Re: CO2 driven global warming
Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pobox.com)
Thu, 21 Aug 1997 10:47:21 -0700
Anders Sandberg writes:
> On Wed, 20 Aug 1997, Eric Watt Forste wrote:
> > So you don't think Marshall Savage's scheme to use OTECs to raise
> > lots of spirulina and dump some of it (with the attendant carbon)
> > to the ocean bottom will help?
>
> Will this not risk the creation of dead sea bottoms as aerobic decay
> processes consume all the available oxygen, creating a layer of
> hydrogen-sulphide laden water (which kills most aerobic lifeforms)?
> This kind of problem regularly occurs in the Baltic sea after algae
> blooms. In the oceans, the inflow of cold polar water might change
> this, but I'm still somewhat worried (although I like the general
> idea).
Savage was talking about doing this in equatorial ocean waters,
with his preferred first site being in the Indian Ocean between
the Seychelles and Zanzibar (because later, he wants to build a
laser-launcher in Kilimanjaro). That has open access to cold
flows from the Antarctic waters.
There might be a way to package or preprocess the discarded algae
(more specifically, the carbon, which would be the only thing we'd
really be trying to get rid of) so that it decays anaerobically,
or goes into the sediment layer without withdrawing or releasing
any constituents to or from the abyssal waters.
--
Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ expectation foils perception -pcd