[HN Gopher] Researchers are scaling up solar-powered kelp farms
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Researchers are scaling up solar-powered kelp farms
Author : geox
Score : 60 points
Date : 2023-12-25 13:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| trebligdivad wrote:
| I love the quote 'we've gone from designing systems on a chip in
| Silicon Valley to systems on a ship'
| schiffern wrote:
| I had the opposite reaction. Reading that quote made me
| immediately take them a lot less seriously.
|
| It smacks of the same old SV overconfidence. " _I designed
| (hold your applause) chips. How hard could maritime engineering
| possibly be??_ "
| bamboozled wrote:
| Who cares, if it gets results, that's all that matters.
|
| We really need results right now.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Pretty cool, but...
|
| The article " _Kelp is the planet's fastest-growing plant_ "
|
| ... kelp is not a plant? Second sentence of its Wikipedia
| article.
| mkaic wrote:
| Prescriptivism vs. descriptivism. Taxonomically, you're right
| -- kelp is a macroalgae, not a plant. But _most_ people don 't
| really care (and don't _need_ to care) about this taxonomical
| distinction in their day-to-day life. It has a stem and leaves,
| it eats via photosynthesis, it 's rooted to a single spot, and
| it's green-ish -- as far as I'm concerned, that's a plant!
|
| I generally find that defining words descriptively (based on
| how most people use them most of the time) rather than
| prescriptively (based on how institutions or niche groups use
| them) is a good way to avoid conflict, both on the internet and
| IRL!
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| The same with trees and 'plants'. Many trees are more closely
| related to plants, than to other trees.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| There are trees that aren't plants?
| tomrod wrote:
| I think they missed a word: other plants.
|
| Tree wood has evolved independently several times, much
| like the crab form.
| patall wrote:
| Too bad the article doesn't cover the relationship with nutrient
| depletion. After all, nutrients taken up by their kelp won't make
| other algae grow. Given that ocean fertilization experiments have
| such big, unknown consequences (so that they are pretty much
| under memorandum), that would have been interesting to relate to.
| worik wrote:
| Is that a problem?
|
| What is the evidence?
| balderdash wrote:
| I'd speculate that if you did these offshore of river deltas
| where there is significant agrarian economy upstream you'd be
| able to capture fertilizer/waste run off, though not sure about
| the distance to deep water and dissipation at that distance
| adolph wrote:
| Jokes on the downvoters who thought kelp couldn't turn sunlight
| into biofuel.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37885853
| asdff wrote:
| That user was quite bullheaded it seems, claiming such things
| are impossible without even understanding how kelp are grown
| today. They are grown on lines trawled by ships, not the ocean
| floor where there are urchins perhaps and depth requirements.
| Its already a massive industry in East Asia. It's the US that
| is decades behind on this effort. 16 million tons of seaweed
| harvested in 2016 in these countries:
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00318884.2019.1...
| adolph wrote:
| It is interesting how a cultural element, like food habits
| leading to development of aqueous agriculture, can guide
| later utilization of the resource in an unforeseen manner.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| Hmm..
|
| _" A quarter of the seaweed grown typically falls off the
| platform and sinks 1,000 meters to the seafloor, von Herzen says.
| At such depths, little oxygen is present, and biomass doesn't
| readily decompose."_
|
| Let's hope that is thoroughly verified. Elsewhere, microbes break
| down biomass in oxygen-poor conditions into lots of methane. If
| that turns out to be the case, dropping masses of seaweed to the
| ocean floor could be a timebomb worse than the CO2 it
| sequestered.
|
| Better aim for the other option:
|
| _" But he [Rod Fujita] believes the best strategy for mitigating
| climate change with seaweed is to turn it into fuels or plastics,
| construction materials, or additives that suppress methane
| emissions from cattle and rice paddies."_
|
| Yep. Win-win: sequester carbon, and produce something useful that
| replaces fossil-based goods.
| asdff wrote:
| This exact mechanism has been proved before in the historical
| record, several times in fact, leading to ice ages even with
| the massive sequestration of greenhouse gasses from such algae
| falling to the bottom of the ocean.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2012/07/algae-ice-age-climate/
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Yes, both mechanisms are well attested. We need to know which
| one is happening here.
| asdff wrote:
| Also I apologize for the double comment but I think its a point
| that stands on its own. Kelp is also very useful for dealing
| with eutrification from either sewer or runoff. There have been
| some successful pilot experiments in new york harbor on using
| kelp to clean the water (1). Where its farmed in bulk it also
| has significant cleaning properties for local waterways (2). So
| not only does it help with greenhouse emissions but water
| pollution as well.
|
| 1.
|
| https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/03/22/kelp-farming-climate-solu...
|
| 2.
|
| https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac3fd9
| downrightmike wrote:
| If we want to do anything to reduce carbon, we have to stop
| burning shit, not just burn some other shit.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Interesting project, the key take away is that if kelp can
| migrate to deeper water overnight, they have access to nutrients
| that typically end up depleted in the surface water.
| Oceanography-wise, this is not surprising - spring algal blooms
| in northern oceans are aided by winter storms mixing up the ocean
| surface and introducing nutrients from deeper waters. However,
| the climate blurb is a bit odd:
|
| > "The extra kelp can be turned into food, fertilizer, and fuel,
| or it can be committed to the deep, locking away countless tonnes
| of carbon for centuries."
|
| If you dump lots of organic carbon in the deep ocean, you end up
| with a lot of microbial respiration of that carbon (return to
| CO2) with an equivalent drawdown of free oxygen, leading to
| anoxic bottom waters (a process exacerbated by all the nitrogen
| fertilizer being dumped in the ocean from industrial
| agriculture).
|
| Hence, schemes like providing carbon credits to seaweed farmers
| who dump their product in the deep ocean in exchange for the
| ability to sell those carbon credits to say natural gas producers
| who want to claim their emissions are being 'offset' should be
| viewed as the dishonest scams that they are.
| worik wrote:
| Carbon credits are a scam, true
|
| But I do not think it is a foregone conclusion that "...If you
| dump lots of organic carbon in the deep ocean, you end up with
| a lot of microbial respiration of that carbon (return to CO2)
| with an equivalent drawdown of free oxygen,"
|
| Have you evidence?
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