankton blooms, but doesn't link it with actual "carbon removal". I suppose CO2 is temporarily removed in the form of the bloom, but I believe historically these blooms have a low efficiency for "permanent capture" because the plankton decay or are consumed. The only way to effectively capture would be to somehow create the bloom, then sink the phytoplankton en mass…
I've heard of capture technologies that literally pump organic matter down far enough that it sinks to the seabed (high enough pressure collapses air bubbles and results negative buoyancy). The problem is that your pumps need to operate using less carbon than you capture (easy with solar?) and that they need to be durable enough to pump billions of gallons of seawater with low maintenance (much harder, salt is terrib…
Even if you get it to the seabed, the majority will be remineralised there. And if you pump enough down there to bury significant amounts of organic carbon, the bottom waters will likely become hypoxic as a result.
Re: Natural experiments prove phytoplankton carbon removal works
#17This article shows that we can reliably cause phytoplankton blooms, but doesn't link it with actual "carbon removal". I suppose CO2 is temporarily removed in the form of the bloom, but I believe historically these blooms have a low efficiency for "permanent capture" because the plankton decay or are consumed. The only way to effectively capture would be to somehow create the bloom, then sink the phytoplankton en mass…
There are water bodies (Black Sea?) that are very poor at depths, so matter decays very slowly. Bogs aka peatlands are also like that, you can literally preserve meat and other organics, and let it sediment.
Re: Natural experiments prove phytoplankton carbon removal works
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. I'm sure they tried at some point and got beaten into equilibrium by other slimy things that were also trying to proliferate.
Not without first filling the oceans and atmosphere with toxic amounts of oxygen, driving all slimy things that couldn't adapt fast enough into extinction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event On the plus side, since we descend from slimy things that survived the carnage, we have fairly good oxygen tolerance and completely removing all CO₂ might not even hurt all that much.
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Re: Natural experiments prove phytoplankton carbon removal works
#19This article shows that we can reliably cause phytoplankton blooms, but doesn't link it with actual "carbon removal". I suppose CO2 is temporarily removed in the form of the bloom, but I believe historically these blooms have a low efficiency for "permanent capture" because the plankton decay or are consumed. The only way to effectively capture would be to somehow create the bloom, then sink the phytoplankton en mass…
How much of the carbon stays in the animal eating the bloom? I would think while it's tricky to calculate assuming them being eaten is bad might not be true. Of course we might end up making farting whales and adding loads of methane to the atmosphere knowing our luck...
Whenever we try playing god it seems we generally mess things up a few times so we'd need to monitor the actual outcomes in reduced CO2 in the atmosphere over several decades. It seems extremely high risk to assume there won't be unintended consequences...
Re: Natural experiments prove phytoplankton carbon removal works
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why can't we make pumps that withstand salt, dammit. It seems pathetic. How about like a medical pump? Have a flexible polyurethane tube that's squidged by cams to pump the seawater through it. The cams stay in the dry.
It has to handle solids. Something more like a sewage pump.
Couldn't they front a pump with a macerator?