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Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

The simplest geo engineering is planting trees, but I see very little rush from government, privates and agencies into doing the simplest thing.

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Iron fertilization is arguably simpler— don’t need to own the land and it can be scaled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization

The use of mass timber for construction is a great way to make sustainable forestry sequester carbon for the long term.

https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/66069

Cloud seeding via containerships is another low cost, high impact method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_cloud_brightening

But if we really want the ability to pause climate change, we need to do some more research on Stratospheric Aerosol Injection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...

Stratospheric Injection of Calcium carbonate is a very promising approach that would have the benefit of reducing ocean acidification.

> Iron fertilization is arguably simpler

its simpler, but also, if its like algal blooms, easy to fuckup and cause complete decimation of plantlife in the area.

Algal blooms are dangerous because it is coastal (i.e. in shallow water).

I don't know of any research on the danger of algal blooms in deep sea.

But monitoring seems critical no matter what.

You can't capture even a percentage of what we've been emitting in Carbon over the last 100 years or so with trees.

Planting trees is good thing to do but not even getting close to a solution.

Trees release chemicals to see clouds and make it rain. They also prevent soil erosion. It’s not just about carbon capture.

I didn't say it's a solution, but it makes a huge difference for many things (erosion, carbon capturing, providing shade and cooling cities/suburbs).

Yet, I don't see much of it being done, at least in my countries (Poland and Italy).

> Planting trees is good thing to do but not even getting close to a solution.

for carbon, no.

For stopping heat being absorbed by the earth, yes. Some of the anti-desertification work being done in africa has yielded something like an average 8 degree c drop in temperature.

We have already been planting tress for a long time. In Sweden it is the law that after a forest is cut down it must either be replanted or have enough viable trees remaining for natural regrowth. For managed forests it is often a revenue increase to replant trees since it increase the efficiency of the land. The amount of tree planting that goes into environmental purposes are tiny compared to the amount of trees planted as part of the natural cycle of tree harvesting and regrowth.

However, cutting down tress and then replanting it do not capture a lot of carbon. Much of it either get burned or decompose into methane. Planting trees without protecting it from being cut down is not going to do much to compensate excess greenhouse gases that get created from burning fossil fuels.

That’s why using timber in construction — especially when it displaces steel and concrete — is great for sequestering carbon.

The amount of coal that can be captured by planting trees doesn't compare in volume to the amount of coal we dig/pump up.

At best it will make the planet prettier and at worst it will simply be feelgood.

Trees also reduce or eliminate urban heat island effects, improve soil absorption during downpours thus mitigating runoff, provide food and habitat for wildlife, increase humidity through evaporation, and on and on... They're so good at improving the localized climate, it's why they're trying to use millions of them to stop the Sahara Desert from expanding southwards.

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