4 ms·

How seawater might soak up more carbon

39 points by dnetesn 4y ago

greenornot 4y ago
> nearly 1,800 full-size factories on coastlines Good luck manufacturing those in a carbon-neutral way. There are no hacks. We need to stop emitting so much of this stuff. Who is going to pay for those factories that net-reduce emissions by 1/4? what about pouring those fund into avoiding emissions in the first place, like replacing coal plants with something green or not building new ones or not burning down rain forest or getting people to not commute for 3 hours a day in their SUVs or flying intercontinental for a week of beach holiday?
- DennisP 4y ago
  Sadly, stopping emissions isn't enough anymore.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    Sadly, we're not going to achieve even that much. We will not only fail to hit net zero, we will still be increasing year on year long after that point. Net zero was always hard, harder than anyone would actually admit. Because what actually needs to be done is even harder than that. Thus far we have accomplished fuck all and will continue to achieve fuck all.
gmuslera 4y ago
There is no way to get out of this without carbon capture. We already have too much carbon in the atmosphere, even if we reach net zero. And a lot of that extra carbon in the system was buried before being pumped up as fossil fuel. Said so, we won't survive the death of the oceans. And that is what is the worst that can happen meddling in scale with them, if even because we don't know yet all the players there. We are still getting surprised by unexpected interactions, new feedback loops, new things and new ways of things going wrong. Could be (existing or emerging) process that reemits that "captured" carbon, so the effort may be short lived or kick back badly. And meddling without knowing the consequences is not (geo)engineering. Most net zero proposals (and this carbon capture "solution") doesn't put in the map severely cutting down extraction, just moving that carbon around the system in a potentially transitory way, and keeping adding new fossil carbon because capturing something will be flagged as a green card to keep business as usual.
- bilsbie 4y ago
  Why can’t we live with something like 450ppm?
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    It's not about living with xxx ppm, it's about sustainability and pleasantness of the ecology.
    - zosima 4y ago
      How is the ecology more sustainable and pleasant with a different amount of CO2 than 450ppm? What is the optimal concentration of CO2 and why?
      - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        If you start tinkering with things you aren't sustaining it, you're tinkering with it. Increased in CO2 requires ecological adaptations of organisms living in the oceans, for instance. https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-coasts/ocean-acidification https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-co... "Researchers have already discovered severe levels of pteropod shell dissolution in the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica." The optimal concentration for the ecology that we recently had is the CO2 concentration we had a bit before that (as it takes times for effects to be felt). Plus or minus, here or there, depending on other factors such as warming. Forcing the rest of the ecology to try to adapt to increased CO2 levels starts to become really problematic for them when we are also forcing them to try to adapt to things like human-introduced invasives, human-caused habitat destruction and repurposing, population loss due to over-hunting and over-harvesting. It all adds up.
        bilsbie 4y ago
        Good point about OA. I couldn’t find what the control was in the pteropod study. What are they comparing them against? Also looks like OA isn’t uniformly bad. Some species seem to thrive: https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification-a-risky-shell-game/ https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification-a-r...
olliej 4y ago
Yes the ocean can absorb a bunch of carbon, and in doing so you get acidification - wiping out coral and crustaceans, both of which are critical parts near the base of ocean ecology. There is no magic get out of jail free card other than reducing carbon emissions to levels significantly below current, and then likely waiting thousands of year for some degree of stabilization. People talk of carbon sequestering but that needs to not just compensate for the current emissions, but the last 50-100 years of such - given no project is talking about volume sufficient for just what we’re still emitting I don’t hold out much hope.
- etskinner 4y ago
  Acidification is due to the water holding more carbon dioxide (carbonic acid) than baseline, right? This proposal is to turn carbonic acid into calcium carbonate, which 'removes' the carbonic acid from the water. So this would reduce acidification (at least until the water absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere). Am I missing something?

39 points by dnetesn 4y ago

> nearly 1,800 full-size factories on coastlines Good luck manufacturing those in a carbon-neutral way. There are no hacks. We need to stop emitting so much of this stuff. Who is going to pay for those factories that net-reduce emissions by 1/4? what about pouring those fund into avoiding emissions in the first place, like replacing coal plants with something green or not building new ones or not burning down rain forest or getting people to not commute for 3 hours a day in their SUVs or flying intercontinental for a week of beach holiday?

DennisP 4y ago
Sadly, stopping emissions isn't enough anymore.
- jfengel 4y ago
  Sadly, we're not going to achieve even that much. We will not only fail to hit net zero, we will still be increasing year on year long after that point. Net zero was always hard, harder than anyone would actually admit. Because what actually needs to be done is even harder than that. Thus far we have accomplished fuck all and will continue to achieve fuck all.

gmuslera 4y ago

There is no way to get out of this without carbon capture. We already have too much carbon in the atmosphere, even if we reach net zero. And a lot of that extra carbon in the system was buried before being pumped up as fossil fuel. Said so, we won't survive the death of the oceans. And that is what is the worst that can happen meddling in scale with them, if even because we don't know yet all the players there. We are still getting surprised by unexpected interactions, new feedback loops, new things and new ways of things going wrong. Could be (existing or emerging) process that reemits that "captured" carbon, so the effort may be short lived or kick back badly. And meddling without knowing the consequences is not (geo)engineering. Most net zero proposals (and this carbon capture "solution") doesn't put in the map severely cutting down extraction, just moving that carbon around the system in a potentially transitory way, and keeping adding new fossil carbon because capturing something will be flagged as a green card to keep business as usual.

bilsbie 4y ago
Why can’t we live with something like 450ppm?
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  It's not about living with xxx ppm, it's about sustainability and pleasantness of the ecology.
  - zosima 4y ago
    How is the ecology more sustainable and pleasant with a different amount of CO2 than 450ppm? What is the optimal concentration of CO2 and why?
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
      If you start tinkering with things you aren't sustaining it, you're tinkering with it. Increased in CO2 requires ecological adaptations of organisms living in the oceans, for instance. https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-coasts/ocean-acidification https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-co... "Researchers have already discovered severe levels of pteropod shell dissolution in the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica." The optimal concentration for the ecology that we recently had is the CO2 concentration we had a bit before that (as it takes times for effects to be felt). Plus or minus, here or there, depending on other factors such as warming. Forcing the rest of the ecology to try to adapt to increased CO2 levels starts to become really problematic for them when we are also forcing them to try to adapt to things like human-introduced invasives, human-caused habitat destruction and repurposing, population loss due to over-hunting and over-harvesting. It all adds up.
      - bilsbie 4y ago
        Good point about OA. I couldn’t find what the control was in the pteropod study. What are they comparing them against? Also looks like OA isn’t uniformly bad. Some species seem to thrive: https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification-a-risky-shell-game/ https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification-a-r...

olliej 4y ago

Yes the ocean can absorb a bunch of carbon, and in doing so you get acidification - wiping out coral and crustaceans, both of which are critical parts near the base of ocean ecology. There is no magic get out of jail free card other than reducing carbon emissions to levels significantly below current, and then likely waiting thousands of year for some degree of stabilization. People talk of carbon sequestering but that needs to not just compensate for the current emissions, but the last 50-100 years of such - given no project is talking about volume sufficient for just what we’re still emitting I don’t hold out much hope.

etskinner 4y ago
Acidification is due to the water holding more carbon dioxide (carbonic acid) than baseline, right? This proposal is to turn carbonic acid into calcium carbonate, which 'removes' the carbonic acid from the water. So this would reduce acidification (at least until the water absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere). Am I missing something?