[aristophenes]

Yes, and the carbon storage of all the seagrass sugar in the world is roughly equivalent to one day of automobile driving in the USA. But everywhere in the article it is phrased to make it appear like a world changing amount of carbon. Why?

[montalbano]

I think the point of the article is that understanding how seagrass captures carbon is useful and interesting.

For more relevant numbers, I did a very quick calculation (tell me if you spot a mistake).

Using these numbers [0, 1], the worlds seagrass captures ~5% of US automobile emissions per year.

Another number of interest, the amount of seagrass carbon sequestration is 2 - 4x greater than mature tropical rainforests (per hectare) [0].

Seems to me that seagrass is an organism worth understanding.

[0] https://www.thebluecarboninitiative.org/about-blue-carbon

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1120499/us-road-vehicle-...

[i386]

> I think the point of the article is that understanding how seagrass captures carbon is useful and interesting.

You’ve perfectly described why pure research science has merit in its own right.

Application of knowledge comes a little later.

[wolfram74]

It's my understanding that early steam engines were pretty rubbish until the underlying thermodynamics were understood and then you could engineer your way to a Watt Engine [0] that was revolutionary. The nearly two order of magnitude superiority of this sea grass on this metric is tantalizing.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_steam_engine