3 ms·

Exactly. We have pulled an unnatural amount of "usable carbon" to the surface, which, even if it becomes a part of a natural, stable, cycle, will leave us with

by lend000 10y ago

Exactly. We have pulled an unnatural amount of "usable carbon" to the surface, which, even if it becomes a part of a natural, stable, cycle, will leave us with a higher net amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We can only go back to "natural" CO2 levels through unnatural means, unless we are willing to measure time on a geological time scale (the millions of years it will take to replace oil reserves from the swamps of today). So until then, we would still be dealing with an acidic ocean and a greenhouse atmosphere.

schiffern 10y ago
>We can only go back to "natural" CO2 levels through unnatural means Ok, but let's be careful not to exclude the middle here. "We got here by mining (an industrial activity), therefore we can't use plants in any part of a carbon sequestration chain (even one that also involves industrial activity)." Trying to use this argument as a blanket ban on plants becomes little more than an appeal to sympathetic magic. The only thing that matters is how much CO2 a technique can buffer (annual production x time constant), not whether or not it uses plants at any stage. Plants already have enormous annual production, but for economic/thermodynamic reasons it's hard for purely factory-based techniques to achieve sufficient scale. It becomes a money sink both up-front and operationally, respectively because A) factories are expensive, and B) hard thermodynamic constraints mean that it's at a fundamental competitive disadvantage compared to any typical [reminder: energy consuming] factory.
- lend000 10y ago
  > therefore we can't use plants in any part of a carbon sequestration chain (even one that also involves industrial activity) Not sure where your logic is coming from here. I am not saying we shouldn't use plants, but I am saying that even if we let forests retake "all the land," the stable CO2 level would be a bit higher than pre-industrialization, and it would stay that way for a long time until dead plant matter returned significant amounts of carbon to the deeper parts of the crust. Therefore, using other methods like the one in the article are necessary if we want to reduce CO2 levels.
  - schiffern 10y ago
    >let forests retake "all the land," I agree, a hands-off approach is insufficient. We would need to actively manage those forests (which is just as unnatural an activity btw), using intelligent design to improve upon the carbon density possible solely from blind natural processes. Big industrial thermodynamic sinks don't scale (and imo never will), simply because they can't economically compete with conventional energy consuming factories. An approach is needed that sequesters carbon while also producing sufficiently valuable goods to society (ie probably not rocks). Food is one possibility, and can avoid carbon futility since in perennial systems the annual food yield is a small percentage of the total carbon stored in the biome.

by lend000 10y ago

schiffern 10y ago

>We can only go back to "natural" CO2 levels through unnatural means Ok, but let's be careful not to exclude the middle here. "We got here by mining (an industrial activity), therefore we can't use plants in any part of a carbon sequestration chain (even one that also involves industrial activity)." Trying to use this argument as a blanket ban on plants becomes little more than an appeal to sympathetic magic. The only thing that matters is how much CO2 a technique can buffer (annual production x time constant), not whether or not it uses plants at any stage. Plants already have enormous annual production, but for economic/thermodynamic reasons it's hard for purely factory-based techniques to achieve sufficient scale. It becomes a money sink both up-front and operationally, respectively because A) factories are expensive, and B) hard thermodynamic constraints mean that it's at a fundamental competitive disadvantage compared to any typical [reminder: energy consuming] factory.

lend000 10y ago
> therefore we can't use plants in any part of a carbon sequestration chain (even one that also involves industrial activity) Not sure where your logic is coming from here. I am not saying we shouldn't use plants, but I am saying that even if we let forests retake "all the land," the stable CO2 level would be a bit higher than pre-industrialization, and it would stay that way for a long time until dead plant matter returned significant amounts of carbon to the deeper parts of the crust. Therefore, using other methods like the one in the article are necessary if we want to reduce CO2 levels.
- schiffern 10y ago
  >let forests retake "all the land," I agree, a hands-off approach is insufficient. We would need to actively manage those forests (which is just as unnatural an activity btw), using intelligent design to improve upon the carbon density possible solely from blind natural processes. Big industrial thermodynamic sinks don't scale (and imo never will), simply because they can't economically compete with conventional energy consuming factories. An approach is needed that sequesters carbon while also producing sufficiently valuable goods to society (ie probably not rocks). Food is one possibility, and can avoid carbon futility since in perennial systems the annual food yield is a small percentage of the total carbon stored in the biome.