Geoengineering/climate mitigation thread

>>8753314
How about stopping the burning of fossil fuels? All these schemes are pointless otherwise.

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>>8753326
YOU CAN'T DO THAT YOU FUCKING STUPID SHIT. FOSSIL FUELS = TECHNOLOGY YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT

>>8753326
Where's the fun in that?

Also those kind of deals are very hard to strike. For example, the big majority of anthropogenic CO2 in the ocean-atm system was added by industrialized western nation. However, currently the biggest CO2 emission comes from China, India, and other developing nation who's trying to lift their population out of poverty. The question would be who should cut their emission? On one hand emission cut by developed nations alone would not suffice, and kneecap the economic might of western industrialized nations, but on the other hand for full emission control it is not fair to gimp and kneecap a nation who's trying to lift itself out of poverty.

Policymakers from these countries can argue in circles, and can argue internally within their nation in circles, but it seems like the only way out is to science our way out, rather than through international diplomacy and regulation

>>8753345
So when we run out of fossil fuels we will die?

>>8753360
Nah, it's both. Having a moderate carbon tax and investing more in alternative energy tech and infrastructure won't cripple anyone, and will save billions of dollars by mitigating damage in the future.

>>8753543
>So when we run out of fossil fuels we will die

it will be extremely painful

>>8753592
We're a big population.

>>8753605
For you.

>>8753608
Was derailing the thread part of your plan?

>>8753543
>So when we run out of fossil fuels we will die?
Not everyone, and not immediatly. But global population will shrink close to what it was before industrialisation. Or it could drop past that, who knows what unforeseen or unprepared for catastrophes we've yet to live through.

>>8753543
>Nah, it's both. Having a moderate carbon tax and investing more in alternative energy tech and infrastructure won't cripple anyone, and will save billions of dollars by mitigating damage in the future.
NO WE HAVE TO COMMIT 100% ITS NO MORE FOSSIL FUELS EVER OR ZERO REGULATION POLLUTIONFEST

cloud seeding and greening deserts is all "people" are capable of

>>8753314
Why can't we just keep burning fossil fuels and capture/store the emissions?

>>8753360
Not all fossil fuel is the same. Coal is by far the worst. If we all could just fase that out in the next 10 years it make a big difference.

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we just are gonna launch some satellites to provide shade from the sun

>>8753314
Geologist here. That's not at all what the article says. I thought it was odd because we've already experimented with iron fertilization and know it works. The reason we don't do it is there's unknown consequences.

What the article is ACTUALLY saying is iron fertilization doesn't work in the EQUATORIAL PACIFIC. The article makes some suggestions on what went wrong with the experiment and how these may be resolved, such as adding silic acid, another necessary nutrient for diatoms.

It even references an experiment that worked exactly as intended. So I find it surprising that after reading the article you would immediately shout out that ocean fertilization just got BTFO

>>8753314
>https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160516181020.htm

sorry this is not btfo

plankton distribution by type and density is in no way homogenous, its patchy af

if we could determine where patches of what are going to be oceanographically speaking, it could def work

>>8755206
>>8755225
Thank you

>>8753314
>https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160516181020.htm
>iron fertilization somehow BTFO by study of shit happening thousands of years ago despite working just fine when we tried it out ourselves.
Just dump a shitone of iron and everything will be alright.

>>8753326
>lol dude like just stop civilization hahahaha like bruh just go back to living like apes
>inb4 solar maymay

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>>8755206
>>8755225
this is the kind of /sci/ discourse I want to see

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>>8753314
CO2 sequestration technology is still very much in its infancy. the US Navy came up with a fairly good way of pulling it out of the ocean with the end goal being to process it into jet fuel. they were going to power the whole system with the excess energy of the nuclear reactor inside the carrier. it turned out to be not cost effective on a sea born platform, but a shore based platform could be promising.

i'm hopeful, if not confident, that we can create a closed loop carbon cycle with a little bit more innovation.

www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA539765

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>>8755086
Coal is already dying.

coal fired power plants aren't responsive enough to modern energy demands. see the "duck curve" problem that california is having. its why most new power plants are gas fired instead. natural gas turbines and fuel cells are very complimentary to renewables such as solar and wind. coal not so much.

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>>8755206
>>8755225
OP here, oceanography grad student.

The study I posted is just one of the few studies in the last 5 years or so finally putting the nail in the coffin. Pic related is the synthesis of various studies from various spot taken from a synthesis paper
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2004JC002601/abstract

The take home point is that on average, per mol Fe added only 5620 mol C get sequestered (DIC/Fe efficiency). The authors and general scientific consensus argue that at this amount, the price is not economically feasible.

1. External cost. First to mine iron in itself takes quite a bit of C emission. Then you need to make the iron bio-available, so Fe(s) would not suffice, you need to dump it in form of say biofixable compound, the most common one being Fe(III)SO4.7HSO so you need to chemically process the iron and this process also has C emission associated with it.

CONT'D

>>8755946
2. Cost efficiency. In oceanography there's this concept called Atmospheric Uptake Efficiency. If you fertilize the planktons, but the plankton take DIC (Dissolved Inorganic Carbon) in the water, rather than CO2 from the atmosphere then it's moot. At best, atmospheric uptake efficiency according to the synthesis study of 15 experiments is about 20%. Given that, and 5620 mol C sequestered per mol Fe dumped then say to offset an annual anthropogenic emission of 6Pg per year a rough back of the envelope calculation stated that you need to dump 27 million metric ton of Fe (so equivalent to ~90 million metric ton Fe(III)SO4.7H2O) per year. This amount is simply too expensive, not to mention the amount of logistics require to do this and spread it into the ocean (you can't just dump everything in one hostpot).

3. Side effects & sustainability
Fe fertilization doesn't mitigate ocean acidification, in fact it makes the problem worse as you're increasing the amount of DIC in the ocean. Furthermore, as you continue to tilt the C equilibrium towards the ocean, you'll need to put more and more Fe every year because the C system from the ocean are gonna want to equilibrate with the atmosphere even further. Think of it as a fizzy soda, a fizzy soda is oversaturated with C in form of bicarbonate (hence the name carbonated drink). When you open the can to the atmosphere, the soda equilibrates to the atmosphere and outgasses, becomes flat. Fe fertilization geoengineering is akin to trying to keep a can of soda (in this case the whole fucking ocean) more carbonated than equilibrium by tilting the equilibrium field through biological productivity, but as you're doing that you're making the ocean more acidic, more anoxic (those organic material from productivity bloom will inevitably decompose, taking O2 with it) and the further out of equilibrium you are, the less sequestration ratio between DICvs. Fe and the more Fe you need to dump.

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>>8755949
CONT'D

This is why recent consensus has shifted away from Iron fertilization as feasible geoengineering method, and Iron fertilization was only briefly mentioned in the latest IPCC AR5 report physical science basis, not to mention completely skipped in the AR5 report on policy and mitigation

>>8755946
>>8755949
paleofag here.

one problem with your position (as >>8755206 pointed out) is that this is only for the central Pacific; other regions of the world ocean might benefit. (the mid-Atlantic is unlikely, since it already gets a lot of iron from Saharan dust, but that's another story.)

the other problem is that you're assuming that planktonic fixed carbon just goes into DIC (as carbonates etc.) or immediately decomposes. there is a significant fraction of ORGANIC CARBON that rains out of the photic zone, and some of that ends up being buried in sediments, eventually becoming kerogen. it's a race between sedimentation and decomposition, but some experiments have shown promising results in which ocean fertilization can result in increased burial of organic carbon. after all, fixed carbon must be buried (or otherwise sequestered) for it to remove carbon from the atmosphere. and when that carbon is buried, it's no longer an influence on the equilibrium of the ocean.

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>>8755984
>significant fraction of ORGANIC CARBON that rains out of the photic zone, and some of that ends up being buried in sediments, eventually becoming kerogen.

Not as many as you think, in oceanography this term is called export ratio, shorted as e-ratio or EZ ratio. This depends on the type of dominant phytoplankton, e.g. large bodied diatoms vs. smaller planktons. Unfortunately as you can see in sub figure c attached, the e-ratio in the Southern ocean is very low, about 0.05 to 0.1 of total Net Primary Production (NPP) is sequestered and made it to the ocean floor, the rest being oxidized back into DIC.

The Southern Ocean being the best hotspot for Iron fertilization, as it is the most iron limited ecosystem in the ocean unfortunately also has very low e-ratio, making the iron fertilization scheme more ineffective and just contributing further into ocean acidification and increased DIC

Figure source
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013GB004743/full

>>8755984
cont.
the caveat, though, is that low sedimentation rates in the open ocean mean that burial of organic carbon mostly happens on continental margins. and if ocean acidification raises the carbonate compensation depth, God only knows what will happen to basinal deposition. siliceous oozes might help bury carbonate and stop it from dissolving...but we can't count on that.

>>8756011
I'm well aware that a lot of planktonic biomass doesn't make it to the ocean floor. (otherwise finding oil would be a lot easier!) thanks for the figure, though.

out of curiosity, do you happen to know what's going on in the South Atlantic in (c)? is that just the upwelling off the coast of South America, or is there something else going on to increase EZ-Ratio?

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>>8755984
>this is only for the central Pacific

The first study I posted in the OP is, but the older synthesis study I posted >>8755946 comes from various places. As you can see studies conducted in the Southern Ocean has the biggest bang for your buck in term of Fe/C sequestration ratio

>>8756020
e-ratio takes into account the whole ecosystem, not just planktonic biomass, as it also has several grazing term (how much pythoplankon eaten by zooplankton, how much zooplankton eaten by fish, etc) and death term (how fast does the zooplankon and fish are dying).

>do you happen to know what's going on in the South Atlantic in (c)
Yeah it's just higher productivity from upwelling, hence higher EZ ratio. you can see that (c) closely follows (a) which is just ToTEZ here = total productivity very closely. I think the R2 is something along 0.8. Basically the more productivity you have the more biomass that dies and sink being uneaten in the food chain, so the more sequestration you get

>>8753314
The problem is fossil fuel depletion with no real alternatives on the horizon, not the climate. You are being intentionally distracted and misled.

The solution is make sure no one particular group, global governance entity, cabal of corporations or global fascist regime gets complete control over the remaining fossil fuels through fraudulent means such as man made global warming theory. We must also ensure resources are not wasted on geo-engineering or other "solutions" to non-problems as this simple compounds the real problem already mentioned.

All of this plays out over the course of the 21st century so they should be some exciting and interdasting times!

>>8755910
>www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA539765

This has nothing to do with C sequestration. The article blatantly said that it takes MORE energy than produced in jet fuel form to synthesize DIC in the ocean into combustable jet fuel.

In military term, despite the negative energy it makes sense if you can use renewables (e.g. solar, wind, waves) + ocean water to produce jet fuel in time of crunch for logistics purposes, or as mentioned in the report nuclear + ocean water to produce jet fuel.

The whole exercise is to see whether it is feasible to turn DIC into jet fuel so that the US Navy doesn't need to mantain as many fueling bases and resupply around the world. It has nothing to do with climate mitigation as the whole process is a net energy negative.

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>>8756038
>cabal of corporations or global fascist regime gets complete control over the remaining fossil fuels through fraudulent means such as man made global warming theory.

>>8756055
the fact that its energy negative is irrelevant when the energy source powering the equipment doesn't generate carbon.

>>8756108
>the fact that its energy negative is irrelevant when the energy source powering the equipment doesn't generate carbon.

Well then why not cut the chase and just do wind turbines & nuclear to produce electricity back home, rather than this convoluted ideas of using wind & nuclear to produce jet fuel with negative energy yield then burn the jet fuel for the energy?

>>8753326
You just have to burn less of them. The best way to do this is forcibly convert people to less energy-intensive lifestyles.

>>8756291
>forcibly convert people to less energy-intensive lifestyles

Individual effort barely makes a dent though and you're just a sucker for doing so. Say there's a test and everyone cheats on it, you're a sucker if you don't cheat. That's the fundamental of game theory.

Upscaling it a bit from individual to country sized regulation, top down regulation will also not work, because then your whole country is just a sucker if other countries don't cut their emissions.

In the end, just like always humanity need to science their way out through inventions and technology

>>8756241
first, it wouldn't be making jet fuel. ideally the final product would be a much simpler hydrocarbon like methane.

second, our non-carbon generating power sources are rarely ran at maximum capacity and there isn't an increase in cost for running at 100% all the time. storage is a huge problem for renewables. this technology could (with refinement) provide a valuable sump for unused energy.

third. the technology has almost no moving parts. the process is mostly electrochemical. meaning that you can dot the globe with self contained power to gas plants if only for the purpose of sequestering CO2 from the ocean itself. set it and forget it so to speak.

and finally, its scalable tech. you don't need an ocean, just a body of water with a large enough surface area to have a driving concentration gradient between the water and the atmosphere.

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>>8756084
>haha all I have to is post captaincontrolledopposition's face, everyone else is just like me and very sensitive to ridicule

Start building most buildings out of wood and logs. Fertilize and cultivate forests so they grow optimally.

I'm not kidding. A sqm of wood house stores 200 kg of carbon. A 100 sqm house would store 20 tons of carbon easily. A log house maybe more, depending on wall thickness. Now calculate how much concrete production wood construction replaces and it looks even better. This could help us bridge the gap until we all have electric cars and electricity storage methods improve.

>>8757843

Also they can build skyscrapers from cross laminated timber so it's feasible in cities.

>>8757843
What about Pyrolyze and plough into farmland?

>>8757909

I'd rather have buildings than waste good resources.