I've gone back and forth on whether the potential for unintended consequences is too risky. Lately I've been in favor of slow, carefully controlled efforts. We've already geoengineered the oceans into a bad situation and are about to take things to a whole new level with ocean mining. Mineral release could be considered analogous to tree planting restoration work.
A bloom sucks a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere to make biomass which then dies and sinks to the bottom of the ocean as marine snow and then gets buried fixing the carbon under natural sedimentation. Finding places we can make this happen with minimal biome impact and minimal leverage needed to trigger (some missing nutrient which is cheap and readily available)
You'd need lots of careful planning to avoid causing more harm than good.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/scientists-are-dumping-fake-...
We do have evidence of iron fertilization boosting algae growth from the Australian fires' iron-rich smoke.
https://nicholas.duke.edu/news/australian-wildfires-triggere...
The big but is whether the iron-based fertilization will grow the right algae or not. Whatever works, we need boatloads of this stuff stat
The Dune ecosystem is much less thought out than it appears to be. Herbert drops bits and pieces about the Dune ecology here and there so getting an overall picture is difficult, so we don't realize how silly it is.
* We don't know where sand plankton comes from.
* Sand plankton lives in the top layers of desert sand, eats spice.
* Some of the tiny sand plankton individuals grow larger, migrate deeper down, and become sand trout.
* Sand trout excrement combines with water pockets deep below, is biologically active, grows, releases gases and explodes, transporting it back to surface, becomes spice.
* We don't know what sand trout eats, but it should eat something in order to produce excrement.
* Some sand trouts grow larger, become sand worms.
* Sand worms eat sand plankton.
So the thole ecosystem consists only one species, with 3 life stages: (1) sand plankton, (2) sand trout, (3) sand worm. And stage 1 lives by eating the excrement of stage 2, and stage 3 lives by eating stage 1.
Ecologically and energetically this is silly. The species just eats itself and its own excrement, and there appears to be no energy input to the system.
One phase photosynthesizes, one phase sequesters excess water, and one phase... Stirs the lithosphere and eliminates large animals or trespassers?
> The spice allows creatures to fold spacetime...
Doesn't seems so fantastical now, does it?
Folding spacetime requires incredible amounts of energy. I still think that's the bigger deal.
That's unclear. It could easily release incredible amounts of energy, but require very little.
but specifics apart, the main point is just because readers accept hyperspace and extrasensory perception as part of your fictional universe, doesn't mean they will not expect the laws of thermodynamics, or planetary ecology, or other related fields, to also be suspended.
I put together the pieces mentioned in various places in the first Dune book. Every step sounds good and plausibly science(-fiction)-esque when presented separately, like the book does. Only when you put all the steps together, the picture starts to look like an M.C. Escher drawing.
One (possible) omission here - the sand trout traps water underground by linking and forming dams around water pockets - that’s the cause of Arrakis’ ultra arid environment, but maybe it’s also the source of nutrition?
Anyway, it is a bit silly indeed but in the novel’s context it feels grounded.
https://www.quora.com/How-many-BTUs-would-you-need-to-cool-j...
>So we have to pump 150 + 22 = 172 watts of heat up a thermal gradient of 10C — more if it's hotter. If I assume a slightly pessimistic factor of 2 for the heat pump, that's an electrical input of about 85 watts to the heat pump, plus some to run fans and coolant pumps in the suit — my guess is that you need a minimum of around 250 watts to power the suit.
>Sounds distinctly unpleasant to wear.
>Edit:: and if the cooling stops, get out of the suit quickly, before you roast.
There are hints that Dune was once a thriving jungle world, before the sand trout encapsulated all the water deep below the surface. So there's plenty of organic matter, and water, and sunlight, to support the sandworm lifecycle.
I never thought about it like this, but it is a little strange that such an eco-centric author/book had a relatively shallow description of one of the main components of the ecosystem. Then again, the mystery may have been intentional. After all, we still don't understand perfectly well how many ecosystems functions, especially in the since of having a causal model sufficient to to predict responses to perturbations. I imagine at the time of writing ecosystems at large seemed even more indiscernible, so it wasn't a stretch to have some part of the many cycles involved that didn't make sense. But overall I lean toward it being kind of silly, as you say.
Do the beavers "adopt" the structures? Or are they too dissimilar to their constructions? I imagine the main goal is actually less about the beavers than it is restoring habitat that beavers otherwise create. Do you ever build them in places where there never were beavers?
I have this funny picture of beavers refusing to enjoy the dams because they didn't build them. No "pride of ownership".
So Philmont is building BDAs in order to slow down the creeks, providing suitable habitat for willows - and once this food source is once again established, the beavers should return and take over maintenance of the BDAs.
https://www.pdxmonthly.com/arts-and-culture/2015/07/how-the-...
Can probably just farm them, or harvest the fields that exist, and then store the seeds / roots or make flour out of them. Seems like a possible farm crop personally. Go out with a harvester designed for beans / peas. There's not that much that grows in Iceland anyways.
[1] USDA, https://plants.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/plantguide/pdf/pg_lu...
[2] Sierra Club, https://sierraclub.bc.ca/ecomap/nootka-lupine/
[3] Plants for a Future, https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Lupinus+nootkaten...
[4] Wild Flower Web, http://www.wildflowerweb.co.uk/plant/2579/nootka-lupin#:~:te...
From an economic perspective, the yields on perennial lupin are just too low. Something that plant breeding could hopefully address long term.
Apparently the Land Institute already investigated it (https://landinstitute.org/our-work/perennial-crops/legumes/) and decided on sainfoin instead of lupin. I reached out some time back to ask why, because I was curious if their research found yield or alkaloid content too difficult to control for. Never got a reply.
Mostly just a suggestion for the issue of "lots of a plants, that we don't especially want." At least it's edible. According to a quick search, it cost apparently $30 to $40 dollars per acre to harvest an existing field (Purdue custom rates survey for combines, obviously no input costs considered, Iceland's maybe different).[1] Maybe add a bit further for cutting, raking, windrowing, and threshing parts.
Either way, with an existing field you just want to get rid of, hiring a combine and running it over the field is not that expensive (based on the available prices). Throw it all in a pond, pool, or barrel and let it soak until they're safe to eat. Not horribly expensive.
On the sainfoin thing, probably just easier and less work for their objectives. WP says sainfoin's already "highly nutritious plants" used for a long time for forage and nectar production.
Frankly, they seem like a trade-off personally, since Lupin varieties grow rapidly in horrible climates and terrain. Sainfoin is apparently finicky. "difficult to establish as pasture, not persistent in grassland, do not recover well from overgrazing." Lupin is probably a better choice for anything in the artic, sub-arctic, tundra, and taiga biomes (which is most of Iceland).
[1] https://www.farmprogress.com/harvest/custom-harvesting-could...
lanfeust6•3mo ago