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by Ekaros 1106 days ago
Now could this be solution for large scale carbon capture? Seed massive amounts of forested areas with radioactive material? So we could prevent large mass of bio material from decomposing and thus releasing carbondioxide?
5 comments

There's a scifi or apocolyptic story in here.

Environmental extremists come to the conclusion that irradiating large patches of Earth to make it unlivable for humans but is a net benefit to the non human ecosystem because the damage from human habitation far exceeds the damage from radiation. And of course, life evolves and adapts to the radiation. Then they start seeding dirty bombs to intentionally create more and more of these no go zones that become nature sanctuaries.

I suppose "The 100" is partially playing into this concept.

No, because water in all dead material will dry out and then lightening strikes will start a fire and turn it all into CO2 again.

If you want to make a difference make sure that you start a forest and grassland fire every single year - the regular fires ensure the resulting fires are small and leave a lot of carbon behind some of which will get incorporated into the forest floor and forever stored away. Plus forests depend on those fires to clean up all the under brush.

Note, the above applies to most forests in North America, but you need to check with a local expert in forests to understand the details and where it doesn't apply. Every location/climate has different forests with different needs. There is no blanket statement that is right for everything.

Sealife sanctuaries are causing commercial fish populations to bounce back. We just need rules that are simple enough that animals understand them, and we can fix a whole shitload of problems.
Poe's law strikes again; I came here to make the same comment sarcastically.
Just deforest the land and dump the logs onto the North/South Pole, reforest, and repeat. No radiation necessary.
I have read a similar proposal that you can just drop biomass into deep oceanic trenches. The cold, pressure, etc mean that decomposition is significantly slower than would happen on the surface.
“Just” move a zillion tons of wood halfway across the earth.
Wood floats the same way rocks don't. It's not an energy problem, it's a time problem.
That model only works in an ocean without currents, or with exclusively favorable currents. The weaker claim of, "we can expend minimal energy by taking a very long time to get there," perhaps even wind energy, might work though. I think we'd have to answer that empirically.
Wood floats, so that doesn't sound impossible.