@@GEOGIRL I don't know how people sowho don't study this in any kind of deep way can give you a context disclaimer..... I got off FB because I had a query about some of the domanent narratives....
(As you mentioned): The potential for devastating ocean anoxia, combined with the fact that we can dig up and burn carbon orders of magnitude faster than this method can sequester it...
@@archstanton_live I tend to think that the scale of heat sequestration in the ocians and atmosphere is so slow that huge distruptions will not be felt on a human life span scale.... In any case, climate change is a process that I do not understand and most of the processes that I do understand I was misled or attempted mislead by the 'experts'..... Those are the proesses that I DO understand so if they tell me to be conserned about something I don't understand I balk.
@@urrywest That is likely however, remember that the topic at hand is carbon sequestration. The ocean continues to take up excess heat from the atmosphere and periodically balances out (somewhat) with oscillations like El Nino (ENSO) when the ocean cools a bit, but the atmospheric temperature gets a bit of a goose back from the oceans.
If tomorrow we stopped all oil and gas wells and stopped feeding cows and pigs, the Earth would recover in human scale, not geologic scale. The reasons we need fertilization, sequestration, and other mitigation methods is because governments and corporations are unable / unwilling to give up fossil fuels, and consumers won’t give up burgers.
Thanks for drawing my attention to this! I was waiting for your discussion to turn to anoxia... I grew up in New Orleans and am fairly familiar with the anoxic zone that exists in the Gulf of Mexico, (which dates back to the 70's), partly as a result of farmland fertilizer runoff into the Mississippi river valley. As a former fisheries biologist, it worries me that we are increasingly turning to science in order to manipulate natural systems to "deal" with the man-made dillema of climate change. Thank you as well, for mentioning the issue of rate of change; many people do not appreciate that fact when making the argument that climate change is 'natural'. Sadly, it doesn't surprise me that we are in this position. I look forward to your other video and am excited to see what other options are being explored for Carbon sequestration.
Frozen Siberian mammoths should tell us that 'natural' climate change can turn on a dime. And the idea that such changes only occurs gradually should be held with caution.
The Hollywood version of instant freezing, is inaccurate. There was no, instantaneous freeze suddenly trapping mamoths and all life in ice as your comment would suggest. The process of preserving mamoth carcasses was certainly a "relatively" quick event; however, what you are suggesting is an oversimplification of the dynamics involved. Peat bogs take millenia to form; however, dead bodies trapped in those peat bogs are well preserved, also trapped in time. Why argue against scientific theory on a science based channel? Our definitions of gradual are obviously vastly different.
Very informative video GG, thanks. So once again, it seems by far the biggest impact we can have on climate change is to just stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere in the first place.
Well yes, but it will require some sequestration at this point as well. And it would not be possible to sustain the economy or human well being if we were to just stop emissions all together, so we really need an energy transition plan and a C sequestration plan. But it is going to take more than just careful ocean fertilization ;)
@@GEOGIRL Yes it will take more than Ocean fertilization to fix climate change for sure It depends on what kind of economy the climate crisis isn't really something which can be solved without substantial political and economic reforms. While the current fossil fuel economy certainly couldn't be supported there is a shockingly large fraction of the carbon dioxide emissions comes from the very inefficient and wasteful processes of a number of industries as capitalism is prone to large scale overproduction and or underproduction due to its unregulated structure and many of those products being produced for a profit are unnecessary commodities that don't go to market as an end product, mostly vast quantities of plastic waste. And many sectors of jobs and services exist for no reason other than to make billionaires(shareholders and corporate executives) even richer, (particularly the fossil fuel industry and their subsidiary products most notably plastic ) via methods such as manufactured demand and built in obsolescence. Given that our economic system is and always has been fundamentally unsustainable in the sense that capitalism requires imperialism to exist as a prerequisite as there needs to be a net influx of resources and labor into an economy for it to function, we will have to make political reforms if we want to address climate change and that will probably need to include things like selective degrowth of over developed/useless unsustainable industries and of course we will need some better means to recycle and reprocess the resources in the form of waste, we have been throwing away. Its basically far far more complicated particularly in the way hierarchical bureaucratic systems can struggle to adapt with changing circumstances (this is generally what has lead to empires historically collapsing).
Hi Rachel, I watch your show regularly to get educated, it occurred to me that having non-experts ask you questions might actually make a difference in terms of getting more viewership.. as I think of knowledge acquisition as a process that can involve listening in on a school dialogue between teacher and students... or a subject matter expert and a non-expert or like a radio-station.... anyways keep up the awesome work! I am so glad you explored this topic! Learning about the earth keeps me sane! I sometimes quiz myself to see if I remember what the heck I've studied.... and curious about doing some kind of entertaining interactive video-game to test knowledge acquisition.... without feeling likes its homework...
Thanks Rachel, good topic. You finally touched on my favorite carbon sequestration method of building up soil fertility. There was a project in Africa using carbon rich ocean water to grow algae which was buried in the desert sand. Might have thrown in some fertilizer into the mix. Carbon sequestration into desert soil sounds exciting to me. I haven’t heard updates on this project in a while, hopefully they’re still going. Thanks for your excellent videos.
The seaweed is an excellent fertilizer as it decays. The method may need some baked clay beads and charcoal plus some local animal poop. That's how terra preta is made. Also growing seaweed for making compostable packaging is another thing to add to the soil building system.
Was that project in Morocco by any chance? If so it was a feasibility study, that if successful they planned to scale up to something really useful. I'm not sure the study is complete yet. Hopefully it will be complete soon, and hopefully successful.
You have done an Excellent Job as our Host & Educator today Geo Girl. THANK YOU, I appreciate it. Sometimes you speak so fast that it is hard to comprehend what you are saying on some Videos. GREAT JOB B.Y.L.
Rachel, you have many gifts, two of which are your understanding of geology and your ability to communicate it to others. But here's a conundrum: The phosphatic episodes that occur during ice ages (as sea levels fall and upwelling speeds up) seem to have fertilized the oceans at a greater rate than humans ever could. The Miocene phosphogenic episode (in the ancestral Atlantic) for example, corresponds with an explosion of sea life, and the corresponding evolution of whales and megalodon sharks. It appears to be one of the most productive times in the history of the Earth's oceans. But to my knowledge, (and correct me if I'm wrong) there was no anoxia associated with these phosphogenic episodes. Can you comment?
Ok, so I don't know about those specific episodes (but I will look into it), but what I can say now is that there is always anoxia in some part of the ocean somewhere, it is just a matter of how contracted or expanded it was at the time. So for example, today, the ocean is oxic. We call the modern ocean oxic because it is for the most part, but it does, even now, have spots that are anoxic, such as the black sea, Cariaco basin, parts of the baltic sea, etc. and parts that are hypoxic like many of the margins that are currently getting a lot of nutrient input from fertilizer runoff. So, ultimately, there was anoxia during the time you are talking about because there has been anoxic portions of the ocean throughout geologic time. If the primary productivity increased during these episodes, then it is likely that the anoxia did expand, but I am not aware of to what extent. We have observed full-on Ocean Anoxic Events in Earth's past, but in many cases there was expanded anoxia without constituting a global anoxic event. In these times, it is of course not as deadly as a global event, but certainly still can be harmful especially given the coastal ecosystems are typically the most bioabundant and diverse and that is where the anoxia spreads most. Another thing I would question is the 'at a rate faster than humans'... There are very few things that geology can naturally do faster than humans and my guess is that humans could beat it if we actually fully implemented an ocean fertilization plan. From what I just briefly looked up about these episodes, it looks like they were on the order of tens of thousands of years, whereas humans can (if we try) greatly alter the biogeochemical cycles (such as the C cycle) at rates much faster (decades rather than 1000s of years). But again, I haven't read up on these events, just giving my initial 2 cents! :) Thanks for bringing this up, may be a great topic for a future video! :D
@GEOGIRL I'm waiting for you to connect the animal ag dots... I recommended Dr Zach Bush MD to you a year or so ago. I still think he's right. He has 3 doctorates... I hope you'll realise the main cause of climate change is eating animals.
@@GEOGIRL I would never bet against the planet. There is always the possibility of it doing something that we have no record of in the geologic record, but which may actually have happened in the past. I'm not saying you're wrong, simply that we can't speak in absolutes, since we don't know everything the planet is capable of "in the right circumstances". As a possible example of animals creating a faster effect, what did millions of massive dinosaurs do to carbon sequestration rates? Those huge bodies held a lot of carbon, and there would have been millions of them at the very least all over the planet in pretty much every ecosystem. That's going to affect something in some way, just as billions of humans HAVE to have an effect of some kind on everything around us.
Ever since I've heard about ocean fertilization method in the 90's, I've thought of it less as a carbon sequestration method and more of enhancing ocean biomass . . . especially with the rate at which we're causing extinction rate among marine life.
Took me awhile to watch the video. After it I feel more confused, now I have a ton of questions about deep sand beds, anoxic filtration and their effects on the nitrogen cycle, weird fish stuff. Are you dealing with the same sulfur bacteria in deep sand bed aquariums. You did a lot better climate change than I expected. Good job.
It doesn't have to sink to the bottom to remove carbon short term. Just having more fish and mammals takes carbon out of the air. Also more ocean protein reduces meat demand. Short term is important. Medium term we have time for other options. Great video.
Ever since I learned of the Azolla event that happened in the Eocene, I've been wondering about Ocean Fertilization as a means of reversing climate change. As you suggested, its just too slow to keep up with the rate at which we're pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Where I differ is in the potential for something like this to be carried out without collapsing marine ecosystems, because those anoxic conditions would largely be what enables significant amounts of carbon to be sequestered this way in the first place. A slightly better idea might be to create vast stretches of biomes that naturally sequester carbon effectively, such as peat bogs. But I doubt that could be done at the required scale for it to matter on human timescales.
this topic reminded me a lot about deep sea mining! there’s something about trying to fix climate change by disrupting even more the natural cycles of the earth that sends shivers down my spine
50% of our oxygen needs or every other breath comes from that produced in the oceans. It had not occured to me until your presentatioon that this comes at the cost of ocean oxygen depletion. Thanks Rachael! Continental weathering and silt to oceans had been negatively affected by dams and hydroelectric projects. Most major rivers have been tamed and continental weathering dead ending in dams as silt deposits. It's very unlikely any proposed increased continental weathering projects will get as much support as our current practice of building dams, considering how much more economic gains these hydroelectric projects bring being green and renewable. We have dramatically changed how rivers function this past century and we didn't even have a clue of how gigantic algal blooms were until we went to space! 22:52
Good video, I think talking about short term carbon cycles and long term cycles makes it easier for a lot of people. Problem is who pays for this fertilisation? More oxygen for break down might mean less carbon into long cycle locked up. To be honest I think we need a new organism to lock up carbon.
I've always wondered why people weren't doing this, at least on the small to make sure it wouldn't go wrong. Even if we aren't talking about much in the way of carbon sequestration, we could better support resources such as fish that we currently get from the ocean if we could double or more primary productivity in some areas.
I've wondered if we could manipulate the earth's environment in order to prevent catastrophes in the earth's weather cycles, but if we tried to do that we might tip the balance in some weather cycles in ways that are unpredictable and which might be worse than what we had before we started to tinker with the earth's carbon cycles. I'm not as impressed by the resistance of the earth to maintain stability in its weather cycles as some experts seem to be. The industrial revolution and subsequent climate changes occurred over a period of a few hundred years, with the biggest changes occurring relatively recently. We owe scientists like Geo Girl a debt of gratitude for working on what might be the biggest threat to the quality of life for all humanity in the future.
We're doing oscan fertilisation all the time through farming and in Oslo, Norway, where I live, there are parts of the Oslo fjord that is now basically dead. I know, give it a few million years and it'll all balance out, but I won't be here when that happens. There are works in progress to try to remedy this, though, like pumping oxygen (just air) down to the sea bed and bubbling it there to release o2 and some scientists beleive this'll work, but then, we'll have to seriously restrict fertilisation on land, since most of that ends up in the water anyway. Also, as your graphs show, what's happening in the Oslo fjord is rather tiny, globally, and can possibly be fixed somehow. That's not the case elsewhere.
Big part not discussed for ocean fertilization is the energy budget for long-term ocean fertilization projects. Just vertically mixing significant quantities of ocean waters sounds very energy expensive. Spreading mined minerals in the ocean, would require energy expensive separation of desired nutrients, or if not separated, would spread many toxic materials along with the nutrients. Also, effects on terrestrial eco-systems was not discussed. Most, if not all, human created CO2 removal projects would be very energy intensive to do at a large enough scale to significantly effect earth's atmosphere. Where does all the energy and money come from for any CO2 removal project of the required duration?
Good video. Aren't coastal waters already pretty saturated by artificial fertilization? Yes, I'm sure there are some nutrient-poor coastal waters, but "dead zones" are common. Given that the natural baseline that ecosystems were adjusted to was lower before "us", it seems that open ocean is really the only game in town where the field isn't already covered with "rogue players".
would the decomposition problem not also release much of the carbon in the form of methane, potentially making the warming impact worse on decades to centuries timescales?
Well yes, but the type of decomposers that produce methane are typically way deeper down than aerobic decomposing organisms at and near the surface and even all of the other anaerobic decomposing organisms, so yes if the organic carbon gets passed all the other decomposers, the methanogens may use it to produce methane (although many methanogens are autotrophs, meaning they do not need organic carbon to metabolize and produce methane, they can use inorganic carbon like CO2; also there are methanotrophs which use and break down the methane that methanogens produce, so these processes may balance each other out depending on local conditions). The bigger methane source that we should be worried about is the release of methane due to the melting of frozen methane hydrates and permafrosts. Hope that makes sense, Thank you for asking that, that is a wonderful question! :)
You are right that any ocean actions must be monitored closely. In my climate crisis mysteries, I propose a fleet of surplus yachts converted to since vessels. The real story is of the people braving the oceans to save them.
I have the impression that there is an incomprehension at 8:38 1. with a constant concentration of CO2 (carbon neutrality), from 2020 onwards, we would very quickly reach a thermal equilibrium of 1.25 degrees by the end of the century, without any further increase (this is due to the ocean taking time to equilibrate) (ipcc special report 1.5 C global warming, chapter 1, figure 1.5) 2. it is also said that this could take millions of years, yet given that we have emitted around 250 GT of CO2 since 1850, 60%(~) of this CO2 would be dissolved and absorbed in the vegetation and oceans over 100 years, over 1000 years, only 20% of the CO2 initially present would remain, and over 10,000 years, 10%. (see IPPC5 chapter6 final box 6.1 figure 1) So the processes at work are fast and not of the order of milllions of years ! In conclusion that's why I don't believe in real carbon sequestration projects other than just not emitting any more, which is feasible in a socialist and democratic economic system because in capitalism, green growth is not really possible due to the inherent problems of the capitalist system. very good video nonetheless :D
Great point! Sorry if I wasn't clear on this, but the part that I meant to say takes millions of years is for organic carbon deposits to get buried and preserved as rocks, so yes, carbon gets taken up relatively quickly by the biosphere (life) and hydrosphere (oceans and other water bodies), but it takes millions of years for it to go back into the geosphere (rocks), which is where we want it to go back to eventually since that is where we are taking it from. Moreover, the more C that goes from the atmosphere to oceans, the more devastation of marine life by ocean warming, acidification and anoxia. So yes, it is quickly taken out of the atmosphere, but does not quickly go back into the geosphere, so helping that along through carbon sequestration projects is important even if we stop emissions, especially considering the damage that could be done to marine life if the carbon that we have already emitted is continually absorbed by the oceans. Hope that makes sense ;)
The problem is really one of responsibility. We've evolved to change things quickly, for better or worse. Without us other life forms can't keep up. If we started sequestering carbon just as fast the global cooling would still be a problem. In fact you could argue it would be a worse one. Ice ages aren't great for life and that's what we evolved in. Life loves shallow coastal seas and continents fringed with swamps, massive rivers, and tons of rainfall. It doesn't care so much for tundra, steppe, and glaciers. So what is the point? We change things quickly. If things are going to warm up it's up to us to quickly move plants and animals around. We can manufacture terra-petra as the perma frost melts, and plant grasses and trees, we can move animals around, we can make seed banks, and genetic material banks, and help life adapt to more warmth even as we work to stabilize the atmosphere with better technology. The rate at which we, as intelligent tool users, can change the environment has always been a problem. Think about goats in Greece. As we become more powerful and advanced we can change things faster, on a larger scale, and we have to take responsibility for that. In the human era the only way life adapts at human speed rather than geological speed is if we help it every step of the way.
Great question! The projects that I have read about spread basalt (a silicate rock that induces CaCO3 formation once weathered and transported, as its dissolved constituent ions, to marine or other aquatic settings) fragments over areas that recieve a lot of rain. The rain leads to weathering of the basalt and subsequent C sequestration (in CaCO3 rocks like limestone) and burial. The idea is basically that rain falling over exposed rock will lead to more weathering, transport, and subsequent C burial than rain falling over soil, vegetation, etc. The reason that silicate weathering is so useful when it comes to C burial is because (1) silicate mineral-containing rocks like basalts contain Ca that induces CaCO3 formation upon transport to aquatic basins, (2) the breakdown of silicates, like basalts, often involves the reaction of the CaSiO3 in the rock with carbonic acid (H2CO3), which leads to the formation of Ca2+ ions, Si4+ ions, and bicarbonate ions (HCO3-) which also induce CaCO3 formation, (3) this reaction also raises the ambient pH, which also induces CaCO3 formation, (4) basalts and other silicate mineral-containing rocks are more susceptible to weathering than many other rocks types, and (5) silicates are the most abundant minerals at Earth's surface, so their accesible as well. Hope that makes sense! ;D
@@Vandal_Savageyup.... bill gates special, cut down the oxygen producing trees and the ground will erode faster, and seed the clouds (with whatever......🤔) to increase rainfall. And of it happens to collapse the ocean ecosystem ?? Well, bill gets his other wish too, 7 billion less people on the planet.
@@GEOGIRL Many mines and gravel pits create large quantities of rock dust that could be spread on agricultural ground provided economic incentives. Usually the rock dust accumulates in a pit or pond and is buried if the site is remediated.
so what we realy need to do, is create several million swimming pool size tanks, to seed with the proper bacteria and the material to cause this to occur. Then trap them away instead? :)
Another thought... I've heard that shrinking glaciers create a "moraine" as they retreat. This loose soil is very susceptible to rain & river weathering. I expect that would make at least some increase in those elements reaching the seas. On a smaller scale we are getting rid of a number of old dams on various rivers, which allows the sediment that built up in them to weather, and erode into the seas as well. (If this isn't in your planned video, can you add at least a brief touch on the subject?)
Yes though it should be noted that the instability of glacial moraines means that the delivery of much of that material into the water comes in the form of massive landslides which can cause Tsunamis.
I think the US destruction of Nord stream and the massive release of natural gas probably needs more attention as a significant cause of planetary heating
We could let higher oceanic life forms fertilize the oceans by not killing them off for our pleasure and desire to expand our waistlines. Just a thought.
I've never heard ocean fertilization proposed to transport carbon primarily to sediment. The destination was always the ocean below the thermocline, which holds much more CO2 than the atmosphere does, and which takes hundreds to thousands of years to turn over and equilibrate with the atmosphere. I don't think there's enough carbon in the atmosphere to cause global anoxia of oceans below the thermocline. Ocean fertilization with realistic amounts of material can only be effective in parts of the ocean that are severely depleted in the element or elements (usually iron) to be added. Those aren't the coastal regions where fertilizer runoff causes dead zones. Ok, at 17 minutes in, the not-coastal part is finally acknowledged.
It seems that if we need more photosynthesis to sequester carbon, we'd be better off protecting the forested areas on land that we already have and replant trees and native plants in areas we have deforested. The key is to use native species that will help support other local plant and animal life!
This fix seems complicated and hard to address the possible unintended consequences, better to prevent, by using less fossil fuels. Should still study it though as we may need all the possible solutions in combination.
Nitpicky grammatical correction: At 12:44, the word "passed" in the third bullet point should be written "past". I can see why you'd use the spelling "passed". It probably would make more sense to use that spelling for all instances of things "passing" each other, and solely use the spelling "past" to refer to relative direction of one point in time to another, but that's not the convention. Thanks for the informative video! I'm curious what the estimated yearly mass totals of iron, phosphorus, and nitrogen would be that we'd be adding to currently low-productivity areas of the open ocean in order to max out primary production as far as we can without causing anoxia. I'm wondering how economically feasible such a project might be. Could the benefit of increased fish stocks perhaps reduce the net cost enough to make such a project viable.
How would increased primary production lead to ocean anoxia? Because the decomposition of organic matter would only use up oxygen which was produced by primary producers in the first place. Are you sure it's not the other way around, or correlation?
That's a great question! I used to think the same thing! So, the thing with the C and O cycles (and all other elemental cycles) is they have 'chemical reservoirs' meaning the atmospheric bucket has a certain amount, the oceanic bucket has a certain amount, the biosphere (life) bucket has a certain amount, and the geosphere (rock) bucket has a certain amount, and these relative amounts of C and O in the reservoirs also change depend on local conditions. So, when we have increased productivity due to increased atmopsheric C (like the red bucket on the slide at 14:50), the bucket of oxygen in the water column (the green bucket in that figure) becomes depleted from the increased decomposition. Whereas, when these two processes, photosynthesis & respiration, are in balance, the buckets should not run out because they replenish each other, but when primary productivity gets out of control, the ocean can become stratified (form layers and become not well mixed), leading to anoxia in the deep parts even though the producers are producing oxygen at the surface. There are of course other 'buckets' or chemical reservoirs involved in this process like the Fe, S, and P buckets shown on those figures, but this is the gist of the process. If you want to see a full break down of the process and those figures, I recommend checking out my old biogeochemistry video where I step by step go over the processes shown in those figures: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-LQKGhPUxrpU.htmlsi=6lTE8JxlzFnXV-lC Hope this helps! :)
Can someone explain why the Sahara can go from + 50 C during the day to -10 C in the night. The Amazon during the day + 35 C and at night doesn’t drop that much. The difference is of course the Amazon is enveloped by water vapor and the Sahara total lack of it therefore desert. I wonder why CO2 that is there in Sahara cannot prefend heat leaked to space in such massive rate?
i think you are right at the start of the troubles or along the way, but speaking of scheming then it would seem more direct man-made devastation also occured ie., nuke warring. i like that it was never really explained though, not evrything need to be laid at the reader's feet, we can use our imaginations.
Fertilizing the ocean may actually for once perhaps not be an asinine idea. It won't solve the problem of course (which does not exist by the way) but it prolly will increase ocean fish so we can eat more of it (healthy food).
hi again doc geo i have a request -- we are visiting australia next month and so i was wondering if you could do a video for us about it as its so unique a continent. as you know it has the oldest life on earth stromatolites -- and i think some of the oldest geologic samples as well (the jack hills hadean zircons 4.404B yrs old). its so strange that anything of the hadean era could still be detected on the surface. thanks and please let us know when you are defending -- you are almost there best wishes!
Absolutely! Cooling has caused some of the largest mass extinctions in Earth's history, and our initiation of cooling (if we can even acheive that) can certainly turn into a rapid enough change that causes more harm. However, I would guess (guess being the important word here haha) that our current release of carbon (which wouldn't stop all together even as we put into practice more C sequestration efforts) would likely keep any cooling from getting out of control for a while, but it is certainly possible that in the long term (possibly after humans are extinct), cooling will take over and cause another major glacial advance. But I don't know for sure and it depends on a lot of other factors, I am just speculating here as well :)
At this point, I think we would do better to abandon any attempt at mitigating or reversing climate change, and just invest our resources into adapting our infrastructure to it. We just don't understand climate well enough to start messing with it like that, I fear we would just unintentionally make things worse.
Thanks for that wonderful roller coaster of a video. You covered a lot of ground, er, ocean... While CO2 sequestration is a useful if limited tool, wouldn't it be nice if we could instead, find alternatives to carbon dioxide producing burning to power our civilization? It ought to be easier, and cheaper, to stop the burning than it is to get rid of the byproducts by any means.
Great question! Absolutely it would be easier and cheaper, but at this point, we need to think about both decreasing emissions and sequestration because we have already emitted enough to cause devastation to marine and terrestrial ecosystems because the C we've already emitted is not going anywhere and will remain in the atmsphere continuing to warm Earth for millions of years to come. So, we need to come up with some large-scale sequestration techniques in addition to decreasing emissions. The good news is we are already doing sequestration in many ways (like the ocean C burial mentioned here, as well as no-till farming which increases the soil's ability to sequester carbon and planting trees which certainly sequester loads of carbon). :)
@@GEOGIRL I'm not saying don't do sequestration. I just think there are cheaper, easier ways to do these things. For instance taking CO2 directly out of the atmosphere with machines is very expensive and hard to scale, without being even more expensive. What I think we need is more ways to induce CO2 into chemical bonds it wants to take, and that we don't need a fan or other fancy equipment to draw it to our binding agent(s). I absolutely think we need more of the right trees in the right places. One of the big problems with trees is deforestation. We cut them down to build housing, and then make the housing "pretty" with a few non native tree species. So lose 10 trees per house, plant 3-5 per house, is a net loss of trees. It's not just trees though, grasses, peat, swamps, there's a number of natural processes that suck CO2. We burn the peat, we drain the swamps, and that just exacerbates the problem. We should be creating new bogs, swamps, and areas with plants of whatever kind to really make a difference, because those things really do make a difference.
Rachel, will you make a video on enhanced continental weathering? I have been following Project Vesta for a couple of years. You probably already heard of it, but the core idea is grinding dunites and spreading the resulting green sand on tropical beaches. As far as I understand, that does not require biological processes. According to people working on the project, covering 2% of the tropical beaches with that olivone-rich sand would be enough to offset all the current global emissions. What do you think of it?
Absolutely, yea I should've been more clear that that is for a general average of productive coastal regions in the modern ocean and of course would fluctuate depending on local conditions. But is still very low even in anoxic zones due to anaerobic respiration :)
Over the same period that CO2 has gone up by 130 ppm, oxygen in the atmosphere has gone down by 800 ppm. One CO2 molecule needs one O2 molecule, so there is over 600 ppm of oxygen missing. Should we be worried?
Need to consider that the world leaders own ocean front property. Let us also consider the insurance companies would not insure a property that was surely to be in jeopardy of inundation. I understand that people in forested areas are having trouble getting insurance though. Think about that. I am.
Looking at it not with a "what can go wrong with the ecosystem", but through the what can we do better to improve it lens... - embrace anoxia and sulfur bacteria, not all over the globe, but in water basins that can be separated from wider world ocean After all that drastically reduced the amount of marine snow that becomes sediment permanently. - make marine snow "not edible" ...since opposite chirality molecules are "forever chemicals" they make the best marine snow i guess?
We remove a lot of biomass from the oceans every day. Would it not be good to "fertilize" that with something to replace what we take out? Except it's not iron is it.
It would depend on what we are fertilizing (what type/species of algae). Different algae have different pigments, and thus would affect Earth's albedo differently. The ones that are white in color would likely increase Earth's albedo which would help with cooling, but not to a degree that I think would be that great, especially if we have to manually mix the water column to avoid anoxia, because then we would be disturbing the surface bloom enough to potentially decrease its solar reflectivity. Anyway, this is just a guess, I am not enitrely sure, but great question! ;)
Rachel I love this video. It is fascinating and offers a glimmer of hope. Thank you very much. I put nutrient-rich products on my face twice a day. Do you think my cheeks 🥰 are anoxic? Also, a confounding variable is 🅱️errt, my younger English 🇬🇧 golden 🐕, is constantly licking👅 me.
I don't know, I thought excessive fertilizer runoff and erosion are forms of pollution. They contribute to eutrophication. Excessive erosion of silt and clay harms fish, amphibians, and other organisms in river, estuarine, and marine ecosystems.
So, if pcean fertilization leafs to hypoxia, do we see this also where the nutrient rich deep ocean waters well up from the depths, like on the tip of s South America or on greenlands west coast? Afaik NO!
Well I am not originally from El Paso, I am just here now because I go to UTEP, but unfortunately, no I do not speak spanish. I told myself when I moved here that I should learn, but never did. Why? Are you El Paso? or nearby?
Why don't we stop polluting the environment? Me personally; I would think that the pollution produced by me is killing the animals the lock carbon. In my own personal opinion, I think the problem is the massive fishing of animals which causes other animals to shrink in number or bloom out of control. In short, how about we check ourselves instead of checking the environment? The planet is doing just fine last time I checked, and we are the only problem that is ironically hurting ourselves.
Gosh... it is almost like _there is no way to maintain any kind of stasis;_ and with or without human presence, the energetic conditions, and the amount and variety of chemicals available for life to metabolize, are _going_ to change. I believe that kind of dynamism meets the definition of a _complex system._ So if we aren't here, some _other_ organism is going to fill the void and be the primary driver of environmental fluctuations. From this fact, one can conclude that our activities are ultimately natural, and our tendency to chemically alter the environment is also natural, regardless of the substances or concentrations thereof that we introduce. That isn't meant as a justification for pollution. I personally find the practice disgusting. We are certainly capable of rendering the world inhospitable to our own species, but we are incapable of destroying life as a whole any more than any other event or formerly dominant species is, was, or could be. Even if we dumped all toxic and radiological waste into the ocean and launched every nuclear weapon simultaneously, life would be reduced, but it wouldn't be destroyed. As spectacular as you are, Geo Girl, you will never convince me that climate change is something that _should_ be stopped, reversed, or otherwise mitigated. In fact, I am convinced it should be embraced and accelerated.
That's a good way to get lots of people killed. Organisms in the past altered earths climate-often to their own detriment. Simply because single celled life forms were able to do it, causing the worst mass extinction on Earth doesn't mean we should do the same.
I'm thinking what governments will offer up to the people of planet earth. Think of all the shortcuts-crazy, unworkable, and dangerous notwithstanding, and you'll have your answer. 3 to 4C and a billion on the move, increased war, dried up glacial rivers, multiple failed growing seasons, etc. I don't think we full understand what our impact (overcoming planetary inertia of multiple regulating systems) and resultant system response. We are in for it.
Anyone who is interested in Earth science, processes, etc., but for some of my videos I specifically target students (such as my thin section identification tutorial type videos or my more technical lectures), and for others I target more general public, broad lay audience to increase my reach and the reach of the geosciences in general (such as videos like this or last week's shark evolution video). Because the latter type of video takes less time that my really detailed technical lectures for students, I have been making more of those recently because I am super busy with my dissertation at the moment, but I hope soon to get back to more of a ~ 3:1 ratio (or around that) of general interest videos to student-targetting lectures. So anyway, that's the breakdown ;)
