this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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I'm sure we've got the technology somewhere. We just need like a giant fucking tree to suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and to desalinate the oceans. Something that's the size of an island all by itself.

I don't care if it's 100 billion trees woven together with some science fuckery, but we need an Yggsrasil if we want to fix the planet.

Think about it. A giant tree out in the middle of the ocean that sucks up all of our carbon dioxide and turns it into more trees and that sucks the salts and minerals and plastics out of the ocean and incorporates those into itself until it grows as tall as 100 billion trees woven together with dark science can possibly grow.

Sure, it'll cost I don't know several billion dollars to make this happen a trillion I don't fucking know, but if we had that the world would get better.

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[–] Dagamant@lemmy.world 57 points 1 month ago

That’s just planting trees with extra steps.

[–] inlandempire@jlai.lu 51 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The real Yggdrasil was the forests we cut along the way

[–] Txmyx@feddit.org 1 points 1 month ago

Gesprochen wie ein Löwe

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 45 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We had the Amazon Rainforest....

[–] innermeerkat@jlai.lu 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The Amazon rainforest is often considered the lungs of the planet. It represents only a small part, the lungs are mainly our oceans.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We can't even take care of that, how could we care for an Yggdrasil?

[–] sawdustprophet@midwest.social 11 points 1 month ago

We can't even take care of that, how could we care for an Yggdrasil?

"Mom I want an Yggdrasil"

"We have Yggdrasil at home"

[–] fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

Fortunately we're also destroying the oceans

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 35 points 1 month ago (3 children)

square-cube law means height, diameter, and weight are all going to be issues.

Isn't algae more effective per volume?

[–] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 29 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Aren't you forgetting to factor the square of the magnitude of the raw fucking radness though

[–] recklessengagement@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Radness factor is left out of efficiency calculations way too often

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 month ago

Yes. Algae would be much better. Just don’t mess up the oceans, and the algae will do their job.

[–] InverseParallax@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

Algae is the easiest and most likely to work.

We did experiments with iron seeding, the technology isn't too far, it's basically how the planet used to regulate before us.

[–] Sundial@lemm.ee 23 points 1 month ago

Pretty sure that's what forestation is all about.

[–] lordnikon@lemmy.world 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Was thinking the title was about the Linux distro and was like we can do that. but after reading this ocean algae is way beter for carbon capture than trees. They also don't tend to burn down and release that carbon.

[–] dsilverz@thelemmy.club 6 points 1 month ago

I thought that OP's title was mentioning Yggdrasil as in the IPv6 P2P network.

[–] YeetPics@mander.xyz 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Desalinate the oceans?

Yea, fuck all that marine life that makes most of the oxygen in the atmosphere.

[–] bizarroland@fedia.io 9 points 1 month ago

Ocean salinity has increased over the last 200 years, I'm just saying revert it to it's 1800s levels.

[–] Diddlydee 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago

Yggdiculous

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That wpuld be cool but ineffective and solve none of the systemic issues.

[–] SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You mean a giant 2 mile tall 600 yard thick tree in the middle of the Atlantic wouldn't solve racism??

If that's the case I don't even know what COULD solve racism...

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Now hold on, maybe if the tree was trained to be as anti-racist as possible...

[–] SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago

Yes. It must take a bi-annual sensitivity training and a yearly aptitude test. Truly you are a genius.

[–] Mothra@mander.xyz 11 points 1 month ago

I thought you were talking about the VR game in Overlord and was ready to post my support but you just want complicated forestry with no regards to marine life

[–] TARgz@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago
[–] Xerxos@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 month ago

Oh, we could probably create giant trees with selective breeding and gene editing. But those trees would still need hundreds of years to grow (and that's a good thing, since it would store CO2 while growing) and if there are problems with the gene editing we would only notice after decades.

[–] recursive_recursion@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago

The closest realization of this idea is to potentially cultivate/modify the gene pool and DNA of a tree probably with the use of CRISPR and selective breeding

[–] eleefece@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Sadly, our planet only makes life sustainable, there's absolutely no money to make for the shareholders, so there's little to no chance in hell that the powers that be are going to make any effort to prevent our planet going to shit. Remember: Life is temporary, short term gains are eternal

[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Humans would do literally anything before lowering their standard of life

[–] 667@lemmy.radio 3 points 1 month ago

House of Leaves reference?

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Does it have to be a giant tree tho? There are floating machines cleaning plastics out of the ocean right now. One of them I'm pretty sure was conceived by a high school student for a science project, and it worked so well somebody built it. Good shower thought tho.

[–] fin@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

I thought you were talking about network

[–] BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago
[–] Bach37strad@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago