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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.
I’ve got my fingers crossed for a Snowpiercer set up.
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.
Actually, one of their feasibility assumptions is that the device is too large to be used militarily.
I think they underestimate a military’s desire to use all of the things that go boom.
Ah. I suppose building an 81 gigaton nuclear weapon wouldn’t be small.
Let’s fire up the antimatter then!
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.
Paper is here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.06623
wow, and the bomb only needs a yield of 1620 times the largest nuclear bomb ever deployed.
“Nuclear explosions are inherently unsafe”
Well, he warns about it.
And states the main problem, with a deep ocean detonation, would be fallout.
I’m not sure that’s right. The shockwave of a bomb that insane could easily have seismic and tsunami effects. Probably be the biggest mass of dead fish floating at the surface, too.
Should probably talk to some geologists first.
Nuclear explosions are inherently unsafe…
…but fuck them fish!
“Barren seafloor”
“That’s what we call your mom Kevin!”
[citation needed]
Would 1,620 of those bombs work instead?
perhaps, though you’d have to dig a much bigger hole. however, the paper points out that the sheer military uselessness of such an enormous bomb would be crucial to making it legal or politically feasible. the international community would be understandably sus of anyone wanting to make 1620 tsar bombas.
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 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?
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.
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
Coal is much rarer than oil? I have to look that up, I always thought there is far more coal.
Nope, there is about 3x more coal than oil.
IIRC, all that coal comes from plant material from before there were microbes that can break down cellulose. Meaning that while it’s possible to regenerate oil over millions of years, coal cannot.
So yes, there may be more of it now, but when we burn it, it’s gone forever.
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.
The only way that works is if all the oil execs are in ground zero.
I have a similar modest proposal to solving the wealth inequality hoarding problem of billionaires
Someone needs to work out the inheritance fallout. With our luck it will still fall within the same families, or the government.
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?
Dilution was supposed to be the solution to the whole greenhouse gasses emissions, turns out atmosphere not … that big.
The ocean dissolves a large amount of CO2, which then, just like in the rain example, can react with minerals. It can react faster if there is more surface area of said minerals.
Do you know if Co2 that dissolves into water is less buoyant, or is it held in suspension? Or is this relying on the sediment being suspended in the ocean for a while before being deposited back on the ocean floor?
I am not sure if I understand you. Dissolved CO2 in water of like normal water. There is no crazy difference. If water can get to the rocks, so can the dissolved CO2.
There is no crazy difference. If water can get to the rocks, so can the dissolved CO2.
Oh, I was just pondering the efficiency. If Co2 is held in suspension and only the top layer of sediment is going to be exposed to the carbon in the water, and not to a degree of co2 more concentrated than normal.
Every bit that is in contact with water is also in contact with CO2.
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?
Oh right. The solution of course is a bigger bomb.
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
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
Uh oh. What an apropos American way to go.
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.
Water absorbs a lot of co2 and removing it from the water via weathering is a valid idea.
I don’t know. What do you think is the concentration of CO2 in the sea water? I am just not convinced.
The biggest threat of co2 emmisions is ocean acidifcation. A collapse of the ocean ecosystem would be devastating to the rest of the planet. A warmer planet sucks, but dead phytoplankton would result in a global plumment in O2 production.
The concentration isn’t as important as the difficulty to remove it. It’s still a hard problem, but rock weathering is one way to accomplish it, but it would need a lot of exposed rock surface.
Not just a lot of exposed rock surface. But also, there are energy costs for pumping water to the exposed surface. Factoring in the efficiency of the carbon removal from the water, I find it hard to believe it is a good solution.
Wouldn’t it be better if we focus on better sources of energy? I am no expert, but I know about it more than a common man due to my academic background in civil engineering.
Gotta nuke somethin’.
That would just make the molepeople mad and double our problems
They already hate us surface dwellers!
This is “nuke the hurricane”-level science.
No, absolutely not. This is increasing the surface area and availability of rocks that take up CO2.
By “level”, I’m talking about the practicality and wisdom of the idea.
It is not comparable.
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!
