Gaia's system is much more complex as most climate engineers might
imagine: plant roots use chemical, mechanical and biological means to
extract nutrients and micronutrients out of the ground within they grow.
Roots excrete CO2 and organic complexants into the ground and they
cooperate with mykorrhiza fungi to activate the dissolution of all kind
of minerals like quartz, fieldspar, calcite, magnetite, hematite,
goethite, phosphate minerals etc. Additional the roots creep into
smallest rock joins and use mechanical pressure induced by growth to
widen the joints. The CO2 concentration level within the soil where
plant roots grow is up to two orders of magnitude higher than in the
atmosphere. Plants living within anaerobic wetland habitats like willow,
alder, reed, rush, water lilly even pump oxygen by their roots into
their anaerobic habitat to help microbes living around their roots to
oxidize toxins like ammonia and hydrogensulfide. The positive effect to
the climate of these wetland plants is their direct help to minimize
emissions of methane from the wetlands and to produce microbial
generated sulfate even from sulfur containing minerals like pyrite. The
plant root induced oxidation products sulfate and nitrate act as
fertilizer and further, additional to the root-exceted oxygen, are used
by the wetland soil microbes to oxidize methane before it has the chance
to emit from the wetland.
Summing up, plants do much more than greenhouse gas depletion by
assimilation: additional they enhance CO2 capture by weathering of
continental surfaces and prevent from methane emission. Further they
generate sulfate which is used as methane depletion oxidant in oxygen
depleted parts of the ocean and at the surfaces of the sediments. The
latter even reduces methane emission.
These efficient plant-induced climate cooling methods deserve support.
The rcent most praised and supported CE measure is the SRM method. SRM
has no greenhouse depleting potential. And SRM does just the opposite to
this natural climate control: the sunshine-dimming SRM method generates
its aerosol plume above the whole planets surface. According to the SRM
solar radiation dimming the CO2 depletion of all planets plant and
cyanobacterial life doing CO2 and methane depletion by assimilation and
weathering enhancement becomes reduced. Thus SRM does probable more harm
to planets ecosystems than helping them to survive.
We analyzed the most efficient natural climate cooling system by dust
which was activ during the glacial times. It is simple, needs only
iron-containing dust and sea spray, acts only in restricted regions
within the lowest part of the stratosphere. According to the results of
our analysis we developed the technical equivalent of Gaia's greenhouse
gas depletion CE method: the ISA method - description can be found at
http://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/8/1/2017/ The ISA method activates even
the part of natural CE methods described above.
But as often as we tried to gain notice, resonance or discussion by the
google group about our ISA method, attention kept very restricted.
Reason for this low attention level can't be the "disadvantage" of the
ISA method's technical simplicity and its low technic and economic
expense. According to the SRM method aerosols or aerosol precursors have
to become lifted to hights of at least 20 km above ground: this
catapults technic and economic expenses into ranges orders of magnitude
higher than necessary for the ISA method. Might be difficulties in
comprehension the complexicity of its acting the reason?
Franz D. Oeste
------ Originalnachricht ------
Von: "Greg Rau" <[email protected]>
An: "Geoengineering" <[email protected]>
Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Gesendet: 31.08.2017 21:03:41
Betreff: [geo] The Tricky Future of Capturing the World’s Carbon
Emissions
https://medium.com/s/how-geoengineering-really-works/the-tricky-future-of-capturing-the-worlds-carbon-emissions-218963d12f97
"If you’re thinking the solution is as easy as planting trees, I have
some bad news for you: While it’s true that photosynthesizing plants
take in carbon dioxide and “exhale” oxygen, they really only take up
enough carbon to build their own cells. And when a plant dies and
decays, most of that carbon ends up right back in the atmosphere.
Forests aren’t so much “lungs” that constantly filter out carbon
dioxide as they are standing stores of it. That means that, practically
speaking, reforestation could only pull as much CO2 out of the
atmosphere as past deforestation put up there in the first place.
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report
<https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/> estimated that human changes to the
landscape (mostly deforestation) added about 180 billion tons of carbon
to the atmosphere between 1750 and 2011. Globally, the next decade of
our greenhouse gas emissions could just about equal that amount. So
even if we expanded forests to their pre–Industrial Revolution extent
(an unlikely proposition), climate change would be far from solved."
GR That's not to say that there couldn't be ways to secure the carbon
fixed by plants (biochar, BECCS), but it's not obvious that this should
involve forests if land use efficiency is to be maxed, nor necessarily
using land plants. Then the usual DAC discussion. No mention of
enhanced weathering, listed by the IPCC as having no biophysical
limits, unlike plant-based methods.
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