Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)
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Re: Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)
#2It seems more and more likely to me that the general approach to climate change is going to simply be adaptation. We'll have to figure out ways to live and grow food in a hotter world that has more dramatic weather events. I think this will be expensive and could tragically lead to the deaths of many people who cannot afford to live in this new world.
If a large country with many poor people are faced with this situation, maybe it's likely that they might try one of these geoengineering efforts as a last resort? The environmental effects are unpredictable, but if it could save a lot of lives...
Re: Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)
#3Every time I read something like this, my hubris alarm goes off. We couldn't even get trans-fats right, so I don't see how we're going to cover all the contingencies for something like this.
Re: Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)
#4There are so many lower hanging fruit for reducing emissions of and sequestering existing carbon.
If you simply restored the majority of the US great plains back to a bison centered ecosystem instead of cattle, you'd produce a similar resource (bison meat) in large quantity while reducing emissions, and the tall grass would sequester an enormous amount of carbon.
Re: Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)
#5There are so many lower hanging fruit for reducing emissions of and sequestering existing carbon. If you simply restored the majority of the US great plains back to a bison centered ecosystem instead of cattle, you'd produce a similar resource (bison meat) in large quantity while reducing emissions, and the tall grass would sequester an enormous amount of carbon.
Sounds dubious. It sounds anything but simple. Converting from cow meat to bison meat would certainly have different economics so who knows what would happen. Sequestering carbon in the grass would probably help, but let's not say "enormous" as if to imply that it would solve the problem.
I don't have numbers and transitioning from cows to bisons could plausibly have some positive effects. But its hard to compare it to plans like messing with ocean chemistry in terms of scale.
Re: Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)
#6There are so many lower hanging fruit for reducing emissions of and sequestering existing carbon. If you simply restored the majority of the US great plains back to a bison centered ecosystem instead of cattle, you'd produce a similar resource (bison meat) in large quantity while reducing emissions, and the tall grass would sequester an enormous amount of carbon.
Would it though? I don't see how because if it did sequester a lot of carbon (not just a one time chunk but over time) then the world would have way less carbon in the atmosphere than it did before industrialization.
Re: Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)
#7There are so many lower hanging fruit for reducing emissions of and sequestering existing carbon. If you simply restored the majority of the US great plains back to a bison centered ecosystem instead of cattle, you'd produce a similar resource (bison meat) in large quantity while reducing emissions, and the tall grass would sequester an enormous amount of carbon.
I was about to say most of the plains are used for growing corn and not grazing land but I was wrong, partly. Its mostly cropland in the Northern/Central plains, but mostly grazing/pasture land otherwise.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses/maps-...
Re: Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)
#8Every time I read something like this, my hubris alarm goes off. We couldn't even get trans-fats right, so I don't see how we're going to cover all the contingencies for something like this.
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Re: Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)
#9It seems more and more likely to me that the general approach to climate change is going to simply be adaptation. We'll have to figure out ways to live and grow food in a hotter world that has more dramatic weather events. I think this will be expensive and could tragically lead to the deaths of many people who cannot afford to live in this new world. If a large country with many poor people are faced with this situa…
Yes, we will have to adapt. That doesn’t change the fact we also must try to slow and minimise it as much as is possible. Adapting to two degrees is probably an order of magnitude easier than adapting to four or five degrees.
We rich westerners will most likely only be inconvenienced. We have our AC and we can afford more expensive food. If you live close to the coast or a river you might need to move.
The greatest problem we will have to face is probably the huge waves of refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Not only from starvation, but from conflicts about e.g., water.
Re: Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron (2007)
#10Every time I read something like this, my hubris alarm goes off. We couldn't even get trans-fats right, so I don't see how we're going to cover all the contingencies for something like this.
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At some point you have to choose what to do, and that's always going to involve unknowns. For instance: 40 years ago, the USA could have chosen to continue building out nuclear power. Not accelerate the deployment, mind you, merely continue the roll out apace. If we had done so, we would be completely free of coal and gas today. Not maybe 30 years from now if we hustle, today. One could rage all day against the risks of another meltdown that this would entail, but when one considers that the "reasonable cool-headed alternative" we chose instead was to pump the atmosphere full of CO2, suddenly that doesn't seem too bad.
It's easy to rant about the negatives of any given tradeoff, but for the rant to be meaningful, it has to be compared to the alternatives, which in this case are "do nothing, adapt to climate change" and "spend truly mind-boggling sums of money to accelerate renewable rollout." Neither of those is good. I'd personally prefer to spend the money, but I don't get to make this choice, and since "do nothing, wait and adapt" seems to be the default alternative, and it's chock-full of unknowns, it's hard for me to say that the geoengineers are significantly worse, even though their risk profile is, as you point out, steep.