Last Dinosaurs Repair

[Marianna]

Theworld has been a hothouse most of the last 540 million years. Humanity can mimic what naturally occurred to turn a hothouse Earth 15C warmer than today into a -9C ice age. We can just do a little less aggressively and in more precise amounts to cool 1.2C.

Another hothouse period was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) about 55-56 million years ago. Though not quite as hot as the Cretaceous hothouse, the PETM brought rapidly rising temperatures. During much of the Paleocene and early Eocene, the poles were free of ice caps, and palm trees and crocodiles lived above the Arctic Circle.

A PBS special discussed the PETM but focused on the fact that human-based global warming is acting faster than whatever caused the PETM. The PBS special glosses over the Azolla event. The Azolla event is the theory that this plant grew and covered the Arctic and then sank to the bottom of the ocean taking trillions of tons of carbon to the bottom and ending a warming event that is 12C-15C degrees warmer than we have today.

Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.

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We have natural analogues of temporary cooling from volcanic eruptions, which would take far less time and effort to deploy than anything in orbit. And we have the example of World War Two, when much of the world's economy turned on a dime to face a common threat.

-fastest-66-million-years

I think there's more than CO2 driving these climate variations, a lot more, so I don't think you can actually say, "We've got higher CO2, so the temperatures and sea level have to end up higher." But, maybe.

My concern here is actually that we respond sensibly, and taking a large part of our carbon inventory and putting it permanently out of reach is not sensible, because if we turn out to have done it by mistake, we can't undo it.

Space based sun shields can be turned off and on like a light switch. If it starts getting cold, we can turn the heat back up. We can even, potentially, modulate the light spectrum and spacial incidence to improve the biosphere; Reduce only the green wavelengths plants don't use, make it darker over the low albedo largely abiotic oceans, while retaining full energy for photosynthesis in biologically productive areas.

I heard a story about three African tribesmen sneaking up on a pride of half a dozen lions gathered round a kill. They just broke cover and marched right up to them. The lions retreated while they figured out this insolence. The men grabbed a haunch and made off, laughing their heads off at having robbed the King of the Beasts.

'In highly productive nitrate-rich environments limited by Fe, small, lightly silicified diatoms dominate the phytoplankton community and are easily recycled in the upper water limiting the efficiency of the biological pump. In an Fe-rich marine environment, however, large chain forming diatoms clump into rapidly sinking aggregates that efficiently transfer carbon to the sea floor (efficient biological carbon pump). The excess Fe may come from continental shelves, rivers, glacial sediment, or atmospheric dust.'

Iron fertilisation is one of the positive feedbacks postulated to account for the slight nudges of Mihailovic orbital cycles leading to such decisive swings between ice and interglacials. The glaciers ground up millions of tons of raw rock, and the low sea levels exposed wide areas of what is now continental shelf. Wind blew glacial flour from these all over the ocean, and the resulting diatom blooms sucked even more CO2 out of the atmosphere.

The carbon is not being taken out of the food chain. It is just circulating. These things are being eaten at all levels. And I stand by the claim that it is unlikely to reach the seafloor without having been eaten perhaps a few times. It can literally take years for it to reach the bottom. If it is not eaten by larger organisms, it will be eaten by microbes.

'Diatoms sustain the marine food web and contribute to the export of carbon from the surface ocean to depth. They account for about 40% of marine primary productivity and particulate carbon exported to depth as part of the biological pump. Diatoms have long been known to be abundant in turbulent, nutrient-rich waters, but observations and simulations indicate that they are dominant also in meso- and submesoscale structures such as fronts and filaments, and in the deep chlorophyll maximum. Diatoms vary widely in size, morphology and elemental composition, all of which control the quality, quantity and sinking speed of biogenic matter to depth. In particular, their silica shells provide ballast to marine snow and faecal pellets, and can help transport carbon to both the mesopelagic layer and deep ocean' -2017-nature-geosciences.pdf

The hair was gone much much earlier. We know from lice species. Far earlier than clothing started. Our System loads us with infantile repressed needs, assuaging these needs becomes a source of bonding. It becomes sexy to be like an infant, soft with fat like an infant and hairless. I first heard the aqua-ape theory from a waitress in the 80s. I must admit, it does explain the webbed hands and feet.

In the example project, they use gray water which is limited indeed. Egypt focuses too much on the Nile, historically, while desalination is possible from three Seas: the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and The Red Sea. Profit outweighs cost and that is all that matters to put it in motion + wrangling politicians to give a permit which in Egypt requires that you make them believe it is their idea and is not terribly difficult to do.

Not rotting: Not really an advantage unless the plant grows in stagnant swamps where rotting is a threat to the living organism.

Huge spectacular size: Not an advantage more just about all trees. Which is why only a couple have developed that, in a handful of locations.

Super fast growth: Once again, some plants have evolved this, most have not, so no reason to evolve it outside of those rare niches.

We have HEAPS of existing examples where humans were able to modify plants and animals to have characteristics that we enjoy (large, edible, plentiful grains, bountiful milk) but did not occur naturally.

It's cheap to test, and easy to implement if it shows promise. (Which it did, a decade or two back in an experiment that was roundly criticized because they didn't get approval from green groups first)

OK, seriously: The energy imbalance we're talking about is on the order of a watt per square meter, out of about a thousand. If you put up sun shades at L1 to intercept enough of the incoming sunlight to put the Earth back in balance, without irreversibly sequestering carbon, you'd never even notice the dimmer sunlight.

And, so ineffective compared to Space solutions. The kelp need sunlight. An acre of solar panels in Space will be thousands of times less massive than kelp supports. Will make money selling power. Also, direct shade from Space for short term. Space power for scrubbers easier than kelp, if the power is cheap enuf. And, it opens Space for the further benefit of Earth.

It has some hidden costs. It does not make money the way Space Solar would. Indeed, it does not help open Space even. If we spend money on ocean iron we will divert money from *my* program, which stops the CO2 production, a slower effect than removal. Do BOTH!

Indeed, an excellent account of the "standard model" as I glean it from popular accounts, not being a specialist in that field. Some ideas of population biology, but not the recent details you describe. Our 7 million year evolution in the tropics is fortunate, what if we were polar bears?, but still was entirely within an overall cold spell. Seems wise to limit the rate of warming to the slopes usually seen thru the past, not the one from the asteroid. Our choice, after all.

On the bigger *human nature* ideas, beyond the topic perhaps, there is another factor in addition to, not instead of, those in the *standard model*. We are predated by or at least coevolve with our "System" of ritual, esp child treatment ritual. This System shows many of the signs of being a life form, and is *in control* of our behavior, so can form feedback control loops. Powerful stuff. See Janov for details. Our need for a large brain to handle this System imposed control is a factor. Our nearly being extinct most of the time, until language?, is a sign of death by System, often in childhood, or killing by crazed, "mad" in British, power addicts. Males harming females and adults harming (their own) children also a sign of trouble. Don't get me started on politics!

cacti consume CO2.

many xeriscape plants do the same.

we have to stop thinking that evolutionary nature is the most productive, creative, and ideal 'creator'.

Mankind can do better and should; we can increase complexity, productivity, and aesthetics.

We need only overcome, as in many things, 'don't rock the boat' sentimental-conservatism.

But whatever we do better be something we can quickly turn off if we discover we were mistaken. No sinking billions of tons of carbon where we can't get it back, and then discovering how fast ice ages kick in.

In order to sink enough carbon to cool the planet, the Azolla plant needed a few things-

A freshwater lake the size of the USA and Canada combined.

Temperatures of 20 C, with 24 hour sunshine.

An anoxic lakebed, so dead plant matter couldn't rot.

Several hundred thousand years.

Those could be hard to arrange.

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