
A recipe for global cooling: put seafloor on dry land near the equator - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/a-recipe-for-global-cooling-put-seafloor-on-dry-land-near-the-equator/
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throwaway284534
I've read the article and still have no idea how the title was approved by an
editor. It makes no sense.

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Normal_gaussian
It makes perfect sense to me. Then again I bake a lot.

Its structered like a recipe.

"Recipe for chocolate coating: Whisk sweetened cream with cocoa paste at low
heat."

"Recipe for shortbread: Bake mix of plain flour, caster sugar and unsalted
butter until lightly coloured"

"Recipe for runny egg: Add egg to buttered pan near edge"

"Recipe for pointless egg: Add egg to oiled pan near centre"

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throwaway284534
The first part seems to work. What does the second part mean? Put the sea
floor on dry land? What? Is the dry land being lowered to sea level? Is sea
floor dirt being moved?

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adrusi
Its using the term "sea floor" as an ingredient, "dry land" as a location.
"Put rocks from the sea floor on a plot of dry land". To be fair to the
editor, I don't see how "put x on y" could ever lead someone to ask the
question "is y being lowered to x?".

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yuzi
It's because people identify "sea floor" as being in a, relatively speaking,
fixed position. Moving rocks from the sea floor != move sea floor.

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unchocked
The only feasible technology to remove carbon from our atmosphere is burning
biomass with capture and sequestration of the resulting CO2.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BECCS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BECCS)

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onion2k
Why do you need to _burn_ the biomass? Wouldn't simply growing lots of biomass
remove the CO2?

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adrianN
You would need to store the biomass somewhere where it doesn't release the
captured carbon due to decay. I think the burning is supposed to pay for the
process.

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andrewclunn
The amount of energy and land required for this plan, and keeping in mind that
most of that area is in conflict zones or less than stable. Also there's
potential impact to deep sea habitats (that are still very mysterious). Good
job thinking outside the box, but I don't think this is viable.

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jdminhbg
The article is about plate tectonics, not geoengineering.

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andrewclunn
It suggests that replicating the nature process can have the desired effect.
Though perhaps that implication is less pronounced without the title (and the
author may have had no control over that) so point taken.

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jdminhbg
There's absolutely nothing about replicating the natural tectonic process in
the article.

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cbr
The combination of the title and phrases like "simulations using a mid-
latitude climate couldn’t get the job done because the rocks didn’t weather
fast enough" did make me think initially that they were proposing using this
as geoengineering to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere.

(But yes, that's not what they're saying. And my guess is it wouldn't be
anywhere near worth it.)

