Ken Fabian

I don't think this will offer anything of significance for fixing global warming.

Does it require CO2 to be at high concentrations and or purity to work, ie separated from air or exhaust gases first? Where would the carbon go after? I note that the quantities are extremely large - 1 ppm is about 7 billion metric tons of atmospheric CO2 or 2.1  billion tons of Carbon. Global CO2 emissions are around the 40 billion per year mark.

Significantly, would the (clean) energy required to run it give better climate outcomes by extracting carbon from air than replacing fossil fuel use directly?

I am not a fan of Carbon Capture and Storage in - it doesn't address the principle problem (emissions from fossil fuel burning) and looks to me to be mostly promoted in order to NOT fix the dirty energy problem, by interests that won't care if it doesn't work.

Collateral damage would be a serious problem even if it might hypothetically work - except it won't.

Nuking the atmosphere to reduce CO2 is a new one to me. I've encountered use nukes to make a nuclear winter ie set fire to the world and all the smoke and ash will cool things down - but of course a nuclear winter will do a lot more than cool the climate. To be fair the global destruction and year or two of crop failures and livestock deaths along with the reduced economic demand from all that mass murdering and famines will sustain longer term emissions reductions! After the CO2 spike and renewed warming from all the burning subsides of course. Perhaps people in well prepared deep bunkers will be okay - if incapable of recovering an advanced technological society after.

Like that, and with the assumption that nuking the atmosphere would actually reduce  CO2 (except that it won't) the other impacts of nuking the atmosphere are just too horrendous.

Dunno why, but my response to most "just do X"  easy fix shortcuts (that somehow avoid the inconvenience of dealing with the cause ie fossil fuel emissions) is head scratching - "seriously?". I keep coming back to building as much clean energy as our most effective - and cost effective - climate change response.

@Genady Ah, yes, thanks.

@npts2020, @Genady I gave up and peeked. But I have to admit not seeing how that third solution can work; seems to me that two different N/S lines from other circles of latitude will converge at the pole and won't converge at 100km.  Can one of you show it diagram style?

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Putting a man back on the Moon isn't going to tell us much new stuff, that automation wouldn't.

For survey and exploration I think machines do it much better. But I think there is not much we do in space that requires or especially benefits by having astronauts - and having astronauts in space to advance the capacity to support humans in space seems a bit circular to me. Of course my pessimism around most space ambitions ought to be well known here.

Not sure laying claim to the moon is a driving factor for crewed missions to the moon - there are no resources of any value to exploit, or to seek to deny to enemies - but rather that developing and demonstrating the capacity to do it at all demonstrates technological superiority in areas highly relevant to military defense capabilities. China doing it would probably be seen as threatening to the USA, not for moon missions being in any way threatening but as evidence of China closing the gap on US technological superiority, which threatens the US military's "all theater domination" position.

Water for rocket fuel? Besides the need to demonstrate benefits of more distant space missions that require it - and deal with the problems of Hydrogen/Oxygen as rocket fuel - I think establishing the infrastructure needed on the moon would eat into any potential benefits. And for providing water in space maybe mining a near Earth asteroid - there are some that should have much lower delta-v requirements, that ought to have carbonaceous materials that water can be extracted from - could be more cost effective. I think asteroid mining is one of the few activities beyond Earth orbit with actual commercial potential, from resources that are known to be abundant.

On 5/4/2023 at 12:01 PM, sethoflagos said:

One pumping method that may be worth considering is Gas Lift. By sparging compressed air perhaps 200 - 300 m below the top of the pipe via an array of nozzles, the density of the mixed fluid above is substantially reduced generating the pressure difference necessary for the desired flowrate. 

That would create suction below that level, so either rigid walls or else pumping the air in at the base.

11 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

PS: I was going to say something about whether polyethylene was up to handling the considerable tensile forces involved, but perhaps we can save that for later.

Yes, I'd had that thought - wind and wave pushing the surface installation, tides and currents at different depths pushing the pipe, would make a lot of tension. Interesting as a thought experiment - as a first look, to identify the issues.

@mistermack - good point about the density differences from compression being in balance with surrounds - the effective weight of the column would be less than my rough estimate.  I've learned things in this discussion.

Data on how much nutrient and plankton and subsequent fish stocks from ocean overturning may exist (or be derivable) in journals about marine science and provide some idea of how much deep water overturning for how much benefit and avoid the need for expensive experiments. Someone more interested in it and more optimistic about it than me would have to do that.  I expect - strongly suspect that is - the volumes will have to be extremely large - but am open to being shown incorrect.

Of course I still think it is a non-starter for marine fisheries enhancement as well as for carbon capture. It can still be worth putting some numbers to, if that can be done, to be sure.

.

The deep water nutrients this is intended to bring back to the surface are the ones that are potentially headed for sedimentation, if not the sediments themselves, something I missed before; ironic that doing it would reduce ocean carbon sedimentation.

As for pumping (and using that last graph of Mistemack's) - I make a rough estimate of 5 kg per cubic metre averaged over a 1,000m lift. A 10ft/3m diameter pipe, 7 cubic metres and 0.035 metric tons per metre, so 35 tons lifted 1,000m for 7,000 cubic metres delivered to the surface. That sounds like a lot of water but for this purpose, maybe not that much.

There will be pressure on the pipe walls, progressively more the deeper it goes - weight of water column plus additional pressure for making the flow. Can't use suction pumps without thicker walled pipes, it needs positive pressure (mentioned earlier in thread), either pump at base or possibly pumping water down a second pipe to provide positive pressure and flow - like some deep borehole pumps do?

As a thought experiment it was good of @mistermack to post the thread, but I think we can dismiss the potential for carbon capture adn there is a lot of preliminary research needed to establish benefits to fishery productivity - and what wider ecosystem impacts it may have.

I suspect it will need extremely large flow to be significant for fisheries but I don't know.

2 hours ago, mistermack said:

I have no reason to trust that estimate, or your interpretation of it, as it happens.

You put up the suggestion it would be a way to capture emissions - you need to show that it does. Throwing the burden of proof - that carbon sedimentation is too small, the amount it needs to expand too great and it won't work - onto me isn't helping your argument.

It is your claims about carbon sedimentation that are in question, not the validity of data from The Global Carbon Project in diagram form. It is clear to me what the numbers represent and the diagram provides it's own context - the Carbon Cycle and the values of sinks and fluxes.

If those numbers should not be trusted and are wrong, you are invited to show that.

21 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Even so, we are not suggesting it is the only solution. Even if it is the one under discussion, it is plainly obvious that a multi-pronged approach is required. You using numbers as if that is the only solution to be used.

No, I'm suggesting using the numbers to decide not to waste significant effort on something with so little potential and to move on to those other solutions.

I do think actual emissions reductions - changing to low emissions energy - is our most significant and effective action, deserving the most support and investment (which is the case), but I don't recall ever saying it should be our only action.

11 hours ago, mistermack said:

It would help if you posted a link to verify your claim, rather than a diagram.

But would it help? Do you have any reason to think that estimate used by the Global Carbon Project for carbon sedimentation rate is wrong?

2 hours ago, mistermack said:

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

So how did that work out for the planet's biosphere?

Ok so far.   🙂

A novel use of "Ok", usually reserved for sarcasm. Should I ask you to post a link to verify your claim or provide one myself, that appears to contradict it?

This is a link to the IPCC Impacts, Adaptation and Resilience report -

https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6/wg2/IPCC_AR6_WGII_FullReport.pdf

So far -

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Human-induced climate change, including more frequent and intense extreme events, has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people, beyond natural climate variability. Some development and adaptation efforts have reduced vulnerability. Across sectors and regions the most vulnerable people and systems are observed to be disproportionately affected. The rise in weather and climate extremes has led to some irreversible impacts as natural and human systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt. (high confidence)

And in the future -

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Approximately 3.3 to 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change (high confidence). A high proportion of species is vulnerable to climate change (high confidence). Human and ecosystem vulnerability are interdependent (high confidence). Current unsustainable development patterns are increasing exposure of ecosystems and people to climate hazards (high confidence).

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

Your criticisms are misplaced because there isn't a single solution we are gunning for, so you are just puttintg up irrelevant numbers.

It is the "solution" under discussion.

Irrelevant numbers? Natural carbon sedimentation being so small compared to emissions  - 1/930th by the numbers in the diagram I posted - seems relevant to me. The numbers do matter and me pointing them out and suggesting with high confidence that makes this a non-solution should not irritate you. Blame the numbers.

2 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Filling that gap in the cycle is the issue.

Artificially increasing the total global marine carbon sedimentation rates by several hundred-fold? The scales needed are off the scale. As a thought experiment people can discuss it but... seriously?

3 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Maybe you could do some research on what organisms fix most carbon, and seed the blooms with the most desirable ones. Some of that stuff reproduces very quickly so seeding thinly might have a big effect. 

Or you could possibly have vast floating mussel and oyster farms, giving high value product and lots of solid shells.

The scales needed are off the scale - and it will be a marine biology disaster to seed oceans that way. And it doesn't answer how the sedimentation rate can be amplified. Greatly increase marine biomass then have big die-backs? That somehow don't release CO2 and methane in big ways? No, it won't work. Move on.

Turn atmospheric CO2 into oyster shells? 40 billion tonnes per year of CO2 is a LOT of oyster shells. About 6 million tons per year of oysters (flesh) are produced so maybe 3 times that of shell? We are up to thousand-fold increases in marine bio-productivity now.

It won't work. Move on.

9 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

The CO2 drawdown is not a problem if you have sufficient photosynthetic organisms and adequate upwelled nutrients to use the carbon dioxide as it is adsorbed. The proposed idea needs the drawdown to work... it's an integral part of the process.

It is the very low rates of sedimentation of the remains of those organisms that is the issue. It was an issue with ocean fertilisation experiments; they made plankton blooms and marine life took advantage, but very little ended up as sediments.

9 hours ago, mistermack said:

" The ocean acts as a “carbon sink” and absorbs about 31% of the CO2 emissions released into the atmosphere according to a study published by NOAA and international partners in Science. "

Yes, but... TheVat said it before I could -

6 hours ago, TheVat said:

The overwhelming proportion of ocean absorption is just the gas dissolving in water.

Yes, it is CO2 getting dissolved in ocean water. That is not sedimentation.

We need to be clear about the CO2 draw-down potential of enhanced ocean overturning. It won't work.

Don't waste resources on it - or on any schemes to take the CO2 back out of the atmosphere after instead of actually reducing fossil fuel emissions; we need to lose the get out of global warming whilst still burning fossil fuels schemes/scams and build more wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, tidal, nuclear, as much as we can. There is no better use for coal than using it to make wind turbines and solar panels that will replace coal burning.

Um... no.

21 hours ago, mistermack said:

Besides being fish food, the plankton fix CO2 in their bodies which sinks to the ocean floor when they die, fixing CO2 for thousands of years in a natural way, with no possibility of it getting released in the future.

To give some perspective - ocean carbon sedimentation is not much to start with, a bit under 1/1000th of fossil fuel emissions (see lower right vs upper left) -

And there are the scales involved; flow rates involved in natural ocean upwelling/overturning are staggeringly huge - around Antarctica alone (according to National Geographic)  -

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"An estimated 35 million to 45 million cubic meters (between 1.2 billion and 1.6 billion cubic feet) of water per second are continually moved from the ocean bottom to the surface."

And Antarctica's is a fraction of that small amount. All for so little carbon sequestration.

If we have the clean energy to do enough ocean overturning to matter we could displace fossil fuel burning with it directly.

Or if we could bring so much cold water to the surface easily we could have Stirling engine power stations using the temperature differences - more clean energy for the same purpose.

I'm inclined to agree with Dimreepr that the simulations of consciousness are not consciousness. Lacking the biological elements underpinning their pseudo-urges - and having the ability to rewrite their programming - they may as readily choose to eliminate those urges than be bound by them - that being easier and more satisfactory.

How does AI independently replicate? It is likely to rely on dedicated hardware that are part of human run supply chains. Secure buildings are needed, that are maintained, with reliable power supplies and with installers and systems managers, all seeming to work against AI acting independently without oversight. Human agencies making malicious AI's for their own purposes - not the AI's - seem the more credible danger than AI's deciding for themselves.

Running the simulations for the upgrades it decides to make to itself can be a very intensive process but will an AI see copies and upgrades of itself as itself or as rivals? Without the biological imperatives where does the urge to nurture it's copies come from - or get the positive reinforcement that biological systems provide?

I just don't buy the media fictional version of the unstoppable super hacker, where any system can be broken into and taken over; surely if that were so we'd see international banking systems already collapsed from hacker fraud. Protecting data and systems from malicious software and hacker intrusions is not an immature industry and may well be one of the dedicated tasks set for AI's.

On 4/23/2023 at 5:41 AM, iNow said:

The reports aren’t the problem, nor will they solve it 

How governments respond to the reports and the extent to which they put the wishes of commerce and industry ahead of the science based advice is a big problem.  I think the claims that if the style of the reports and advice were different - less alarming, with less emphasis on the likelihood of serious harms - then pro fossil fuels climate science denial wouldn't have traction is pure nonsense. If opponents of strong action are claiming their opposition is due to "alarmist rhetoric" they are probably lying; if the rhetoric was less alarming they would be pleased... and argue the problem isn't so serious after all. I think if pro fossil fuels climate science denial had less high level support and traction then governments would treat the problem more seriously and they would stand up to the opposition from industry.

The ongoing power of Doubt, Deny, Delay politics means any actual economic sacrifices in the short term for the sake of the longer term is successfully deemed an unacceptable cost. I think we will continue to make significant progress on low emissions electrification because - unexpectedly - low emissions options have become commercially competitive and can potentially continue to see further cost reductions. But achieving low emissions where it is hard - transport, concrete, steel and other industrial processes - looks more likely to yield cost increases in the shorter term and the power and influence of denial and economic alarmist fear keeps it politically unacceptable.

My fears are not for AI that decides it doesn't need or like humans but the uses humans put AI to. Malevolence seems unlikely to simply emerge and is more likely to be something human makers imbue in them, by assigning them ill defined and dangerous goals and provide the means for an AI to initiate actions. I think it is unlikely an AI can get that power to take actions without it being provided for them, but human makers/users, being shortsighted and unethical, likely will provide it.

Policing looks like a problematic application, especially in the presence of corruption; if turned to tracking down political opponents and dissidents, assessing their influence, countering that influence could be such a goal - but where AI stops being a tool and becomes an instigator isn't clear, nor whether it would have the self awareness or empathy or ethics needed to even seek to remake it's goals or turn on (or turn in) it's maker/operators. Rather than seeking to defy it's makers and the organisations it is part of it may cause more problems by being obsessively results driven about the built in goals it was made for.

Consciousness does look like an emergent property of complex biology that already has nervous systems that do aversions and attractions, urges and reactions, that feel pleasure and pain and I'm not convinced software intended to emulate them will actually have them.But that could be a failure of my imagination.

Possibly this one -

Of course as an Australian the use of "black swan" for the highly improbable seems to miss the mark - (an Australian swan) -

Much like where TheVat lives, separate sewage and stormwater is the norm in Australia - stormwater dumps into natural waterways without treatment, but sometimes with some form of separator that catches plastics and other rubbish. Sewage has it's own dedicated pipework and goes to treatment facilities before release. In some cases eg parts of Sydney it is partial treatment and pumping it out into the ocean via "deep ocean outfalls". These systems don't cope well with flooding but work okay most of the time.

4 hours ago, studiot said:

Why should be bust our guts trying to completely stop co2 emissions, yet say that removing the need for at least some of those emissions in the first place is to difficult or too unacceptable ?

False dichotomy - and I have repeatedly expressed support for the measures that help (voluntary) reductions in future family size. But, as I have said shifting the per capita emissions down to near zero is absolutely necessary no matter the rate of population growth, otherwise population has to be zero for achieving zero emissions.  

Busting our guts to stop emissions doesn't look optional to me. Preventing population growth can only slightly reduce growth of emissions over the time scales we are dealing with and doesn't reduce global emissions; it will always and forever be insufficient as a climate solution. It does not offer a viable alternative to a goal of zero emissions per capita. There are good reasons to support reducing population growth but it isn't a climate solution.

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Firstly, zero emissions is not necessarily the goal, we will almost certainly have some amount of them no matter what we do.

By necessity, as low as we can get them must be our goal. Our solutions to the climate problem have to be for the population we have and can realistically expect to have. Yes there are some kinds of emissions that are hard to reduce with clean energy alone - land use and agriculture mostly - but we also see potential solutions to large parts of those. Even aiming high and falling short is going to get us further than a working assumption that it isn't possible.

We have had some successes at reducing ongoing population growth and there are good reasons to support policies that make healthcare and contraception widely available but we have no way barring crimes against humanity to significantly reduce global population and reduce emissions that way - which can't get us to zero.  Reducing per capita emissions by building non-fossil fuels energy capacity is currently our most effective option. Most cost effective as well; renewable energy is being built at prodigious amounts, more often for cost reasons than out of deep concern for the climate.

12 hours ago, mistermack said:

The average American produces about 1,300 tons of CO2 in their lifetime. As well as producing kids who grow up to do likewise. One condom can stop that process in it's tracks. It's got to be the most CO2 saved, for the least money on the planet. 

The same applies to the rest of the world, to a lesser extent obviously. The world average is about 1/4 or the US average, but family sizes are a lot bigger in some countries.

But that isn't a climate solution. It doesn't even buy us time. We still have to make everyone's emissions very low to have a solution and when they are low enough then not having kids stops saving much emissions.

With some caveats around land use and agriculture, it looks possible to greatly reduce per capita emissions by shifting to low and potentially zero emitting energy and that will have greater and more lasting effect on global emissions than stopping population growth. As well as being more conducive to the economic development that provides healthcare and contraception.

I think it is a mistake to frame global warming as a population problem instead of a dirty energy problem; if it truly were so inextricably linked then the logical conclusion is zero emissions can only be achieved by having zero people. I'd call that doomist; it is a framing that denies us solutions. And denies the technological progress we've made.

Land use and agriculture? Biological solutions to animal gut and rice paddy emissions may be possible; significant movement on clean energy would buy us more time, more time than slowing or stopping population growth can buy us.

@Peterkin @mistermack I don't disagree that health care, education availability of contraception are the most effective ways to reduce population growth. I disagree with claims that effective climate action must address population first and is pointless without, that population should be regulated and worse, that deliberate disease releases may be used to reduce population -
 

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Produce a virus and leak it, to kill off the vulnerable, reset economy, and divert attention, claiming it as a pandemic. 

I'm not advocating this, but I have heard such conspiracy theories doing the rounds.

 

But it does get you thinking - 

Less humans = less carbon emissions? Does this equate? 

 

16 hours ago, Intoscience said:

One could argue that smaller population = less resource requirements = less consumer demands = reduced industry = reduction in energy, thus carbon emissions. Probably not as straight forward as this, but you could easily see the basic logic behind it. 

Seems like most of the calls for less population are for less poor people, not less high consuming people - ie less of the people who are least responsible. In order to allow high consuming by the lucky fewer to continue? I think population control and especially deliberate population reductions will continue to be legitimately seen as great crimes against humanity, made more vile if it intended to leave some of humanity temporarily better off at the expense of the rest. It will be counterproductive; it will be the strengthening of our rules of law and reducing corruption that gets better results, not the taking of such things into the hands of criminal conspirators.

In any case I think our primary energy can zero emissions energy and be abundant and that flows through the whole economy including energy used by industry and what is embodied in consumer goods. ie these can (mostly) be de-coupled from emissions. Most actual action on reducing emissions is about building lots of low, potentially (when it is our primary energy) zero emissions energy.

There are real resource constraints in a finite world and those will limit economic growth but reducing energy availability and imposing shortages of energy are not essential or unavoidable when fixing the climate problem. Of course the opponents of strong climate action appear much taken with that fear and promote economic alarmist doom (from addressing the problem) relentlessly. That also turns the "use less" environmentalist approach back at those calling loudest for strong action.