Paper is here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.06623
Thanks for the link, interesting read! I know that a good paper is succint, but honestly, I thought that making the case for a gigaton-yield nuclear explosion to combat climate change would take more than four pages...
Study conclusion: YOLO
It's quite light on details.
I think y'all are missing the point here.
It's really to justify the production and testing of an insanely large planet altering weapon that would create a really cool firework.
The only way to convince conservatives to fight climate change is if we do it with guns and bombs
If it gets the job done, I'm willing to make that compromise.
Actually, one of their feasibility assumptions is that the device is too large to be used militarily.
Ah. I suppose building an 81 gigaton nuclear weapon wouldn't be small.
Let's fire up the antimatter then!
I think they underestimate a military's desire to use all of the things that go boom.
Seems half-baked. Well unbaked really. They make a shit ton of assumptions that I’m not sure are true.
For example, why do they assume 90% pulverization efficiency of the basalt? Or is that a number they just pulled out of their ass?
And does ERW work if the pulverized rock is in a big pile on the sea floor? Or would we have to dig the highly radioactive area up and spread it around the surface?
And does the radioactive water truly stay at the site of the explosion? Or will it be spread through the entire ocean via currents?
Cool concept but, like, maybe we should check the assumptions a little harder?
Some people would literally rather nuke the planet than take a train to work...
And does ERW work if the pulverized rock is in a big pile on the sea floor? Or would we have to dig the highly radioactive area up and spread it around the surface?
Yeah..... Doesn't the carbon sequestering happen from rain absorbing carbon in the atmosphere and then attaching to the rock to mineralize it? Something tells me 6-7 km of ocean might impede that process.
And does the radioactive water truly stay at the site of the explosion? Or will it be spread through the entire ocean via currents?
Dilution is the solution.........ocean big?
Also would it kill all the sea life leading to a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions from all the decomposing fish corpses? Does undersea decomposition release greenhouse gases?
And doesn't plankton already sequester CO2 on the ocean floor when it dies?
I mean… if we’re being honest, the long-term effects of global thermonuclear war would be (very eventual) carbon sequestration in tens to hundreds of millions of years, and then we’ll renew our oil reserves! We of course won’t be around to use them, seeing as we’ll have been sequestered into the oil.
Can we get new oil actually? I thought we now have organisms that can break down every organic matter and thus it can not really accumulate anymore?
Oil actually comes from aquatic life (mostly plankton) that sinks to the sea floor and gets buried, squeezed and heated. Oil still forms today, but it's a process of millions of years.
Coal is formed from plants, and that does indeed require something doesn't eat it first. Swamps, for example, help a lot, letting the fallen trees sink down where most stuff can't eat it. Peat can also form into coal. Coal forms even slower than oil though, and it's much rarer, but it also doesn't require an ocean, so it's often more accessible for us land-living humans
There's an abiotic pathway that creates new oil geologically. It's a very small amount.
The theory is popular in Russia, where it's claimed to be the main way oil is produced. That's complete bullshit. It turned out there is some, but not enough to matter.
If you squeeze a baby hard enough
Being sequestered into the oil sounds pretty nice at this point.
Another cycle, another life. Same shithole planet.
Every proposal to save the world ultimately comes back to the plot of The Core
You mean the smash hit 2003 documentary The Core?
Yes, by plot I of course mean those things that happened
Just spitballing here. These grand ideas good/bad practical/or not are the beginning of mankind learning how to geo engineer planets or moons. I'll be long dead before I get proven right or wrong so it's easy to spitball
Uh oh. What an apropos American way to go.
Gotta nuke somethin'.
That would just make the molepeople mad and double our problems
They already hate us surface dwellers!
The last time I checked, we don't have a whole lot of climate solutions that feature the bomb. And I'd be doing myself a disservice.. and every member of this species, if I didn’t nuke the HELL out of this!
I'm pulling for artificial diamonds. It's the funniest solution: dumping truckloads of precious gemstones back down empty wells. Or burying them in the desert. Or I guess just handing them out for industrial uses, since even grinding them to dust isn't the same problem as CO2. Have a free bucket of aquarium gravel, made out of worthless tacky gold.
Hey, if you can make diamond that easily, we can exchange a LOT of substances for it. Not just windows and glasses, but pretty much every ceramic object, insulators, but also just toilets (slap some paint on it and done).
Drop a plate, floor breaks.
I feel like the podcast Behind The Bastards talked about this in the episode released today.
Did they talk about nuking the great lakes again?
No: this was about how the US Government considered underground nuking Alaska for the coal, killing cattle to check for cancer, and having people believe it was aliens. I was at work, so I may have missed a few points, but there was a discussion on power via turbine powered by nuclear weapon melted salt.
Re-naming all the Great Lakes to Lake America (with the easy to remember acronym "AAAAA!") was one of the late night shows.
The point is that it's a passive process, not an active one. No need for pumping.
Water is so much denser than air that you do get more exposure time per unit time.
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit
It's the only way to be sure
No more climate change if no more climate!
I love fusion explosions, I love fission explosions.
I've got my fingers crossed for a Snowpiercer set up.
Drivel...
This is by far the most practical "geoengineering" solution I've seen, far better than aerosols over the arctic, space shades or whatever. The ecological damage is comparatively miniscules.
And even then... quite a engineering feat. Nukes are actually "cheap" to scale up (a small bomb can catalyze big, cheap cores), but burying that much volume "3-5 km into the basalt-rich seafloor" is not something anyone is set-up to do.
But by far the hardest part is... information. Much of the world doesn't even believe in climate change anymore, and by the time they do, it will be too late.
Carbon sequestration is not going to solve global warming. CO2 is less than 2% of atmosphere. Even if you pass a shitton of air through the strata the difference will be negligible.
I guess Trump could add a new canal to the Red Sea, as per an old proposal involving nukes to dig it. Considering this administration, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
Well, I'm sure controlled slow-paced mining is more energy efficient and will emit less carbon to create...
But I'm not stopping that guy. Go on. I'll just watch from a safe distance.
Going of the value in the paper and wikipedia it would take the energy used by all of humanity in two months.
