'Our method of carbon sequestration can be scaled even further and can feasibly and cheaply sequester all carbon required to stop and reverse climate change completely.'
I am a strong supporter of the enhanced rock weathering approach, and nuclear explosives are a cost efficient means of breaking rock, but the efficiency of this seems highly dubious. We need the rock broken very fine and dispersed very widely or the neutralization removes all the local CO2 and stops. Dispersing sand and finer basalt will allow wide spread reactions in soil - and gradually release Iron, Magnesium, Calcium, and Phosporous into the soil A nuclear explosion is going to break a column of rock, depending upon yield, on the order of i hundreds of meters, where i may be less than one and is no more than a few. i is going to vary as the cube root of the yield of the blast. But broken rock does no good unless it is dispersed and exposed to flowing water, and to have a fast reaction rate it needs to be quite fine - and not covered by mud. If you are going to turn a seamount into rubble and then mine and grind the seamount into fine powder, it works, but the bulk of the work will not be the initial blast that rubbelizes the seamount. And you would still have to finely disperse the ground basalt.
Relevant weathering numbers: An Australian study of ground Basalt in farm soils had ~ 55% of the basalt in 10 micron powders consumed in 10 years, 99.9% of 1 micron powders were consumed in 10 years. 10 microns is too coarse for seawater neutralization - it settles too fast. 1 micron is probably finer than needed, at least in warmer waters. You want the basalt mostly weathered before it hits settles out of the surface waters. The weathering rate is highly temperature dependent and requires water, which slows down weathering in temperate soils.
We need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and the surface water of the globe (about half of the CO2 from our carbon burning has been absorbed into the surface waters). The deep water in th ocean has not been affected all that much yet - the time scale is too long. So we need to remove CO2 not from the deep ocean but from the surface. Ground basalt in soil and finely ground basalt mixed into the surface waters could do it. Note - Ultramafic deposits are perhaps 2X better CO2 absorbers, but are much less available and may have concentrations of other trace metals that you do not want to add to the environment. But we need lots and lots of ground rock to counter our CO2 emissions. It takes at least 2 tons of rock to neutralize a ton of Carbon, and we are burning billions of tons of Carbon annually. Do the math, it is going to take a lot.
"These levels are projected between 2.5°C and 4°C." No. You only get those numbers by using extreme scenarios that even the IPCC acknowledges are highly implausible.
Setting off nuclear explosions calibrated to prevent further warming or to reverse it assumes our models are accurate, which they clearly are not. Overshoot and you make the world colder which has bad effects. Cold kills 9 to 13 times as many people as heat, so you will be killing a lot of people.
With any luck, we will escape succumbing to a renewed ice age but this foolish move could tip us into a global winter.
For those concerned about global warming, the sensible solution is adaptation and resilience resulting from inexpensive and reliable energy. This nuclear "solution" imposes the extremely uncertain outcomes on everyone with no choice.
I love that you are considering this idea. I read the arXiv article a month or two back, and thought the idea wasn't that well thought out yet.
However, I think that it is an incredibly important habit of mind to be open to new ideas, no matter how unusual they might sound.
A lot of people have stopped considering new ideas, if only for a second, perhaps because they are afraid of looking foolish. I'm glad you're not one of them!
And, a lot of people have stopped proposing crazy ideas, because they are even more afraid of looking foolish. So kudos to Andy for doing it!
Re-building the muscle of discussing crazy ideas is way more important right now than if any specific idea is right. We can figure that out later.
This is rank amateur bollocks by an entirely unqualified overconfident sheltered rich person who thinks he knows everything when in fact he knows nothing. Perhaps ChatGPT wrote the paper for him.
He should stick to AI and Quantum bollocks, at least he's qualified for that.
A good traumatizing career failure would do this punk a world of good.
I am a strong supporter of the enhanced rock weathering approach, and nuclear explosives are a cost efficient means of breaking rock, but the efficiency of this seems highly dubious. We need the rock broken very fine and dispersed very widely or the neutralization removes all the local CO2 and stops. Dispersing sand and finer basalt will allow wide spread reactions in soil - and gradually release Iron, Magnesium, Calcium, and Phosporous into the soil A nuclear explosion is going to break a column of rock, depending upon yield, on the order of i hundreds of meters, where i may be less than one and is no more than a few. i is going to vary as the cube root of the yield of the blast. But broken rock does no good unless it is dispersed and exposed to flowing water, and to have a fast reaction rate it needs to be quite fine - and not covered by mud. If you are going to turn a seamount into rubble and then mine and grind the seamount into fine powder, it works, but the bulk of the work will not be the initial blast that rubbelizes the seamount. And you would still have to finely disperse the ground basalt.
Relevant weathering numbers: An Australian study of ground Basalt in farm soils had ~ 55% of the basalt in 10 micron powders consumed in 10 years, 99.9% of 1 micron powders were consumed in 10 years. 10 microns is too coarse for seawater neutralization - it settles too fast. 1 micron is probably finer than needed, at least in warmer waters. You want the basalt mostly weathered before it hits settles out of the surface waters. The weathering rate is highly temperature dependent and requires water, which slows down weathering in temperate soils.
We need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and the surface water of the globe (about half of the CO2 from our carbon burning has been absorbed into the surface waters). The deep water in th ocean has not been affected all that much yet - the time scale is too long. So we need to remove CO2 not from the deep ocean but from the surface. Ground basalt in soil and finely ground basalt mixed into the surface waters could do it. Note - Ultramafic deposits are perhaps 2X better CO2 absorbers, but are much less available and may have concentrations of other trace metals that you do not want to add to the environment. But we need lots and lots of ground rock to counter our CO2 emissions. It takes at least 2 tons of rock to neutralize a ton of Carbon, and we are burning billions of tons of Carbon annually. Do the math, it is going to take a lot.
What a terrible idea.
"These levels are projected between 2.5°C and 4°C." No. You only get those numbers by using extreme scenarios that even the IPCC acknowledges are highly implausible.
Setting off nuclear explosions calibrated to prevent further warming or to reverse it assumes our models are accurate, which they clearly are not. Overshoot and you make the world colder which has bad effects. Cold kills 9 to 13 times as many people as heat, so you will be killing a lot of people.
With any luck, we will escape succumbing to a renewed ice age but this foolish move could tip us into a global winter.
For those concerned about global warming, the sensible solution is adaptation and resilience resulting from inexpensive and reliable energy. This nuclear "solution" imposes the extremely uncertain outcomes on everyone with no choice.
Wouldn't this wake up Godzilla?
Hi James,
I love that you are considering this idea. I read the arXiv article a month or two back, and thought the idea wasn't that well thought out yet.
However, I think that it is an incredibly important habit of mind to be open to new ideas, no matter how unusual they might sound.
A lot of people have stopped considering new ideas, if only for a second, perhaps because they are afraid of looking foolish. I'm glad you're not one of them!
And, a lot of people have stopped proposing crazy ideas, because they are even more afraid of looking foolish. So kudos to Andy for doing it!
Re-building the muscle of discussing crazy ideas is way more important right now than if any specific idea is right. We can figure that out later.
All the best,
--Buz
This is rank amateur bollocks by an entirely unqualified overconfident sheltered rich person who thinks he knows everything when in fact he knows nothing. Perhaps ChatGPT wrote the paper for him.
He should stick to AI and Quantum bollocks, at least he's qualified for that.
A good traumatizing career failure would do this punk a world of good.