It requires energy - plants use photosynthesis to harness sunlight, and then use the carbon to build more of themselves, a great positive feedback loop. We have no current technology that has anywhere near the ability to be as net-carbon negative as a plant
Now, if we had something like insanely-cheap fusion power, this would probably be a solvable problem. Otherwise I think some serious advances in nanotech would be required - you're talking about needing to pull 32.3 billion metric tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere per year just to offset our current emissions, much less pull the atmospheric ppm down from the dangerously high (and likely unstable) spot it's already at.
tl;dr the problem isn't getting carbon out of the atmosphere, the problem is being net-carbon for the entire process lifecycle while doing it
I'm about 40. Do you realize that people have been heralding nanotechnology as the solution to all these problems since I was 17? Same goes for fusion. I remember reading in Scientific American that fusion was just a few years off. that was over 20 years ago.
They keep fusion in the news as marketing for the uneconomical nuclear fission power that we're actually forced to use. "Any day now, we won't be producing all this noxious waste!"
He meant the radioactive waste from nuclear fission (with an I) plants. If I picked up the argument correctly, fusion was never meant to work, it was just a smoke screen so that people would not look too closely at what the nuclear industry was actually doing.
I don't share that opinion, though I think nuclear fusion power production - at least in the scales that would matter for the project of human civilization - turned out to be much more harder to achieve than what anyone had expected 50 years ago; and that some hard questions about the practical feasibility of that option went unasked for far too long. Out of normal human nature, of course. No need to cry conspiracy!
We have really dropped the ball on fusion research. JET the current best fusion reactor was built between 1978-1982 (Q ~= 0.7). So from 1982 to now there has been zero count it zero actual progress with a physical device. (They waited to 1991 to actually start using it for fusion not just plasma experiments and the record comes from 1997.)
Arguably, if we had been building a new state of the art device every 5 years we would have had a working fusion reactor in the late 1990's. Though computer models suggested it would not be cost effective.
PS: Yes, the world’s best fusion reactor was designed in 1977 and people wonder why progress is so slow. Hmm, I wonder.
I remember reading that they figured out that photosynthesis' energy transport operates at the quantum level. whatever that means -- but I think that means that photosynthesis is way more complex than we can currently figure out.
I'll defer to another commenter about the challenge of doing this without generating more carbon to generate the required power.
Also, plants don't, "Convert Carbon into Oxygen", they separate the Oxygen from the Carbon and release it.
FWIW the Ocean processes like 3-4x as much carbon as the rainforest. It is of concern that the rainforest is losing its' capacity to, but perhaps it has been overloaded as dead spots in the ocean expand.
Sylvia Earle's project, "Mission Blue", is trying to help the ocean regenerate by fighting overfishing and other practices. There's a great film on Netflix by this name that includes a lot of dive footage from decades ago, and from present day.
Carbon is converted into oxygen in the heart of stars.
You presumably mean converting carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. Yes, we can do this. Plants are currently more energetically efficient at it, and they just grow, which is tough to beat.
Actually, much of the land in Brazil that's being used for biofuels was previously deforested for logging and cattle. Of the remainder, yes, some of it is biofuels, but the vast majority is simply logging, with agriculture (both crops and livestock) a distant second.
Wald's unique insight was that the holes from flak and bullets on the bombers that did return represented the areas where they were able to take damage. The data showed that there were similar patches on each returning bomber where there was no damage from enemy fire, leading Wald to conclude that these patches were the weak spots that led to the loss of a plane if hit, and that must be reinforced.
I thought rainforest is carbon neutral. Every tree is oxidized back to carbon dioxide after death. How can it absorb more carbon, than release? What is the sink?
If the rainforest increases in size, then carbon is removed from the atmosphere. If the rainforest decreases in size, it is released. As you pointed out, if the rainforest is the same constant size, it doesn't matter if a tree is oxidized after it dies - that means a new tree replaced it. The steady state is that the rainforest is a constant size. It is constantly absorbing and releasing carbon dioxide, but they must sum to zero if the size of the forest is constant.
A sink does not have to be an "ultimate sink", you can think of it as a temporary storage subsystem. Individual trees take carbon from the atmosphere, put it into their body mass, and release it years/decades later on their eventual death.
As others have pointed out, a "steady state" forest would be carbon neutral. In any given year all the surviving trees add as much body mass as that of the fewer dying trees. However, steady state is usually not how things work out in practice. AFAIK, most years forest are carbon negative - slowly building up wood mass - and then there are specific events that make for big releases of carbon (big fires, blight that affects multiple trees, etc). Not sure if you can say that evens out to neutral in longer time frames.
The problem in Brazil seems to be that illegal loggers are much more efficient than isolated release events for cutting down trees, so the normal tendency to sequester carbon is being overwhelmed. The "sink" in those terms gets turned into a "source". Not that new carbon atoms are getting created, but it's more like the buffer has now a tendency to grow smaller instead of bigger over time.
btw. I don't understand why the down votes, so +1.
Canadian here. Worked for the forestry service 10 years ago on a team building out software to measure forestry carbon impact in a time before our elected leaders strove to imitate the conservative south. (Broke our national census, fired the scientists, chilled various debates, made it harder to vote, pursued a punitive approach to crime and drugs, etc. . . . but I digress[0])
Your assumptions are the same as we had in our published model. In an organization that wanted to earn money by cutting trees, we considered it a source of carbon we had to offset. Once the trees were cut, we assumed it was released.
Though our Conservative press may try to convince you our failure to get a seat on the UN security council doesn't imply our international reputation is eroding, their figures still show our tourism is down a third from 2005-2013, our immigration is down/flat, and we're half as likely to be Google searched. http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/has-harper-hurt-canadas-po....
You know, we could stop this nonsense in less than a year if we wanted to.
Do you know why we won't? Of course you do. You know the answers just as well as I do.
Firstly, you have to understand the role of the human ego. Some people like playing the revolutionary role, but many people don't. People who want revolution think the answer is to get other people to take up their cause, to think like they think, become committed to a just world.
Can you not see why it's ineffective? Can not see that all you end up doing is preaching to the converted?
If you want an fast, effective environmental revolution, you downplay the rhetoric. You make it mundane. You make it so people can join in without needing to act or think in a set way. You stop trying to fix everything all at once and you focus your efforts on breaking down the problems systematically.
As an example, think about how the conversations surrounding fossil fuel usage have evolved. At first the main argument was about global warming/climate change, how we must change to save the planet. It helped build awareness, debate, column inches in newspapers, etc... but the arguments were too easily swayed by climate change deniers, who could cherry pick various statistics in order to further their case. However, luckily we found a better argument... peak oil.
Peak oil is a simple concept to explain. We're using crude oil at a much faster rate than it's being produced, and there will come a tipping point after which we will have no choice to use less oil, as it'll be harder to come by and more expensive. The concept is simple, it stands up logically, you don't need to follow the latest developments in order to appreciate its validity, all positive points. But the most positive point at all, there's no cultural baggage that comes along with it. There's no lifestyle expectations that come from taking it to heart. It's a less emotionally stimulating idea, and it's all the more effective for it.
So let's look at this Amazon carbon capacity issue. Let's look at what works. Easy first focus, deforestation. People are cutting down trees in the Amazon rainforest in order to make a living. So you focus on giving those people other options to make a living, options that take away the need to cut down rainforest trees. Is it as cathartic as shouting in the streets about saving the rainforest? No. Is it more effective? You know the answer.
The world's environmental problems is ultimately a single over-consumption problem.
We consume too much:
* fossil fuels
* trees
* fish
* food & fertiliser & antibiotics
It'll be difficult to convince others to spend less. We're currently taxed on how much we extract the earth's resources for other's use. I think to solve the consumption problem this is the wrong way to go. It would align incentives more to tax consumption instead. This will better encourage people to not spend.
Of course this goes against what the ECB and the Federal reserve's objective, to increase GDP and thus, consumption, reducing our forests, increasing our CO2 output, and destroying our fisheries.
The world's capital and political system is aligned the wrong way around in creating a sustainable system to manage humankind's allocation of production and consumption. I think it will be too difficult to change the world, and the only thing I can do is to encourage my own frugality.
I am actually surprised that ecosystems on Earth somehow are in an equilibrium, with plants converting as much carbon back into oxygen as animals convert back, on a global scale.
I mean, how does evolution explain that? We once had a near exinction for anaerobic bacteria, because of all the oxygen they produced, at least that's the theory. But the feedback mechanism is through such a global thing (amount of CO2 in the atmosphere) that it is a wonder to me how the populations don't just enter a tragedy of the commons.
I don't think it's right to say that Earth is in "equilibrium"; it's always changing, with or without us (though it's changing faster with us).
But the feedback mechanism is through such a global thing (amount of CO2 in the atmosphere) that it is a wonder to me how the populations don't just enter a tragedy of the commons.
If oxygen-using species generate more carbon dioxide, plants grow better, producing more oxygen. No tragedy of the commons here once the feedback is in place. We're also talking about geological time scales.
That's survivor bias. Earth looks in equilibrium to us because it changes very, very slowly... and we happen to evolve to make the most out of the current set of conditions.
But I'd bet that to the living organisms of the Cambrian period, the current state of our planet would look like a complete (though slowly improving) wreck.
45 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 114 ms ] threadNow, if we had something like insanely-cheap fusion power, this would probably be a solvable problem. Otherwise I think some serious advances in nanotech would be required - you're talking about needing to pull 32.3 billion metric tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere per year just to offset our current emissions, much less pull the atmospheric ppm down from the dangerously high (and likely unstable) spot it's already at.
tl;dr the problem isn't getting carbon out of the atmosphere, the problem is being net-carbon for the entire process lifecycle while doing it
I don't share that opinion, though I think nuclear fusion power production - at least in the scales that would matter for the project of human civilization - turned out to be much more harder to achieve than what anyone had expected 50 years ago; and that some hard questions about the practical feasibility of that option went unasked for far too long. Out of normal human nature, of course. No need to cry conspiracy!
Arguably, if we had been building a new state of the art device every 5 years we would have had a working fusion reactor in the late 1990's. Though computer models suggested it would not be cost effective.
PS: Yes, the world’s best fusion reactor was designed in 1977 and people wonder why progress is so slow. Hmm, I wonder.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8307584
Also, plants don't, "Convert Carbon into Oxygen", they separate the Oxygen from the Carbon and release it.
FWIW the Ocean processes like 3-4x as much carbon as the rainforest. It is of concern that the rainforest is losing its' capacity to, but perhaps it has been overloaded as dead spots in the ocean expand.
Sylvia Earle's project, "Mission Blue", is trying to help the ocean regenerate by fighting overfishing and other practices. There's a great film on Netflix by this name that includes a lot of dive footage from decades ago, and from present day.
They don't do that either. They separate Oxygen from Carbon Dioxide which is not the same thing as carbon.
Carbon pollution is soot - like from a diesel. The stuff they are talking about here is carbon dioxide.
You presumably mean converting carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. Yes, we can do this. Plants are currently more energetically efficient at it, and they just grow, which is tough to beat.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Wald
No, it turns out, decay is a long-term process, and much (most, even) of the carbon is taken up by the organisms that feed on that decay.
Another organism feeds on its decay? Lather, rinse, repeat.
As others have pointed out, a "steady state" forest would be carbon neutral. In any given year all the surviving trees add as much body mass as that of the fewer dying trees. However, steady state is usually not how things work out in practice. AFAIK, most years forest are carbon negative - slowly building up wood mass - and then there are specific events that make for big releases of carbon (big fires, blight that affects multiple trees, etc). Not sure if you can say that evens out to neutral in longer time frames.
The problem in Brazil seems to be that illegal loggers are much more efficient than isolated release events for cutting down trees, so the normal tendency to sequester carbon is being overwhelmed. The "sink" in those terms gets turned into a "source". Not that new carbon atoms are getting created, but it's more like the buffer has now a tendency to grow smaller instead of bigger over time.
btw. I don't understand why the down votes, so +1.
Your assumptions are the same as we had in our published model. In an organization that wanted to earn money by cutting trees, we considered it a source of carbon we had to offset. Once the trees were cut, we assumed it was released.
[0] this is a 5 minute google search: http://www.leadnow.ca/elections-act/
Though our Conservative press may try to convince you our failure to get a seat on the UN security council doesn't imply our international reputation is eroding, their figures still show our tourism is down a third from 2005-2013, our immigration is down/flat, and we're half as likely to be Google searched. http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/has-harper-hurt-canadas-po....
On top of that, Nader has called us out: "We used to look to Canada to hold up a higher standard. There was a propensity to wage peace and engage in peacemaking — I'm sorry to see this Conservative government mimic the U.S. policy of militarization," he said. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/02/19/ralph-nader-stephen-...? http://www.harperscrimes.ca/
Do you know why we won't? Of course you do. You know the answers just as well as I do.
Firstly, you have to understand the role of the human ego. Some people like playing the revolutionary role, but many people don't. People who want revolution think the answer is to get other people to take up their cause, to think like they think, become committed to a just world.
Can you not see why it's ineffective? Can not see that all you end up doing is preaching to the converted?
If you want an fast, effective environmental revolution, you downplay the rhetoric. You make it mundane. You make it so people can join in without needing to act or think in a set way. You stop trying to fix everything all at once and you focus your efforts on breaking down the problems systematically.
As an example, think about how the conversations surrounding fossil fuel usage have evolved. At first the main argument was about global warming/climate change, how we must change to save the planet. It helped build awareness, debate, column inches in newspapers, etc... but the arguments were too easily swayed by climate change deniers, who could cherry pick various statistics in order to further their case. However, luckily we found a better argument... peak oil.
Peak oil is a simple concept to explain. We're using crude oil at a much faster rate than it's being produced, and there will come a tipping point after which we will have no choice to use less oil, as it'll be harder to come by and more expensive. The concept is simple, it stands up logically, you don't need to follow the latest developments in order to appreciate its validity, all positive points. But the most positive point at all, there's no cultural baggage that comes along with it. There's no lifestyle expectations that come from taking it to heart. It's a less emotionally stimulating idea, and it's all the more effective for it.
So let's look at this Amazon carbon capacity issue. Let's look at what works. Easy first focus, deforestation. People are cutting down trees in the Amazon rainforest in order to make a living. So you focus on giving those people other options to make a living, options that take away the need to cut down rainforest trees. Is it as cathartic as shouting in the streets about saving the rainforest? No. Is it more effective? You know the answer.
We consume too much:
* fossil fuels
* trees
* fish
* food & fertiliser & antibiotics
It'll be difficult to convince others to spend less. We're currently taxed on how much we extract the earth's resources for other's use. I think to solve the consumption problem this is the wrong way to go. It would align incentives more to tax consumption instead. This will better encourage people to not spend.
Of course this goes against what the ECB and the Federal reserve's objective, to increase GDP and thus, consumption, reducing our forests, increasing our CO2 output, and destroying our fisheries.
The world's capital and political system is aligned the wrong way around in creating a sustainable system to manage humankind's allocation of production and consumption. I think it will be too difficult to change the world, and the only thing I can do is to encourage my own frugality.
I mean, how does evolution explain that? We once had a near exinction for anaerobic bacteria, because of all the oxygen they produced, at least that's the theory. But the feedback mechanism is through such a global thing (amount of CO2 in the atmosphere) that it is a wonder to me how the populations don't just enter a tragedy of the commons.
But the feedback mechanism is through such a global thing (amount of CO2 in the atmosphere) that it is a wonder to me how the populations don't just enter a tragedy of the commons.
If oxygen-using species generate more carbon dioxide, plants grow better, producing more oxygen. No tragedy of the commons here once the feedback is in place. We're also talking about geological time scales.
But I'd bet that to the living organisms of the Cambrian period, the current state of our planet would look like a complete (though slowly improving) wreck.