/sci/ - Science & Math

http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/10/pentagon-climate-change-shift-wars

This article gave me the impression we moved from trying to slow down climate to change to just trying to prepare for the changes instead.

The climate has been changing for millions of years.

No need to 'fix' anything.

>>6825949

>>>/b/

The IPCC presents some climate engineering research, but so far, they have been more concerned with mitigation and adaptation. Still, you can find some references in the report

>>6825951
You must be one of hiatus deniers.

I don't have a source, but I remember hearing about someone using carbon from the air to make cement, but it currently couldn't be done efficiently at a large scale. I personally think that we should be investing heavily in figuring out ways to capture and store carbon, because I'm not confident at all that the governments that matter will do anything to stop further pollution, and the CO2 in the atmosphere is already at problematic levels.

Helping rainforests and coral reefs grow back is a pretty good start since they're huge carbon sinks.

>>6826026
Aye, increasing rainforest coverage would permanently (at least as long as the rainforest was maintained) sequester carbon, but one must keep in mind that existing rainforest will essentially even out with regard to carbon input and output

genetically modifying plantlife to take in more CO2 and breathe out more oxygen.

Of course that would fuck up the balance of the ecosystem but that's better than killing it.

>>6826084
This is a bad idea for a number of reasons.

First of all, plants die. When they die, detritovores consume oxygen to break down the plant, which releases CO2 back into the atmosphere.

Second, how exactly could you modify plantlife to absorb more CO2? would you make it so the plants grow larger? In any case, wild plantlife has the genetic makeup that it has because that is what has produced the most reliable ability to survive and reproduce. It's not inconceivable that we could give them an advantage, but it would be extremely difficult to predict whether any modification would be advantageous.

Finally, we have this:
>Of course that would fuck up the balance of the ecosystem but that's better than killing it.
It's not like climate change will turn the planet into a desolate wasteland, there will still be organisms inhabiting the earth. So either way the ecosystem will be unbalanced (not completely dead).

>>6826114
It would have to be somewhere around one trillion trees.

>>6826114
>First of all, plants die. When they die, detritovores consume oxygen to break down the plant, which releases CO2 back into the atmosphere.

This is irrelevant because we are making plants breathe in more CO2, not simply introducing more plants. On top of that, the plant will "breathe" throughout its whole life and decay only for a far smaller amount of time.

>how exactly could you modify plantlife to absorb more CO2?

I never claimed to have that answer, after all, this solution doesn't exist yet. That said, life is quite suboptimal in all cases.

>>6826180
> we are making plants breathe in more CO2, not simply introducing more plants. On top of that, the plant will "breathe" throughout its whole life and decay only for a far smaller amount of time.
This comment demonstrates that you have a fundamental lack of understanding about how and why plants use CO2. All the carbon a plant intakes must be accounted for somewhere. Most of it is incorporated into the plant tissues and remains there until it dies. When it is decomposed, the detritovores consume the carbon (in the form of sugars and other organic compounds). These detritovores incorporate some of this carbon into their bodies (which will also decompose eventually), but most of it is used in respiration (which consumes O2 and releases CO2). Where do you think the CO2 goes when plants "breathe it in"? Further, the amount of time it takes to decay is irrelevant, what matters is the total amount of CO2 released. A tree can spend 200 years building itself using carbon from the air, then have all of that carbon released in an hour upon burning.