Climate change: Can an enormous seaweed farm help curb it?

[Judi Lynn]

Published
1 hour ago



A scientist from Seafields measures the depth on beds of floating Sargassum

By David Reid and Justin Rowlatt
BBC News Climate and Science

Imagine a huge seaweed farm the size of Croatia floating in the South Atlantic between Africa and South America.

Spinning in a natural ocean eddy, it sucks a billion tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere every year and sinks it to the ocean floor out of harm's way. Far-fetched? Maybe. But a British businessman plans to have this up and running by 2026.

Scientists say reducing the world's emissions probably won't be enough and that carbon capture will be crucial to limiting global warming. But carbon capture schemes have so far been relatively low-scale and seen limited success. If they are going to work, they need to be bold, big, and attractive to investors.

Businessman John Auckland believes he has just such an idea. He wants to exploit what he calls "the wondrous properties" of the floating seaweed sargassum. He's confident his Seafields floating farm will draw sufficient CO2 from the air to moderate the effects of climate change, while also earning its backers carbon credits.

More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63200589

[msongs]

1. meanwhile caribbean sea islands and mexico are swamped with tons of rotten sargassum nt

[NNadir]

2. I have calculated the total carbon content of Sargassum.

It's not impressive in terms of carbon capture, a drop in the bucket.

The Very Modest Carbon Capture Potential of the Massive Sargassum Blooms. The links to graphics seem dead in the post, but no matter.

It's probably worthwhile, but not dramatic, on the order of 100 million tons of recovered carbon. World carbon dumping now amounts roughly to 35 billion tons per year.

[hunter]

3. The "law of holes" comes to mind...

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Leaving fossil fuels in the ground is the direct solution to this problem.

Carbon credits and other accounting schemes designed to make affluent people feel better about their fossil fuel use are not going to save the world. They'll only prolong our dependence on fossil fuels.

Once we've quit fossil fuels, either by rational decision making or the collapse of our civilization by global warming, future generations may decide carbon capture projects like this are useful for restoring the natural environment and biodiversity that their fossil fuel burning ancestors destroyed.

If I was a billionaire super-villain I might fund this project. I'd build my floating fortress there surrounded by an artificial sargassum sea. I'd spend my days fishing off my front porch and chatting with my international crew of minimum wage biology and oceanography interns.