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I would strongly suggest investigating the claims of http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/olivineagainstclimatechange23.pdf http://www.innov

• strainer 8y ago
  > nobody wants to accept a bad outcome, but in this case I think it is better than the alternative. I don't like this reasoning because when it comes to environmental effects we've always had individual firm expectations but we haven't known, we didn't know and we still don't know. But I do believe the growing crisis demands urgent research and gradual early implementation of a range of projects like ocean seeding, and others which may be opposed by a most skeptical portion of the environmental movement. But when there are doubts about the details of potentially massive eco-engineering projects, please dont write them up as 'qualms of environmentalists' The movement has broadcast for decades the crisis we face today, helped in many situations and hindered very few - it was never truly characterized by sentimentality.
• sandworm101 8y ago
  >> I understand the qualms of environmentalists As one of those environmentalists, my qualm isn't so much that this may be dangerous but that carbon capture tech (and associated "carbon capture and storage") is often championed by people looking to delay implementation of technology and laws that limit carbon emissions. It is far more energy-efficient to curtail carbon emissions than try to capture it once emitted. The most efficient use of money is to do things like close coal power plants in favor of solar/wind. Once all the coal plants are gone, then is the time to focus on capture.
  • ttul 8y ago
    How about investing in lobbying? If $10B were sent to politicians, perhaps they’d implement a carbon tax? The future of the world is presently in the hands of pasty white men on Capitol Hill. Why not sequester their carbon (hot air) first?
    • ISL 8y ago
      Washington State is voting this week on a carbon tax. That future is now, should voters choose it.
      • TeMPOraL 8y ago
        How this is not on top of HN for the past month? It's not the first time I see a comment like "actually, a $critical-legislation is under vote this/next week somewhere". It feels that the important cases lack marketing.
        • ISL 8y ago
          Politics are generally decremented on the front page. It's not just N, but rather HN, after all. It is news, though. It is the second time that a carbon tax has been on the Washington ballot. It may pass this time around.
          • philipkglass 8y ago
• bobthepanda 8y ago
  I mean, do we know that local toxic algae blooms are the only effect this will have? This to me smells like it could have potential unforeseen consequences like the Deepwater Horizon cleanup.
  • ChuckMcM 8y ago
    The point is perhaps that we know we're driving off a cliff. Is this going to slow us down or not? If you look at the proposals, what does setting up half the land mass of the Sahara as algae lagoons do? How does that affect local weather patterns, wildlife, Etc. The argument that the action may be dangerous is not as compelling when the prognosis for inaction is bleak.
    • Loughla 8y ago
      But that's missing the point. You're saying that we have to then sell these two messages - one of which is being supported by actors that are not acting in good faith. Message 1: yes, this could have unpredictable and devastating consequences in new and exciting ways, and you are directly responsible for it. Message 2: (current message) we shouldn't do that and you're already doing enough because you have a more fuel efficient truck than you had in the 90's, and you use LED lights. For most people, that's what's in the back of their head, I would argue. (note that I'm not agreeing with either). How do you sell that?
      • ChuckMcM 8y ago
        Fair enough, it wouldn't be the first time I missed the point. But lets talk about how we talk about it (which is kind of meta but hopefully it will help) The message in that CFS was pretty clear to me, it was "We aren't doing enough, and not doing anything will doom us to yet another mass extinction event." (they aren't as explicit as that but nearly all of the literature on "Phase 3" of this stuff has nearly everything dying off. So the first thing to check is this, is that the message you heard in the linked CFS? Or did you hear a different message than what I heard? Assuming you heard the same message, we can talk about the next place in the conversation where things may go off the rails, a comment of the form "We already know how enhance algae blooms by fertilizing the ocean." Which related to previous work on dumping ferrous material into the ocean to create an algae bloom that would capture carbon and sequester it. And the response to that comment, the message I heard/read was (paraphrased) "How do we know what that will do in the long term? We should not make such a move without knowing the consequences of making it." In my reading, that has been a common response to large consequential ideas such as the fertilize the ocean. So is that something you've heard as well or is the first you have heard it? So the messages in that exchange that I've heard are 1) We understand the mechanism of phytoplankton blooms and we know how to create them, we should try that. 2) We should not try that because we don't know if creating such a bloom would generate a net positive result, and we don't know what intermediate results it might generate as well. I combine the RFS message of "We're doomed, none of the current things people are doing to ameliorate CO2 gain in the atmosphere are working." with "We shouldn't try things if we can't predict the outcome." and come up with, "Inaction is worse than not fully understood action if inaction is leading to destruction of the world." Now I often lose the climate deniers on that last bit. In their belief system as I understand it, it is not something we are doing that affects climate so there is no compelling call for action on human's part. So, what part of the point did I miss? As for "selling it" I am not sure who is being sold here. In my response, I was making the argument against inaction, against the environmental argument of 'do no harm.' I recognize that doctor's admit that you have to poison your patient (which does great harm) using chemotherapy when they are suffering from cancer because the alternative is just watching them die. What the doctor knows is that once the risk of cancer is gone the normal processes of the body will recover the patient to a better state of health. The argument for iron fertilization is similar, which is that while it may do short term damage, by pulling the CO2 out of the air the Earth will be in a better place after its own restoration mechanisms have undone the damage. Sadly, unlike cancer patients we can't do clinical trials on planets, we've just got the one.
• marmadukester39 8y ago
  What about doing it in landlocked major bodies of water? I'd sacrifice the Great Lakes for the climate.
  • chasely 8y ago
    You would sacrifice the largest source of freshwater on earth for the climate? EDIT: The Great Lakes are not land-locked either. They flow out to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence River.
    • JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      Isn't Baikal much larger?
      • btilly 8y ago
        It depends on how you measure. By surface area, no. By volume, yes.
  • 52-6F-62 8y ago
    Those are the largest [above ground] freshwater bodies on the planet. That is not a good idea. We're going to need them.
  • adamsea 8y ago
    Millions of people depend on the Great Lakes for their supply of fresh water. Water scarcity is already a problem, that would make it worse.
• greglindahl 8y ago
  I thought that the biggest problem with the "seeding the ocean with iron" method of sequestration was not the "qualms of environmentalists" but that it turned out to sequester a lot less carbon than initially thought?
  • philipkglass 8y ago
    Its sequestration efficacy is not well-established yet. I think that more experiments should be run to better quantify the effects. Some environmentalists oppose even additional research-scale trials. Some proponents of iron fertilization have internalized "some environmentalists oppose this, and efficacy still has large error bars" as "it probably works great but technophobic environmentalists want us to suffer deprivation instead."
    • marcosdumay 8y ago
      From the appearances, it has a lot of potential. Iron is extremely plentiful and has a very large impact on the small systems it was tried. It is possible that inefficiencies take such a toil that it stops being viable, but it's not the opposition that make people think it can have a large impact.
      • philipkglass 8y ago
        There are reasons to think it may be effective. But I try to live by "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool." I want additional experiments to make findings robust. In particular, even if small fertilization inputs reliably lead to large biomass increases, we need to know how much of that added biomass sinks to the deep ocean before we know how effective it is at sequestration. That can mean trying to track carbon movement over complicated food webs.
        • mchannon 8y ago
          Last I ran the numbers for that chapter, I determined that there simply isn’t enough ocean surface area to achieve the carbon absorption necessary, even if we used every underfertilized patch of seawater on the planet. It was close, but it still came up short.
• matznerd 8y ago
  I am working on a non-profit that is utilizing Schuiling's research and is actually getting this project done. We are scouting beaches right now for a "wiggle" tank, which is a sort of see-saw like device where we can gather data to affirm the real world dissolution rate. The chemistry, however, is sound that each 1 ton of olivine will sequester 1.25 tons of carbon. By the end of 2019 we hope to have our first olivine on the beach. The project will be funded by donations, but we will also be selling olivine/peridot jewelry that's price equates to actual tons of olivine we will dump on the beach. Raw olivine is currently ~$20-$25/ton and the average us person puts out 15-20 tons of CO2/year. The next closest technology for sequestering carbon is well over $150/per ton. For more info and access to the full text studies, visit https://Climitigation.org https://Climitigation.org and Project Vesta https://ProjectVesta.org https://ProjectVesta.org
  • deleted 8y ago
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  • aoner 8y ago
    Hi Matz, this is super awesome. I'm looking for some resources to offset my carbon footprint to live carbon neutral. I was thinking about tree offsetting but I'd love to donate this to advanced weathering $20 per ton for offsetting is peanuts and I'd be more then happy to pay this. Do you have some info on the rate of sequestration of olivine? Are you also taking for account that you need to transport the olivine and crush it to increase the surface area?
    • matznerd 8y ago
      Hi, thanks just working to apply the hard work of Schuiling and others. Glad to hear that the pricing makes sense to you as well. I love trees and suggest we plant as many of them as possible, but the problem with using them as a means of carbon sequestration is that you have to protect them for 50+ years from pests, fire etc. If the trees were to burn, all of that carbon you worked so hard to sequester would be released, so it is not foolproof and decades of sequestration can be rolled back in hours. Whereas once the olivine grains are on the beach, it is going into the seafloor in a pretty much irreversible chemical reaction. As for the rate of olivine weathering, it is the fastest of any major rock-forming silicate mineral and is further accelerated by the abrasions of rock, and by microbes. The rate of sequestration depends on the size of the particles, and how much is spread per each beach. Many of the calculations affirming the data have been measured from static piles of olivine tailings (pilings of rock that sit as "waste" in mines sites.) Those rates alone are impressive, but we are looking to utilize the beaches to further increase the rate of weathering to at least 20 microns per year. At that rate, a grain of olivine with a diameter of 100 microns will dissolve in around 5 years. "Our experiments show that olivine grains when kept in motion weather fast because continuous mutual impacts remove reaction-inhibiting silica from the surface and tiny µm-size slivers are produced allowing a fast chemical reaction. The application of olivine and other (ultra)mafic minerals like serpentine in high-energy shallow marine environments can make a significant contribution in the fight against climate change. The counteracting effect on ocean acidification is immediate." Here is the basic reaction: Mg2SiO4 + 4 CO2 + 4 H2O −→ 2 Mg^2+ + 4HCO3^- + H4SiO4 CO2 is consumed, and Mg2+, Fe2+, H4SiO4 and HCO3^- are produced. This paper has the best calculations and a lab experiment demonstrating the rate. https://climitigation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Rolling-stones-fast-weather-of-olivine.pdf https://climitigation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Rolling... This one is good as well and discusses the tailing pilings and importance of microbes alone in possibly accelerating the rate up to 4,000x https://climitigation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Olivine-against-climate-change-and-ocean-acidification.pdf https://climitigation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Olivine...
• pokemongoaway 8y ago
  I don't know how any scientists take this seriously. CO2 increases biological growth and metabolism, thus increasing the metabolizers who sequester CO2... Everyone undervalues the stabilization processes and overemphasizes the run-away processes - and the only reason I can see for it is that their jobs depend on this belief structure. Because I know people only accept mainstream authorities as sources, unfortunately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v5I70Gt_NQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v5I70Gt_NQ
• User23 8y ago
  > wipe out all shellfish species worldwide Look you raise good points but this is nonsense. The Earth has had far higher CO2 concentrations for geological periods and there’s no fossil record suggesting shellfish all died. This kind of Trumpian rhetoric just hands ammo to the skeptics.
  • intended 8y ago
    Right, the ones that exist today should be evolved for today’s environment. Higher acid levels should mean most of the average stock will die, and the mutants which survive will eventually adapt. Think of the George Carlin skit - the planet will be fine, just we humans and everything we know will be gone.
    • User23 8y ago
      I agree with your main point, but I'm pretty sure that evolution and adaptation work for humans too and there are an awful lot of human beings. None of this is to discount the potentially severe (unknown, scary) risks, but I don't think human extinction is really in play due to a warming climate. The most serious risk I'm aware of is that high CO2 content in the atmosphere will interfere with human respiration. Evolution will handle this, just like it handled human beings living in the Himalayas.
    • eanzenberg 8y ago
      How is this not fear-mongering? Most people will be fine with a 5deg C global increase.
      • spookthesunset 8y ago
        Maybe people, yes, in the short term. But everything that people depend on.... not so much. I mean, yeah we'd live but you an kiss coral reefs goodbye, glaciers, etc... It would be a rather shitty place to live.
        • eanzenberg 8y ago
• ivanhoe 8y ago
  As fairly experienced aquarium hobbyist I'm a bit worried about the side-effects of this approach. If you add amounts of olivine that are sufficient to create a globally significant effect on CO2 how do you avoid altering the local environment parameters too quickly? Marine animals are not as adapted to quickly changing environment like freshwater or terrestrial animals, and sudden swings in CO2, pH and hardness (which are all interconnected) could just wipe out the whole local ecosystems. Cyanobacteria and algae blooms are just the tip of the iceberg here. This is something that needs to be implemented really carefully and step by step to avoid causing even worse catastrophe.
  • elihu 8y ago
    That's a reasonable concern; I'd expect anyone doing this large-scale would first investigate local environmental impact. Presumably one could add olivine in areas of the ocean that are far from coastlines, and spread it around in a wide area so local effects are less extreme. I don't know if dumping it in the deep ocean where there's less life to disrupt is viable, but if so maybe that would mitigate negative impact.
• superkuh 8y ago
  Unfortunately ocean fertilization efforts are limited by phosphorus. And even in simulations where the entire phosphorus content of the ocean was "magically" replenished every year for the max amount of biomass possible it only slightly delayed air CO2 levels by about a decade and didn't significantly impact ocean CO2 levels.
• chicob 8y ago
  Large-scale geoengineering has the potential for unexpected consequences that could seriously damage the environment. This applies to olivine mining and desert flooding. Personally, I think a good compromise lies in resorting to algal blooms in a controlled setting. Algal blooms have another advantage: there is already hypertrophication around farming regions where water bodies are polluted with fertilizers. So the ideia is to build artificial reservoirs as buffers for algal blooms that not only pollute the water, jam irrigation systems and decrease biodiversity, but also as a means for carbon fixation. The algae would then have to be harvested, processed and buried. A fraction of it could be used to produce biofuels, thus reducing the need for fossil fuels, and for fertilization, which would reduce the usage of artificial, carbon-releasing fertilizers. My only doubt is whether the scalability is interesting enough.