Reversing ocean acidification with aggressive CO2 removal will take 700+ years (2015)
ibtimes.co.uk
ibtimes.co.uk
Powdering olivine and broadcasting that to the oceans would work overwhelmingly faster, and end up pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere, too. Powdering iron and broadcasting that in the deep ocean would put microbes to work doing the same thing. There is no reason not to do both, not necessarily in the same places. There are certainly other clever avenues I don't know about yet.
Just putting iron compounds at micromolar concentration in jet fuel used on trans-oceanic flights, so the exhaust dust settles to the ocean, would automate a huge iron distribution network at practically no cost. Similarly, for bunker fuel burned in ships.
Probably this or that idea would turn out not to work as well as hoped. You just try something else, then. Wringing your hands and doing nothing is the worst of all alternatives. We already tried that, it already failed.
Unintended consequences.
The thing proponents of megascale geoengineering projects are the unintended consequences. Which is baffling to me considering that the entire issue that we've gotten ourselves into with the industrial revolution is about the unintended consequences of burning fuel and releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere.
(I'm not saying that this has to be the solution -- after all, there may be some consequences we determine beforehand that put it out of the running. But worrying about the dangers of a megascale geoengineering project just because it is a megascale geoengineering project, would seem to require our current path to be a known status quo, rather than just another megascale geoengineering project.)
Starting a potentially unstoppable chemical chain reaction to stop another unstoppable chemical chain reaction just seems a bit... dumb to me, you know?
If we're going to be doing megascale engineering to mitigate our past mistakes with greenhouse gasses we should look towards using something like space-based lenses or mirrors to lower the amount of energy that the Earth receives. We can always turn them off if we decide that we want to.
Neither one gets any acid out of the oceans, and instead allows their acidity to continue rising until the entire ocean ecosystem collapses. Then, billions go hungry.
Meanwhile, the moment these shading projects hiccup, e.g. from mass starvation induced global thermonuclear war, temperatures skyrocket to where they would have been, but much more quickly. And then of course there is the starvation and war.
What "unstoppable chemical chain reaction" are you imagining? The exact moment you stop spreading olivine powder, the chemical reaction process stops dead.
European fishing is done with mega trawlers operated by tiny crews.
It's just a political football generally used by nationalists to further their agenda.
You could ban industrial fishing in the UK or France or Spain and it would have no effect on their economies, just personal tragedy for a few thousand.
For example in the UK, out of 66,000,000 people a tiny 12,000 are professional fishers.
For the olivine and iron proposals above, potentially you could run a proof of concept on a lake for a few years first?
There is also fertilization from natural sources of iron and other minerals that we can observe - the sands of Sahara that fly to the Atlantic and the Amazon basin, some vulcanic eruptions had high iron content, etc.
I suppose slowly increasing the scale of iron fertilization experiments could be a good direction.
1) we will make some things worse (just like returning to pre-industrial climate would). From roads in France, life in Eastern Europe/Russia, destruction of trade through the "Northwest passage", ... Some 100's of people will freeze to death in Brussels, London and Paris and most of Western Europe every winter once again if climate return to pre-industrial levels.
I wonder if the few thousand I-needed-heat-so-got-a-fire-I-fucked-it-up-and-got-carbon-monoxide-poisoning deaths will return too. On the one hand we don't use coal anymore. On the other hand with enough stupidity (and leaving something bad on top of it) you can still get even an electric heater to give you carbon monoxide poisoning.
2) it's a project done by someone. So someone will have responsibility. Whoever actually acts will be vilified endlessly for the inevitable negative consequences. Such as those people freezing to death.
3) it will have unforeseen consequences. In other words: despite climate "proof" implying models are complete ... they aren't. There will be big surprises.
4) Nature is good and great and Gaia will save us! We are killing people's belief in nature and/or God by fixing problems by interfering in Nature on a large scale. They will fight any and all attempts to interfere at all just for that reason.
5) it won't stop most of the changes underway. We are in an interglacial. Temperature is rising, just way too fast. But it should be rising. Getting CO2 to pre-industrial levels leaves most or all of the changes we've already seen intact. In a practical example, that means every cubic meter a glacier loses is gone until the next ice age. Ice sheets will grow back more, but not to the levels 100 years ago. Pre-industrial climate generally won't make them grow back.
6) what's to stop some countries from using Climate change as a weapon if they control climate change infrastructure?
So it doesn't really matter that we know of many ways to influence and take control of the climate, and that it's becoming ever clearer we want to do so. The problems are political, even psychological, not scientific (although more research into it would help with more options)
The original steam engines standing in as a pilot project didn‘t do much to the atmosphere. Billions of combustion engines did.
The great insect apocalypse went almost unnoticed until two decades in and an order of magnitude of change.
* All the potential wars where nations had a disagreement, but did nothing.
* All the chemical and biological weapons nations might have built, but didn't.
* ...
And I'm sure glad we built universal surveillance systems.
* All the fossil fuel that might have been burned, but wasn't.
So sure, do a pilot project. Let's make sure that even the first-order stuff works the way we expect. But also think hard about second-order effects. And even after that, continually watch for un-thought-of second-order effects emerging as (and after) you roll it out.
But the US could unilaterally adopt an olivine-based program, beneficially, and demonstrate its effectiveness; then countries who have signed that thing could join in. It might need adjustments, such as enriching calcium to replace what the carbon takes down with it, but you learn as you go.
Even if all human activity stopped tomorrow, now that natural processes are in a positive feedback loop, GHG will continue to increase.
How do you suggest we proceed?
It also completely removes the innovation that humans can achieve. Reminds me of the NY Times saying in 1903 that humans wouldn't fly for at least 1 million years. Glad the Wright brothers and others weren't listening.
I'm also rather unsure what innovation you're imagining here. It's literally a model of ocean acidity based on some tons/year of carbon sequestration. Innovation can make this cheaper, but the model isn't about cost.
If the answer today is 'nothing', then what would ever get people to care?
As for carbon sequestration, I'm not learned enough on the subject to even guess what's possible, or if the idea of doing it faster is feasible from a scientific standpoint.
Is the moral of the story that we must do carbon capture better, or that we're all screwed?
That's what I care about. This isn't being pedantic, it's trying to help get people's attention. This does not.
Not to mention that it doesn’t matter. This article isn’t even a call to action. It is simply dryly stating facts. There is no “come in guys, we can do this!” It instead says “ocean acidification will take hundreds of years to recover.” That’s it.
There is no way to frame this other than clinically. How exactly could it be framed differently? Do tell!
IOW: nonsensical replies that steer the conversation away from the point being made, intentionally or not.
On the flip side, this just goes to show you how much of a scam forest planting based carbon credits are. I've said it before, industrial scale carbon emission takes industrial scale solutions. (planting forests is generally good, but I don't think it balances out a coal plant or any other industry buying credits).
I feel this limitation is where we lose most of the public. For example I am convinced that if we bid the bullet and banned burning fossil fuels starting next January, things would suck in the short term. However, I am also convinced that the progress we'd make in alternative technologies in the next 1-2 years would be unfathomable. I think we underestimate the miracles mankind can do given strong incentives like this. Yet we are afraid to create these incentives because of our low faith in our own ability.
People who hold the money/power don't want to lose it. Quick (big) changes are a huge risk to their positions. Hence, we get slow gradual changes instead. It really is that simple to me.
It’s one of the reasons I’m anti-pipeline. I’m generally against anything that makes it easier to get and distribute fossil fuels. Adding friction is an alternative way to internalize the cost of fossil fuels.
Are you sure your approach is helping?
Not sure if I was clear that my view is the opposite of what you are saying. I believe much fewer people would "freezer and starve" than expected because we suddenly would get very, very industries about finding alternative solutions. We would get through a short period that's super super tough but quickly would end up end par or better than our current circumstances. What's more, I believe that it's much easier to go through tough times collectively than individually. This is often true in war and natural disasters and night be true if we go cold turkey, as long as we do it together.
The difference is in 1903 the breakthrough technology of human flight was not being depended on as a matter of skirting existential crises.
Both apocalyptic defeatism and procrastinatory techno-optimism are failure modes.
The root problem is that we people of the Global North are incapable of looking ourselves in the mirror. The obvious solution is to stop all of the frankly idiotic overconsumption that hasn't increased our well-being in decades and – when no overconsumption means no economic growth – rebuild our economy on equity, instead of feverishly insisting that accumulation of almost all of the wealth to a few people is a the only alternative.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainabilit...
Edit. replaced "westerner" with "Global North" for clarity.
> and rebuild our economy on equity, instead of feverishly insisting that accumulation of almost all of the wealth to a few people is a the only alternative.
Senseless non sequitur. Social ownership doesn’t solve climate change, that’s just a trope from some leftists as a means to couple one issue (climate change) with something completely unrelated (disrupting capitalism). Just look to Norway for an an example of a huge socialist project terrible for climate change (Statoil).
"Social ownership doesn’t solve climate change,"
I skipped a few steps there: the reason we can't just stop overconsumption is because that would effectively stop and reverse economic growth. No growth just doesn't work without restructuring the economy.
Life was much bleaker in the early 1900s. Then the Cold War was decades of immediate existential crisis (grade school children practiced getting under their desks for nuclear bombs).
> Both apocalyptic defeatism and procrastinatory techno-optimism are failure modes.
And this article is squarely defeatism.
I agree that climate change is horrible for biodiversity [1]. Solutions to life that took millions of years to evolve will die and be forever gone. Tragic, irreplaceable losses. Undoubtably the worst part of climate change.
But I don't think this will be an existential crisis for humans unless we trigger a "clathrate gun" [2] or some other runaway system that kills off the entire food web. Or substantially changes the chemical composition of the atmosphere well beyond periods such as the Mesozoic Era. (There have been vastly different climates and atmospheres throughout Earth's history, but we're adapted to a similar enough environment to survive many of them.)
We have to fight climate change, but I think that the doomsday "existential crisis" attitude is a turnoff to many that you'd attempt to sway. There's a pragmatic sweet spot.
Besides, there are a number of more likely culprits that would kill us before climate change (nuclear war, bioweapons, reverse chiral autotrophs [3], ecoterrorists seeding the world with prions, ...). Or at least things that would stick us in this gravity well until civilization ends.
[1] my thoughts on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27279511
Life isn't fair. Life isn't nice.
Mother Nature doesn't give a Frig about humans or you individually. We are expendable and NOT the center of the universe. See George Carlins "The Planet is Fine" because that's reality.
Innovation takes time. 20 years minimum but 90% of all "ideas" NEVER make to reality because they are poorly thought-out "hopium" rather than science or engineering.
Flying is NOTHING like this because this is primary nature rather than technology or engineering. Seriously how is that not clear?!
In terms of technology: look up "entropy" and the energy required to overcome it. CO2 in the air already is at maximal entropy so it takes ENORMOUS amounts of energy to grab at scarce CO2 molecules diluted among a see of N2/O2.
http://www.chem1.com/acad/webtext/thermeq/TE4B.html
The Gibbs energy of dilution has to be provided to reverse and extract the CO2. The C2/C1 ratio is literally 420 ppm or 420/1,000,000.
This is why the ONLY practical means is to get the CO2 BEFORE it's in the atmosphere. Whatever is already there will take a very long time (700 years apparently - but where are you REALISTICALLY going to the energy for the duration - if you say Green, you are full of shit because you are ignoring the actual supply chains for making that Green technology and whether any of that breaks even, energy-wise).
The most effective solution is plants; it will still take dozens if not hundreds of millennia.
If I found the right equations to use, the entropy from CO2 being diluted into the atmosphere is a bit over 400 joules per gram.
Burning enough carbon to produce a gram of CO2 releases 9000 joules.
So if we assume we have to undo combustion to store CO2, the entropy factor only makes it 5% harder.
If we assume we don't have to undo combustion to store CO2, then we could use oil to fuel the process and get up to 20 grams captured for each gram produced.
Did I do the math wrong?
Isolating CO2 is really bothersome but as far as I know it's not the raw thermodynamic factors that have the most impact.
It's not how I read this. I read it as: this is a massive problems that needs massive attention and innovation.
What is their natural state, when we look at the past 4 billion years or so? We know of several extinction events in the oceans tens of millions of years ago, the oceans always recovered without any (known to me anyway) fixed pH value.
There may be long term climate changes that man is not part of, but those are negligible across the past 150 years or so.
But what does that have to do with my statement?
My question was very specific and not about protecting the environment in general.
There have been proposals to remove dissolved CO2 directly from the ocean by turning it into calcium carbonate:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/combat-climate-cha...
There might be some small time savings removing it directly from the ocean, but at 700 years out even 25 gigatons a year of carbon removal was insufficient. Given that kind of time scale, a few years earlier or later wouldn't matter.
Literally the first two sentences of TFA address this.
I will go look for the original study.
FWIW, that's a reprint of this OC [0]:
https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/petrifying-climate-change... [2021/06/03]
TLDR: Uses electrolysis to extract calcium and magnesium from ocean water, which can then be used to extract carbon from atmosphere. Happy by product is hydrogen.
Question: This is similar to the desalination systems, right? Can future infrastructure do both?
One plausible scenario is to have off shore wind and solar farms powering these devices. Drop the limestone into the ocean. Pipe fresh (treated) water back to shore. Bottle up the H2 for collection.
What could be easier?
[0] It KILLS ME when articles omit meta data like timestamps, bylines, links to legislation being discussed, etc.
The first is something much more extreme than "yikes!"
The second is that this news -- as other commenters have noted -- means that there will be plenty of startup opportunities related to climate change. We are already seeing the initial phases of revolutions in food, power, and transportation technologies. Just today I discovered a startup building a radically more efficient small airplane. [https://www.ottoaviation.com] The 700+ years number will likely fall, and the question is by how much.
But the technological solutions will only get us so far, which brings me to the third thing:
35 generations seems daunting. Especially because urgent problems usually go hand in hand with fixes that get applied quickly. Climate change however is an urgent problem with long-term implications and long-term solutions. At the same time, the culture(s) of Aboriginal Australian and Torres Straight Islander people the oldest continuous cultures are estimated to be ~ 200 - 250 generations old. In other words, though 35 generations is formidable, it is not unheard of -- certain spas and hotels in Japan have been operating for longer than that. And perhaps we should somehow set a target for ten generations, and see how much progress we can make in that time.
My hope is that on my deathbed, Earth will at least be trending in the right direction.
EDIT: Perhaps should add (2015) to the title, although this result may still be current.
What?!? 5gt is roughly 15% of annual emissions…
The time-constants of climate are extremely long. The whole "we must change by 2030 or we all die" meme is summarily stupid in context of the REALITY of these time-constants.
How did anyone not know this? Especially if they are so serious and knowledgeable about "climate change". Well, when it's actually religion and ideology rather than science, that's usually what happens.
That would help, but is a bit risky.
> Restore corals?
A good goal, but probably too tiny to matter much.
> If you remove all the CO2, how will the plants survive?
Nobody wants to remove "all the CO2".
> Do we know the balance?
Not in exact detail, but getting closer to 1900 levels would be good.
> Why is CO2 vilified so much?
Seriously? You ask this in 2021? Because it changes the weather and those rapid changes cause extinctions and habitability problems. Including killing corals.
–Exodus