DarkCloud@lemmy.world
on 03 Feb 19:12
nextcollapse
Also, there’s a bunch of ways to make Algae blooms in the ocean. Apparently even just dumping a bunch of iron dust in the ocean would cause lots of algae blooms - but we don’t do it.
Because it has a lot of side effects and the oceans are under a lot of stress because of climate change already. So for the moment we don’t fuck with it.
DarkCloud@lemmy.world
on 03 Feb 20:05
nextcollapse
So when we say Climate Change is an immediate and irreversible threat… There’s another clause there that’s something like: but not to us right now as a species, more to the biodiversity that would be put at risk if we tried producing more Algae? So we’re not going to address the “immediate and irreversible threat” in that way (use of algae), because it might upset other things in the ocean.
Would those other things be stuff like… Er… Important stuff. I’m just not sure about this stuff because I don’t know that much about Climate Change in relation to Algae and Oxygen production… And what/when the threat would warrant it.
RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
on 03 Feb 20:23
nextcollapse
The ocean is the Earth’s largest carbon sink. If we fuck it up worse by “just growing algae” we would absolutely fuck ourselves 10x faster.
Not trying to be a dick, but I figured Algae is still a carbon based life form… So I googled and it said: Uptake of CO2 by algae is approximately twice of the weight of algae.
But I assume other stuff is doing most of the heavy lifting… I think I remember something about coral forests, just trying to ask people who know more - what’s taking up all that carbon? Is algae a threat to it?
P.S looked it up, apparently seagrasses and mangroves absorbed the most carbon in the ocean, and Algae van risk sea grass by shading it too much… I still suspect they’re not totally at odds, because it didn’t say anything about being a direct threat, just making too much shade… Anyways. I’m sure others will comment.
EDIT: oh, maybe it’s that sea grass is more stable in its effects/consumption of carbon. Where as Algae patches probably float and fluctuate, or die off… But that probably fertilizes other stuff… I guess this is all why “sustainable” solutions are the focus…
It’s not just the uptake, it’s whether it stays at the surface, ultimately releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere via decomposition gases, or sinks to the ocean floor, thus locking up the carbon in oceanic rock.
We have a good handle on understanding the uptake. It’s the float vs sink part that has the critical uncertainty.
Algae itself needs a functioning ecosystem to survive, to much algea will cause it to kill itself due to overpopulation (e.g. using up resources and dead algea not being cleaned up) while in a small scale humans can care for the algea, taking the place of the ecosystem, for any large area this would be unfeasible and the ecosystem including the algea would collapse.
A benifit of biodiversity is greater resilance to change, by selecting for the growth of specific algea using iron you cause other algea/plant that rely on the prior ecosys to die out (including those reliant on other organisms which died).
this group of less diverse algea will be more susceptible to change, (diseases or environmental change) and as most of the algea in the world will be similar, most of the algea in the world could get wiped out in one go.
So the likely outcome would be an initial spike in carbon capture before the environment becomes unsuitable, collapses, and most of the algea dies.
So all im all at any meaningful scale in the sea this is and will always be, a terrible idea.
(A better idea would be lots of small manigable algea tanks which could realistically be maintained and won’t affect the current diversity, diseases could also not spread between them. This would be expensive but could actually work as a long term solution)
How about instead we dredge reefs for a tiny amount of lithium. That seems like a good compromise.
SkybreakerEngineer@lemmy.world
on 03 Feb 19:16
nextcollapse
Yes, because algae blooms are usually bad for everything but algae. Red tide is a bad thing.
frezik@midwest.social
on 03 Feb 20:11
nextcollapse
Fun fact, depending on your definition of “fun”. Deniers sometimes argue that plants will just grow to absorb the extra co2. This doesn’t work in general, because most plants aren’t limited by co2 availability. There are some exceptions, and the algae that causes red tide is one of them. So we have that to look forward to.
thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world
on 04 Feb 09:17
collapse
To work as a carbon capture mechanic, iron fertilization-driven algae blooms would have to die and sink to the bottom of the ocean, thus locking up their carbon in oceanic rock.
The concern is they would die and float, releasing all that carbon back into the atmosphere via decomposition gases. Then we would have all the effort of the fertilization, all the ecosystem disruption of the algae bloom, and maybe negative benefit as far as carbon since the ecosystem disruption could mess up carbon sinks that were actually working.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
on 07 Feb 15:31
collapse
for the same reason that blue cheese is only partially moldy, if it’s all mold then there’s no cheese left and it all becomes rather unappealing.
Sounds like we need to genetically engineer super algae.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
on 03 Feb 21:14
collapse
That is already happening iirc and being sold as another bullshit tech solution to our energy problems. Its like carbon offsets or carbon capture. Like bro just use less fossil fuels and stop destroying the existing natural carbon capture systems ffs.
painfulasterisk1@lemmy.ml
on 04 Feb 00:01
collapse
MutilationWave@lemmy.world
on 04 Feb 01:35
nextcollapse
All the biofuel things are just burning more stuff for energy, which we need to stop yesterday. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
pipes@sh.itjust.works
on 04 Feb 07:57
nextcollapse
You’re not wrong at all, the worst part is even the “cleanest” of fuels will need to be refined, trasported (burning more fuel and rubber). If one were to live in the middle of nowhere without electricity or sun or wind or geothermal etc…then it starts making sense. So almost never
I think there are definitely some specific cases where it makes sense. For example garbage dumps (and compost facilities as well, I think) produce tons of methane and other unpleasant flammable gases which often get flared off, it seems only reasonable that if you’re gonna be burning the gas anyway that you might as well use that heat to spin a turbine instead of just fuelling a uselessly burning flame on a pole.
In theory biofuel is perfectly carbon-neutral if you’re growing all the input biomass yourself, since all the carbon released when the fuel is burned is carbon which was captured during the growth stage. But in practice it’s not ideal:
There’s still plenty of potential sources of emissions, like harvesting and transporting the biomass will likely be burning fossil fuels and also tires and stuff
Growing biomass is slow, so from what I understand a lot of it ends up coming from newly cut trees and stuff because it’s cheaper than buying tons of land, planting stuff and then waiting years for stuff to grow
IMO the main problem: there are other more useful things we could be doing with that land, if you can grow crops for biofuel production you could also just grow food there and put some wind turbines or solar panels or something on one of the many places on earth not suitable for agriculture to provide the energy
If the biofuel is being produced from like agricultural byproducts (e.g. the stalks of harvested crops) I don’t think there’s really a problem, but AFAIK most of that stuff gets used for compost or gets left on fields to put nutrients back in the soil (and because it’s cheaper and easier to leave it than having to collect it again).
threaded - newest
Also, there’s a bunch of ways to make Algae blooms in the ocean. Apparently even just dumping a bunch of iron dust in the ocean would cause lots of algae blooms - but we don’t do it.
Because it has a lot of side effects and the oceans are under a lot of stress because of climate change already. So for the moment we don’t fuck with it.
So when we say Climate Change is an immediate and irreversible threat… There’s another clause there that’s something like: but not to us right now as a species, more to the biodiversity that would be put at risk if we tried producing more Algae? So we’re not going to address the “immediate and irreversible threat” in that way (use of algae), because it might upset other things in the ocean.
Would those other things be stuff like… Er… Important stuff. I’m just not sure about this stuff because I don’t know that much about Climate Change in relation to Algae and Oxygen production… And what/when the threat would warrant it.
The ocean is the Earth’s largest carbon sink. If we fuck it up worse by “just growing algae” we would absolutely fuck ourselves 10x faster.
Not trying to be a dick, but I figured Algae is still a carbon based life form… So I googled and it said: Uptake of CO2 by algae is approximately twice of the weight of algae.
But I assume other stuff is doing most of the heavy lifting… I think I remember something about coral forests, just trying to ask people who know more - what’s taking up all that carbon? Is algae a threat to it?
P.S looked it up, apparently seagrasses and mangroves absorbed the most carbon in the ocean, and Algae van risk sea grass by shading it too much… I still suspect they’re not totally at odds, because it didn’t say anything about being a direct threat, just making too much shade… Anyways. I’m sure others will comment.
EDIT: oh, maybe it’s that sea grass is more stable in its effects/consumption of carbon. Where as Algae patches probably float and fluctuate, or die off… But that probably fertilizes other stuff… I guess this is all why “sustainable” solutions are the focus…
It’s not just the uptake, it’s whether it stays at the surface, ultimately releasing the carbon back into the atmosphere via decomposition gases, or sinks to the ocean floor, thus locking up the carbon in oceanic rock.
We have a good handle on understanding the uptake. It’s the float vs sink part that has the critical uncertainty.
Algae itself needs a functioning ecosystem to survive, to much algea will cause it to kill itself due to overpopulation (e.g. using up resources and dead algea not being cleaned up) while in a small scale humans can care for the algea, taking the place of the ecosystem, for any large area this would be unfeasible and the ecosystem including the algea would collapse.
A benifit of biodiversity is greater resilance to change, by selecting for the growth of specific algea using iron you cause other algea/plant that rely on the prior ecosys to die out (including those reliant on other organisms which died). this group of less diverse algea will be more susceptible to change, (diseases or environmental change) and as most of the algea in the world will be similar, most of the algea in the world could get wiped out in one go.
So the likely outcome would be an initial spike in carbon capture before the environment becomes unsuitable, collapses, and most of the algea dies.
So all im all at any meaningful scale in the sea this is and will always be, a terrible idea.
(A better idea would be lots of small manigable algea tanks which could realistically be maintained and won’t affect the current diversity, diseases could also not spread between them. This would be expensive but could actually work as a long term solution)
How about instead we dredge reefs for a tiny amount of lithium. That seems like a good compromise.
Yes, because algae blooms are usually bad for everything but algae. Red tide is a bad thing.
Fun fact, depending on your definition of “fun”. Deniers sometimes argue that plants will just grow to absorb the extra co2. This doesn’t work in general, because most plants aren’t limited by co2 availability. There are some exceptions, and the algae that causes red tide is one of them. So we have that to look forward to.
so more CO2 more red tide algae? cool
And bad for everything but the algea is bad for the ecosystem the algea relies on to live
To work as a carbon capture mechanic, iron fertilization-driven algae blooms would have to die and sink to the bottom of the ocean, thus locking up their carbon in oceanic rock.
The concern is they would die and float, releasing all that carbon back into the atmosphere via decomposition gases. Then we would have all the effort of the fertilization, all the ecosystem disruption of the algae bloom, and maybe negative benefit as far as carbon since the ecosystem disruption could mess up carbon sinks that were actually working.
for the same reason that blue cheese is only partially moldy, if it’s all mold then there’s no cheese left and it all becomes rather unappealing.
Sounds like we need to genetically engineer super algae.
That is already happening iirc and being sold as another bullshit tech solution to our energy problems. Its like carbon offsets or carbon capture. Like bro just use less fossil fuels and stop destroying the existing natural carbon capture systems ffs.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/c6e76eaf-d7d1-4a5c-b67a-2420aae47a1b.jpeg">
Something like this?
All the biofuel things are just burning more stuff for energy, which we need to stop yesterday. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
You’re not wrong at all, the worst part is even the “cleanest” of fuels will need to be refined, trasported (burning more fuel and rubber). If one were to live in the middle of nowhere without electricity or sun or wind or geothermal etc…then it starts making sense. So almost never
I think there are definitely some specific cases where it makes sense. For example garbage dumps (and compost facilities as well, I think) produce tons of methane and other unpleasant flammable gases which often get flared off, it seems only reasonable that if you’re gonna be burning the gas anyway that you might as well use that heat to spin a turbine instead of just fuelling a uselessly burning flame on a pole.
In theory biofuel is perfectly carbon-neutral if you’re growing all the input biomass yourself, since all the carbon released when the fuel is burned is carbon which was captured during the growth stage. But in practice it’s not ideal:
If the biofuel is being produced from like agricultural byproducts (e.g. the stalks of harvested crops) I don’t think there’s really a problem, but AFAIK most of that stuff gets used for compost or gets left on fields to put nutrients back in the soil (and because it’s cheaper and easier to leave it than having to collect it again).
Biofuel is to make something to burn for fuel. Ethanol is a biofuel.
Rock Papa Swingers.
Would’ve been better if you had used a photo with an actual tree instead of a rock.
And an actual algae instead of a great wall of China
Yeah, who is this guy, anyway?
No algae ever kept me cool in the shade on a sunny day.
No, but maybe we can make that happen.
Wise men
plantbioengineer algae whose oxygen they will never breathe?They have for me - albeit I was swimming in an untreated lake at the time.
Yea sure, keep bragging about your height
Plankton? Is it you?
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/85ff8c31-3d06-4df5-9f2b-ecf8c07dd76a.webp">
I’m not scale shaming, just to be clear. I’m shaming you for what you have done
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/fd73f466-2988-43c6-a89a-0631d88258f3.webp">
But don’t take it personal
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/015f5136-10e7-4b77-abdc-d614314ca059.webp">
Technically speaking, trees are just structures that evolved to hold up that same algae anyway.
I thought it was more like 70%. You’re doing algae bad here.
to be fair I am currently failing algae bruh
I’m also failing algeaebra, don’t worry
Algae rock? Yeah, what about it? <img alt="" src="https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/b9db2840-7091-4aa4-8821-2d0b2db15be6.jpeg">
Well, they also have 70% of the earths surface while trees only have 30%
.
Trees capture more carbon though