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Oil formed over millions of years at a rate of about 80,000 barrels / year. We consume 36.4 billion barrels of oil per year. That means we consume oil about 455

Oil formed over millions of years at a rate of about 80,000 barrels / year. We consume 36.4 billion barrels of oil per year. That means we consume oil about 455,000 times faster than it was originally produced. And this is just oil; I'm not counting coal and natural gas. Trying to reverse that process by taking a fraction of one year's plant growth and sequestering it is probably 5-6 orders of magnitude too little to stop climate change. https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/571/how-much-oil-is-created-each-year https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/571/how-muc...

adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
especially since modern farming heavily uses oil based pesticides
- ckrapu 2y ago
  I think it's more like 3-4 orders of magnitude (i.e. 1000 or 10000 of these sites), but yes, it would take quite a few to completely offset CO2 emissions.
iamthemonster 2y ago
But only a very miniscule fraction of carbon ends up as oil. This paper made an attempt at a comparison of fossil fuel use versus agricultural biomass production: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-annual-production-of-major-biomass-types-in-agriculture-and-forestry-and-fossil_fig1_240531181 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-annual-production... I think plants convert 120 GtC from the atmosphere into biomass every year (ref https://www.worldbioenergy.org/uploads/Factsheet_Biomass%20potential.pdf https://www.worldbioenergy.org/uploads/Factsheet_Biomass%20p...) - obviously this is very roughly balanced by how much CO2 is naturally returned to the atmosphere. The additional anthropogenic CO2 emissions are 37 GtC. So there is theoretically enough biomass for us to sequester - if we could do all that work without dramatically increasing our CO2 emissions...
Y-bar 2y ago
You're not wrong. That said I want to take issue with one thing: Between the lines there is a suggestion that doing a small positive action is useless. But that implies that there is either a silver bullet-type solution where doing only one major thing will resolve the problem of climate change, or that there is no possible way we can resolve it. I want to counter the implication by saying that the problem of solving climate change is easy in concept but complex in implementation. The concept is that we must reduce GHG in the atmosphere and oceans, and reduce the amount of new GHG added there. The solution can contain hundreds of minor actions working on concert, some certainly have more impact than others, but they all contribute, such as for example: - Taxes on emissions. - Incentives on sustainable actions. - Local changes such as improved public transportation and cycling. - Electric transportation. - Large scale battery storage. - Renewable energy sources. - Better insulated houses can avoid peaker plants needed in winter cold snaps for heating, and summer heat wave air conditioning. - large scale (industrial) carbon capture. - Re-forestation (where the tree is not immediately burned but instead used long-term in e.g. housing and furniture). - High speed rail to offset flights. - Incentivise local tourism rather than long-haul flights for vacations. - Social changes such as adjusted diet to be better (e.g. less beef, more lamb, poultry, and especially vegetables). - Right-to-repair and related social changes that lead to a thriving second-hand-market. For example, the EU Common Charger Directive (aka the USB-C Law) is expected to reduce e-waste by 12 000 tonnes yearly in the medium-long term and reduce GHG emissions ~to~ by 900k tonnes yearly. That may not look like nearly enough in the grand scheme of things, but once you do a handful of those it starts moving the needle.
- indymike 2y ago
  What I like about the author's idea is it is a technical solution to a technical problem. Taxes, incentives, or for that matter anything that requires large-scale public behavior change is: a) not likely to work b) equally unlikely to cause a change on the scale needed. c) will likely come with unpredictable and unwanted side effects caused by trying to force society to change (which is most often requires threats of violence and the loss of civil rights)
- tomxor 2y ago
  > The concept is that we must reduce GHG in the atmosphere and oceans, and reduce the amount of new GHG added there. That's an assumption. I'm usually in favour of fixing the original problem, as so much of what is wrong with society would be simpler to fix by focusing on the source, but we prefer technological solutions rather than be confronted with changing our behaviour. The problem with global warming is the source of the issue is extremely large, complex to reverse, and extremely difficult behaviour to change because it underpins economy. It is also one that is guided by economy on a global scale of supply and demand, making a single country green tends to just displace emmission to a poorer country (see what happened with coal). For GHG I think the human forces at play are way too strong. This one needs a solution that will unfortunately allow for GHG, because the weaning off on a global scale is way longer than you think, and reversing it is going to takel even longer. It's too late, we need climate engineering, i.e controlling the temperate with other mechanisms. We saw this in action during the transition to cleaner shipping fuels a couple of years ago. I'm not suggesting we polute more, but controlling temperate with particulates clearly works.
jjk166 2y ago
Note this is an issue with averages. The conditions that produce oil deposits are rare, and last for geologically short periods. If you average out all oil ever produced by all time over which oil has been forming, the number is quite low, but during those periods of time the rate is orders of magnitude higher. Further, the commonly touted claim that it takes millions of years for oil to form is only relevant if your goal is to naturally produce extractable oil. The carbon sequestration is practically instantaneous, it just takes millions of years of deposition for the sequestered carbon to get deep enough to turn into oil. Renewable oil is never going to be a thing, but sequestering carbon through biomass is at least possible. And note that any realistic solution to climate change demands a reduction in fossil fuel consumption, but with sequestration less reduction is necessary, and the very large amount of carbon already emitted can be removed.

adgjlsfhk1 2y ago

especially since modern farming heavily uses oil based pesticides

ckrapu 2y ago
I think it's more like 3-4 orders of magnitude (i.e. 1000 or 10000 of these sites), but yes, it would take quite a few to completely offset CO2 emissions.

iamthemonster 2y ago

But only a very miniscule fraction of carbon ends up as oil. This paper made an attempt at a comparison of fossil fuel use versus agricultural biomass production: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-annual-production-of-major-biomass-types-in-agriculture-and-forestry-and-fossil_fig1_240531181 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-annual-production... I think plants convert 120 GtC from the atmosphere into biomass every year (ref https://www.worldbioenergy.org/uploads/Factsheet_Biomass%20potential.pdf https://www.worldbioenergy.org/uploads/Factsheet_Biomass%20p...) - obviously this is very roughly balanced by how much CO2 is naturally returned to the atmosphere. The additional anthropogenic CO2 emissions are 37 GtC. So there is theoretically enough biomass for us to sequester - if we could do all that work without dramatically increasing our CO2 emissions...

Y-bar 2y ago

You're not wrong. That said I want to take issue with one thing: Between the lines there is a suggestion that doing a small positive action is useless. But that implies that there is either a silver bullet-type solution where doing only one major thing will resolve the problem of climate change, or that there is no possible way we can resolve it. I want to counter the implication by saying that the problem of solving climate change is easy in concept but complex in implementation. The concept is that we must reduce GHG in the atmosphere and oceans, and reduce the amount of new GHG added there. The solution can contain hundreds of minor actions working on concert, some certainly have more impact than others, but they all contribute, such as for example: - Taxes on emissions. - Incentives on sustainable actions. - Local changes such as improved public transportation and cycling. - Electric transportation. - Large scale battery storage. - Renewable energy sources. - Better insulated houses can avoid peaker plants needed in winter cold snaps for heating, and summer heat wave air conditioning. - large scale (industrial) carbon capture. - Re-forestation (where the tree is not immediately burned but instead used long-term in e.g. housing and furniture). - High speed rail to offset flights. - Incentivise local tourism rather than long-haul flights for vacations. - Social changes such as adjusted diet to be better (e.g. less beef, more lamb, poultry, and especially vegetables). - Right-to-repair and related social changes that lead to a thriving second-hand-market. For example, the EU Common Charger Directive (aka the USB-C Law) is expected to reduce e-waste by 12 000 tonnes yearly in the medium-long term and reduce GHG emissions ~to~ by 900k tonnes yearly. That may not look like nearly enough in the grand scheme of things, but once you do a handful of those it starts moving the needle.

indymike 2y ago
What I like about the author's idea is it is a technical solution to a technical problem. Taxes, incentives, or for that matter anything that requires large-scale public behavior change is: a) not likely to work b) equally unlikely to cause a change on the scale needed. c) will likely come with unpredictable and unwanted side effects caused by trying to force society to change (which is most often requires threats of violence and the loss of civil rights)
tomxor 2y ago
> The concept is that we must reduce GHG in the atmosphere and oceans, and reduce the amount of new GHG added there. That's an assumption. I'm usually in favour of fixing the original problem, as so much of what is wrong with society would be simpler to fix by focusing on the source, but we prefer technological solutions rather than be confronted with changing our behaviour. The problem with global warming is the source of the issue is extremely large, complex to reverse, and extremely difficult behaviour to change because it underpins economy. It is also one that is guided by economy on a global scale of supply and demand, making a single country green tends to just displace emmission to a poorer country (see what happened with coal). For GHG I think the human forces at play are way too strong. This one needs a solution that will unfortunately allow for GHG, because the weaning off on a global scale is way longer than you think, and reversing it is going to takel even longer. It's too late, we need climate engineering, i.e controlling the temperate with other mechanisms. We saw this in action during the transition to cleaner shipping fuels a couple of years ago. I'm not suggesting we polute more, but controlling temperate with particulates clearly works.

jjk166 2y ago

Note this is an issue with averages. The conditions that produce oil deposits are rare, and last for geologically short periods. If you average out all oil ever produced by all time over which oil has been forming, the number is quite low, but during those periods of time the rate is orders of magnitude higher. Further, the commonly touted claim that it takes millions of years for oil to form is only relevant if your goal is to naturally produce extractable oil. The carbon sequestration is practically instantaneous, it just takes millions of years of deposition for the sequestered carbon to get deep enough to turn into oil. Renewable oil is never going to be a thing, but sequestering carbon through biomass is at least possible. And note that any realistic solution to climate change demands a reduction in fossil fuel consumption, but with sequestration less reduction is necessary, and the very large amount of carbon already emitted can be removed.