Greening the world's deserts and reversing Climate Change

[SpaceMouse]

I stumbled on this earlier and thought it was too important NOT to share.

 

Edited October 21, 2017 by SpaceMouse

[Green Baron]

Hi,

i can't see the link for some reason but i fear it is about Allan Savory from the choice of words.

 

If that is the case then it is just part of the noise from gurus and wannabe world saviours, bragadocios trying to catch the attention of the light minded. It is not science, the guy isn't even a scientist.

 

Otoh, many real scientists all over the world work in the analysis of causes, contexts, relations, etc. blabla of climate and its change. Instead of listening to easy solutions presented by gurus i'd strongly recommend to follow the publications in the journals or from the respective national or international institutions, but always keep in mind that climate and its change is subject to political capriciousness, regrettably :-)

 

If it is not about Allan Savory (and you're probably all searching) then just forget what i wrote. Don't even ignore me ...

[steve_v]

4 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

i can't see the link for some reason but i fear it is about Allan Savory

It is.

4 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

It is not science, the guy isn't even a scientist.

Yeah, I'm pretty sceptical of this guy too. I haven't investigated his claims in any great detail, but the solutions he suggests sound suspiciously easy...

Edited October 21, 2017 by steve_v

[KSK]

I have no intention of sitting through a 20 minute video, so I may be wildly off-base here - but this sounds unlikely.

It takes a handful of minutes to burn a piece of coal but several million years to make it. Greening the deserts might be helpful for locking away carbon but I doubt it'll lock it away fast enough to reverse climate change any time soon.

 

[Green Baron]

Most effective in locking away carbon on a geological scale are actually marine lifeforms, from corals over planktonic to unicellular. These can be really effective, building up layers of carbonate sediments and thus locking away the C for some time. The carbonate platforms can be seen from space (in the Caribbean, Oceania, etc.)

Bad news, for corals it is getting too warm ...

Edited October 21, 2017 by Green Baron

[Scotius]

Simplest solution to overabundance of CO2:

1. Plant a LOT of fast-growing trees.

2. Let them grow to decent size.

3. Cut them down.

4. Sink the logs in nearest deep sea or ocean.

5. Wait until they get buried in sediments, becoming perma-locked.

6. Profit!

7. Wait several millions of years and exploit brand new coal or oil field. Even more profit!

[SpaceMouse]

8 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Simplest solution to overabundance of CO2:

1. Plant a LOT of fast-growing trees.

2. Let them grow to decent size.

3. Cut them down.

4. Sink the logs in nearest deep sea or ocean.

5. Wait until they get buried in sediments, becoming perma-locked.

6. Profit!

7. Wait several millions of years and exploit brand new coal or oil field. Even more profit!

Maybe skip the last one.

[Scotius]

Why? There are many uses for hydrocarbons beyond burning them for energy they contain.

[mikegarrison]

A lot of people get like this. They fall in love with their one big idea, and they think that the whole world is a nail for their hammer.

Sometimes counter-intuitive ideas do actually work, but Savory's claim that cattle grazing in marginal land will turn it into carbon-locking savannahs has been tested and found to be wrong.

[steve_v]

4 hours ago, Scotius said:

1. Plant a LOT of fast-growing trees.

The problem with which is: Where? People are taking over areas suitable for trees at an alarming rate (still), to plant crops to feed the (still) ever expanding population.
Then there's the teensy problem of fresh water to irrigate said trees, which people are also sucking up at an alarming rate.
I hope this was a joke...

The solution to climate change is fewer people. Same goes for most of the world's problems.

[mikegarrison]

8 minutes ago, steve_v said:

The solution to climate change is fewer people. Same goes for most of the world's problems.

Starting with whom? Are you volunteering?

[PB666]

I thought the politics of climate change was verboten.

[steve_v]

5 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Starting with whom? Are you volunteering?

Starting with not making more than die naturally. Preferably less. I volunteer to not have heaps of kids, sure.

2 minutes ago, PB666 said:

I thought the politics of climate change was verboten.

I took that as avoiding the contentious topic of "is it happening / are we causing it". This is a discussion of solutions, so those old arguments are (so far) moot.

Edited October 22, 2017 by steve_v

[PB666]

Well given that forum members want other forum members to volunteer to be part of the ultimate fix, I would say its now officially in verboten land.

[mikegarrison]

4 minutes ago, steve_v said:

I took that as avoiding the contentious topic of "is it happening / are we causing it". This is a discussion of solutions, so those old arguments are (so far) moot.

That seems completely backward. "Is it happening? Are we causing it?" are not political questions. They are science questions.

A discussion of solutions -- now that is actually a political discussion.

Edited October 22, 2017 by mikegarrison

[steve_v]

Just now, PB666 said:

Well given that forum members want other forum members to volunteer to be part of the ultimate fix, I would say its now officially in verboten land.

Don't look at me, I only baited the trap...

1 minute ago, mikegarrison said:

That seems completely backward.

Either can be political, or scientific, depends on how one discusses it.

[mikegarrison]

21 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Either can be political, or scientific, depends on how one discusses it.

I'm sorry, but no. Whether climate change is happening and (if so) what the causes are is NOT a political question, no matter how often politicians try to make it one. It's a science question. It's either a fact that it is happening or a fact that it is not. All the legislatures in the world can't legislate a new speed of light or a new value for pi, and in the same way they can not politically decide whether climate change is really happening.

However, they CAN politically decide whether to do anything about it.

Edited October 22, 2017 by mikegarrison

[Bill Phil]

There is no solution to climate change. There is a set of methods to address certain issues, but it mostly boils down to speeding up the carbon cycle... which may bring about other, potentially bigger, issues.

Greening deserts may not work out. We recently discovered that the Sahara helps keep the Amazon green (or maybe not recent, idk). Also, a desert has a high albedo, relative to forests and other greenery. You may be trapping carbon into trees and other flora, but it could increase the heat retained regardless of that.

Reversing climate change will take centuries. And by then we may not even care about Earth's climate.

[steve_v]

30 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Whether climate change is happening and (if so) what the causes are is NOT a political question, no matter how often politicians try to make it one.

This is entirely true. However there are some that refuse to believe and try to argue with this truth. And that opens the discussion to politics...
Where politicians are involved, the conversation inevitably descends into politics. Lets' not, on either point.

Lets just pretend that politics has nothing whatsoever to do with anything being discussed here, so as to not have this thread stomped on by the mods, yes?

Edited October 22, 2017 by steve_v

[YNM]

Really ? Says a man with a "holistic" views applied for ecology ? Someone who lead to the culling of elephants ? (well admittedly they'll die anyway, probably.)

The ideas is just to manage grazing ?

 

 

I'm not buying this.

I know I insulted personally, I know they sometimes work but... no.

The only reason for life to exist is to spread energy (quote "someone who finally got it"). No need to reverse things or whatever, leave it to flow where it flows. If we've managed to make ourself go out of existence, so be it.

[Scotius]

Go with the flow? Really? But everything we did since one of our ancestors cracked two rocks together to make first stone tool is going against the flow We make our living by forcing the flow in the directions we want it to go. Is it wise? Certainly not always. But it does work so far - we're doing pretty well for a species descended from small apes roaming through african savannahs.

[YNM]

26 minutes ago, Scotius said:

Go with the flow? Really? But everything we did since one of our ancestors cracked two rocks together to make first stone tool is going against the flow...

Well, our people just crack the rocks. That's going with the flow.

Going against the flow would be like making cement. But even then you expend energy - that's going with the flow !

[PB666]

Remediating climate change and Atmospheric carbon reduction are two separate issues.

To give an example, to remediate ocean acidification in sensitive fisheries one can take limestone, heat it until it decomposes into calcuim oxide, dropwise add it to distilled water until saturated, mix this with dehydrated salt water and distribute it into the currents that feed the fisheries. That may fix the fisheries but it also adds CO2. There are many similar issues such as widening waterways, national and continental water plans that deal with extreme drought and rainfall events. All of these things require energy and technology that require CO2. Yes you can use Solar panels to move water, but how do you move water close to the coast in a 1:500 year rain event that are now happening every 20 years, given that the infrastructure and power reserves required will not be used but once every 20 years.

Carbon Dioxide is very abundant in the ocean, Carbonates are major buffers in sea-water. It is easy enough to take NaCl and split it into Sodium and Chloride. Acidify the sea-water and heat it and CO2 will come out, add the NaOH back to it and you will have sodium rich sea water. The problem is what to do with the CO2 once you have it. No-one really takes carbon capture seriously because no-one as yet is talking about carbon dioxide polymerization. About the cheapest carbon polymer that can be made is formalin, and it requires the addition of two CH bonds, its easily contaminates ground water and is toxic..

In terms of  Carboniferous-like tree production, it has to be remembered that tree growth (if you can call them trees) in the early terrestrial ecosystems was very rapid compared to today. That is the problem with lignite coal burning, much of the trees are bark that was contaminated with all kinds of heavy metals. Trees could grow more densely than at present make coal formation much easier.

The more rapid alternative is microbial oil synthesis (biofuels) the problem is that the most prosperous that dont require CO2 producing fertilizers undergo nitrogen fixation, the cells of cyanobacterium that fix nitrogen are extremely toxic to most eucaryotes, and so this cannot be done in the oceans and require land use that could otherwise be devoted to other tasks.  So before you come up with a strategy for greening the oceans for carbon capture, you first need a way of nutrient priming oil producing microbes that is also carbon neutral on the front side.

This is the problem. I should make the point here that its about 10 times easier to conserve fossil fuels than remediate their damage after your burn them. If someone can come up with an efficient means of Hydrogen production (at least half is wasted in production of oxygen, something that is already abundant) then addition of hydrogen to coal emulsification plants or as a cracking agent in coal-tar sands effectively reduces the carbon footprint per btu in half. This is easy, but adding hydrogen to CO2 is significantly harder because of the stability of C=O bond versus C=C bond. A significantly higher amount of energy would be required to crack and hydrate CO bonds to form formic acid which can then be further reduced to methanol. Chain elongation is more difficult but doable. The minimum ground stable carbon polymers are C20 and longer.

These steps are on the order of 'beware of the unintended consequences'. The best choice on a planet of 7 billion people is to nudge people to conserve energy ever-harder each year: about deforestation, unneccesary pastoralism, inefficient and carbon-hungry agriculture,  power production/transmission inefficiencies and fertility rates. Trying to remove carbon in the current environment will only make the matter worse, the people who are removing the carbon will attempt to exact the costs out of people generating carbon which could lead to war. Get those across-the-board usages downward trending first. With regard to population size one has to remember that most of the worlds population lives within 500 feet of sea-level, so if decadal-intensity cyclones increase in frequency and people are moved out of the highest production areas (such as what has happened in burma) then population will fall anyway. The predictions in the mid-90s that moved the discussion from global warming to climate changes suggest that large areas of dense human habitation were at danger for increased intensity flooding and droughts. If people are squeezed from these areas to lower production areas then there will be wars (such as what is happening along the Burmese and Bangladeshi border) and the population will fall. The US department of defense has already accepted this as something that will happen, and almost all countries have signed the Paris accord so at least in words people deem this is important. 

In terms of the original post. dryland grasses increase ground water; the grass roots increase the penetration of rainwater deep into the soil and in drought grass die or rely on dormant root systems for seasonal growth. Overgrazing of semi-arid land encourages grass decline and the growth of non-edible trees (such as mexican red cedar in the southwest). This then blocks the absorption of ground water. Native americans knew the value of this and burned grasslands periodically to kill the trees. Cattle brought both mesquite and cedar from Mexico and this has increased the runoff and inhibit the penetration of water into agriculturally benefical aquifers. Africa's deserts may be making a comeback for other reasons. Of course it is smarter to control grazing and replace pastoral-derived intake with agricultural products. Management strategies may fail before they begin because of social instability, some of which has been created by climate change. There are many leading issues with regard to proper land management including composing versus chaff burning, disuse of  firewood, recycling human waste and animal waste for methane production, regrading soil to trap water, restoring underground water reserves, etc. Any of these can increase carbon retention.  These are all fine but who is going to northern Nigeria and Niger to teach locals how to do these things, war is all the easier way to control population overgrowth. It is, afterall, the outsiders that made matters worse to begin with.

[LordFerret]

The only way you're going to manipulate the climate of this planet or any other, is by controlling the energy output of the star it orbits... and that's not going to happen in my lifetime, nor yours.

 

 

Please practice on some other star. Thank you.

[Bill Phil]

20 minutes ago, LordFerret said:

The only way you're going to manipulate the climate of this planet or any other, is by controlling the energy output of the star it orbits... and that's not going to happen in my lifetime, nor yours.

 

 

Please practice on some other star. Thank you.

Well, we could just put a giant fresnel lens in between Earth and the Sun, diluting the light around the Earth. For Mars, we could do the same, only focusing the light onto Mars and increasing the irradiance. 

Still, not in anyone's lifetime.