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Interesting project, the key take away is that if kelp can migrate to deeper water overnight, they have access to nutrients that typically end up depleted in th

Interesting project, the key take away is that if kelp can migrate to deeper water overnight, they have access to nutrients that typically end up depleted in the surface water. Oceanography-wise, this is not surprising - spring algal blooms in northern oceans are aided by winter storms mixing up the ocean surface and introducing nutrients from deeper waters. However, the climate blurb is a bit odd: > "The extra kelp can be turned into food, fertilizer, and fuel, or it can be committed to the deep, locking away countless tonnes of carbon for centuries." If you dump lots of organic carbon in the deep ocean, you end up with a lot of microbial respiration of that carbon (return to CO2) with an equivalent drawdown of free oxygen, leading to anoxic bottom waters (a process exacerbated by all the nitrogen fertilizer being dumped in the ocean from industrial agriculture). Hence, schemes like providing carbon credits to seaweed farmers who dump their product in the deep ocean in exchange for the ability to sell those carbon credits to say natural gas producers who want to claim their emissions are being 'offset' should be viewed as the dishonest scams that they are.

worik 3y ago
Carbon credits are a scam, true But I do not think it is a foregone conclusion that "...If you dump lots of organic carbon in the deep ocean, you end up with a lot of microbial respiration of that carbon (return to CO2) with an equivalent drawdown of free oxygen," Have you evidence?
- photochemsyn 3y ago
  https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/nitrogen-deposition/mechanisms-of-organic-carbon-burial-marine-anoxia.html https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/nitrogen-deposition/m... > "Any increase in the occurrence of anoxia in the ocean should therefore enhance the geologic organic carbon sink. The solubility of oxygen decreases with increasing water temperatures, so a warmer Earth should have a less oxygenated ocean (all other things being equal). Increased stratification will also reduce the downward transport of oxygenated surface waters to depth. An increase in carbon preservation and burial in marine sediments in response to global warming is therefore starting to look like a distinct possibility." Basically, you end up re-creating the conditions that led to the formation of the majority of the world's large oil & gas deposits some hundred(s) of millions of years ago.
  - worik 3y ago
    > Basically, you end up re-creating the conditions that led to the formation of the majority of the world's large oil & gas deposits some hundred(s) of millions of years ago. Interesting If I understand, that is carbon sequestration?

worik 3y ago

Carbon credits are a scam, true But I do not think it is a foregone conclusion that "...If you dump lots of organic carbon in the deep ocean, you end up with a lot of microbial respiration of that carbon (return to CO2) with an equivalent drawdown of free oxygen," Have you evidence?

photochemsyn 3y ago
https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/nitrogen-deposition/mechanisms-of-organic-carbon-burial-marine-anoxia.html https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/nitrogen-deposition/m... > "Any increase in the occurrence of anoxia in the ocean should therefore enhance the geologic organic carbon sink. The solubility of oxygen decreases with increasing water temperatures, so a warmer Earth should have a less oxygenated ocean (all other things being equal). Increased stratification will also reduce the downward transport of oxygenated surface waters to depth. An increase in carbon preservation and burial in marine sediments in response to global warming is therefore starting to look like a distinct possibility." Basically, you end up re-creating the conditions that led to the formation of the majority of the world's large oil & gas deposits some hundred(s) of millions of years ago.
- worik 3y ago
  > Basically, you end up re-creating the conditions that led to the formation of the majority of the world's large oil & gas deposits some hundred(s) of millions of years ago. Interesting If I understand, that is carbon sequestration?