21–30 of 38 posts
"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?
Engineer a more efficient diatom. Release it into the wild. What could go wrong.
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…
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 d…
>Maybe climate change is not a political problem and not a technology problem - maybe it's a mental issue.
Care to connect these two thoughts for us?
"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?
> "...would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?" Good question. Answering questions is called 'research'. ;-) I'm skeptical for the same reasons as you, too. Let's see... the ocean covers 361km^2. If we could engineer a material with "cells" that were 1000x as effective at carbon capture as diatoms, and the manufactured material was 1000x more densely packed together than diatoms are on the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Engineer a more efficient diatom. Release it into the wild. What could go wrong.
We'd need to be careful not to "overshoot". If the ocean were somehow made into an even more efficient carbon sink, and human CO2 emissions decline significantly in the coming decades, atmospheric CO2 might eventually find a new equilibrium below pre-industrial levels!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We'd need to be careful not to "overshoot". If the ocean were somehow made into an even more efficient carbon sink, and human CO2 emissions decline significantly in the coming decades, atmospheric CO2 might eventually find a new equilibrium below pre-industrial levels!
Does atmospheric CO2 act to moderate combustion ? Would your scenario increase (wild)fire risk ?
"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?
> "...would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?" Good question. Answering questions is called 'research'. ;-) I'm skeptical for the same reasons as you, too. Let's see... the ocean covers 361km^2. If we could engineer a material with "cells" that were 1000x as effective at carbon capture as diatoms, and the manufactured material was 1000x more densely packed together than diatoms are on the…
Though probably one can try to create an artificial wind, blowing CO2-free air away so CO2 could move quickly into the freed space.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We'd need to be careful not to "overshoot". If the ocean were somehow made into an even more efficient carbon sink, and human CO2 emissions decline significantly in the coming decades, atmospheric CO2 might eventually find a new equilibrium below pre-industrial levels!
Does atmospheric CO2 act to moderate combustion ? Would your scenario increase (wild)fire risk ?
This would end pretty much all higher life on land.
There are theories that earth was slowly moving towards this point naturally, as across the last 2 million years, CO2 concentration successively decreased with each passing glacial period. Maybe humans inventing fire saved everything!
"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?
The key point of this paper with respect to synthetic industrial photosynthesis:
> "Reaction-diffusion modeling of C. reinhardtii suggests that all pyrenoid-based CCMs require the following essential features: (1) aggregation of most of the chloroplast’s Rubisco enzymes, (2) a local source of high CO2 concentration at the center of this Rubisco aggregate, and (3) a diffusion barrier at the aggregate border to prevent CO2 leakage. Our data indicate that the PyShell contributes to the first two essential pyrenoid features (Figure 5A), and we wonder whether the PyShell may directly perform the third (Figure 5B)."
A big difference between oceanic diatoms and land plants is that the former's carbon source is bicarbonate, and diatoms convert bicarbonate (HCO3-) to CO2 which is utilized by Rubisco to fix CO2 onto a five carbon sugar which then splits into two 3-carbon species that are fed into carbon metabolism to generate lipids, amino acids, carbohydrates, etc. Increasing CO2 concentration around Rubisco makes the process more efficient (as this keeps out the O2, and avoids futile cycles where the O2 gets added to the target sugar). Some land plants (grasses, cacti) use alternative concentration systems not involving bicarbonate (bundle sheath and CAM).
The real takeaway for industrial-scale synthetic photosynthesis efforts is that it's always more efficient to preconcentrate CO2 into a 100% CO2 stream before feeding it into a reaction process with suitable robust catalysts in which O2 is removed and H2 is added to generate methanol or methane (somewhat analogous to ammonia synthesis) which (if you want to do real long-term storage) can be converted to materials like carbon fiber or diamond.
"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?
We can definitely try to increase wheat production by trying to make a GMO. This could be ground breaking for food production.