Climate change

Why couldnt we make an enourmous platform in the middle of the ocean, plant millions of plants there and pump out the oxygen? Make specialized technology to only suck in carbon dioxide, have the plants make it into oxygen, and pump it outside of the massive fortress. I’d like to see some sort of growth on this, cause apparently if we don’t do something the earth is dead.

We can do all of those things.

But, how will you pay for them without the current fossil fuel economy? ;^)

The logical answer to that is the UN passing an act that makes Earth preservation projects a sort of team building activity. “Contribute to the preservation of earth, or you will no longer be protected under our laws”

chekt

that will fall on it's face in record time
the only reason the UN has any power at all is because they can use the USA as a hammer

If u wanna fix the environment embargo the gooks until they stop

>blame the Chinese REEE despite cumulative anthropogenic carbon emission in the past 200 years is due mostly to industrialized western nation

China just beginning to industrialize at best in the 80s and 90s. US and Western Europe had 200 years head start on polluting the planet

>a single entity restricting resources unless you follow their rules
This would be >logical if humans weren't human

What happens when the plants die? Does the carbon disappear? I'm afraid it doesn't. Planting forests doesn't suck out carbon endlessly, eventually there is an equilibrium between plant photosynthesis, plant respiration, and the decay of organic matter.
If, as you say, we could somehow only let oxygen out, then eventually we would perhaps have a dense amount of carbon there. However, this carbon would be waiting to be released. I think there other methods of carbon sequestration that are more plausible.

iron seeding of the ocean is a similar idea
the vast majority of carbon is locked up in rocks, we just have to find a way to accelerate hydrolysis but shell-forming organisms are threatened by ocean acidification due to CO2
It might make more sense to raise plankton, foraminifera and other shell-forming organisms as opposed to plants if you want to sequester carbon
maybe plants grow faster but they decompose when they die, shells don't

dude, you know what? THERE ARE ALREADY PLANTS IN THE OCEAN! They aren't good enough at removing CO2 fast enough to make a damn difference.

not even close to the truth, all the trees in the world are little bitches compared to the unicellular gods of the biosphere, algae

algae still aren't good enough to remove CO2 fast enough to make a difference. Algae are pretty based though.

We should build big ponds in the desert, grow algae in them, then bury the algae.

they are so good enough to remove carbon fast enough, they do significantly more photosynthesis than forests
there's more ocean than land and algae can grow pretty much everywhere in the ocean

To properly sequester carbon, the algae need to be buried through the "carbon pump" e.g. sinking particulate organic matter. Scientist call this "e-ratio" short for export ratio. Sadly the export ratio are pretty small.

When you seed phytoplankon, by giving them say nitrate or Fe (depending on which are the limiting factor) most of it just boom and bust in span of days, creating massive anoxic (oxygen depleted) surface ocean. Phytoplankons by themselves are not heavy enough to sink into the ocean, so phytoplankon e-ratio is zero. They need to be eaten by zooplankons, then zooplankons need to be eaten by bigger critters krills to have a chance to sink all the way through the mesopelagic zone for it to be isolated from the atmosphere.

Any part of carbon from the original algae bloom that did not sink through the mesopelagic zone will eventually enter the surface ocean DIC (dissolved inorganic carbon) and then would equlibrate and outgass back to the atmosphere.

The overall e-ratio of the world's ocean is like 0.03 to 0.05, which is not anywhere near high enough.

This is why beyond Fe fertilization, some scientist have deviced goofy contraption to artificially sequester carbon and increase the export ratio of artificially induced algae bloom, to a extremely limited and often nonexistent or counterproductive result

yeah but oxygen and like I said before - shell forming organisms
isn't hydrolysis like the main way carbon comes out of the atmosphere? we just need to grow limestone via forams and shit

No the main sequestration is through the bio pump.

Even shell forming organisms, primary producers like forams are still not heavy enough to sink through into any significant component. You need multi cell organisms to be able to have e-ratio of not zero, and 99% primary photosynthetic producers in the oceans are single celled organisms (the exception being sea weeds, which constitutes a negligible portion of ocean net primary production).

Finally limestone dissolves in acid. As you artificially bloom primary production in the ocean, you increase DIC, which then decreases pH and dissolves your limestone.

Even the best scenario of ocean sequestration doesn't involve limestone. It involves getting the carbon through the mesopelagic zone, so that it goes into the deep ocean currents. Once you go beyond the surface, ocean mixing lifetime is about 1000 years, so the stuff that you bury into deep ocean will resurfaces in 1000 years, so all ocean geoengineering solution is just kicking the can down the road for 1000 years (which might be good enough, or not)

k but the biggest carbon sink is the lithosphere right? the way carbon dioxide gets into rocks is by fossilized shells right? just grow like a fuckton of shells ezpz

what if we bury the phytoplankton? Like set up big reservoirs in sunny places to grow huge amounts of it, which we then scoop up and bury somewhere?

We could even breed the phytoplankton to grow quickly and eat more carbon than usual.

in geological timescale, the only sink that matters is the lithosphere through chemical weathering. When you erode silicate rocks, in pulls CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into carbonates. However as one can imagine, it takes forever to weather rocks so on human timescale the flux of this sink is really small.

>what if we bury the phytoplankton?
>which we then scoop up and bury somewhere?
Your carbon sequestration need to use less energy, or purely powered by renewables. Burying that amount of diffuse carbon takes a lot of energy, as seen by these goofy contraptions people made when trying to sequester carbon through kinetic ocean wave energy.

You can't just power up a Caterpillar tracktor, dredge up they phytoplankons, dredge up the ocean floor and bury it without being carbon neutral