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Comment by hawkice | Hacker News Reader

It would probably be dangerous to engineer an organism that doesn't break down. Imagine a living, growing plastic. Except not a Dr. Who villain.

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This classic novel explores that scenario.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41094.Greener_Than_You_T...

Well presumably we could still collect, dry and burn what accumulates on the shore, and the rest would fall to the seabed. If the alternative is a hothouse Earth, with large sections of the planet rendered uninhabitable, geoengineering schemes like this are going to be necessary. We can start with iron fertilisation experiments - Australia has a lot of it, and is near oceans.

You risk creating a locust-like scenario, where it's impossible to fully control areas with specimen outbreaks.

Wouldn’t burning it defeat the carbon sequestration purpose?

That would be a desperate attempt to reverse a runaway process, if it turns out to be too successful.

>>Well presumably we could still collect, dry and burn what accumulates on the shore, and the rest would fall to the seabed.

Immortal plastic organism will eventually evolve to a lot more that 'trap carbon' work. Human's barely live for 60 years, and yet we can transfer all our knowledge generations one after the other. Imagine what an organism that can never die could do.

> the rest would fall to the seabed

And kill a ton of sea life?

What sea life will be left after a few more decades of acidification?

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