TL;DR: viable last-ditch option would resemble Highlander 2 in terms of putting one corporation in charge of “protecting” the planet.
Okay, so I was keeping the idea of using deliberate “global dimming” in my back-pocket just so it wouldn’t worm it’s way through the zeitgeist. It’s a viable last-ditch option, but it comes with steep drawbacks. But since we’re here now, fuck it.
We already know that, thanks to requiring shipping vessels to use low-sulfur fuel, cloud seeding can actually reduce solar gain. The problem is that it also blocks out a lot of the light needed for photosynthesis. So this approach punches down on the environment in a completely different way. As for people, while global warming will absolutely impact agriculture, so would less sunlight.
So we could just use airplanes and cloud-seeding. Or we could increase particulates in the atmosphere. Or, as Elon suggests, fly satellites to do the job. The tradeoffs here are awful: disrupt where rain happens, raise lung cancer risks globally, or catapult one man into multi-trilliionaire status while they charge every government on earth for the privilege. Plus, each of those options are more or less forever if we never get around to carbon sequestration that actually works.
We should seriously considering doing anything else first.
This is it. Active sequestration is at best a small part of the solution, at worst a dangerous tangent that will grab investments and energy that should go to reduction, restoration and preservation efforts.
That’s such an unhelpful statement. Idk what made you think it’s obligatory. Everyone is talking about ACTIVE SEQUESTRATION. Further extraction of more carbon from current natural sequestration is undoing what already has been done. We need to create ways to artificially sequester the carbon while ALSO limiting emissions.
I think there’s more than 40% of the people on earth, at least in most major western country, that need to hear that statement. How about you calm down when talking to people trying to help.
I got curious and will attempt some math and duckduckgoing.
A forest can remove between 4.5 and 40.7 tons of Carbon Dioxide per year per hectare during the first 20 years of tree growth. Sauce
Humanity is currently generating around 40 billion tons of CO2 per year. Sauce
So now some simple math: it would take between 1 billion and 10 billion hectares of forests, depending on their maturity, to keep up. 100 hectare = 1 km2sauce, so this means 10 to 100 million km2 of forests.
Earth’s total surface area is 510 million km2. sauce.
So 10ish percent of the 510 million km2 of land on earth, or around 5.1 million km2 is a good candidate for tree planting. That’s not enough if we want to sequester all the carbon produced by humanity. Without getting to net zero global warming will continue. The best we can do is slow it down. More disconcertingly, our appetite for energy is only increasing. The good news is that we’re really starting to see large scale wind and farm operations ramping up, but there are still a lot of power plants scheduled to come online in the next two decades.
Technologies? No. But the oceans are 42x better at sequestering carbon than the surface, and there are some pretty interesting ideas around promoting phytoplankton blooms and kicking the ocean currents up, that sort of thing.
But trees are rad. We should absolutely have more of them. Besides, they’re proven, as you noted.
But really, humans have to stop emitting as much CO2eq. That’s it. There is no magic sciencey solution.
For a starts, we need to shut down all coal mines and power factories, stop oil, reduce animal exploitation as much as possible, stop fast fashion and reduce AI to scientific uses.
Nothing here is new or controversial, it’s just a bit boring, difficult, and goes against massive entrenched interests. That’s the hard part.
But any approach that is banking on technological breakthroughs maybe helping us capture all the CO2 (and methane, and nitrous oxide, and…) is inane.
TL;DR: viable last-ditch option would resemble Highlander 2 in terms of putting one corporation in charge of “protecting” the planet.
Okay, so I was keeping the idea of using deliberate “global dimming” in my back-pocket just so it wouldn’t worm it’s way through the zeitgeist. It’s a viable last-ditch option, but it comes with steep drawbacks. But since we’re here now, fuck it.
We already know that, thanks to requiring shipping vessels to use low-sulfur fuel, cloud seeding can actually reduce solar gain. The problem is that it also blocks out a lot of the light needed for photosynthesis. So this approach punches down on the environment in a completely different way. As for people, while global warming will absolutely impact agriculture, so would less sunlight.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shipping-rules-are-affecting-global-warming/
So we could just use airplanes and cloud-seeding. Or we could increase particulates in the atmosphere. Or, as Elon suggests, fly satellites to do the job. The tradeoffs here are awful: disrupt where rain happens, raise lung cancer risks globally, or catapult one man into multi-trilliionaire status while they charge every government on earth for the privilege. Plus, each of those options are more or less forever if we never get around to carbon sequestration that actually works.
We should seriously considering doing anything else first.
Edit: I know I didn’t invent this idea. Rather, I just didn’t want to add to any consensus around it.
Obligatory reminder that the easiest by far way of sequestering carbon is to simply not extract it from the ground in the first place.
This is it. Active sequestration is at best a small part of the solution, at worst a dangerous tangent that will grab investments and energy that should go to reduction, restoration and preservation efforts.
That’s such an unhelpful statement. Idk what made you think it’s obligatory. Everyone is talking about ACTIVE SEQUESTRATION. Further extraction of more carbon from current natural sequestration is undoing what already has been done. We need to create ways to artificially sequester the carbon while ALSO limiting emissions.
I think there’s more than 40% of the people on earth, at least in most major western country, that need to hear that statement. How about you calm down when talking to people trying to help.
Trees sequester carbon. Trees work.
I got curious and will attempt some math and duckduckgoing.
A forest can remove between 4.5 and 40.7 tons of Carbon Dioxide per year per hectare during the first 20 years of tree growth. Sauce
So now some simple math: it would take between 1 billion and 10 billion hectares of forests, depending on their maturity, to keep up. 100 hectare = 1 km2 sauce, so this means 10 to 100 million km2 of forests.
Earth’s total surface area is 510 million km2. sauce.
Of that, here’s a quick breakdown:
Sauce
So 10ish percent of the 510 million km2 of land on earth, or around 5.1 million km2 is a good candidate for tree planting. That’s not enough if we want to sequester all the carbon produced by humanity. Without getting to net zero global warming will continue. The best we can do is slow it down. More disconcertingly, our appetite for energy is only increasing. The good news is that we’re really starting to see large scale wind and farm operations ramping up, but there are still a lot of power plants scheduled to come online in the next two decades.
yeah, sure, but have any of the other carbon sequestration technologies proven more efficient while being equally scalable?
Technologies? No. But the oceans are 42x better at sequestering carbon than the surface, and there are some pretty interesting ideas around promoting phytoplankton blooms and kicking the ocean currents up, that sort of thing.
But trees are rad. We should absolutely have more of them. Besides, they’re proven, as you noted.
But really, humans have to stop emitting as much CO2eq. That’s it. There is no magic sciencey solution.
For a starts, we need to shut down all coal mines and power factories, stop oil, reduce animal exploitation as much as possible, stop fast fashion and reduce AI to scientific uses.
Nothing here is new or controversial, it’s just a bit boring, difficult, and goes against massive entrenched interests. That’s the hard part.
But any approach that is banking on technological breakthroughs maybe helping us capture all the CO2 (and methane, and nitrous oxide, and…) is inane.
I think there’s argument about whether or not even that’s enough.