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Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

projectvesta.org

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Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#131

Post by SwellJoe »

mrec wrote: post #99
the8472 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't the thing pay for itself in climate impact costs avoided?

The benefits are global though, while the impacts on beaches are local.

Which is true of all of the costs of climate change. The costs are already being most harshly felt in poorer communities and nations, and that divide will accelerate the more expensive and resource-intensive it becomes to keep living "normally" under climate change. As droughts strike rich regions, they'll build dams to retain water than would have traveled to poorer regions (e.g. as a significant portion of Californians want to do already at even the first hint of climate change striking the area, despite its impact on people to the south).

I don't know what the right answer is on this question, but I know that the pain of climate change will be felt by poor nations more than it will be felt by rich ones, no matter what. It may be that staving off climate change, even if it has its own negatives, is less bad than the alternative of doing nothing for those places and communities. But, maybe not. Hopefully it would get a lot of study and small scale experimentation before going big.

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#132

Post by Gabriel_Martin »

lallysingh wrote: post #127

We'll ultimately need a bunch of techniques working together. I suspect this would even be effective with less than 1. But really, what's the cost? That's the main factor. It may be a reasonable way to shove money at poorer countries to do manual work to solve the rich countries' problems.

Everyone's problem, no?

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#134

Post by matznerd »

pier25 wrote: post #55

Even if this is actually feasible and does not have negative environmental impacts, I don't see countries implementing it on their beaches where a lot of tourism is located. For example in Mexico Riviera Maya, Cancún, Holbox, etc, the main selling point are the white beaches and turquoise sea.

Our goal is not to cover up existing tourist beaches. You would be surprised how much coastline around the world is undeveloped and not even accessible by roads etc, those beaches are likely to be the places where we go first.

That said, we believe that green sand beaches will become their own tourist attractions as the naturally occurring ones, such as Papakolea in Hawaii, are (which is the beach pictured on our site). They are beautiful and we are considering ways we could create ecotourism hubs for climate change education etc.

Because most rivers are now damned and sediment flows impeded, many beaches in developed areas are eroding away with no sources of replenishment. Beach replenishment/nourishment is a huge industry and there are not only sand shortages, but even sand mafias who steal sand. So as resorts have to replace their sand, in the future, they might consider creating olivine sand beaches.

We have had early interest from a few parties who own resorts with rocky beaches and would consider replacing their beach with green sand, but at this time, that is not our focus.

We are focused right now on getting a pilot project deployed that can definitively and irrefutably prove the minimum accelerated olivine weathering rate on a real-world, high-energy tropical beach.

The questions of ecotourism and specific beaches is what we will be dealing with as we move to Phase II-III. See an outline of our deployment plan here -> https://projectvesta.org/plan/

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/insid... [2] https://smile.amazon.com/World-Grain-Story-Transformed-Civil...

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#135

Post by philipkglass »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #133
scorchin wrote: post #15

For other mitigations to climate change, see Project Drawdown: https://www.drawdown.org/

It doesn't look like olivine is mentioned in that. Is it under some other name / concept?

It's called Enhanced Weathering of Minerals.

They mention olivine in its description page:

https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/coming-attractions/enhanc...

They don't try to quantify the potential, though.

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#136

Post by nostromo »

kragen wrote: post #121
nostromo wrote: post #109

I have this invention that runs on solar power and water, removes carbon from the atmosphere day and night, lowers the nearby temperature of the Earth dramatically, is bio-degradable, and best of all, it self replicates. I'm calling it Tree and I'll sell you it for $0.

Because it's biodegradable, the carbon it removes is only temporary. Also you are lying when you say it removes carbon from the atmosphere day and night; some Trees remove it during the day, while others remove it at night, but none do both.

Forrests hold carbon permanently.

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#137

Post by petra »

It costs about $1 to transport an oil barrel 1000 miles.

35 billion oil barrels are transported each year.

So transporting that olivine rock will cost an order of $250B.

This will compensate for the yearly co2 emissions , ~38B tons.

With carbon offsets priced at $15-$40 per ton - so there's potential for profitability .

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#138

Post by DenisM »

matznerd wrote: post #73
asauce wrote: post #37

Hey, heads up to anyone associated with Project Vesta... currently your webshop shows an empty store[0]. Also, if executed right then this project could market itself. Travel "influencers" love to show off unique beaches and destinations, and uniquely coloured beaches are always a huge hit. By marketing these beaches appropriately it will generate a lot of attention and (hopefully) a lot of funding for the project. G…

Hi, if you'd like to donate at this point please check out https://projectvesta.org/donate where we currently have our "Grain of Hope" necklace available. It is a single grain of olivine, suspended in a sand timer vial, to symbolize that although time is ticking, it is not too late to stop (and reverse) the damage. Since we do not have a beach yet where we can place olivine, we were originally not planning to offer t…

Setup recurring donations as soon as you get around to it. It's a lot more money, and a lot easier to plan your budget since attrition is perfectly predictable.

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#139

Post by nostromo »

HunOL wrote: post #115
nostromo wrote: post #109

I have this invention that runs on solar power and water, removes carbon from the atmosphere day and night, lowers the nearby temperature of the Earth dramatically, is bio-degradable, and best of all, it self replicates. I'm calling it Tree and I'll sell you it for $0.

Can I buy from you 100k trees for $0?

I'm only selling the IP rights for $0, so yes, you may.

Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

#140

Post by matznerd »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #133
scorchin wrote: post #15

For other mitigations to climate change, see Project Drawdown: https://www.drawdown.org/

It doesn't look like olivine is mentioned in that. Is it under some other name / concept?

This process is typically referred to in the scientific literature as "enhanced" weathering but we think that "accelerated" weathering is easier for lay people to understand.

Drawdown is mostly focused on things we can change in our current activity to lower emissions and less about methods for Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). Their top solution for becoming carbon neutral is "Refrigerant Management"...

I like the concept of the project and know some people working in the org, but in my opinion, they do not give enhanced/accelerated weathering enough credit as a potential solution, even though it can scale all the way up to global CO2 level emission removal. Many of the other solutions they suggest are limited in potential, yet featured prominently... I am working to communicate this to them.

https://www.drawdown.org/solutions/coming-attractions/enhanc...

https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank

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