5 ms·

A mineral produced by plate tectonics has a global cooling effect, study finds

92 points by wglb 3y ago

qwerty_clicks 3y ago
This is a bit too simplistic and frankly bizarre without accounting for the whole earth system or well established science. Petroleum geologists have very we characterized that association of clays with organic carbon. Finding source rock is #1 in O&G exploration. Additioanlly, there is clear evidence for orbital forcing of climate via milankovich cycles. Pinning it all on plate tectonics is strange without mentioning other factors. It doesn’t really lay out that erosion of mineral rich rocks and high bathymetric relief are associated with organic production. Also that preservation is associated with rapid burial from higher rainfall/erosion and basin containers also in found in tropical transpressional and convergent margins. Additionally cooling temps may create a differential that increases ocean currents momentum and rate of upwelling (thus more production and preservation). This is well known in the Miocene and other periods. Because this happens near the tropics (there is erosion, life, and so on at the poles due to lower differentials) is not news. Overall are very unique situations where organic carbon is preserved, some can be associated with clays and some ice ages. But far from a paradigm shift. I think it’s just a bumbled headline.
- Phithagoras 3y ago
  Phys.org often bumbles headlines (and implications) a bit, but I like to use it as a stepping stone to the original paper (which I likely wouldn't have heard of otherwise). Sadly the authors paper isn't easily found on the public internet for free but the abstract [1] describes coupling an idealized ophiolite obduction model with a carbon box model, giving δ13C predictions that align with known examples of cooling in rock record. As you rightly point out, this doesn't replace well studied phenomena like Milankovich cycles, but it does suggests there's more the the story. I have to say I'm not terribly surprised though, weathering of (ultra)mafic rocks has been examined as a sequestration method for at least 5 years [2] but it's still kind of neat to see models matching the rock record. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01342-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01342-9 [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876610218301450 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187661021...
6stringmerc 3y ago
Anytime I see plate tectonics and its applications discussed it really excites me! Truly fortunate to study under a pro O&G and Diamond Geologist for a semester. Gonna write a full article now actually, will be fun! My takeaway is his frank pragmatism: paraphrased - the Earth will do what the Esrth does. Yes care is good but also if the Earth decides to uncork what’s under Yellowstone…
- timeagain 3y ago
  That don’t sound very pragmatic to me, more like fatalist
  - jrsdav 3y ago
    The two don’t always have to be mutually exclusive, no?
  - pugworthy 3y ago
    Depends on who you think will win in the end. Pragmatic from the Earth's perspective, fatalistic from the humans.
drtgh 3y ago
It would be ironic if it were discovered if are mainly the salt mines what affects the climatological cycles, when the salt, after being consumed and evacuated from our organisms due to the high doses we receive (what damage our kidneys), arrives the rivers and ends up in the oceans increasing their salinity, affecting the heat dissipation and the currents of the whole planet.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Wouldn’t this be a very tiny amount
  - schiffern 3y ago
    Dietary salt yes, but counting all sources of anthropogenic salt (eg road salt) in the USA it's similar to the natural erosion rate. In other words we've roughly doubled the total salinity of American rivers. The ocean is big so that's still not huge globally, but it can have regional effects. https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_Report.cfm?dirEntryId=359581&Lab=CPHEA https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_Report.cfm?dirEntr...
    - shiroiuma 3y ago
      Wow, I knew that cars and SUVs were destroying the planet because of emissions and pollution and various other factors, but I didn't even think about how road salt (only necessary because of cars) was also making things even worse.
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        Salt isn't even strictly necessary with cars. I always preferred unsalted roads.
briantakita 3y ago
Wake me up if this mean we are off the hook for the wealth transfer to the jet setting war mongering billionaire managerial class in exorbitant taxes for a lower quality of life...with a surveillance state as a bonus..."to save the planet". I'm not happy about owning nothing...
- anonymouswacker 3y ago
  But you will be happy once you're sufficiently medicated via the patented delivery mechanism of antidepressant pharmaceuticals in industrial agriculture... :)
  - briantakita 3y ago
    That's emotionlessness...not happiness. Can't wait for the next lecture from "the adults in the room" on the the virtues of colonialism & why the current war on a way of life is necessary for Democracy. Meanwhile I'm wondering how the military or the jet setting managerial class is never held responsible for its CO2 emissions...or how CO2 doomsday cult members do not seem to notice that their international CO2 summits do nothing to affect the atmospheric CO2 levels. I'm tired of this dream of idiocracy...wake me up already
dadjoker 3y ago
Great article - right up to this quote: "And this is also the way forward for us to find solutions for this climatic catastrophe. If you study these natural processes, there's a good chance you will stumble on something that will be actually useful."
- vlovich123 3y ago
  I feel like that’s just sensationalism to get more media attention. The existing clay is formed by tectonic activity over a long period of time and using lots of energy (ie the earth’s core moving tectonic plates). Any artificial manufacturing effort would require similar energy input and it’s highly likely it requires more energy to create the clay artificially than it was to burn whatever amount of carbon gets sequestered (just guessing based on thermodynamics). So I don’t see how this clay helps us. It might be more efficient to create new clay than our existing recapture techniques although I would be skeptical.
  - lainga 3y ago
    I want to see some numbers. It's just porous mafic rock (i.e. pumice) in the presence of hot seawater. ed. wait, no, it's felsic? but it forms quickly in marine environment... either way, there's a lot of it
- onionisafruit 3y ago
  You included only the second part of the quote. The full quote is: "If you want to understand how nature works, you have to understand it on the mineral and grain scale, and this is also the way forward for us to find solutions for this climatic catastrophe. If you study these natural processes, there's a good chance you will stumble on something that will be actually useful." I don't see anything wrong with including Jagoutz's thoughts on this. Maybe you disagree, but including it in the article gives us an idea of the authors' thinking.
gumby 3y ago
I wonder how easy it would be to produce something with similar structure in volume. It doesn't sounds like a nanoscale structure and wouldn't have to be clay. Not because nature can surely made larger volumes (this is plate tectonics after all) but to do it faster and in higher volume than we could extract from the ocean floor. Who knows how long the weathering takes, and its statistical prevalence.
- saalweachter 3y ago
  Because I can never pass up a chance to mention it, the fiery core of the Earth that's moving those plates around is an approximately 45 terawatt engine; human civilization is currently around 19 terawatts. Obviously we're not going to devote our entire economy to producing a mineral, and we're talking about millions of years versus decades, but it's still crazy to me that humans and the Earth itself operate on the same energy-scale.
  - redblacktree 3y ago
    That's fascinating. Thank you for sharing. That really puts the scale of human activity into context.
  - Arrath 3y ago
    > the fiery core of the Earth that's moving those plates around is an approximately 45 terawatt engine; human civilization is currently around 19 terawatts Oh wow that is mind blowing! I would have thought we were at a smaller proportion, to be honest.
    - saalweachter 3y ago
      If you want to feel small again, on the other end of things, 173,000 terawatts of sunlight hits the Earth. Earth's biosphere uses something like 1% of that (depending on your definition of "used", but whatever), so we have Earth's biosphere at something like 1700 terawatts, dwarfing both us and Earth's fiery core.
ecoffey 3y ago
Makes me think of this project: https://www.vesta.earth/ https://www.vesta.earth/

92 points by wglb 3y ago

This is a bit too simplistic and frankly bizarre without accounting for the whole earth system or well established science. Petroleum geologists have very we characterized that association of clays with organic carbon. Finding source rock is #1 in O&G exploration. Additioanlly, there is clear evidence for orbital forcing of climate via milankovich cycles. Pinning it all on plate tectonics is strange without mentioning other factors. It doesn’t really lay out that erosion of mineral rich rocks and high bathymetric relief are associated with organic production. Also that preservation is associated with rapid burial from higher rainfall/erosion and basin containers also in found in tropical transpressional and convergent margins. Additionally cooling temps may create a differential that increases ocean currents momentum and rate of upwelling (thus more production and preservation). This is well known in the Miocene and other periods. Because this happens near the tropics (there is erosion, life, and so on at the poles due to lower differentials) is not news. Overall are very unique situations where organic carbon is preserved, some can be associated with clays and some ice ages. But far from a paradigm shift. I think it’s just a bumbled headline.

Phithagoras 3y ago
Phys.org often bumbles headlines (and implications) a bit, but I like to use it as a stepping stone to the original paper (which I likely wouldn't have heard of otherwise). Sadly the authors paper isn't easily found on the public internet for free but the abstract [1] describes coupling an idealized ophiolite obduction model with a carbon box model, giving δ13C predictions that align with known examples of cooling in rock record. As you rightly point out, this doesn't replace well studied phenomena like Milankovich cycles, but it does suggests there's more the the story. I have to say I'm not terribly surprised though, weathering of (ultra)mafic rocks has been examined as a sequestration method for at least 5 years [2] but it's still kind of neat to see models matching the rock record. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01342-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01342-9 [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876610218301450 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187661021...

6stringmerc 3y ago

Anytime I see plate tectonics and its applications discussed it really excites me! Truly fortunate to study under a pro O&G and Diamond Geologist for a semester. Gonna write a full article now actually, will be fun! My takeaway is his frank pragmatism: paraphrased - the Earth will do what the Esrth does. Yes care is good but also if the Earth decides to uncork what’s under Yellowstone…

timeagain 3y ago
That don’t sound very pragmatic to me, more like fatalist
- jrsdav 3y ago
  The two don’t always have to be mutually exclusive, no?
- pugworthy 3y ago
  Depends on who you think will win in the end. Pragmatic from the Earth's perspective, fatalistic from the humans.

drtgh 3y ago

It would be ironic if it were discovered if are mainly the salt mines what affects the climatological cycles, when the salt, after being consumed and evacuated from our organisms due to the high doses we receive (what damage our kidneys), arrives the rivers and ends up in the oceans increasing their salinity, affecting the heat dissipation and the currents of the whole planet.

actionfromafar 3y ago
Wouldn’t this be a very tiny amount
- schiffern 3y ago
  Dietary salt yes, but counting all sources of anthropogenic salt (eg road salt) in the USA it's similar to the natural erosion rate. In other words we've roughly doubled the total salinity of American rivers. The ocean is big so that's still not huge globally, but it can have regional effects. https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_Report.cfm?dirEntryId=359581&Lab=CPHEA https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_Report.cfm?dirEntr...
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    Wow, I knew that cars and SUVs were destroying the planet because of emissions and pollution and various other factors, but I didn't even think about how road salt (only necessary because of cars) was also making things even worse.
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      Salt isn't even strictly necessary with cars. I always preferred unsalted roads.

briantakita 3y ago

Wake me up if this mean we are off the hook for the wealth transfer to the jet setting war mongering billionaire managerial class in exorbitant taxes for a lower quality of life...with a surveillance state as a bonus..."to save the planet". I'm not happy about owning nothing...

anonymouswacker 3y ago
But you will be happy once you're sufficiently medicated via the patented delivery mechanism of antidepressant pharmaceuticals in industrial agriculture... :)
- briantakita 3y ago
  That's emotionlessness...not happiness. Can't wait for the next lecture from "the adults in the room" on the the virtues of colonialism & why the current war on a way of life is necessary for Democracy. Meanwhile I'm wondering how the military or the jet setting managerial class is never held responsible for its CO2 emissions...or how CO2 doomsday cult members do not seem to notice that their international CO2 summits do nothing to affect the atmospheric CO2 levels. I'm tired of this dream of idiocracy...wake me up already

dadjoker 3y ago

Great article - right up to this quote: "And this is also the way forward for us to find solutions for this climatic catastrophe. If you study these natural processes, there's a good chance you will stumble on something that will be actually useful."

vlovich123 3y ago
I feel like that’s just sensationalism to get more media attention. The existing clay is formed by tectonic activity over a long period of time and using lots of energy (ie the earth’s core moving tectonic plates). Any artificial manufacturing effort would require similar energy input and it’s highly likely it requires more energy to create the clay artificially than it was to burn whatever amount of carbon gets sequestered (just guessing based on thermodynamics). So I don’t see how this clay helps us. It might be more efficient to create new clay than our existing recapture techniques although I would be skeptical.
- lainga 3y ago
  I want to see some numbers. It's just porous mafic rock (i.e. pumice) in the presence of hot seawater. ed. wait, no, it's felsic? but it forms quickly in marine environment... either way, there's a lot of it
onionisafruit 3y ago
You included only the second part of the quote. The full quote is: "If you want to understand how nature works, you have to understand it on the mineral and grain scale, and this is also the way forward for us to find solutions for this climatic catastrophe. If you study these natural processes, there's a good chance you will stumble on something that will be actually useful." I don't see anything wrong with including Jagoutz's thoughts on this. Maybe you disagree, but including it in the article gives us an idea of the authors' thinking.

gumby 3y ago

I wonder how easy it would be to produce something with similar structure in volume. It doesn't sounds like a nanoscale structure and wouldn't have to be clay. Not because nature can surely made larger volumes (this is plate tectonics after all) but to do it faster and in higher volume than we could extract from the ocean floor. Who knows how long the weathering takes, and its statistical prevalence.

saalweachter 3y ago
Because I can never pass up a chance to mention it, the fiery core of the Earth that's moving those plates around is an approximately 45 terawatt engine; human civilization is currently around 19 terawatts. Obviously we're not going to devote our entire economy to producing a mineral, and we're talking about millions of years versus decades, but it's still crazy to me that humans and the Earth itself operate on the same energy-scale.
- redblacktree 3y ago
  That's fascinating. Thank you for sharing. That really puts the scale of human activity into context.
- Arrath 3y ago
  > the fiery core of the Earth that's moving those plates around is an approximately 45 terawatt engine; human civilization is currently around 19 terawatts Oh wow that is mind blowing! I would have thought we were at a smaller proportion, to be honest.
  - saalweachter 3y ago
    If you want to feel small again, on the other end of things, 173,000 terawatts of sunlight hits the Earth. Earth's biosphere uses something like 1% of that (depending on your definition of "used", but whatever), so we have Earth's biosphere at something like 1700 terawatts, dwarfing both us and Earth's fiery core.

ecoffey 3y ago

Makes me think of this project: https://www.vesta.earth/ https://www.vesta.earth/