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Climate Part 3: Locking up the Carbon [1]

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Date: 2023-04-28  

We have released a huge amount of carbon in a very short period of time, <150 years, and have altered the chemistry of our environment in ways that are not optimal overall.

Now humans have been altering the climate/biosphere for a long time, Native Americans regularly burned tracts of forest to create meadows, Europeans cleared large tracts of land to plant crops (corn, wheat, rye, beans, alfalfa, etc.)……we though recently started burning oil, coal, natural gas with a vengeance releasing millions of years of stored CO2 and other gasses. Now our air is composed of:

Nitrogen: ~78%

Oxygen: ~21%

That last 1% is everything else which we measure in parts per million or parts per billion……but that last 1% is very important since it helps to bring our global temperatures up to a livable point……well until we alter the mix and raise it too far….which we are doing. And we need a stable, known, and predictable climate to survive and thrive in; it is the one we “grew” up with after the last ice age and developed all our agriculture with….so maybe, just maybe we should see if we can stabilize it.

Now global temperatures are driven by a number of things including but not exclusive to:

Orbital mechanics: we have a tilt, a wobble to the tilt, a non-circular orbit which changes with time (Malinkovich cycles describe this and match to glacial advances and retreat quite well and as a first order effect-climate.nasa.gov/….)….note the cycles indicate we should be getting cooler not hotter if I remember correctly.

Solar output: The sun is our wonderful NRG machine but it is slowly heating up and putting out more radiation (~0.1% change but that is enough) as part of its normal cycle.www.climate.gov/.…

Greenhouse Gases (CO2 and methane are the biggies): Now we have understood greenhouse gasses and measured and understood CO2 since the 1890’s when a guy named Svante Arrhenius thought it out and actually did a lot of research in it among other things en.wikipedia.org/….. Note he thought a warmer climate would be good!….of course he had just come out of a cold snap (the little ice age).

Methane is short lived with a large forcing factor (40x)

CO2 is long lived with a lower forcing factor (1)

some like Sulfer hexafloride SF6 have huge factors (23Kx)

(Luckily SF6 is rare and breaks down very quickly)

Now we cannot change our orbital mechanics or the suns solar output……but we can control our release and capture and locking up of gasses, especially that long lived one CO2……note we grew up in a 250+/-50 ppm climate and really it is one we should try to return to and net zero will not reduce the CO2 we have injected into the atmosphere.

So what is to be done to reduce and return our climate to what we know and like?

A number of things, mimicking nature (which has been locking up carbon for millions of years), and with not a lot of cost or effort (see Climate Restoration by Peter Fiekowsky)…….as follows:

Option A: Synthetic Limestone: yep a number of companies have figured out how to make synthetic limestone which will lock up carbon for a very, very, long time. Nature does it all the time using coral, clams, and other creature ….and we use the stone in many buildings. Blue Planet systems is one such company yet they need funding, more research, and government to help kickstart this (synthetic limestone is not cheap)……why government, well they can force the reduction/use of standard CO2 emitting concrete/cement and move us all towards less CO2 intense construction (this also will likely bring down cost of synthetic limestone as it scales up). CarbonCure, Carbicrete, are other companies that use CO2 to cure the concrete and thus lock it up….scalable, long term sequestration that can be supported economically…..what can we do, politics (call a congress critter) and invest in such companies (a moderate investment risk).

Option B: Ocean Permaculture — Mostly ideas around helping seaweed to thrive and expand since this plant grows at phenomenal rates, can be harvested for food and feed, and will help marine environments/fisheries. This is also a huge market opportunity since we already use seaweed for many things like food alginates and have been experimenting with adding it to cattle feed to reduce cattle methane burps (it seems to be working). Another company, Carbonwave, is using Sargassum seaweed for many products……again what can we do, well yell at our Congress Critters to look into Marine Permaculture (which includes starting floating seaweed forests anchored to artificial reefs), fund it, and again if you want to risk it invest in new companies.

Option C: Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF); seems there are many areas of the ocean that should/could be more productive except that they are iron poor and phytoplankton will not prosper. Phytoplankton (CO2 eaters) are the base plant ecology that Zooplankton and then small fish and then big fish and whales etc. count on……note whale poop is high in iron from eating all the other critters and thus re-irons the ocean (although a good amount sinks to the ocean floor (as do dead whales) and locks up both the iron and the CO2). Now nature supplies the iron from high altitude dust storms , volcano eruptions, etc…….but maybe we should not wait for such rare and uncontrollable events, eh. OIF can be done very easily and several experiments have been done showing how productive it is….funny thing is that many environmentalists scream bloody murder about it, yelling it is “planetary engineering” (like we are not already doing that) and would “let the polluters off the hook and encourage people to release more CO2”……well not really guys, the polluters need to stop and we still need to lower CO2 levels to a more comfortable level….and OIF just mimics nature, improves ocean ecology, and is reasonably cheap since we are not talking a lot of iron here (10lbs of iron dust per square mile — farmers use up to 90,000 lbs of fertilizer per square mile as comparison). This seems a easy, cheap, solution and would improve our fisheries overall, lock up carbon (whale poop and also phytoplankton that dies and settles into the dark depths of the ocean)…..Oh, and we are talking a couple billion dollars here a year to do this; given permission from various Gubmints that is….Again what should we do ?

YELL AT YOUR Congress Critter…..this is a theme here.

This would take political will to do since it involves the ocean commons and also would require private/public money to fund it……but it would lock up a lot a released carbon naturally.

Locking up already released CO2 in a permanent, and pumping the gas underground it not really a safe option, way is critical yet it will take political, social, and economic willpower to do……that means all of us folks, not somebody else…..you, me, and the right wing authoritarian tRumper next door all need to be on board here.

Also educate yourself on climate, the environment, and the politics of the possible (my last diatribe will give lots more book recommendations, links to sites I trust, and my philosophy).

Again, long, booorrrrrring diary….next one is about Methane the wild card that could kill us all.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/28/2165350/-Climate-Part-3-Locking-up-the-Carbon

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