Re:I finally understand methane lifetimes
by thaumasiotes on Friday April 29, 2022 @06:57PM
(#31211568)
I remember someone pointing out that (1) there is a very large amount of advocacy based around going to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and harvesting microplastic particles there; and (2) this is a colossally stupid idea, because there is almost no plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It's a a part of the ocean where the level of plastic is higher than usual. But it's still a part of the ocean.
If you want to filter plastic out of the ocean, you want to filter it out of the input stream, where it's concentrated, not out of the end product of diluting the input stream with the entire ocean.
Interestingly, the wikipedia article on the Patch is headlined by a disclaiming of a very similar mistake:
> Despite the common public perception of the patch existing as giant islands of floating garbage, its low density (4 particles per cubic metre (3.1/cu yd)) prevents detection by satellite imagery, or even by casual boaters or divers in the area.
That’s the moral of the story for all climate control: don’t produce bad stuff, if you have to try to get rid of it as close as possible (temporally and spatially) to the source because once it’s diluted in the atmosphere it becomes insanely more difficult.
Global CO2 levels are at 450 parts per million meaning you need to actively filter 2,222 parts of air to get to one measly CO2 molecule in the wild. It’s horrible inefficient (expensive and slow). But if you don’t produce the CO2 or if you tackle it right then and there at the site of production where it is at much higher concentrations, you still have a chance.