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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only when growing. Stable biosphere is carbon neutral.
Not so. Stable biospheres continuously deposit carbon in the soil.
Maybe you’re right, but introducing additional data, information, or argument is more helpful to the discussion than just saying “Yuh-huh”
It may be forgotten in some parts of the world, but certainly not in the Netherlands. Primarily because of the effects of nitrogen deposition on the environment and ammonia/methane in particular. There is basically a stop on building and expansion of agriculture as well as a reduction of the maximum speed on highways.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no way to turn it off unless you can build a giant AC unit over entire arctic or maybe you can dig entire siberian soil and send it to Mars. Not realistic but you could dig part of the soil and put it somewhere sealed, and periodically compress the methane and store it into something.
Do you realise how big Siberia is?
It is called sarcasm.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similar logic applies to the case when we would use laser robots to get rid of weeds. It's artificial selection. Are you suggesting we should stop fighting weeds/insects to get better crops?
Not really sure what you're hinting at, but yes using robots instead of herbicides would be a step forward. Robots can be programmed to not leak out into surrounding nature. And actually yes maintaining a variety of weeds/bush around crops has been shown to be beneficial in certain circumstances: more insects attract more predators of all kinds and as such can create an ecosystem which lead to less plagues on the cro…
I don't think you can "program" a robot to avoid loosing micro-particles of its shell, or to prevent leaky/self-flammable batteries. Also i'm pretty sure the manufacture of the robot would incur processes that are much more devastating to the environment, eg. extracting and refining materials.
All in all, i agree with your point that chemical fertilizers and mechanized monocultures are slowly turning our soils into a desert, but i don't think "robots" are the future of many things.
Maybe some forms of eco-friendly robots can have a future in an eco-friendly society although i doubt it. But for that you'd need to build robots from widely-available and very recyclable materials, which is the opposite direction that the industry has taken by introducing over a hundred rare earths and metals in most electronics products.
Let's just say i have conflicted feelings about solarpunk: my gut tells me "cool" but my brain tells me "this is how we destroy nature". Although i do note some segments of the solarpunk community are more low-tech and would laugh at the idea of using robots for agriculture.
Also interesting to note: the heavy use of nitrogen fertiliser is also one of the reasons for the biodiversity crisis. Which according to some is a problem just as serious as the climate crisis, but is much less reported on in global media. Basic principle for the operation: plants which thrive well on nitrogen (think fast-growing grasses, nettles, ...) get an advantage over other plants (typically slower growing lon…
At least that's my understanding from the little i read about permaculture, but i have no specific knowledge of that field so please correct me if something is off.
Also interesting to note: the heavy use of nitrogen fertiliser is also one of the reasons for the biodiversity crisis. Which according to some is a problem just as serious as the climate crisis, but is much less reported on in global media. Basic principle for the operation: plants which thrive well on nitrogen (think fast-growing grasses, nettles, ...) get an advantage over other plants (typically slower growing lon…
You described the problem well, but missed another part of the problem, which is that mechanized monoculture usually turns over the soil, destructing the humus in the process, which is home to all sorts of micro-organic life and helps prevent the soil from turning into a desert (as we see happening now across the world where mechanized/chemical monocultures have been around for decades). At least that's my understand…
And the way it gets typcially used in agro-industry does in turn have even more negative consequences then what you mention (which as far as I'm aware is correct); erosion for instance is getting a serious problem in some places. Combined with heavy sustained percipation in areas which don't usually see that (also as a result of climate change) it can lead to the complete topsoil just flooding away. And then more fertilizer is needed to make the land useful again, while the part which flooded away is fertlizing/polluting downstream areas. And so on, and so on. There's quite a lot of these chains/cycles all contrbuting to, in the most pessimistic view, a man-made complete downgrade of the whole planet.
Thawing permafrost is releasing massive amounts of CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide, and the thawing permafrost is locked into a positive feedback loop, the warmer it gets the more the permafrost thaws, the more greenhouse gases get released, causing it to get warmer.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/06/harvard-chemi...
Positive feedback loops keep running until they exhaust their energy source, which in this case is locked up greenhouse gases in the frozen permafrost. The permafrost sequesters about double the amount of greenhouse gases that is currently in the atmosphere. 24% of the landmass of the northern hemisphere is permafrost, and it's also the areas of the world that are warming the fastest.
Let's also not talk about phytoplankton populations, which account for 50-80% of all the oxygen in the atmosphere, their population is declining due to ocean warming and acidification. When that population crashes, it will not only impact the oxygen levels in the atmosphere, but phytoplankton are the basis for the entire marine food chain, which 40% of all humans rely on for their main source of protein.
Melting glaciers, thawing permafrost, warming oceans, acidification of the oceans, phytoplankton population decline, these are all positive feedback loops that have started due to human's releasing greenhouse gases. In 10-15 years the thawing permafrost will be outputting about the same amount of greenhouse gases as humans output, it won't be the same mix of chemicals, but it will have the same impact on warming.
Unless someone invents a technology that can capture and sequester abut 45 Billion metric tonnes per year of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere the positive feedback loops will keep chugging along. Unfortunately we only have until the phytoplankton population crashes to invent the greenhouse gases capture and sequestor technology, because once that population crashes and the associated oxygen they create crash, life on the surface of the earth for creatures that need oxygen will become untenable.
Cut down meat, cut down surface.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not so. Stable biospheres continuously deposit carbon in the soil.
You just repeated your assertion from the prior comment. Maybe you’re right, but introducing additional data, information, or argument is more helpful to the discussion than just saying “Yuh-huh”
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/60/9/685/237929
The key line would be this, from a cursory reading:
"Long-term (millennia) C sequestration can be achieved when C from aboveground biomass transfers to the roots and enters the pool of SOC or SIC (hereafter SC, for soil C)."
Obviously there's more context, but this is why old growth forests are huge carbon sinks: because they have undergone the process of sequestering carbon into the soil uninterrupted for such a long time.
Again, apologies for taking the above for granted. Maybe it is less well known than I thought.