this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Dare to dream.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 week ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 week ago (2 children)

wow, and the bomb only needs a yield of 1620 times the largest nuclear bomb ever deployed.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 week ago (3 children)

"Nuclear explosions are inherently unsafe"

Well, he warns about it.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nuclear explosions are inherently unsafe…

…but fuck them fish!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

"Barren seafloor"

"That's what we call your mom Kevin!"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Give some ear plugs to the whales

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Would 1,620 of those bombs work instead?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

Study conclusion: YOLO

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

It's quite light on details.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The only way that works is if all the oil execs are in ground zero.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have a similar modest proposal to solving the wealth inequality hoarding problem of billionaires

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Someone needs to work out the inheritance fallout. With our luck it will still fall within the same families, or the government.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Government is fine. Remember money is just IOUs from the government, if billionaires assets were sold and the money went to government it would be deflationary, all money in circulation would become more valuable

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The only way to convince conservatives to fight climate change is if we do it with guns and bombs

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

I think they underestimate a military's desire to use all of the things that go boom.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Ah. I suppose building an 81 gigaton nuclear weapon wouldn't be small.

Let's fire up the antimatter then!

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago (5 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago

Some people would literally rather nuke the planet than take a train to work...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

Dilution was supposed to be the solution to the whole greenhouse gasses emissions, turns out atmosphere not … that big.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] gravitas_deficiency 25 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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?

[–] Tar_alcaran 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Being sequestered into the oil sounds pretty nice at this point.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Every proposal to save the world ultimately comes back to the plot of The Core

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago

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

[–] hypeerror 10 points 1 week ago

Gotta nuke somethin'.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Uh oh. What an apropos American way to go.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This is “nuke the hurricane”-level science.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

No, absolutely not. This is increasing the surface area and availability of rocks that take up CO2.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That would just make the molepeople mad and double our problems

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[–] mindbleach 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I'm pulling for artificial diamonds. It's the funniest solution: dumping truckloads of precious gemstones back down empty wells. Or burying them in the desert. Or I guess just handing them out for industrial uses, since even grinding them to dust isn't the same problem as CO2. Have a free bucket of aquarium gravel, made out of worthless tacky gold.

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