You might not know it, but the hot water and rocks deep within Earth are teeming with undiscovered life. Dr. Tanvi Govil is one of the biologists studying this new frontier of microbial life that thrives in extreme places.
That’s one part the movie for Project Hail Mary missed from the book, that’s disappointing. Sunlight is decreasing, so they bring in a climate scientist to figure out how to produce as much greenhouse gasses as possible. He’s really disturbed by it obviously, but sees it needs to be done. They end up melting the ice caps to release Methane, because it’s more potent and decay into less potent CO2 in a reasonable time frame, so they can stop when things are solved.
It sounds like you have no idea the magnitudes involved, or the timelines. You’re talking about something that took place over a period of 400 million years and whose effects (the presence of oxygen in our atmosphere and our oceans) remain. There’s no chance that geoengineering would change the oxygen levels to anything we can’t handle, and if it starts to head down that direction we can easily handle it (just stop the processes that would sequester carbon).
It’s like being worried that your air conditioning is going to freeze your pipes in the house, in the middle of summer.
You’re probably right, but bioengineering this to self-propogate quickly in the environment would be exponential. I’m sure that isn’t the plan, but it could be done, and it could make this an issue. We shouldn’t let that stop us because we’re currently in an exponential fuck up in the opposite direction, but it is something to think about.
The downside of that kind of stuff is that you need a balance. Scrub too much CO2 and it’s trouble again.
Great, in 50 years we’ll be desperately switching back to fossil fuels to prevent an ice age.
That’s one part the movie for Project Hail Mary missed from the book, that’s disappointing. Sunlight is decreasing, so they bring in a climate scientist to figure out how to produce as much greenhouse gasses as possible. He’s really disturbed by it obviously, but sees it needs to be done. They end up melting the ice caps to release Methane, because it’s more potent and decay into less potent CO2 in a reasonable time frame, so they can stop when things are solved.
I forgot that from the book
If we can get atmospheric CO2 back down to where it was 100 years ago that would be an amazing problem to have.
Look up the Oxygen Catastropy, also called Oxygen Holocaust.
That’s what happens if too much carbon is removed from the atmosphere and thus there’s too much oxygen in it.
It sounds like you have no idea the magnitudes involved, or the timelines. You’re talking about something that took place over a period of 400 million years and whose effects (the presence of oxygen in our atmosphere and our oceans) remain. There’s no chance that geoengineering would change the oxygen levels to anything we can’t handle, and if it starts to head down that direction we can easily handle it (just stop the processes that would sequester carbon).
It’s like being worried that your air conditioning is going to freeze your pipes in the house, in the middle of summer.
You’re probably right, but bioengineering this to self-propogate quickly in the environment would be exponential. I’m sure that isn’t the plan, but it could be done, and it could make this an issue. We shouldn’t let that stop us because we’re currently in an exponential fuck up in the opposite direction, but it is something to think about.
The article talks about mass producing the enzymes themselves, not the life forms that produce the enzymes. It’s a key distinction.
Plus these organisms already live on this earth. They can’t outcompete other life on the surface, in less harsh conditions.