Inert in human time scales at least. What I’m getting at, is the sheer volume we have to deal with and that in and of itself is a problem.
If we are pumping up 100 million barrels of oil per day, Thats 16 000 million liters, or 16 million cubic meters. An ordinary house in these parts is about 40 cubic meters. So, 400 000 houses per day is added to the problem and the scale of what needs to be taken care of.
If we were to dump 400 000 houses worth of sand or other inert material onto any single plot of the seabed that part of seabed is dead. There are no two ways about it.
The oceans are very big place though even the context of 4 million cubic meters per annum (assuming a 25% oil coverage target).
I am not saying we should give up on all other approaches, but it might worth considering this as part of a toolkit.
The oceans are enormous, but so is the rest of the world. Didn’t stop us from affecting most of it. As you say, the ocean may be big enough to handle some, but we can’t afford to dump it all in the ocean. The waste will not build up to a hill, it will in a very short time build up to a mountain.
I agree with you but at the same time there huge swats of the ocean that are the equivalent of aquatic deserts. Specially on the Atlantic. So much so that frequently structures are sinked in order to create better conditions for species that were overfished. But those zones of the ocean being barren is not related to human activity so much as they are just a bit too harsh and empty. So maybe if you could store the carbon there and at the same time create structures to improve conditions it would be net positive for biodiversity.
