Resident Bill Calvin has teamed up with Raz Manson (daughter of the Jacques) to bring about a literal “sea change” in dealing with the climate change crisis. For detailed information please click on their website: https://co2foundation.org/ “For 30 years, Bill has had a ringside seat for the climate scientists’ analysis of global warming and, having learned to write about complicated science for general readers on brain topics, undertook to do it for climate science (blog at CalvinClimate.blogspot.com). That’s how he came to write about both the ascent of human intelligence and the collapse of civilization if we fail to quickly repair climate.” Note: A gigaton of carbon (1 GtC)
Here’s a brief summary of the thinking: “Suppose we discovered a methane leak that promised to overheat the earth 2˚C in the next two decades? Or our CO₂-based overheating and ocean acidification became an emergency?
A drawdown of atmospheric CO₂ would address all three issues but it would need to be big, quick, and sure-fire.
How big? Aim at removing the 300 GtC emitted since 1965. That would cool things off and slow methane production.
How quickly? We must back out of the danger zone before being weakened by resource wars and economic collapse. During a 20 yr project period, another 200 GtC are likely be emitted from business-as-usual, so make that goal 500 GtC. That’s 40 GtC/yr capacity ramping up at 8 GtC/yr capacity each year after 2025.
Once the drawdown is complete, half of the sequestration capacity might still be needed to continuously counter out-of-control emissions; the rest goes on standby for future emergencies.
How secure? Our initiative needs to be sure-fire, since we must avoid the human population crash that a collapse of civilization would trigger.
Most candidates suitable for long-run improvements will be too small, too slow, or too iffy for this emergency. Even fertilizing the ocean surface enough to settle out 40 GtC/yr of the usual debris into the depths would require an unachievable 4x increase in ocean productivity worldwide.
The proposed push-pull pump farms need about 1% of the ocean surface. Pump up nutrients from the depths to enhance plankton production (what winter winds do).
But also emulate natural downwellings. Pump down the carbon-enriched surface waters within a week, before the new organic carbon reverts to CO₂. This also sinks the 240x larger amounts of organic carbon from feces and decomposition that are dissolved in surface waters.
Just as farmers grow a nitrogen-fixing crop of legumes and then plow it under, we would be growing a carbon-fixing crop of plankton and then pumping it under.
Charge the Second Manhattan Project to deploy something like this within four years. A decade later, the climate threat should be half gone.”