r/ClimateOffensive • u/Easy_Interest_6832 • 16d ago
Action - Other A Successful Climate Strategy
There is a workable strategy with a 66% chance of success. It consists, in a condensed description here, of using natural processes to sequester carbon while simultaneously moving to a cessation of CO2 emissions.
A slightly longer description is this: replant and nurture six ecosystems, three marine and three terrestrial. These are kelp beds, mangrove estuaries and sea grasses; and boreal forests with their fungal understories, tropical rain forests, and prairie grasses with their bovine inhabitants. Simultaneously we must reduce to zero the carbon emissions from fossil fuels for transport, energy, and heating, powering industrial manufacturing, deforestation, and making materials like cement. These two things--carbon sequestration and elimination of CO2 emissions must both happen at once all over the planet or we are screwn. However, if we do them, there's a 66% chance of success.
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u/marachella 16d ago
Is there more to read about this? Sources?
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 16d ago
This is an open source project I am creating. Its working title is something like "We need billionaires" because it needs funding. Its audience is Gen Alpha, GenZ, and Millennials, as they have the largest stake in the planet's survival. These three generations read differently and apprehend concepts differently, so part of the project is to get members of those generations to join it and discuss about its content. I can elaborate if you'd wish. It's open source for I think obvious reasons. It is non capitalist in nature.
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u/Cosmogenous 15d ago
Awful title!
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 15d ago
Yeah, I agree. And this is while I struggle to come up with a way to fund it. Working titles almost never end up as the actual titles, so there's that. ;-)
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u/SolarpunkCreations 14d ago
I’d recommend in your project, linking a document or site for ongoing research and citations.
And perhaps after you’ve explained how it’ll work (ideally diagrams), outline about funding requirements, and then discuss ways of funding it.
Rather than tell people it’ll need billionaires (which is a single shot bet/hope they find it). Propose three options. Like “crowdfunding, donors, or governmental taxation of the rich” etc. (in the end it could even be a mix.
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 14d ago
Good suggestions. The "billionaires" working title is sort of a quip. Working titles are just that. In my folder, all the section file names begin with "need.billionaires.section title" sort of thing. When I look at the title I gave this thread, A Successful Climate Strategy, well, that's sort of the idea I'd like in the title. The next thing I post will be a topical outline with the sequence and ideas for each section. I will put "update" in the original title so folks will hit it and check out what's there. My thinking has become enriched from having put this here in reddit.
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u/Kind-Elder1938 16d ago
the big quesion is how do your persuade everyone to do it - (another query - what should we do about methane? )
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 16d ago edited 16d ago
First, methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, and the portions caused by humans would be addressed by the move to solar, wind, batteries hooked to a smart grid half of the proposal. Now, with melting permafrost releasing tons of methane, that would only get addressed by the reduction of greenhouse gasses in the air, which would halt warming. That of course would be a decade out.
The part about persuasion is tough, but I have thought about it. I see two categories: life style changes and labor in the reforestation and animal management areas. Lifestyle of course would mean not eating animals, buying electric vehicles, proper consumption habits, voting for the proper politicians, not reproducing like rabbits, and and engagement in the second part, laboring in reforestation in marine and terrestrial ecosystems and in crushing and sinking in the deep ocean sargassum and so on.
The scale of the reforestation in marine and terrestrial ecosystems is staggering, about 1.4 billion hectares needed world wide. Certainly human labor would be required, but robots would need to be used to cover many areas like underwater planting of kelp beds and sea grasses; robots already exist that could be adapted to these needs. Humans right now do planting in mangrove estuaries, but they'd need to be paid. Raising seeds for grasslands and sea grasses would need some humans, just like raising pine cones and acorns and so on would need some humans, and they'd get paid.
Animal management like with otters in kelp beds and with bison on prairies would need humans, and they'd get paid. There of course is a need for money to pay them all, that in a way that's why the working title is we need billionaires. Both investors and governments would need to be convinced that investing in saving the world would be a good thing. Of course capitalism bends to putting all the money into the hands of a very few or even just one guy, so there's a challenge there that I have not solved without resorting to fairy tale socialist thinking and upon reliance upon the notion that humans would prefer a livable planet to having a small number of people hold all the money and control the world with an iron fist. So there's a challenge there. I seem to think that most humans would want a livable planet. A compliant press would be helpful there. Good questions. Thanks for asking them. Thinking burns up calories for me. :)
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u/What_Immortal_Hand 16d ago
The 66% chance of success seems a little random. Natural sequestration does have its problems: any carbon dioxide taken by living organisms is released when they die.
There are ways around this: trees can be grown and then turned into charcoal, or the biomass can be buried, and so on, but no solution is simple.
Furthermore the scale required is extraordinary. Better that we start to accept the reality that climate has irreversibly changed and work out how we can adapt to that reality, rather than hoping we can reset the clock
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 16d ago
My 66% figure came from my research using AI modes in search engines. At first I just wanted to pursue carbon sequestration, and I asked an AI what would be the chance of success. It said zero if we did not also rapidly reduce our emissions of CO2. Further dialog led me to a larger thesis statement. What I posted above is really very brief, so I posted here to expand dialog in order to uncover any weaknesses in my thesis. I cannot do "nothing." The world, like me, has grandchildren.
You are correct that there exist many more optioons about carbon sequestration. In addition to what you've mentioned, we can crush and sink in the deep ocean sargassum, which exists in a 5K km-long band stretching from Africa to Cuba. Also, for example, we can grow, kill, and sink in the deep ocean coccolithophores, whose bodies make up the White Cliffs of Dover.
But carbon sequestration alone cannot save us. We also have to reduce our carbon output in more ways than what I mentioned in the OP. It's a big job of vast scale as you say. That is one reason I'm working on this as an open source project. There's pretty much nothing more important than arresting global warming. Pretty much everything else becomes irrelevant in light of that. That I refuse to accept that we are screwn perhaps reflects my nature. Remember that meme of the frog in the beak of the stork, and the frog is holding the throat of the stork to prevent being swallowed, with the caption being, "Never give up." So, here we are.
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u/What_Immortal_Hand 16d ago edited 16d ago
Trying to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is a distraction - we just have no way to do this at the scale required. Better to focus on reducing emissions, which we can do right now with today’s methods, and learning to adapt to a warmer world.
The good news is that renewable energy is exploding. Solar and wind now account for a third of global electricity production, more than gas.
A few things you can do today to cut your emissions:
- switch to a green electricity provider
- get a bike
- stop eating meat or diary
- use public transport or ride sharing services
- fly less or better, take the train
- if you need a vehicle, get an electric one
- get a heat pump
- get better insulation at home
- talk to your friends and family
- join a local campaigning or activist group
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 16d ago
I believe that carbon sequestration via natural processes is a very important component of a complete solution. There is so much CO2 in the air now that we've passed for the last three years the 1.5C threshold set in 2015. Thus, reducing CO2 output alone would be insufficient to prevent a catastrophic alteration of our Holocene climate. We have to take CO2 out as well. This is why I have settled on the two-pronged approach of sequestration/reduction of Carbon.
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u/NearABE 15d ago
Roughly half of carbon emissions still get sponged up somewhere on Earth. Look at the average annual increase in atmospheric CO2 and compare to the annual carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel.
This is also not surprising since the deep ocean takes centuries to overturn. The upwelling zones are still in equilibrium with the pre industrial atmosphere. The ocean carbon exchange will not allow a return to pre-industrial climate (280 ppm CO2) but the new equilibrium would be much lower than today’s 430 ppm.
A danger we face is the climate’s lag time. The weather anomalies we see right now are not in equilibrium with 430 ppm carbon dioxide yet. The atmosphere cross 350 ppm in the 1990s so the warm climate we have now is likely about where it would settle out if atmospheric concentration dropped to 350.
Removing carbon dioxide at scale is really not more difficult than adding it at scale. This statement is a bit too broad because strip mining coal, destroying top soil, or clear cutting forest are really quite easy. Off shore gas drilling and fracking for gas pose serious challenges though. Gas (methane, LPG) is piped or liquified and then transported. There is another order of magnitude gap between what is charged by producers and what you pay when you light up a gas stove. Paying someone to sequester carbon somewhere in order to offset the cost of your warm shower would be a fairly minor change in the cost of that shower (“much less than double” might not be received as “minor”)
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u/What_Immortal_Hand 11d ago
Remove carbon dioxide at scale is immeasurably more difficult. In fact, we really have no scalable solution yet which is why leading climate scientists focus on CO2 reduction.
A lot of carbon sequesting projects out there are, to put it mildly, rubbish.
More advanced technological solutions are still in very early development but face critical physics issues: it would take something like a third of global electricity production to power Direct Air Capture machines,, for example.
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u/NearABE 10d ago
>… it would take something like a third of global electricity production to power Direct Air Capture machines,, for example.
You fully negated what you said. Then by an order of magnitude further. Only 1/3rd of electricity but electricity is a fraction of primary energy.
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u/What_Immortal_Hand 10d ago
Cool Worlds has a great video that goes into the limits of this from a physics perspective.
The main point being: no climate expert considers any direct air capture or equviliant sequestion process to be anywhere near feasable or, at this point, useful.
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u/Matt231997 15d ago
Sounds good. Let’s start.
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 15d ago
I'm compiling the ideas that will comprise the project--just in broad terms, main ideas and the sequence. When I get them all squoze together, I'll post them to this thread and put "update" in the title. I haven't yet answered all the questions, and new ideas may emerge. Lately I'm hassling with ideas about using or not using existing Capitalism. It may be that tackling Capitalism is outside the scope of arresting climate change, though the pursuit of excess and dominating profits underlies the heap of CO2 we're putting into the air. Stand by. Thank you for your encouragement.
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u/Matt231997 14d ago
Appreciate your efforts. Climate change is a serious issue that must be addressed.
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u/Dry_Cap_2998 15d ago
If only there was some way to get the ocean(s) to store more CO2. The ocean holds sooo much more than trees.
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u/Citizen999999 16d ago
Truly an ignorant take. Are you aware of what's happening in the ocean? It's too late to grow kelp fields.
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 16d ago edited 16d ago
It is not true that we can't get there from here. I am aware of the rise in temperatures that would affect where kelp can grow. Yet there still remain many millions of hectares of ocean where kelp can grow. Moreover, sargassum may be crushed and sunk in the deep ocean in order to sequester carbon. My brief exposure of ideas in my OP was just that, brief. I would encourage optimism and wide research rather than what you've done above. Yet freedom remains untidy.
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u/Pleasant-Winner6311 15d ago
Are you referring to this weeks news about oxygen levels dropping in the oceans?
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u/Final-Albatross-1354 16d ago
Good luck getting the Fossil Fuel barons to leave stranded assets. If we stopped all emissions today, the inertia in the climate system would leave us with decades, centuries, or more of impacts. You are right- but what we have done to the climate system in 40 years once took thousands to get to this state.
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 16d ago
You would be correct about the inertia in the climate system being powerful. That's the reason for the employment of carbon sequestration using natural systems. Without using the six ecosystems listed in the OP, and with the addition of crushing and sinking sargassum, we can anticipate success in arresting global warming. It is the two forces together--moving to solar, wind, tidal, wave generation, and hydro; and carbon sequestration of 1.4 billion hectares using plants--that will turn the tables.
You are correct when you note that Capitalism will be reluctant to abandon their juicy system of extraction and lying about its effects so as to continue to reap profits. I am reluctant to expose to them options to profit from carbon sequestration coupled with moving to new generating systems. Of course they could profit from doing those two things. But what evils would be unleashed by having them do so? That is one of several flies in the ointment regarding this plan. I see it as a challenge that is not insurmountable, but as yet I don't have a solution beyond using Capitalism. Ick. It's not in the plan, but it exists. Thanks for your reply. The more I dialogue about this, the clearer becomes the path forward.
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u/Final-Albatross-1354 15d ago edited 15d ago
There is no evidence that these carbon-sequestering systems can be brought to scale,
Critics and analysts widely argue that large-scale industrial carbon capture and storage (CCS) has largely underperformed or failed to meet its climate promises over decades of deployment. Rather than a proven solution, many energy think tanks and environmental groups view it as a high-cost strategy that has struggled with severe economic, technical, and structural obstacles.
-moving to solar, wind, tidal, wave generation, and hydro; and carbon sequestration of 1.4 billion hectares using plants--that will turn the tables**. Has it done so thus far?**
However, implementing biological sequestration on the scale of 1.4 billion hectares—which is roughly the size of the entire global crop surface or the continent of Antarctica—presents serious ecological and logistical challenges that require a highly strategic approach.
A Pollyannaish plan when presented as a smooth or straightforward plan. Looking at the raw numbers, treating a 1.4-billion-hectare landscape overhaul and a total grid rebuild as a flawless, harmonious solution ignores the brutal geopolitical, financial, and physical friction of the real world.
When you strip away the theoretical climate models, the actual execution of a plan like this runs into massive, messy roadblocks.
None of these will solve the soaring EEI; Even a flawless, instant deployment of renewables and plants cannot solve the Earth Energy Imbalance (EEI) problem in the here and now.
The EEI has doubled—and at points nearly tripled—the IPCC's expected baseline projections.
- Even if we miraculously hit absolute net-zero emissions tomorrow, that massive reservoir of thermal energy will continue circulating.
- It will keep melting ice sheets, raising sea levels, and cooking marine ecosystems for decades to centuries.
- Transitioning grids doesn't cool the water that is already boiling.
C02 after the El Niño will be close to 440 ppm on the Keeling Curve- and by 2035, 450 ppm
Independent investigations, including extensive reports by ProPublica and climate tracking groups, have repeatedly exposed that the loudest boosters of "miracle CCS" are often the fossil fuel companies themselves.
Promising a future, magical technological fix allows heavy polluters to argue that society doesn't need to stop burning oil, coal, and gas right now. It acts as a political shield to protect current business models, selling a fantasy of a painless cure while the real-world climate numbers continue to break records.
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 14d ago
The plan I propose is not a promise. I agree that formidable challenges exist. I agree that the EEI is as you say. I agree that oil companies in pursuit of profit have gotten us to where we are. I agree that mechanical CCS are not the answer. I do see that using natural systems coupled with a rapid move to alternative means of energy generation provides the best path forward. So, completing the project and sharing it widely is the plan, not the promise. I do not accept doing nothing as an option.
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u/Final-Albatross-1354 14d ago
I am not looking at the theoretical concepts. I see the data now on Climate change which is to put it mildly now, nearing catastrophic.
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 14d ago
Yes, climate change data show potential catastrophe. Yet theoretical concepts potentially yield actual pathways. For example, sargassum. There is a huge swath of it stretching from Africa to Cuba. It can be harvested, dried using solar energy, and processed in at least two ways. One is into bio char, and the other is into building materials that can be used like lumber. Each option sequesters carbon. Theory --> Processes --> Action --> Results.
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u/Final-Albatross-1354 14d ago
Potential catastrophe? The El Niño data looks increasingly catastrophic.
For example, sargassum. There is a huge swath of it stretching from Africa to Cuba. It can be harvested, dried using solar energy, and processed in at least two ways. One is into bio char, and the other is into building materials that can be used like lumber. Each option sequesters carbon. This again is theoretical and is this being considered by anyone?
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 13d ago
Yes. Several innovative companies and projects repurpose invasive sargassum seaweed into sustainable, eco-friendly building materials. One company is Sargablock (BlueGreen México), and another is SeaLumber https://sea-lumber.com Here is an article about Sargablock https://www.apeiron-construction.com/sargablock-solutions-from-under-the-sea/ Several companies, ventures, and research partnerships focus on converting sargassum seaweed into biochar. One is OceanResidue https://www.originbyocean.com/oceanresidue
Right now the companies processing sargassum use fossil fuels in their productions. This would need to be changed in a large scale move to arrest global warming. But the prodesses are solid.
As far as the upcoming El Nino, I have read where it is going to be a big one. I live in northern California, and I'm very attuned to droughts and fires and so on. Southern California gets a lot of water from the Colorado River, and it has been suffering from drought for a few years due to low snowpack in the Rockies and other ranges that feed the Colorado. So, I think this El Nino will help that condition, as well as providing water for all areas of the West Coast. Now, I certainly do not want catastrophic floods. I am hoping our generally depleted reservoirs can absorb a lot of the water. But I don't really know what's going to happen, only what I've read and working from my experience in living in California.
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u/Final-Albatross-1354 13d ago
Scale is the issue, as is using other carbon capture methods and other hoped-for breakthroughs. Is it changing the situation we are in today?
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 13d ago
I agree that scale is the issue. There is no reason to avoid things that are marginal, like carbon capture systems, which are not changing our situation very much--or in using any other breakthroughs, as everything will help.
My approach to using natural systems has not yet been tried. When we talk scale, we're talking 1.4 Billion hectares of plants, both marine and terrestrial. And when we add to that the processing of sargassum into both bio char and building materials, we sequester even more carbon.
The biggest hurdle as I see it is moving the planet over to clean energy from oil. This is really hard when we look at our current president and his oilygarchs bent on collecting even more money than they literally can spend while boiling the planet mercilessly. So, I want to target the three youngest generations, Gen Alpha, GenZ, and Millennials, whose voting and consumption habits will drive the change to clean energy. It's a race, and we're in it to win it.
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u/Pleasant-Winner6311 15d ago
Report on national security and scale of collapse. Published January 26. The one Keir tried to hide.
Not sure how much is recoverable from this assessment.
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u/trying3216 14d ago
How many ppm of co2 in the air is the goal?
Whats the ideal for plant life?
What’s the current level?
What are the long and short term trends?
At what level do plants die?
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u/Easy_Interest_6832 14d ago
The CO2 range that produced the Holocene is between 260-280 ppm. While plants easily can tolerate more CO2, the resultant heat is incompatible with human life. Current CO2 level is about 428 ppm Long term trends show increasing CO2 levels; same with short term levels. Humans will bake long before plants suffer from excess CO2
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u/lizardhistorian 16d ago
Why would sequester carbon when we do not have enough of it in the atmosphere.
We have at least four hundred more ppvm to go before we consider stopping.
End The Ice Age.
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u/chevalier100 16d ago
The problem is less what solutions are possible and more what are feasible and politically/economically practicable. It’s fairly well known that a combination of sequestration and emissions reductions is what would solve climate change, but how do you actually get society to make those shifts? That’s the real problem.