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No, you cannot. Do the math on how much energy and resources would be required to do what you are suggesting at a global scale. That’s the problem with all of

No, you cannot. Do the math on how much energy and resources would be required to do what you are suggesting at a global scale. That’s the problem with all of these great sounding ideas, nobody bothers to quantify them —particularly at a planetary scale. EDIT: Just noticed your comment about burning fuels. I need to clarify something. And this is important. I have never --ever-- said (and I've written about this a few times on HN) that migrating away from fossil fuels is a bad idea. It's a great idea. We should do it to the extent possible. I've done my part, I installed a 13 kW solar power system at my home and we are on track to switch to 100% electric vehicles within, say, a year. What is NOT OK is pretending that this is going to "save the planet". Our migration away from fossil fuels will do absolutely nothing of note --zero-- as far as reversing atmospheric CO2 accumulation. This has been studied and published. The conclusion was, to paraphrase, "even if we migrated the entire planet to the MOST OPTIMAL FORMS of renewable energy sources, atmospheric CO2 accumulation would continue to INCREASE EXPONENTIALLY". In other words, even if we did the impossible (total migration to renewable sources at a global is likely impossible). Why? BECAUSE THE BASELINE IS 75,000 YEARS with NO HUMANS ON EARTH. BTW, I am not yelling, using caps for emphasis. We can discuss facts or that which we wish were facts. The difference is that we are never going to improve anything if we insist on ignoring reality. It is OK to say "all of these proposals are nonsense", if, in fact, they are. It would be the same if politicians were proposing to save humanity by reducing the planet's gravitational constant by 10%. Ridiculous, but I bet someone out there could make a fictional case about the idea and collect an audience...just like the flat earth geniuses.

AstralStorm 7y ago
What we could do is attempt to develop (air conditioned) domes or underground dwellings, hydroponics and water sparing farming. (Incl. GMO, to hell with greens on that.) That would cushion the blow a lot. Catalog and save the species we still can, like corals. Trying to sequester CO2 and CH4 unfortunately won't work well on big scales.
adrianN 7y ago
Planting large forests and turning the wood into biochar would probably reduce carbon dioxide to preindustrial levels on a timeline of centuries, not tens of thousands of years. We can also do things like accelerate olivine weathering and seeding the oceans with iron.
- robomartin 7y ago
  Once again, it's about quantification. All ideas sound great until we grab a calculator and do the math. Thankfully some math has been done with regards to planting trees [1]. The next questions are: How much suitable land is there and how many trees can it sustain? How much water will they require? Will they require chemicals (fertilizers, pest control, etc.)? How much petroleum will they require? Keep in mind that oil is an inescapable part of most processes. An easy example of this would be transportation, tractors, cranes, packaging, etc. Not being negative at all. Just want to make sure we all understand that without quantification anything sounds great. As far as my investigation into this domain has revealed, yes, trees are the ONLY technology we have that stands a chance to do some good without making a larger mess in the process. The problem is that deployment at the planetary scale isn't easy. And there exists a real limit function on just how many trees you can actually plant around the world. Not sure about your claim that trees can solve this problem in centuries. Ideas like seeing the oceans with iron scare the hell out of me. Again, we are talking about planetary scale effects here. The energy and resources required for such a task are monumental. Beyond that, I don't know about you, but I've had plenty of experiences where an experiment was predicted to result in A and I we got Z instead. I cannot imagine doing something like that at a planetary scale. We could literally kill-off half the species in the ocean if we are not careful. The most important thing we need today is to stop our politicians from spewing nonsense. Seriously. These people are dangerous beyond belief. It isn't only about none of their proposals being worth the paper they are not written on, they could actually cause massive harm and hamper real science-based approaches to making things better. In general terms, politicians have turned climate science into a disgusting circus act (or whatever analogy applies best). If you ask me, THAT is the most urgent task ahead for the scientific community: Getting politicians the hell away from this domain. [1] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-could-cancel-out-a-decade-of-co2-emissions-scientists-find https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-cou...
- robomartin 7y ago
  Another VERY important couple of questions to ask and understand when looking at the 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 concentration data we have is: Q1- What caused atmospheric CO2 concentrations to reliably increase by about 100 ppm in roughly 25,000 years for each (roughly) 100,000 year cycle? Q2- What made CO2 concentration decrease over 50K to 75K years? The answers to these questions are simple: A1: Fires. Massive continent-scale fires...burning forests. A2: Massive natural reforestation and weather. Yup. Hurricanes, cyclones, rain, etc. While the idea of planting trillions of trees is excellent, we also have to understand an important point. The more trees we have the greater the probability of going backwards by decades when --not if-- a large fire rips through millions of them. We can't fight fires at those scales. And, if we could, you'd have to calculate the energy and CO2 we would produce in doing so (planes, trucks, equipment, etc.). Climate change isn't an easy problem, not even close. I don't know if I want to laugh or cry when I hear politicians pushing some of the truly brain-dead stuff they get behind.

AstralStorm 7y ago

What we could do is attempt to develop (air conditioned) domes or underground dwellings, hydroponics and water sparing farming. (Incl. GMO, to hell with greens on that.) That would cushion the blow a lot. Catalog and save the species we still can, like corals. Trying to sequester CO2 and CH4 unfortunately won't work well on big scales.

adrianN 7y ago

Planting large forests and turning the wood into biochar would probably reduce carbon dioxide to preindustrial levels on a timeline of centuries, not tens of thousands of years. We can also do things like accelerate olivine weathering and seeding the oceans with iron.

robomartin 7y ago
Once again, it's about quantification. All ideas sound great until we grab a calculator and do the math. Thankfully some math has been done with regards to planting trees [1]. The next questions are: How much suitable land is there and how many trees can it sustain? How much water will they require? Will they require chemicals (fertilizers, pest control, etc.)? How much petroleum will they require? Keep in mind that oil is an inescapable part of most processes. An easy example of this would be transportation, tractors, cranes, packaging, etc. Not being negative at all. Just want to make sure we all understand that without quantification anything sounds great. As far as my investigation into this domain has revealed, yes, trees are the ONLY technology we have that stands a chance to do some good without making a larger mess in the process. The problem is that deployment at the planetary scale isn't easy. And there exists a real limit function on just how many trees you can actually plant around the world. Not sure about your claim that trees can solve this problem in centuries. Ideas like seeing the oceans with iron scare the hell out of me. Again, we are talking about planetary scale effects here. The energy and resources required for such a task are monumental. Beyond that, I don't know about you, but I've had plenty of experiences where an experiment was predicted to result in A and I we got Z instead. I cannot imagine doing something like that at a planetary scale. We could literally kill-off half the species in the ocean if we are not careful. The most important thing we need today is to stop our politicians from spewing nonsense. Seriously. These people are dangerous beyond belief. It isn't only about none of their proposals being worth the paper they are not written on, they could actually cause massive harm and hamper real science-based approaches to making things better. In general terms, politicians have turned climate science into a disgusting circus act (or whatever analogy applies best). If you ask me, THAT is the most urgent task ahead for the scientific community: Getting politicians the hell away from this domain. [1] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-could-cancel-out-a-decade-of-co2-emissions-scientists-find https://e360.yale.edu/digest/planting-1-2-trillion-trees-cou...
robomartin 7y ago
Another VERY important couple of questions to ask and understand when looking at the 800,000 years of atmospheric CO2 concentration data we have is: Q1- What caused atmospheric CO2 concentrations to reliably increase by about 100 ppm in roughly 25,000 years for each (roughly) 100,000 year cycle? Q2- What made CO2 concentration decrease over 50K to 75K years? The answers to these questions are simple: A1: Fires. Massive continent-scale fires...burning forests. A2: Massive natural reforestation and weather. Yup. Hurricanes, cyclones, rain, etc. While the idea of planting trillions of trees is excellent, we also have to understand an important point. The more trees we have the greater the probability of going backwards by decades when --not if-- a large fire rips through millions of them. We can't fight fires at those scales. And, if we could, you'd have to calculate the energy and CO2 we would produce in doing so (planes, trucks, equipment, etc.). Climate change isn't an easy problem, not even close. I don't know if I want to laugh or cry when I hear politicians pushing some of the truly brain-dead stuff they get behind.