• unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      33·
      22 days ago

      That is already happening iirc and being sold as another bullshit tech solution to our energy problems. Its like carbon offsets or carbon capture. Like bro just use less fossil fuels and stop destroying the existing natural carbon capture systems ffs.

        • MutilationWave@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          21 days ago

          All the biofuel things are just burning more stuff for energy, which we need to stop yesterday. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.

          • DaPorkchop_@lemmy.mlEnglish
            4·
            21 days ago

            I think there are definitely some specific cases where it makes sense. For example garbage dumps (and compost facilities as well, I think) produce tons of methane and other unpleasant flammable gases which often get flared off, it seems only reasonable that if you’re gonna be burning the gas anyway that you might as well use that heat to spin a turbine instead of just fuelling a uselessly burning flame on a pole.

            In theory biofuel is perfectly carbon-neutral if you’re growing all the input biomass yourself, since all the carbon released when the fuel is burned is carbon which was captured during the growth stage. But in practice it’s not ideal:

            • There’s still plenty of potential sources of emissions, like harvesting and transporting the biomass will likely be burning fossil fuels and also tires and stuff
            • Growing biomass is slow, so from what I understand a lot of it ends up coming from newly cut trees and stuff because it’s cheaper than buying tons of land, planting stuff and then waiting years for stuff to grow
            • IMO the main problem: there are other more useful things we could be doing with that land, if you can grow crops for biofuel production you could also just grow food there and put some wind turbines or solar panels or something on one of the many places on earth not suitable for agriculture to provide the energy

            If the biofuel is being produced from like agricultural byproducts (e.g. the stalks of harvested crops) I don’t think there’s really a problem, but AFAIK most of that stuff gets used for compost or gets left on fields to put nutrients back in the soil (and because it’s cheaper and easier to leave it than having to collect it again).

          • pipes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            4·
            21 days ago

            You’re not wrong at all, the worst part is even the “cleanest” of fuels will need to be refined, trasported (burning more fuel and rubber). If one were to live in the middle of nowhere without electricity or sun or wind or geothermal etc…then it starts making sense. So almost never

  • DarkCloud@lemmy.worldEnglish
    144·
    22 days ago

    Also, there’s a bunch of ways to make Algae blooms in the ocean. Apparently even just dumping a bunch of iron dust in the ocean would cause lots of algae blooms - but we don’t do it.

      • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
        21·
        22 days ago

        Fun fact, depending on your definition of “fun”. Deniers sometimes argue that plants will just grow to absorb the extra co2. This doesn’t work in general, because most plants aren’t limited by co2 availability. There are some exceptions, and the algae that causes red tide is one of them. So we have that to look forward to.

      • nettle@mander.xyzEnglish
        6·
        22 days ago

        And bad for everything but the algea is bad for the ecosystem the algea relies on to live

    • Lyrl@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      21 days ago

      To work as a carbon capture mechanic, iron fertilization-driven algae blooms would have to die and sink to the bottom of the ocean, thus locking up their carbon in oceanic rock.

      The concern is they would die and float, releasing all that carbon back into the atmosphere via decomposition gases. Then we would have all the effort of the fertilization, all the ecosystem disruption of the algae bloom, and maybe negative benefit as far as carbon since the ecosystem disruption could mess up carbon sinks that were actually working.

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      1·
      18 days ago

      for the same reason that blue cheese is only partially moldy, if it’s all mold then there’s no cheese left and it all becomes rather unappealing.