Geoengineering Fun

Eli Dourado writes of fMarginal Revolution's incomparable links.)

1. Bring dorsum the Wooly Mammoth

The curt version: Siberia used to hold upwards grassland, maintained past times wooly mammoths. Grassland is colder than forests. Our ancestors killed off the wooly mammoths, as well as the trees took over. The permafrost is melting, which volition hold upwards a huge climate amplifier. What to do?

Nikita Zimov ... is managing director of Pleistocene Park, a 144 km² grassy Siberian reserve founded past times his father, gonzo scientist Sergey Zimov. The Zimovs possess got spent the past times 2 decades ripping upwards trees as well as reintroducing grazing herds, including bison, moose, wild horses, yaks, as well as reindeer.

The invention is working. Nikita Zimov says the permafrost, which is at unopen to –3º exterior the park, is 17º colder (!) within the park. 

Better however convey dorsum the wooly mammoth! Or rather play amongst elephant as well as wooly mammoth deoxyribonucleic acid until nosotros teach a one-half agency novel beast that tin teach restore the Siberian grasslands, as well as allow it evolve a bit.

Mammoths provided the Pleistocene amongst the valuable services of grazing, trampling snowfall as well as moving it unopen to to teach to the grass below, as well as uprooting trees. Nothing volition brand a mammoth happier, it is thought, than ripping a tree out of the icy ground, simply every bit modern elephants taste doing the same inward the warmer Earth of Africa. Based on everything nosotros know, mammoths were a critical utilisation of the Siberian Steppe ecosystem, as well as their extinction at human hands is what caused the forests to accept hold.

I dearest the icon of genetically engineered one-half wooly mammoths playfully ripping trees out of Siberia, eating grasses, as well as trampling Earth to salve the permafrost.

2. Project Vesta.

 mine large volumes of a (usually) greenish mineral called olivine, vanquish it up, as well as spread the resulting greenish sand on beaches all over the world, particularly inward the torrid zone where the H2O is warmest. 

It soaks upwards carbon dioxide as well as ends upwards on the sea floor, as well as eventually subjected into the mantle. That's where carbon dioxide ends upwards now, simply much faster. And greenish beaches are kinda cool.

...One ton of olivine applied inward Vesta’s procedure removes unopen to 1.25 tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere. Olivine is superabundant, making upwards nearly one-half of Earth’s upper mantle...[ calculation follows ] that industrial plant out to unopen to $9.04 per ton of CO₂ removed from the atmosphere as well as ocean.

$10 per ton is a swell price. Many other hot ideas are $100 per ton or more.

what if nosotros wanted to offset cumulative anthropogenic emissions since 1751? As of 2017, that was unopen to 1.6 trillion tons of CO₂. 1.6T × $9.04 = $14.46T through 2017. Adding $360B for each of 2018 as well as 2019, nosotros teach far at a one-time cost of $15.18T for offsetting all human emissions since the dawn of the industrial revolution, which if done over 10 years, would cost 1.7% of global GDP.

3. Prometheus fuels

Short version: a chemic procedure that allows you lot to create ethanol as well as and so other fuels from whatsoever electricity source, including nuclear, solar, etc. Fuels tin hold upwards stored as well as transported, so the intermittent nature of much "clean" fuel doesn't matter.

4. The billion oyster project

Bring huge oysters dorsum to New York Harbor. Ok, non much climate activity but pretty cool

*******

Cool, but similar other sensible adaptation as well as geoengineering projects, you lot tin tell this is going nowhere inward today's environmental politics, right? Genetically engineer a novel frankenspecies of mammoth as well as educate it set out to breed? Spread greenish rocks on all the worlds beaches? How unsightly! You've got to hold upwards kidding right? Well, no, if the climate actually is a planetary emergency.

Two niggling sentences from Eli are worth quoting here:

Some environmentalists don’t similar geoengineering because it seems also easy: 

Indeed. Suppose nosotros establish a technical solution that did not ask an uprooting of all society, "climate justice," a federal takeover of this that as well as the other. (Nuclear power, GMO foods, greenish beaches, as well as wooly mammoths.) How would the Green New Dealers react? Thanks, work solved, we'll teach dorsum to other things? I incertitude it.

Most deeply

 it ignores the sins of humanity, for which nosotros must atone. 

That is indeed much of the mood on the climate left -- as well as the argue all sorts of technocratic solutions are going nowhere politically.

Eli makes a brave ethical declaration for his GMO wooly mammoths:

..our climate touching started much earlier, during the Paleolithic era, when nosotros hunted megafauna to extinction as well as hence altered critical ecosystems. .. But inward fact, using genetic applied scientific discipline to revive megafauna that nosotros wiped out to restore ecoystems that practise goodness the climate also atones, if that is the correct agency of looking it at. Hunting these magnificent creatures to extinction was our master copy climate sin.

Good luck amongst that. Maybe nosotros should instead accuse the mammoth caput on: simply teach past times the atoning for sins work concern as well as teach on amongst solving the carbon work inward the most effective way.

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