News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts o... by Someone on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @02:33PM (#23772853)
What exactly has he been saying? That rock weathering captures CO2 has been known for at least 30 years (https://www.nature.com/articles/345486b0, from 1990, introduced the idea to crush rock to speed up the process)

This paper estimates how much carbon could be captured globally and at what price point.

It would not surprise me if farmers have been saying the first for decades, but it would surprise me if they already did those calculations decades ago.

Re:Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts o... by jsilence on Thursday July 09, 2020 @03:50PM (#23784311)
How much CO2 is produced by the energy required for crushing the rock?
Re:Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts o... by StavrosK on Friday July 10, 2020 @05:29AM (#23789673)
This is a red herring. Consuming energy doesn't produce CO2, generating the energy does. The answer to "how much CO2 is produced by the energy required to <do action>" is always "as much as your power generation method".

Crush the rocks using solar power, and it's zero.

Re:Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts o... by jsilence on Sunday July 12, 2020 @03:50AM (#23809654)
Still crushing the rock is an activity you'd not do without the goal to bind co2. If the CO2 equivalent of the energy required for this is higher than the amount of CO2 that can be offset by the rock dust, it becomes a CO2 producing activity in total.

If your energy generation process is CO2 friendly you might simply offset other energy use with this energy and generate a better CO2 balance by this, skipping all the rock crushing.

Re:Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts o... by AstralStorm on Wednesday July 15, 2020 @02:59AM (#23842140)
The other question is, what if you do not have the rocks on site?

Transportation of tons of material is not free either. Neither is spreading it on field (labor notwithstanding).

That said, if farmers are already putting tons of imported materials, this could be a matter of switching it up. But if it would be better just to not do this, the whole thing just starts to look silly and worth it only locally at best.

Re:Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts o... by StavrosK on Sunday July 12, 2020 @05:05AM (#23810000)
But there's a ton of CO2 in the atmosphere that we'll want to sequester anyway.
Re:Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts o... by jelliclesfarm on Friday July 10, 2020 @12:25PM (#23793153)
This made me think of early civilizations that always sprouted on river valleys. Indus Valley, Nile valley, Danube, Yangtze ..when nomads became pastoralists and then agriculturalists, they must have relied upon water that came down from glaciers or flowed across other lands. River bed silt always has the best soil minerals for growing.

The river bed is full of minerals that it had carried with it..perhaps flowing over different rocks, it brings some with it? Contrast that today..where we have a 45 billion dollar Ag industry in California ..legit Desert.