Too many people are saying that it would allow us to continue releasing carbon dioxide, but that doesn’t matter. Regardless, we need to start a serious global plan with the best of our knowledge to reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as soon as possible. The lack of a plan is setting us up to fuck up the future for the next generation, heat waves, massive hurricanes, etc. We only have another couple years to plan this seriously and begin the routine to reverse climate change. This will not be an excuse to continue burning fossil fuels, and any argument that pushes that is illegitimate.
Be honest, did you even know about this before I posted? Did you know that phytoplankton and algae in certain parts of the ocean convert the vast majority of all carbon dioxide on the planet every year?
I mean that’s the idea though. Grow it, let it die, become sediment. This isn’t like a fun thing to do randomly. It’s because the alternative is everything dies.
That’s one of the weak points of the idea. Things just don’t drop to the bottom of the ocean, there are layers that separate the waters. So to sequester the carbon as permanently as possible takes energy to get through all of that. The other issue is feeding this growth. It won’t grow without an input of fertilizer, and that requires more infrastructure and energy use, plus depletes those resources elsewhere. There is no solution to this. Even the real direction that we should take, reduction of emissions, has costs that are bad for lots of people.
This isn’t a suggestion of inaction, just a note of realism, since the post is framed in the tone of “here’s something no one knows about” that will solve things.