Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/30/whales-worth-about-1-trillion.html
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Even better for most heavy metals. Especially mercury, if I remember correctly.
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Now that a dollar value has been attached, some late-stage capitalist “job creator” is going to try a corner the market in living whales. So this might be a positive development in a society dominated by screwed-up priorities.
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Coal-burning, over-fishing Victorians would have been aghast…
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So humans must sequester CO2 too. Maybe burial is better than cremation?
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One better,
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To Lutz, the exact numbers presented in the new analysis are less significant than the framework it introduces for thinking about wild animals in terms of their value when kept alive. He’d like to see this sort of approach applied to carbon-rich marine ecosystems like seagrass beds, and to other groups of marine organisms, like fish.
Which why this is so great. Hopefully the children born today will grow up with a completely different set of concepts and frameworks in their heads. The stuff rumbling around in my head mostly doesn’t work anymore.
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They’ll be genetically engineered to grow faster and die young - and they’ll be sold to corps for the carbon offset credits.
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Mmm manufactured whale
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Trump in soon to suggest:
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Whale fart.
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I’m for saving the whales for the sake of the whales. No other reason needed. That said, the numbers in the summary don’t work out right.
Using 12,000 sperm whales sequestering 200,000 tons works out to a little less than 17 tons per whale. 5 million whales capturing 1.7 billion tons works out to 340 tons per whale. A factor of 20 difference.
As for the cost per ton, Woods Hole is using a value of $30/ ton in an article about iron fertilization, which is close to what is being discussed with this whale evaluation.
Occidental Petroleum is building a capture plant that will capture from the air at $1000/ton or less. It’s being captured for use and the plant will make a profit. But still an interesting benchmark.
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I am sold. I have ordered my whale and it is being delivered tomorrow. Any special care, attention or facilities needed?
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You had me at “buoyant fecal plumes”.
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By eating stuff, getting big, then drifting to the bottom of the ocean after they die.
This is environmental action I can get behind.
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How about burial at sea. Push us over the side in a canvas bag with a couple of cannonballs, we’ll drift to the bottom and sequester all our carbon, or be eaten by fish on the way down and make more fish. Hooray.
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