The Mariana Trench Fix.

Written By: - Date published: 1:53 pm, October 21st, 2018 - 59 comments
Categories: Environment, global warming, infrastructure, International, science, sustainability, useless - Tags: , ,

I was talking to friend last night (he’s a scientist) and he was telling me how there’s an idea within some quarters of the scientific community to take CO2 from the atmosphere and ‘chuck it’ down into the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Which is great! AGW stopped.

Briefly, at given temperatures and at given depths, CO2 will remain sealed beneath thousands of metres of ocean. Here’s a paper on it. Knock yourself out with the theory behind it.

A few problems.

Well actually, lets take a step back first. The IPCC report released a few weeks back (IPCC Special Report 15) has charts for economic growth going out to 2100. How many of them do you think incorporated any ‘steady state’ economy or degrowth? Yup. None.

Economic growth is tied to increased energy use which in turn is wedded to fossil use. And so if we’re currently spewing about 40 billion tonnes of CO2 into the air every year and increasing those emissions by about 2% every year (that’s conservative), then that’s a huge amount of zero carbon free energy that has to get up and running every year for us just to stand still in terms of emissions.

Lets imagine we did that – laid in the huge amount of new infrastructure required to provide zero carbon energy such that we could chase economic growth without putting anything above the current 40 billion tonnes of CO2 into the air every year.

Obviously global temperatures keep rising in that scenario. And if we cut those yearly emissions to 30 billion tonnes or to 5 billion tonnes or to 500 million tonnes, average global temperature will keep going up (albeit slower) because it’s not the emissions from one year that determines global temperatures, but the sum total from all years (about 2 trillion tonnes since 1850).

So that brings us back to the Mariana Trench and somehow chucking all the carbon from the atmosphere down into the bottom of it so that global temperatures stop going up and begin to fall back.

If we were to take half of what we throw into the air, we’d be looking at 20 billion tonnes a year. And we’d have to do it year after year after year.

So assuming carbon capture works, what scale of infrastructure are we looking at, and what does 20 billion tonnes of CO2 look like? Well, if we look at the scale of infrastructure required for other stuff we produce, and the amount of other stuff we produce, we might begin to get a bit of a handle on the scale of things.

So being very rough and ready about it –

We produce about 4 billion tonnes of cement every year. That’s a good start. Yearly cement production gets us about 1/5th of the way to 20 billion.

We produce about 1.7 billion tonnes of crude steel every year. That figure was getting too low for comparative purposes, and so I turned my mind to food thinking there must be a huge amount of rice produced every year – 0.7 billion tonnes. Wheat? 0.7 billion tonnes. Sugar cane 2 billion tonnes. Maize about 1 billion tonnes. Wood pulp is around 0.3 billion tonnes.

I gave up at that. So I got up to about 10 billion tonnes on “big stuff”.

It seems that on very rough and ready measures that the amount of CO2 we’d be looking to draw out of the atmosphere is possibly quite a bit more than the combined total of everything else we produce in the world.

The amount of infrastructure we have built and that we maintain to produce and transport everything we produce is ‘quite a lot’ – meaning, I guess, that the infrastructure required to snaffle 20 billion tonnes of CO2 from the air and transport it off to some (I don’t know) huge set of injection facilities straddling the Mariana Trench would also be ‘quite a lot’…and then some.

It’s…look. Why isn’t government taking our current fossil use and subjecting it to a hard sinking cap so that we are not burning fossil, or using any other carbon emitting source of energy before 1.5 degrees C becomes 2 degrees C, becomes 3 degrees C…?

There must be a very good reason for that. A compelling one. Now obviously I missed it, so if anyone would be kind enough to point me in the right direction…

59 comments on “The Mariana Trench Fix. ”

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  1. Paul Campbell 1
    21 October 2018 at 3:17 pm

    I’ve been arguing for a while that instead of recycling paper we should be throwing it in landfills (or down old coal mines), that would raise the cost of paper and encourage the growing of more forests (to be turned into paper and tossed down coal mines)

    • greywarshark 1.1
      21 October 2018 at 4:05 pm

      That sounds like a paradigm shift that we have been touching on the importance of in post What Are We Waiting For? I don’t think we should throw out any paper after reading Paul’s comment above. Sure recycle once then bury, where would be best for that? What effect would the ingredients, inks have? Could we plant trees on top of them, so bury them with greenwaste. (I am told that relative had to pay $62 in Auckland for last lot of greenwaste at official tip.)

      I would like to address this august gathering on the importance of paper, just to remind people how useful and important it is for keeping accessible records.

      Things that go into a computer machine, need a working machine and system that co-operates with the info exchange in the sky, and it needs energy apart from human ones, (even tills don’t come with an optional crank handle for electricity outages as they used to).

      There is truly utilitarian beauty in the living human body as we take in all sorts of
      matter and produce energy of our own, which when combined with the written word on paper or some flat surface, enables instant communication. Yay for paper and thumbs down for everything on flat shiny discs which are incomprehensible without an opening machine, and without the right tools and energy it is like dinner in a tin when you haven’t got an opener, the internal matter remains inaccessible.

    • Bill 1.2
      22 October 2018 at 10:34 am

      Y’know how in the absence of a sarc tab some people in the comments have taken that as a serious suggestion…?

      The Mariana Trench is deep, but our capacity for stupidity is deeper still.

  2. McFlock 2
    21 October 2018 at 3:31 pm

    More to the point, by my rough math (that could well be off by orders of magnitude), 20Bil tonnes of CO2 @ 1.6gm/cm^3 would fill the Marianas trench in a year or two. We’re talking cubic kilometres of the stuff, and thousands of them.

    Then there’s tha hazard of dumping it all in the same place – a problem happens there (possibly even due to billions of tonnes changing the geography) and decades worth of CO2 is released all at once, if you could pack it in there in the first place.

    But energy use isn’t a problem – it’s the type of energy we use that’s the issue.

    • Paul Campbell 2.1
      21 October 2018 at 3:38 pm

      At those pressures it would not be a gas

    • Bill 2.2
      21 October 2018 at 4:01 pm

      From the paper linked to in the post which, is probably 2005 emission data for the US

      Storage Capacity.
      If the CO2 storage site is 300 m thick with 50% porosity and 50% residual water, then the total annual U.S. CO2 emissions [≈6 Gt of CO2(l)] could be stored in a ≈80-km2 area. Fig. 5 indicates that over ≈22% (1.3 × 106 km2) of the seafloor within the economic zone of the continental U.S. is >3,000 m deep (32), which represents >104 Gt of permanent CO2(l) storage. Outside the economic zone of the United States, the total CO2 storage capacity in deep-sea sediments is essentially unlimited.

      Which, y’know, whatever (because it’s a steaming pile of shite on so many levels).

      But I’m curious about what you mean by “energy use isn’t the problem – it’s the type of energy we use that’s the issue”?

      I’m asking because whenever I write about this stuff I try to be clear that I’m referring, not to energy use per se, but to energy that’s generated from anything that will produce CO2 emissions.

      So electricity at the wall socket is fine, but only if it was generated from a zero carbon source – so not from coal, oil, gas, wood waste…

      Is that what you were getting at, or did you mean something else?

      • McFlock 2.2.1
        21 October 2018 at 4:18 pm

        Pretty much.

        Oil is quickly dying as a source, and carbon-based fuels in general are on the cusp of being outmoded. Their time is passing.

  3. greywarshark 3
    21 October 2018 at 3:51 pm

    Uh-oh. I can see that we can’t keep saying tl:dr any more. That would be continuing trying to pretend that if we leave it all for long enough and say SEP, it will get fixed by the Great Recycler in the Sky. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds or something. Thanks Bill for calling us in from playtime – can we have an icecream?

  4. Dennis Frank 4
    21 October 2018 at 4:01 pm

    Just a bullshit scheme. I read some climate change books years ago by scientists who reviewed proposed schemes for sucking CO2 out of the air and injecting it into suitable rock layers underground, but none got a good appraisal. You’ll probably tell me off for not bothering to check this one out so I’ll pre-empt that by declaring a lack of time & too many better things to do.

    Follow the money. What money? That required to pay for it. Follow it all the way back to the source donor. Who? If real, the scheme has already been costed and likely funders identified. If not, it’s what scientists call `a thought experiment’.

    • Bill 4.1
      21 October 2018 at 4:11 pm

      Just a bullshit scheme

      Of course it’s a bullshit scheme. All carbon capture and storage schemes are bullshit.

      And there’s no need to look at the scientific validity of each and every one of them, because the basic logistics involved in dealing with billions of tonnes of CO2 every year is what makes an utter mockery of them all.

  5. greywarshark 5
    21 October 2018 at 4:08 pm

    Scientist this am on Radionz made the point that cleaning up CO2 from air is hard but not impossible. That which the ocean has absorbed can only be removed over aeons through limestone etc.
    What is there we are stuck with. And it is already affecting the sea animals that are an important part of our food chain.
    Dumping more and washing our hands of it is trying to be like Herod. Didn’t solve his political problem.

    Think scientist info mentioned was on here somewhere.
    https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018667750/the-rights-to-water-robin-kundis-craig

  6. Jenny 6
    21 October 2018 at 4:18 pm

    The World War II Fix

    Years ago, on a visit to the Auckland War Memorial Museum there was an exhibition of New Zealand at war. A rather rusty old bicycle was one of the objects from the home front of New Zealand on display.

    What was remarkable about this bicycle, and the reason for its place in the exhibit, was that it didn’t have any tyres. Instead; fixed right around the rim of each wheel, where the rubber tyres should have been, were screwed a whole series of one inch helical springs, obviously meant to replicate the shock absorbing qualities of pneumatic rubber tyres.

    The purpose of the exhibit was to show the ingenious methods used to overcame the shortages occasioned by rationing of rubber and other strategic resources including fuel, (hence the need of a bicycle in the first place).

    No rubber for bicycle tires. No problem.

    What has this to do with climate change?

    Sequestering CO2 as a viable strategy to address climate change? There may be role for it, as an adjunct to everything else.

    But humanity’s only real hope is to cut back, and to cut back hard.

    New Zealand needs to lead the charge

    As Professor Gluckman says, ‘New Zealand’s total green house gas emissions are only 0.2% of the world total. New Zealand’s greatest contribution to fighting climate change must be by setting an example.’

    If we can get by without rubber tyres on our bicycles, we can get by without coal in our factories and power plants. We can get by, if need be, even without our gas guzzling motor cars. We’ve done it before.

    We can do it again.

    We are better placed than most, and sooner we start the better off we will be.

    What are we waiting for?

    • Gosman 6.1
      21 October 2018 at 4:53 pm

      When was the last time we did without cars?

      • Bill 6.1.1
        21 October 2018 at 5:03 pm

        When we didn’t have them?

        Apparently the very first automobiles were electric.

        By 1900, [in the USA] electric cars were at their heyday, accounting for around a third of all vehicles on the road.

        And an interesting piece from the New York Times (1911)

      • Jenny 6.1.2
        21 October 2018 at 5:57 pm

        In the ’20’s and ’30’s private motor cars were luxury items pretty much the preserve of the well to do and upper middle class. And New Zealanders both rich and poor, due to fuel rationing, pretty much did without private motor cars completely during World War II. During the war I know for a fact that milk delivery went back to horse and dray in Auckland.
        And even much after the war, New Zealanders relied heavily on public transport, trams, trains, buses well into the ’50s.

        And carless days….

        Remember that. Hardly on the same scale, but brought in to cut fuel use during the oil crisis.

        Gosman, You really need to lift your horizons beyond your own personal lived experience. If you did, you would realise that private car ownership and reliance is only a relatively recent phenomenon.

    • Bill 6.2
      21 October 2018 at 4:55 pm

      But humanity’s only real hope is to cut back, and to cut back hard.

      I agree, and anyone whose looked at what’s what agrees too. The only people who seem to standing against it, and they’re powerful, are economists.

      We cut back on energy consumption and all the other stuff that comes as a knock on effect from that, and the liberal capitalist economy won’t be sustained – according to economists.

      Perhaps it’s too late in the day, but more and more scientists are now being vocal in their criticism around the interference of economists and economics on the science of global warming and the effects that the elevation of a narrow economic focus is having on scientific reports.

      • greywarshark 6.2.1
        21 October 2018 at 5:45 pm

        Bill
        A fine example of ‘a narrow economic focus’ is in the BWB Bridget Williams book that I bought from a selection at a recent airport, ‘Portacom City: Reporting on the Christchurch and Kaikoura Earthquakes’. It’s about the earthquakes in Christchurch by a journalist who was reporting on science and watched the quake fault jigsaw closely.

        He got into trouble for reporting facts from GNS. He got further into trouble from reporting after a City councillor blogged about new information that had been released to the leaders and managers of the city but not to the residents and this info said that there was a 23% chance of a further big quake or more.

        In October 2014…[Paul Gorman from the Press was] at a workshop…called ‘Media, Disasters and the Public’…GNS Science and Te Papa geologist Hamish
        Campbell…[said that] actively been ‘shut down’ by his senior managers from talking to the media about the Christchurch earthquakes….

        “I still don’t understand why, but I can tell you that my senior managers got me in a room, and they went over what I had said on radio and written with a fine-toothed comb, and they could find nothing wrong, but I was banned anyway.

        In order to understand why I was banned, we have to understand that I work for a business called GNS Science. Whether we like it or not – and we know people were suffering in Christchurch – everywhere else in New Zealand people running businesses were working out how to make the most of this situation from a business perspective. That’s what my masters were doing when they banned me.”

        Further: “The people who dealt with me said there were three things I needed to know. Firstly, never embarrass the chief executive; secondly, never embarrass the chairman of the board,; and thirdly, never embarrass the minister.”

        Mr Gorman refers to Mr Brownlee’s political presence in Christchurch and how he downplayed delays in providing citizens with enough information to keep them aware of possible ongoing problems, and goes on to report on the UK approach to science reporting and says that it can be very heavy-handed.

        • Adrian 6.2.1.1
          21 October 2018 at 8:25 pm

          Yeah nah ! Down here we always knew . because we were told often enough there was up to 50% chance of another biggie.
          BTW, Kaikoura was probably not linked to Chch but an earlier , by 2 years, Seddon one.

          • greywarshark 6.2.1.1.1
            21 October 2018 at 8:34 pm

            The point is that scientific modelling information was being withheld. It was probably that 50% chance was pub talk, while the ‘as accurate as possible info’ was being withheld.

            I don’t know what has been said about Kaikoura, I haven’t got to that yet.

    • gsays 6.3
      21 October 2018 at 5:34 pm

      Spot on Jenny, the sooner we start….

      We need to take the lead on this, the capitalist nay sayers, ‘NZ’s emissions are so low it will not make a difference so why bother?’ are missing the point.
      We took a lead on women voting, treaty of Waitangi, nuclear free and now it is time to lead on CC.

      Finish electrifying the train set, get the freight off the road onto rail, more solar, geothermal and (dare I say it,) hydro.

      Turn your backs to the supermarkets and buy local food.
      Eat vegetarian 5 x a week.

      • Jenny 6.3.1
        22 October 2018 at 2:50 pm

        Finish electrifying the train set, get the freight off the road onto rail,……

        gsays

        Back in the ’70s before the neo=liberal reforms of the ’80s and ’90s, my father used to work for a government owned warehousing company supplying the education system with school supplies. In those days, government regulation made it mandatory to use rail where rail was available over trucking between urban centres.

        Deregulation and privatisation stopped all that. Which is why private trucking companies dominate our intercity freight. The cost of maintaining our intercity highways damaged by the increased wear by this heavy traffic has mostly been externalised by the private trucking companies on to us. This is a virtual subsidy for the private trucking companies who should have to pay the full cost of this damage and wear. This is not even to mention the huge carbon footprint of these trucks compared even to diesel trains. This cost too has been externalised society.
        When looked at this way, fully electrifying the main trunk line and bringing back legislation to prioritise rail as a first option for freight, makes good economic as well as environmental sense.

  7. WeTheBleeple 7
    21 October 2018 at 4:54 pm

    I bury paper and card all the time, not bury beneath dirt, but green waste as suggested. The paper and card make a weed mat. Dig down through mulch (greenwaste) to this and pierce it when you plant. The dyes are largely benign these days, the organisms breaking down the green waste will make use of them for food. Negligible amounts of toxins. Grow food in it.

    Do this and you will build topsoil. Build topsoil and you will sequester carbon by doing so.

    We could take agriculture back off the chemists and deliver it to biologists who should be in charge, thus replenishing topsoils and forests and sequestering obscene amounts of carbon.

    Or we could listen to these ninnies, and drag it all out into the ocean to destroy one of our planet’s striking geological features.

    Muppets.

  8. Gabby 8
    21 October 2018 at 5:21 pm

    But that trench is already full.

  9. Pat 9
    21 October 2018 at 8:24 pm

    I’m increasingly convinced that if there is any plan to address CC then it only consists of the ability to be the last man standing ….and the ability to ensure that relies almost exclusively on a fossil fuel based military. By an accident of geography NZ is likely best positioned to cope with near term impacts…that may be both a positive and a negative.

    • Bill 9.1
      22 October 2018 at 10:26 am

      I read a somewhat thought provoking piece recently (it could have been on Medium) on that front.

      Given that the underlying philosophy of our politics and economics (ie- liberalism) is firmly planted in ideas of superiority, the argument went that those who consider themselves to be naturally superior think that only the weak or inferior succumb in a time of crisis.

      So why would they give a toss about AGW? They’ll survive it and inherit a world that doesn’t contain any weaklings.

      It sounds off the wall, right? But aren’t the rich already buying boltholes in NZ? And the Thiels of the world – what was their independent sea state stuff? On the next layer down, we have a fair few people reviving fundamental liberal notions of innate superiority (eg – Molyneaux and his IQ bullshit).

      And we already know it’s going to be mostly poor brown skinned people who get to be first to the doors marked ‘exit’, and that poor people in richer countries will be further towards the front of the queue than more wealthy people in richer countries, which if vacuous circularity is your bag when it comes to reasoning,..

      • Pat 9.1.1
        22 October 2018 at 11:33 am

        It also assumes that the poor (and coloured) will go quietly into that night in a timely manner….that may well be another misapprehension

        • Bill 9.1.1.1
          22 October 2018 at 11:51 am

          3000km+ security fence between Bangladesh and India, and a wall/fence across the north of Mexico…

          Of course those barriers have been constructed with no thought to any potential exodus being brought on by global warming.

  10. Stuart Munro 10
    21 October 2018 at 8:30 pm

    The trench is just the latest in a long line of improbable heroic solutions. But cutting back hard on cars would only create resistance, and cars are behind as much as 20% of some economies. A real solution needs to both present a positive alternative for how we do things now, and one that fills a gap in the economy.

    NZ, with its almost universal navigable access should return rapidly to waterborne freight as the principle form of commercial transport. High spec insulated panels and modular photovoltaic and solar water heating panels can fill out the reserve industrial capacity left after constructing a credible coastal trading fleet.

    Auckland only exists where it does because of the ease of waterborne transport there – the very features that make it a traffic nightmare make it a natural for shallow draught freight vessels. We need only shift the subsidy that presently goes to road freight operators to coastal – the squealing of Mainfreight et al will go unheard while the Gnats are busy talking themselves out of domestic strife, corruption allegations, and well-founded suggestions that they couldn’t lead a pig as far as its trough.

    • greywarshark 10.1
      21 October 2018 at 9:01 pm

      Stuart M
      Shallow, waterborne, coastal, right. The sea belongs to everyone etc. Maori would probably like this and go 60% in shipping partnership while they train their people to crew boats with a good number in jobs and trained to be the sailors they used to be. Get Rob Hewitt training them – Treading Water man.

      Some links from google that may have some useful information to someone thinking along these lines.

      pdf – http://www.nzjh.auckland.ac.nz/docs/1993/NZJH_27_1_06.pdf
      15 pages – The Coastal Trade of New Zealand Prior to World War One

      [PDF]New Zealand’s coastal trade 1875-1975 – Open Journal Systems at …
      https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/jnzs/article/download/309/233/
      much of our history. 3. 1975 saw the virtual collapse of the conventi.onal general cargo trade on the coast. In that year the Northern Steam Ship. Company laid …

      https://teara.govt.nz/en/shipping/print
      Shipping – Te Ara

      http://workboats.co.nz/old-archives/WB07%20100%20Years%20p8-9.pdf
      The Reign of the Scow

      This is an example of a firm that has kept building industrial sized ships.
      Damen Shipyards
      https://www.damen.com/
      Ship-to-ship LNG bunkering to come to the North-East Baltic Sea in 2020 · WindEnergy … We deliver tried and tested designs of competitively priced and innovative vessels. By building … Because we are a globally operating company, we are never far away. Building … New Zealand Maritime Pilots Association Conference.

      • KJT 10.1.1
        21 October 2018 at 10:58 pm

        Coastal shipping, and the pool of expertise required, has been decimated since the so called “open coast” policy.

        • Stuart Munro 10.1.1.1
          22 October 2018 at 1:30 am

          We trained them once, we can train them again. Coastal waters are more forgiving than some. My grandad bought his farm with the proceeds of running a scow around Auckland. You know all those roads around Auckland? Wasn’t trucks that brought the metal to them to make them into proper roads.

          But I also want to suggest that private virtue (like recycling supermarket bags) won’t be more than epiphenomenal, unless people detach themselves from those commercial sources which have not been reworked to be more sustainable.

        • greywarshark 10.1.1.2
          22 October 2018 at 10:39 am

          Thanks for that information KJT
          It seems that a little question remains that perhaps you could answer?
          How to turn that around. Do you know what the factors involved in the progress or regress are? Can they be turned? Where are the cracks within which a lever can be inserted?

          • KJT 10.1.1.2.1
            22 October 2018 at 4:17 pm

            Will have to be soon. The average age of properly trained sailors is over 60.
            There has been buggerall trained since apprenticeships, and jobs for New Zealanders on the coast, were destroyed in the early nineties.

            The maritime school is turning out trainees for non -existent jobs, like a sausage factory, recently. But few have been able to get enough sea time to be competent.

            Contrary to popular conception, any fool can drive a ship in the open ocean. It is coastal ships doing lots of ports in a week, that are a real challenge.

            It used to be said of Union Company. “Their ships load cargo by day, and hunt for rocks each night”.

            It needs a Government committed to jobs for New Zealand ships and seafarers, on the NZ coast. We are one of the very few countries that allow foreign flagged ships to carry coastal cargoes. The maritime equivalent of allowing third world standard trucks, and drivers, on our roads.
            Also ports need to be rationalized into two or three export ports and a bunch of coastal ports. The fake competition between ports bought in by the “more market” fanatics, is costing the country dearly. A prime example being the present shambles around the coast, with costly delays to liner ships, including our last remaining, NZ registered, coastal container ship.

            Support for coastal shipping in the same magnitude as for trucking, or dairy. Or, alternately, make trucks pay their full costs, like shipping does.

            It would pay for itself eventually, bringing tax paying jobs and profits back onshore, cutting the billions spent on roads, as well as transporting goods with 20 to 60 times less greenhouse gases per ton/mile, than land transport.

  11. One Two 11
    21 October 2018 at 10:50 pm

    The BAU machine will fight to continue its existence…

    The BAU machine functions in auto pilot mode, is powered by human energy and consists of machines, process and governance controls…

    Under control or out of control is irrelevant…a moot point…auto pilot can’t be turned off or taken control of…not by human beings…not even if they wanted to…

  13. RedLogix 13
    22 October 2018 at 12:12 pm

    An interesting read:

    One council that has been particularly inspired is the Lismore council, which has established a community solar program.

    Using investments from residents, the council has installed a number of community solar farms, including a floating solar farm and one on the roof of its leisure centre.

    The council also has a 100 per cent renewable energy target by 2023 for all electricity generated and used by the council.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-21/californian-city-powered-by-solar-inspires-aussie-councils/10401642

    • Bill 13.1
      22 October 2018 at 1:36 pm

      It’s “interesting” that the claim of ‘zero net energy’ suggests some carbon free scenario, when in fact they’re only talking about the use of electricity generated from solar stacked against that generated from the ‘rest of grid’.

      It’s as meaningless as it is misleading.

      It’s exactly like me selling excess energy from my solar to the grid and claiming some brain lettuce nonsense about ‘zero net energy’…as I jump in my car to drive to the airport to fly overseas for no compelling reason.

      At a global level (and I guess the numbers are fairly close for wherever) non-electrical forms of energy account for about 80 -90% of energy use – which puts the first city in the world to be zero net energy into perspective.

      When cars and heating and airports – when everything is taken into account, and the sums add up to actual zero for carbon, then Lismore council or whoever else may be by Lancaster, can make a meaningful claim to have achieved a meaningful “100% renewable energy” target.

      This 100% of 10% (electricity generation) is only 10% of energy.

  14. WeTheBleeple 14
    23 October 2018 at 11:26 am

    Here’s a half assed non-compelling idea I touched on previously.

    Approximately 11% of land is agricultural (global). This is > 50 M square miles.

    For the majority of this, the carbon content is low (0.5-3%). Less than 0.5 is what you’d call desert.

    By incorporating agricultural methods that preserve and regenerate soils we could raise the percentage of carbon in these soils. I’m talking about no-till, cover crops, rotational grazing and poly culture.

    Some ‘organic’ soils have > 10% organic carbon. Some well above this.

    What’s the math on that? Raise 50 M square miles of topsoil in C content by 0.5%.

    Let’s say the topsoil is only 10 cm deep to remain conservative.

    My amateur ass calculates that to be an increase of 1294 cubic metres of carbon per sq mile. I don’t know what it weighs but multiply the above volume by 50M and that’s the potential of taking agriculture back from the chemists.

    0.5%

    And I was conservative at every step.

    • WeTheBleeple 14.1
      23 October 2018 at 12:13 pm

      Of course, 0.5% increased carbon by volume is not accurate, due to differential weighting of soil ingredients. Carbon is, however, relatively early in the periodic table, and is not particularly heavy. A volume increase (by percentage) might actually be larger than a weight increase by percentage. Especially when one considers improved soil properties with additional organic matter.

      Anyone who can help with the math feel free to chime in. I’m only guessing soil carbon could be enough to make an impact for us.

      The powers that be will not not tell you if it is significant they run/own/profit obscenely from ag land. They wait on a solution that allows maintenance of the status quo.

      Thoughts and prayers, perhaps.

  15. jcuknz 15
    24 October 2018 at 9:59 am

    Have you thought what these total caps would do to people? It took me six weeks to travel UK to NZ by the ‘Captain Cook’ in 1953 while overnight plus a day I went back to the UK a few years back breaking the journey in the States. How many folk could afford both time and resources to that, six weeks/twelve weeks out of their lives just for the journey plus time spent at the destination? I think in 1950 only TEAL were using flying-boats between Aussie and NZ. with ships like the ‘Wanganella’ The world will become a much smaller place for most folk, or much larger if you look at it the other way around.

  16. R.P Mcmurphy 16
    25 October 2018 at 7:48 pm

    memememememememeeme. I wanna, leaf blowa, chainsaw, hotrod, hardly davison, jetski, fishingboat, angle grinda, and I wanna go to mongolia an makoo peekoo so I can come back and show all the peasants bak hoam my selfies.

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