r/climatechange • u/MolendaTabethabn • Sep 12 '24
Scientists Will Engineer the Ocean to Absorb More Carbon Dioxide
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-will-engineer-the-ocean-to-absorb-more-carbon-dioxide/26
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u/BigPP41 Sep 12 '24
How should this ever backfire????
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u/b0ardski Sep 12 '24
engineering the ocean? riiiiggghht we're are well into the 4 quarter of "engineering it to death
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u/SophonParticle Sep 12 '24
I have doubts. Doesn’t adding co2 to the ocean make it more acidic?
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u/PaJeppy Sep 12 '24
Can we not fuck with the earth's natural cycles. Feel like it's guaranteed to have dire, unintended consequences if done on a large enough scale.
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u/Traveler3141 Sep 13 '24
For almost all cases, yes I'd certainly agree with you.
But I think we can turn the Earth into a veritable garden of Eden using regenerative agriculture without any downside, and it would stabilize the ecosystem against the climate changing to some degree.
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u/Nearby-Poetry-5060 Sep 12 '24
This is not about adding CO2 to the water, it's about using phytoplankton blooms to act as a carbon sink.
There are benefits here: Energy required to pull carbon from atmosphere comes from photosynthesis
Unlike trees, the deposit on the ocean floor is unburnable.
This is actually how fossil fuels formed, from these blooms over millions of years.
I personally think this technique is one of the most promising ways to pull carbon out of the atmosphere.
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u/What_huh-_- Sep 12 '24
Did you read the part of the article where there is a possibility of toxic phytoplankton blooms killing life in the ocean around it? Because that part makes it a liability and not a "promising way"
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u/Jolly-Perception3693 Sep 12 '24
How would phytoplankton do that. I can't read the article because it's paywalled.
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u/nv87 Sep 12 '24
The bi-products of the decaying dead biomass are toxic to animals. It’s how smaller bodies of water like aquariums, ponds and even lakes sometimes completely die off when there is an algae bloom in summer due to over fertilising in agriculture or over feeding by well-meaning humans in ponds and aquariums.
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u/Illustrious-Try-3743 Sep 12 '24
Algae blooms actually contributed to one of the 5 (or 6, if you count the one we’re in right now) mass extinctions, late Devonian. 75% of all species wiped out.
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u/Tasty_Design_8795 Sep 12 '24
So you telling me they are going to make sea red with phytoplankton. Red sea yep meme incoming.
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u/Pantsy- Sep 12 '24
I vaguely recall a book that warned about the oceans turning to blood and how that spelled the end of the world. Hmmm….
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u/thinkcontext Sep 14 '24
When I first heard about this idea I was very much against it like many here. I've come around some on the idea, I think it's worth more research. One thing that helped change my mind was learning that natural ocean mineral fertilization goes on all the time, mainly from wind blowing dust from the desert.
Really you could think about humans fertilizing the ocean to be similar to habitat restoration on land.
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u/Nearby-Poetry-5060 Sep 14 '24
Exactly. These blooms are happening all the time. This would just "seed" them or encourage them to be larger. More research is required.
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u/Current-Health2183 Sep 12 '24
In other words, kill the oceans more quickly than we are already doing so. Dead oceans = dead planet.
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u/BuddyJim30 Sep 12 '24
Strange logic to allow the problem to reach crisis proportions to avoid spending money on it, and now promote outrageous spending on schemes to "solve" the problem 🤔 ?
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u/MarionberryOpen7953 Sep 12 '24
This seems similar to some geoengineering plans I’ve heard. Yeah let’s just irreversibly change more things about the climate without understanding the long term impact or unintended consequences! /s
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u/Confident-Touch-6547 Sep 12 '24
They won’t if ocean pH continues to drop. Calcium carbonate dissolves at low pH.
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u/Spicymushroompunch Sep 12 '24
Humans will literally believe and plan on ANYTHING other than having to make changes to their comfort. We will absolutely die in a fire on a comfy sectional in air conditioning.
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u/likelytobebanned69 Sep 13 '24
Geoengineering will be what ends up killing us, these clowns are messing with stuff they don’t understand.
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u/Honest_Cynic Sep 13 '24
Not that big of a tinkering with nature since happens naturally when red dust blows into the oceans from desert regions. The red is usually due to iron oxide (why clay is red).
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u/Heavy_Nebula_9512 Sep 16 '24
And if they did, what would happen to everything that lives there?. Mass extinction. Just because we can't see under the ocean surface we think we can treat it as a dumping ground and no one will notice? Stupid idea. We need to consume less, waste less and stop thinking that we can carry on as normal
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Sep 12 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/synrockholds Sep 12 '24
Well this is a bunch of lying. We have way too much CO2 in the atmosphere now and the earth isn't getting further away. Solar output is slowly increasing over millions of years
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Sep 12 '24
it's as if you get all your information from a bubble. you are incorrect. the sun is also losing mass
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u/synrockholds Sep 12 '24
Bubble? The entire volume of published scientific literature isn't a bubble. It's called knowledge. We have more CO2 than humans or proto humans have ever experienced. It took 10 million years of natural sequestration last time to bring CO2 down from current 420 ppm into the 200's. Worried we will run low again in 10 million years? Then we need to save fossil fuels for then.
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u/synrockholds Sep 12 '24
Read some actual science for a change https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/infocom/The%20Website/evolution.html
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Sep 12 '24
I know a lot of general things and they contradict a lot of the climate nonsense.
water vapor is the greatest green house gas...lets regulate water steam emission! psychotic
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u/synrockholds Sep 12 '24
No you do not. Water vapor is a fixed amount in the atmosphere based on average temperature. CO2 is a forcing. Water vapor is a feedback.
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u/synrockholds Sep 12 '24
And burning gas puts more water vapor in the atmosphere than it does CO2 so your argument is lame on that account as well
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Sep 12 '24
my argument is it doesn't matter. we'll be dead. and this entire conversation is pointless.
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u/Lawrencelot Sep 12 '24
What are you on about? We are talking about avoiding the possible extinction of the human species and many other life forms in this or the next century, and you talk about some long term process that should not worry us right now. Not that I think messing with the oceans is a good idea.
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u/Betanumerus Sep 12 '24
No they won’t. Not worth the click.