

Could Global Warming Be Stopped By Adding Lime To Sea? - nickb
http://www.physorg.com/news135820173.html

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patrickg-zill
Wouldn't it make sense to prove that global warming caused by humans, is
actually occurring first? BTW carbon sequestration is already occurring - see
e.g. diatoms and other ocean organisms.

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mlinsey
You can't "prove" global warming in the sense that you prove other scientific
theories, because you can't set up a controlled experiment in which you have
one planet just like the Earth be subjected to massive carbon emissions and
leave another exactly identical planet alone.

So unless you deny that there exists the possibility of major climate problems
that could seriously damage humanity's well being, what standard of proof
would you have climate scientists meet before agreeing that there is a problem
serious enough to address?

We can have a whole big endless debate about the various studies and climate
models that point to one scenario or another, but we won't get anywhere unless
we agree on these ground rules to start off...so what standard of proof would
you propose?

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manvsmachine
Academia has come up with several scenarios like this. A friend of mine at MIT
told me about a similar idea in which they considered using iron filings to
promote plankton growth. The problem with solutions like these is that they
are likely to introduce their own problems. Case in point: I'm no chemist, but
wouldn't adding a large enough amount of lime to do this have a pretty major
effect on the pH?

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gcv
Yes. A few degrees of temperature fluctuation are already having a significant
impact on marine ecosystems (coral reefs). Making all of the world's ocean
water more alkaline is pure insanity. It is extremely likely to cause mass
extinctions of organisms which evolved to live at a specific water pH level.
These extinctions will reverberate through the entire food chain, all the way
up through commercial fisheries.

Ecosystems are complicated, and no one fully grasps all the variables. Climate
change needs to be addressed, of course, but drastic interventions are likely
to have drastic and unforeseen consequences.

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DaniFong
Really interesting, and potentially useful for me, thanks for posting. :-)

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signa11
what about adding some sugar, and having some lemonade...

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jacobbijani
That's fucked. How was the earth surviving before we got here and realized it
needed lime. Maybe we can all just stop being energy consuming pigs and global
warming could be stopped.

