Maybe we could stop fucking dredging the ocean? I feel like most people missed this statistic… but ocean dredging is likely around the equivalent C02 output of the entire aviation industry.
It’s a reversible reaction, as anyone opening a soda can knows (wait a bit and the gas GTFO and you’re left with flat soda). However, you can “force” a reversible reaction to go more into one or another direction, by messing with the amounts of substances in each side of the equation:
if you add more of the junk to one side, the reaction will go more towards the other side - to consume the stuff that you added
if you remove junk from one side, the reaction will go more towards that side - to regenerate the junk that you removed
So it’s like reactions go against whatever change you do. This is known as Le Chatelier’s principle. In a simplified way, “if you change shit the reaction tries to revert your change”.
Now. The main concern is CO₂ in the atmosphere. We don’t want it. To consume it through this reaction, we could remove acidity from the ocean. That’s actually doable by dumping some alkaline substances there, because of another equilibrium:
So by adding alkaline substances to the sea you could remove hydronium, and by removing hydronium you’re encouraging the sea to gorge on even more carbon dioxide.
It sounds like an extremely bad idea though. Just like the two reactions that I mentioned interact with each other, there’s a bazillion other reactions doing the same. Specially when we’re talking about acidity/alkalinity (pH), it’s hard to find something where pH does not influence the outcome!
So the consequences of “let’s dump alkaline substances in the sea! What could go wrong?” might be extremely messy, and not so obvious from a first moment. Instead we’re simply better off by avoiding to add even more CO₂ to the atmosphere.
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