Best Geoengineering Options

[farmerben]

What are you favorite geoengineering options?

1.  Flood the Qattara Depression to create a new sea the size of Lake Erie in the Sahara Desert.

2.  Create artificial sea ice.  Multiple options including (A) use artic rivers to produce picrete (B) off shore wind driven heat pumps.  A vertical axis wind turbine on a bouy could pump heat from the ocean to the atmosphere throughout the year.  (C) desalinate seawater and use some kind of snow machines to pile freshwater on Antarctica.  

3.  Add aerosols to the atmosphere, introduce impunities into airplane contrails to increase reflectivity.  

4.  Add minerals and feed to the remote oceans to increase biomass in oceanic deserts.  Track ocean biomass with sonar and increase it wherever deficient.

5.  Electrolyze steel underwater which creates calcium carbonate coatings around the steel, thus directly sequestering the carbon and creating artificial structures under the sea.

6.  Pay farmers who can prove tonnage of soil carbon absorbed.  There are multiple known solutions and good reason to do it anyway.  A graphite layer .5mm, like a mechanical pencil lead, spread across all the land on earth would absorb all the manmade CO2.  The top 2 feet of topsoil can usually hold that much increase in the form of underground biomass.  

    

[kerbiloid]

31 minutes ago, farmerben said:

1.  Flood the Qattara Depression to create a new sea the size of Lake Erie in the Sahara Desert.

See the Aral Sea.

32 minutes ago, farmerben said:

2.  Create artificial sea ice. 

Warm the tundra.

33 minutes ago, farmerben said:

use artic rivers to produce picrete

and melt clathrates to release the frozen methane.

33 minutes ago, farmerben said:

3.  Add aerosols to the atmosphere, introduce impunities into airplane contrails to increase reflectivity.  

Back in my days, before the carbon dioxide and the Gret Global Warming, I recall the phreon and Antarctic ozone hole.

It's clear now that it was just a training.

36 minutes ago, farmerben said:

.  Add minerals and feed to the remote oceans to increase biomass in oceanic deserts. 

To make them crash the balance and die from starvation.

36 minutes ago, farmerben said:

5.  Electrolyze steel underwater which creates calcium carbonate coatings around the steel, thus directly sequestering the carbon and creating artificial structures under the sea.

Calcinated remains of the sunken steel ships as an example.

38 minutes ago, farmerben said:

6.  Pay farmers who can prove tonnage of soil carbon absorbed. 

The farmers are specially trained people who dig in the chemical industry products called fertilizers, wait, and then dig out them converted into edible organic structures.

So, it's better to ask the industrial chemists, but this will require more fuel and throw out more exhausts.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

50 minutes ago, farmerben said:

geoengineering

is a REALLY bad idea.  

Like really, really bad.

Far better to stop polluting.

[RCgothic]

Geoengineering is probably necessary in addition to stopping pollution.

But it's less efficient to power carbon capture than it is to not burn carbon in the first place.

The first step is we absolutely have to stop burning carbon. Then any excess clean generation we have (and wind turbines are very "peaky", so there should be a lot) should be used for carbon capture. And we're going to need so much more nuclear power.

We're in an emergency situation and my country is literally on fire right now during its hottest day ever.

[jimmymcgoochie]

1- How exactly do you plan to get quadrillions of tons of water into the middle of the Sahara desert?

2- Fake sea-ice will still melt; if using fresh water it’ll create a cold layer at the top of the ocean that can cause all sorts of problems, while pikrete would need huge quantities of wood and would then dump that wood into the ocean and any ice-making system would require huge quantities of power.

3- Just drop nukes on volcanoes to make them erupt, you’ll get vastly more atmospheric aerosols than you’ll ever get from contrails.

4- Mmm, giant algal blooms spewing toxins everywhere, deoxygenating the ocean and killing all the marine life (and plenty of terrestrial life too if it washed up on a coastline).

5- Steel making is a huge source of carbon emissions, plus who’s going to make that much steel just to throw it into the sea? And where is the power coming from?

6- Trees.

 

Two things that we know will reduce global temperatures: volcanic eruptions and large numbers of nuclear explosions. Drop some nukes into semi-active volcanoes and set them off to trigger huge eruptions and cool the planet by sheer brute force; Krakatoa cooled the entire Earth by about a degree for a few years and there are thousands of old nukes lying around and plenty of remote volcanoes not erupting enough…

[Pixophir]

Geoscientist here.

There are no 'good' geoengineering options.

The only thing that has a lasting effect is stop ghg emissions.

7. is scientist's favourite: Stop burning fossil fuels.

 

Nuke's (or any surface explosion) don't trigger volcanic eruptions. If an eruption is imminent (depending on the type and setting), one maybe can accelerate it by a few hours (Hi, Mr. Spock). But since it is still impossible to time an eruption this is not an option. Totally unclear how to get device anywhere in a position where it is not instantly melted and just, well melts. Not speaking of negative side effects if it explodes over the top of a Stratovolcano, setting everything on fire and bathing the surrounding in radiation while doing just cosmetics on the mountain top. Also, the potential for cooling of the atmosphere by any eruption is very limited (debated) and depends on a lot of things, while the emission of ghg continues. And with the emission of ghg warming will continue once the eruption's effects have ceased (a few years). There's currently no volcanism (edit: or any natural effect!) 'available' that could offset the rate of warming and the loss of space for human habitability that we observe.

Edit: nuclear power doesn't help either. Countries who relied on it (like France) are running out of energy (many reasons). Renewable is the logical way, but needs widespread collaboration and efforts. But this leaves my field of expertise.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Pixophir

[StrandedonEarth]

4, 6: How about starting by NOT overfertilizing vast areas of farmland, with excess runoff going through the rivers into the oceans, which cause end up creating hypoxic regions devoid of marine life?

https://oceantoday.noaa.gov/deadzonegulf-2021/welcome.html#:~:text=The 2021 Gulf of Mexico,over the past five years.

[Pixophir]

An- or suboxic ocean is the last thing we need. There are quite few pockets emerging.

[farmerben]

Most people are talking about what they don't like.  What about what you do like?

We are probably changing the climate through land use alone, not even counting CO2.  

This is my current favorite project.

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

6 minutes ago, farmerben said:

What about what you do like

You are not listening, then. 

 

There are NO good geoengineeting options.  None.  Zero.  Zilch. 

It's a bad thing. 

The earth itself is resilient - all we should do is quit poisoning it so much. 

[sevenperforce]

8 hours ago, RCgothic said:

 

Geoengineering is probably necessary in addition to stopping pollution.

But it's less efficient to power carbon capture than it is to not burn carbon in the first place.

The first step is we absolutely have to stop burning carbon. Then any excess clean generation we have (and wind turbines are very "peaky", so there should be a lot) should be used for carbon capture. And we're going to need so much more nuclear power.

We're in an emergency situation and my country is literally on fire right now during its hottest day ever.

 

And people are literally glossing over this HORRIFYING reality as if it is just any ordinary Tuesday. 

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

1- How exactly do you plan to get quadrillions of tons of water into the middle of the Sahara desert?

Ha-ha!

Spoiler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosion#Soviet_Union:_Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_National_Economy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_river_reversal

https://russian-rt-com.translate.goog/russia/article/827170-proekt-reki-povorot-sssr?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South–North_Water_Transfer_Project

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantropa

(The latter would be enjoyed by the Italians.)

 

7 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

3- Just drop nukes on volcanoes to make them erupt, you’ll get vastly more atmospheric aerosols than you’ll ever get from contrails.

Who said "2012"?

Spoiler

 

 

7 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

4- Mmm, giant algal blooms

A liquid coal. 300 mln years later they will call it "coal".

7 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

Steel making is a huge source of carbon emissions, plus who’s going to make that much steel just to throw it into the sea? And where is the power coming from?

??? It's right in situ.

https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/09/12/the_fear_that_a_nuclear_bomb_could_ignite_the_atmosphere.html

Just take a bigger gun,

3 hours ago, farmerben said:

This is my current favorite project.

 

Qattara sea, twenty years later.

Spoiler

 

***

Now back to the realistic suggestions.

(Btw read attentionally the description of usage, it's rather different from lesser nukes.)

https://warcats-ru.translate.goog/2021/01/31/podzhigateli-neba-superbomby-edvarda-tellera/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru#.YteMcSVByHt

(There was an English original, but can't find it right now.)

Btw, see the hardware developer's name.
Not just anyone, but Edward Teller, the man who knew about the thermonukes everything.
And see,what's his proposal for the propulsion module. This makes me again laugh at everyone who laughs at Orion. Tell Teller about its impossibility.

So, we can warm the useless Antarctics all at once, and melt its ice, instead of warming Arctics like in OP.

Edited July 20, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Pixophir]

5 hours ago, farmerben said:

Most people are talking about what they don't like.  What about what you do like?

Unfortunately, there's nothing to 'like' in a sense of a good, well thought through solution that would have a clear, positive effect on climate change with known side effects. Many of them, like aerosols to reflect sunlight, have known bad side effects (ocean acidification for instance). A lot of work is going on in the area.

One would have to show for each proposal what its projected positive effects are, and what the negative side effects could be. Youtube videos are not helpful there.

5 hours ago, farmerben said:

We are probably changing the climate through land use alone, not even counting CO2.  

This is very true.

Flooding a desert with saltwater to create a stagnant (=bad) water body, assuming it could be done with the help of gravity alone and without blowing more ghg into atmosphere, creates a salt pan unsuitable for land use. It's net effect through raising albedo (clouds) is very low. Saltwater will filtrate into ground water with negative effects on the environment, and human habitability in an already fresh water deprived area. Idk what's known about known aquifers in that area, if they are connected or confined, .... Salt can also be distributed through aeolian transport, negatively affecting land use in the vicinity. Afaik there is no ephemeral highly saline water body that somehow supports stable vegetation (see bitter lake). Iow, they are pretty much dead apart from extremophiles.

 

[kerbiloid]

We should start from gnats.
Targeted chemical/genetic agents.

1. The mosquitoes should vomit from disgust just smeliing a human (even a sober one) or a cat. 
Or even just a cat, to motivate humans pet the cats as much as possible.

1.1. Flies, too, as they are their siblings.

2. Arachnid scum mass extinction. Let the ticks and spiders die, not reproduce, and disappear from the biology.

2.1 Fleas and lice, too.

3. Stimulated reproduction of dragon-flies and mantises, to replace the p.2. ones.

3.1. Make the ants hate aphids. Apply p.3. to the ladybugs, too. 

Edited July 20, 2022 by kerbiloid

[SunlitZelkova]

7 hours ago, farmerben said:

What about what you do like?

Using the dark side of the force relying on innate behaviors of Homo sapiens to pit them against each other, impeding upon their development and damaging their ability to solve problems.

They continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere (the geoengineering part) and based on pure profit related reasons destroy farmland and dry up aquifers. Several decades later, a massive famine occurs as a result of climate change, poor agricultural practices, and ocean acidification. Alongside this will be general ecological collapse on certain fronts. It won’t be enough to send Homo sapiens to extinction, but this will kick off a cascading series of problems that should doom them within 10,000 years to go extinct as a result of an inbreeding depression. The inevitable conflict and slaughter that follows the famine will only ensure this.

The climate will continue to grow hotter as trapped methane is released. The survivors fill the tens of thousands of now emptied ecological niches.

The objective of all of this? The return of megafauna. Crows will evolve into new terror birds and rodents will become the size of cows. We will see both herbivorous, carnivorous, and omnivorous variations.

The Revenge of the Pleistocene Megafauna shall be complete, and the new post-Holocene fauna will rule the Earth for 10 million years.

With the intelligence of rats and crows eventually evolving to work together and master technology, the First Terran Empire will expand into the cosmos, mercilessly annihilating any other life forms and transforming other worlds into Earth copies. The Empire will expand to the edges of the universe, develop interuniversal travel, and then proceed to conquer all of existence. With unlimited worlds to inhabit, the First Terran Empire will exist infinitely.

You didn’t say what goal the geoengineering had to have, after all 

[RCgothic]

12 hours ago, Pixophir said:

Edit: nuclear power doesn't help either. Countries who relied on it (like France) are running out of energy (many reasons). 

Nuclear engineer here.

There isn't now nor will there be a nuclear fuel shortage and France's unusually high number of shutdowns at present has nothing to do with Uranium supply.

[Pixophir]

 

57 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

Nuclear engineer here.

There isn't now nor will there be a nuclear fuel shortage and France's unusually high number of shutdowns at present has nothing to do with Uranium supply.

That's maybe the only thing that seems to play let's say a minor role, for now.

Reasons are old faulty technology, lack of materials, lack of human resources for maintenance, or simply unknown in case of material fatigue and corrosion which seem to make up the majority of cases. Shows pretty perfectly that nuclear power cannot be kept up at reasonable costs and being dependant on it endangers energy supply.

For now, most of France's reactors are down amd France receives energy imports, it is unknown when if ever all can be connected again, or if even safety measures must be lifted to do so. Re-nationalization looms over EDF, and France tackles a quicker transition to renewables.

Heat waves that are becoming ever more frequent also aren't good for any power plant type that does energy conversion with waste heat and so needs some sort of heat exchange to get rid of waste heat. Warming water bodies too much kills biology and turns them in an anoxic mud. It is all a mess without renewables, they do not have these problems.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Pixophir

[sevenperforce]

20 minutes ago, Pixophir said:

Heat waves that are becoming ever more frequent also aren't good for any power plant type that does energy conversion with waste heat and so needs some sort of heat exchange to get rid of waste heat. Warming water bodies too much kills biology and turns them in an anoxic mud. It is all a mess without renewables, they do not have these problems.

Do you have any particular source for thermal power plants causing anoxia in bodies of water? I’d like to read more about that.

[kerbiloid]

Why treat uranium as not renewable?

It gets renewed on every supernova.

***

Is Westinghouse aware of the nuclear plants insolvency?

What about Japan?

[Pixophir]

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

Do you have any particular source for thermal power plants causing anoxia in bodies of water? I’d like to read more about that.

The principle is trivial thermodynamics, heating causes accelerated chemical reactions. Countries have regulations as to how much a water body can be heated before power plants must reduce waste heat outlet, or even shut down, before such things happen, and there are several transitional zones between oxygen rich freshwater and fully deprived anoxic zones. These things have happened in the past, that's why regulations had to be made.

In a rapidly warming world, and with further sinking water tables, the margin is getting narrower and having a negative (or positive :-)) effect on the efficiency of these power plants. Already reactors had to shut down because of difficulties to release waste heat (France again, Meuse comes to my mind).  You can plug in "thermal water pollution power plants" into your browser for an overview from Wikipedia to peer-review.

It (pollution, be it heat or harmful substances) is, btw., another point that is often swept under the rug when comparing efficiency and land use of different power generation technologies.

Edited July 20, 2022 by Pixophir

[farmerben]

7 hours ago, Pixophir said:

Unfortunately, there's nothing to 'like' in a sense of a good, well thought through solution that would have a clear, positive effect on climate change with known side effects. Many of them, like aerosols to reflect sunlight, have known bad side effects (ocean acidification for instance). A lot of work is going on in the area.

One would have to show for each proposal what its projected positive effects are, and what the negative side effects could be. Youtube videos are not helpful there.

This is very true.

Flooding a desert with saltwater to create a stagnant (=bad) water body, assuming it could be done with the help of gravity alone and without blowing more ghg into atmosphere, creates a salt pan unsuitable for land use. It's net effect through raising albedo (clouds) is very low. Saltwater will filtrate into ground water with negative effects on the environment, and human habitability in an already fresh water deprived area. Idk what's known about known aquifers in that area, if they are connected or confined, .... Salt can also be distributed through aeolian transport, negatively affecting land use in the vicinity. Afaik there is no ephemeral highly saline water body that somehow supports stable vegetation (see bitter lake). Iow, they are pretty much dead apart from extremophiles.

 

In the case a Qattara there are no valuable freshwater aquifers in the area, there just a few small natural gas wells.  Even a hypersaline sea might be more valuable than what is there now.   It would be possible to flush brine back into the Mediterranean sea to keep the salinity constant.  

The greatest effect on climate by far is evaporation and increased water vapor in the atmosphere.   Climate models all suck at modelling water vapor and clouds.  

 

[wumpus]

20 hours ago, farmerben said:

What are you favorite geoengineering geokludging options?

[snip]

While I'm not as hostile as JoeSchmuckatelli, "geoengineering" implies a far greater grasp of climate and ecology than humanity currently posses.  I strongly suggest replacing the name "geoengineering" with "geokludging" to represent how much a last ditch effort it should be.  But we still might have to do it.

14 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The earth itself is resilient - all we should do is quit poisoning it so much. 

Thirty years of knowing just what we are doing and *now* we should stop poisoning it?  I've only seen half-hearted efforts all this time.

And the Earth's resiliency typically involves the death of the problematic species in the first place.  I don't think it is something we should count on.

[Pixophir]

48 minutes ago, farmerben said:

The greatest effect on climate by far is evaporation and increased water vapor in the atmosphere. 

If that was so, it would be a positive feedback then, making the atmosphere warmer through increased water content by evaporation, not cooling it. The cooling is limited to a surface effect. Quite generally speaking and without taking details into account.

How did NASA put it recently ? Water vapour in the atmosphere is a "major player" in climate change. Sounds important. Seriously, it amplifies the effects of ghgs, it is a positive feedback.

48 minutes ago, farmerben said:

 Climate models all suck at modelling water vapor and clouds.  

One has a pretty good understanding of the role of one of the most important ingredients of atmospheric warming, really.

 

Geoengineering is a buzzword. For now, there is no safe geoengineering and the effects of any application may have worse consequences and all levels, including socio-economic (like being an excuse not to cut ghg emissions). Something will have to be done to remove ghgs from the atmosphere, and somebody will surely do something along the lines of geoengineering without waiting for an ok from science, or right away with buying one. To what avail can't be said, things are just not as simple and one dimensional as it is sometimes put.

I hope it will be something less intrusive than large scale surface works or spraying the atmosphere. CO2 filtering and storage techniques may be more useful, and probably easier to roll out at large scales. But first and accompanying that, the emissions must stop. It may, though, be too late for up to 3 billion people until 2070.

 

Edited July 20, 2022 by Pixophir

[kerbiloid]

They can launch more Starlinks, and make the "day" and "night" arbitrary, managing the insolation by the sat orientation.

P.S.
Wait...

Oh, ...

That's their plan!

Edited July 20, 2022 by kerbiloid

[SunlitZelkova]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

What about Japan?

Unfortunately, from what I can gather very few in Japan seem to be able to grasp the fact that it was a poor design issue, not an inherent problem with nuclear power itself, that caused the 2011 disaster.

Even plans to activate nuclear power plants again in response to the current state of the energy economy are extremely controversial, although they may have their own fair share of technical issues too.

How did the USSR/Russia overcome PR issues after Chernobyl?

Or did it just not? The US hasn’t done anything and many seem to have forgotten about Three Mile Island, although at the same time, very few new reactors have been built.