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?
Dilution was supposed to be the solution to the whole greenhouse gasses emissions, turns out atmosphere not … that big.
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.
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
Gotta nuke somethin'.
This is “nuke the hurricane”-level science.
Uh oh. What an apropos American way to go.
That would just make the molepeople mad and double our problems
They already hate us surface dwellers!
Drivel...
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've got my fingers crossed for a Snowpiercer set up.
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 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!
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.
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 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.
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 love fusion explosions, I love fission explosions.
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.
