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Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

projectvesta.org

301–310 of 341 posts

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

#301
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to create a way out of this by taking finance structures and adapting them to service public goods. A climate project bank might issue loan/grant type funding for projects, in a model much like how the U.S. mortgage market and fannie mae works right now. Loans are assessed for risk and financial return, and we can use the same type of transactional examination for a hybrid of risk, financial, and carbon…

What says the end points on the receiving end of the monies don't just jack up the rates similar to the University system in the U.S.?

The end points receiving the money don't decide the rates. And because multiple loan originators exist within that structure, they compete to minimize overhead.

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

#302
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extra work. Exactly the problem of having to mine and dump a lot more minerals or plant a lot more trees or whatever if we keep emitting too much.

Market pricing can take care of that though. If the thing that creates carbon emissions is valuable enough that it's cheaper to offset those emissions than stop doing the thing (or find a non-emitting way to do the thing), it makes sense to do the thing and the offsetting.

Again, nobody is saying that emissions need to go to absolute zero, but they do need to be cut. The less "valuable" part of them, if you will.

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

#303
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Could it be the case that contemporary governments and economies are just simply not structured to be forward thinking in this way? I'm confused that this is a quesiton that you're asking, as opposed to something that is blatantly obvious. The United Nations declared as such recently: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/18/ending... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/climate-change-capitalism-eco... "Tru…

That quote is about markets, not governments. It's not great to mix up those two like the parent did. Governments are moving to mitigate climate change. Not all of them at the same pace, and none at the optimal pace, but things are certainly improving on the government front.

Most current governmental structures are innately intwined with the economic system.

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

#304
post #231

So we need to mine and strip the earth of materials at rates far beyond anything we’ve ever done before, then load it up on a fleet of ships larger than anything we have today, all burning the filthiest bunker fuel there is at unprecedented rates to manage the largest shipping operation ever, and dump it all on isolated, natural beaches far from human eyes. Plus we need to check the purity of all of this to ensure no…

[deleted]

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

#305

At first I read this and was like "okay, you want to dump 30 Gigatons of Olivine per year for 'a number of years' on tropical beaches" That sounds crazy, considering we pump out +10Gigatons of CO2 per year as it is. But, does the science actually make sense in that if we actually did that, we'd end up with less CO2 in the atmosphere, and subsequently the oceans? That would seem to make this a great tool (possibly amo…

At the moment the oceans are being acidified by dissolving more CO2 in them - I assume that if you dump enough olivine into them to negate that (or rather return them to preindustrialization ph) then long term you'll also soak up about the right amount of CO2

What I mean is, let's say this process is able to sequester sufficient CO2 in the form of bicarbonate to lower us to a conservative 300ppm CO2. At what point, if any, would we be turning the ph of the ocean to be too alkaline?

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

#306
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, this is true; forests hold a little carbon as long as the forest survives.

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words speculated not demonstrated. We do have economies B for controlled experiments and that data is pretty clear. The richest countries are those who use the most energy to help them deal with nature. Effects might happen depending on the temperature but we don't know which or how severe or when or if it will. We don't know how much humans affect it meaning that we don't know if it even make sense to do an…

Modern physics is also just the model that best fits the data. By your criteria there is no science other than Mathematics.

Mathematics isn't science it's a tool used in science.

The most precise form of science we have is those that follow the scientific method ex. in physics where both theoretical claims and actual observations need to agree with each other plus predict the causality. And even here it's extremely hard to claim something is scientifically proven.

I am not sure what you mean with modern physics, can you be more concrete? What modern physics are just speculation and what does that have to do with the physics that isn't just speculation and theory?

Just because you believe a forthcoming climate catastrophe is real does not make it science in any meaningful way where we can talk about consensus and scientific predictions. You don't get a free pass to claim things just because you think the word as we know it might end.

Climate science is more akin to sociology or macroeconomics, i.e. a lot of speculation and interpretation and very little scientifically demonstrated foundation.

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

#308
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market pricing can take care of that though. If the thing that creates carbon emissions is valuable enough that it's cheaper to offset those emissions than stop doing the thing (or find a non-emitting way to do the thing), it makes sense to do the thing and the offsetting.

Again, nobody is saying that emissions need to go to absolute zero, but they do need to be cut. The less "valuable" part of them, if you will.

Oh, I see now that my "eliminate emissions" above could be read as "eliminate all emissions". That's not what I meant, but it's my fault for not putting it clearly (and the typos as well, I was typing only half-awake). Anyway, let's eliminate a lot of emissions, including pretty much all from land vehicles, as soon as possible. And also sequester carbon.

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

#309
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That quote is about markets, not governments. It's not great to mix up those two like the parent did. Governments are moving to mitigate climate change. Not all of them at the same pace, and none at the optimal pace, but things are certainly improving on the government front.

Most current governmental structures are innately intwined with the economic system.

Yes, which is why the government can fix what the market messed up, because market participants weren't charged for the costs of the externalities they are responsible for. Carbon taxes can change that.

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

#310

“To carry out this plan, it will take a volume of 7 cubic miles of olivine rock placed on 2% of the world high-energy, tropical shelf-seas each year.” To put this in perspective, the global annual oil production is about 1 cubic mile [1], and concrete production is about half a cubic mile [2], [3] (4.4 BN tons at 2.4 t/m3 = 1.83 cubic km = 0.44 cubic miles) [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil [2] ht…

What matters is not the volume but the cost. A back-of-the-envolope calculation shows that olivine rock is about 20 times cheaper than crude oil.

Olivine rock: 10-25$/ton Crude oil: $60/barrel, so about $400/ton

Their website reads that "A volume of 7 cubic miles (11 km^3) of olivine, or around 30 Gigatons, is needed each year. This is less than half the volume of construction materials and less than that of fossil fuel equivalents mined yearly".

If olivine rock needs to be mined in comparable amount to fossil fuels to offset global CO2 production, it will cost about 5% of the fossil fuels, i.e., the price of oil will grow by about 5% globally, which is not much.

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