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Science

Carbonate The Ocean 38

Posted by timothy from the pop-pop-fizz-fizz dept.
Bonker writes: "This article at Salon indicates that scientists in Norway are setting up an experiment to inject massive amounts of C02 into the deep ocean near the Artic circle. They hope that they can prove that C02 can be stored in the ocean rather than in the atmosphere where it contributes to global warming, but the question remains -- can fishies swim in club soda?"
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Carbonate The Ocean More

Carbonate The Ocean

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  • Re:conservation (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    More efficient cars than what ? There are already a number of cars on the (US)market with ratings over 40-MPG. Most motorcycles are in the same mileage range, many higher (my commuter vehicle is a cycle - 50-MPG city, in traffic). Guess what - most people don't buy the efficient car. Mid-size to large (more space) sells, performance sells, price matters, even safety sells. Efficiency doesn't matter much to most people (until a few months ago). A 5,000-lb automatic-transmission 4x4 SUV, with torquey engine, sells better than an econobox with great mileage. The technology is already here - people just need to take advantage of it.
  • >The rest of this post is to just get by the
    >Lameness filter... what the hell is that?

    A filter for short, lame, posts, but
    I guess it doesn't work.

    -Kevin
  • How about this...

    Why can't we bind it in the oceans themselves? We could build even smaller self-reproducing machines based on the very similar basic structural elements, to simply absorb the carbon, bind it into more or less insoluble forms, then die and sink to the bottom, taking the carbon with them.

    We could fit a lot more of them in than we could trees, because we can also stack them vertically and there's not really any such thing as an infertile patch.

    What? We've already got that?

    All right, which of you jokers named it ``Algy?''

    (-:

    Doesn't that just scream ``redundant design,'' ``distributed processing'' and ``efficient re-use of componentry'' at you?

  • [We use a bunch of solar-powered, self-reproducing machines to trap the excess carbon dioxide.]

    Strange. I was just thinking today about someething similar. CO2 (carbon dioxide) and CH4 (methane) are the two big greenhouse gases. What if you had a bunch of devices, floating at the edge of space,that selectively (through nano-holes) sucked in CO2 thru one port and CH4 through the other (different size holes, of course), then zapped them with electricity (floating at the edge of space, remember, so endless solar power), dropped the water overboard and cached the carbon locally. The water would become [pure] rain, and the weight of the cached carbon would gradually cause the device to sink down into the lower atmosphere, where these devices would be gathered up and the carbon they were now full of [excellent pure-carbon coal] harvested. Then it could be burned again. (Or used to make buckyballs or something.) (Or take it to the bottom of the ocean and use the pressure to make industrial-grade diamonds.)

    Chemical equation:

    2 CO2 + 2 CH4 + electricity --> 4 C + 4 H2O

  • A large test is needed... (Score:4)

    by StaticLimit ( 26017 ) on Friday June 22, 2001 @08:36AM (#137697) Homepage
    You know, I'm not entirely sure if nuclear fallout could cause a "nuclear winter". Perhaps a "large test" is needed to validate this.

    And I've HEARD that complete deforestation of the Amazon could impact the oxygen supply significantly. Perhaps a "large test" would help prove this false as well?

    My point is, when we don't know how this will "affect sea life", a "large test" is probably the LAST thing we should be trying.

    - StaticLimit
  • But as water vapor is the gas which contributes most to our greenhouse effect, what really should be getting dumped in the ocean is...water.

    Particularly because the amount of water vapor has increased [nasa.gov].

  • but we can't build more efficient cars and air conditioners


    There is only so much you can do with $X. People are only willing to pay $X for product Y. Then there is the tradeoff:

    1. cheap
    2. efficient
    3. reliable
    choose any two. We can make a much more efficent AC if you can talk the whole country (USian bias) into putting a 5yr engineering effort into building YOU one. If you are able to do it, I'd like you to be my friend 8*)
  • Imagine, on the other hand, that the government spends the money it intends to spend on its Rube Goldberg projects and instead diverts that spending to, say, energy-efficiency research or industry tax credits that encourage air conditioner manufacturers to build more efficient models.


    No, my argument was not about market forces. You read /. too much. My argument was about convincing people that you're spending money wisely. Think of it this way:


    Government We're spending money on a missile defense system to protect you from Sadam Hussien.


    People Yeah!YEAH! Tax us again!.


    Government We're spending money on tax credits that encourage big business to spend less of their money on air conditioning.


    People You're doing what! But big business doesn't pay enough taxes as it is! Why can't you cut the tax on gasoline instead? Stop giving business tax cuts and give me a tax cut!


    You see, it's not about market forces.

  • I completely agree that the ocean in general is more than capable of absorbing enough CO2 to make a difference, and that this dissolution of CO2 is completely natural. I thought I had made that point more clearly in my previous post.

    But as far as solubility goes, while I will agree that pressure plays a part in the solubility of CO2 in water, temperature is much more important in the natural cycle, since at the air-water interface the pressure is 1 atmosphere.

    You are right by saying that pressure will play a much larger part in this artificial injection experiment since the gas will meet the water at a pressure presumably much greater than 1 atmosphere.

    my questions are:

    1.) how much pressure will they have to exert on the gas to get it down to this level? (remember, you must displace ALL of the water for the entire length of the tube going down)

    and 2.) will this pressure be greater than that needed to liquify or solidify CO2?

    maybe transporting large quantities of dry ice to the bottom of the ocean is the answer! surely it won't melt or sublime at such low temp and high pressure ;)

  • I really did study physical chemistry. Primary author on 2 papers in Journal of Chemical Physics, also. :)

    But there are two problems, I earned my six-year degree 4 years ago and haven't looked at anything chemistry since (nice cushy six-figure IT job), and even while in school, my studies were so far detached from water chemistry and such that I would have never known exact numbers, pressures, boiling points, etc, related to this article.

    being a walking information book never makes a great chemist, *understanding* concepts does (try taking a graduate quantum chem exam with an open book to prove this theory) ;)
  • going by the humidity in this hellhole state (PA) in the past two weeks, I can't help but agree with you about an atmospheric water problem *grin*

  • Is Norway really that far behind?? (Score:4)

    by CrudPuppy ( 33870 ) on Wednesday June 20, 2001 @10:34AM (#137704) Homepage
    It is a very well-known fact that the ocean plays a major part in the natural CO2 cycle of the earth. Where water is colder, CO2 is readily absorbed (CO2 absorbs into cold water, an comes out of hot water). This can either take place in regions where the water is chronically colder (e.g. the arctic) or where there is a lot of vertical turbulence going on, causing deeper, colder water to continually come in contact with the atmosphere.

    The only thing that is new here is the fact that they want to stimulate further absorption by injecting it. The only problem with this is that they will have to pump it *very* deep to get to water that is cold enough to make this process as efficient as possible.

    Even carrying this out with stunning efficiency, it is doubtful they will *ever* be able to pump enough CO2 out of the atmosphere to make a tiny dent globally... and NO, this will also never be enough to disrupt the highly buffered pH of the ocean.
  • i am getting in line behind you, because you seem to know what your talking about. i see the same type of thing going on with genetic research. all of these scientists think they know what they are doing, but they are the most naive people on earth most of the time.
  • It's a very doubtful approach, if you ask me. As I understand, there has not been much research to the effects of this on the ocean's ecosystem; but I think it could have heavy influence.

    More phytoplankton means more absorbance of sunlight, means the ocean's layer where photosyntheses is possible (forgot the name of it, my Marine Ecology classes are too long ago) gets much thinner.

  • Nanotech already solves this problem (Score:3)

    by vivarin ( 106778 ) on Wednesday June 20, 2001 @09:39AM (#137707) Homepage
    How about this...

    We use a bunch of solar-powered, self-reproducing machines to trap the excess carbon dioxide. Perhaps the carbon can even be formed into useful products, and the oxygen released back into the atmosphere for us to breathe.

    What? We've already got that?

    What, exactly, IS a "tree?".

  • So how much CO2 you think will fit under the MPAA headquarters? :)

    segfaulteq@home.com [mailto]
  • This is a cool idea -- aren't CO2 and CH4 molecules heavier than the other components of the atmoshpere, though? I would think that instead of having the collectors as high up as possible, you would need to have them close to the surface.

  • A couple of things about CO2 in the oceans.
    First, in relative units, there are 70 units of CO2 in the atmosphere compared to 4000 units of CO2 in the oceans, dissolved. So, even if we were to pump all the CO2 in the atmosphere into the ocean (which would be a very bad idea), we would only change the amount in the oceans by around 2%. This is minute compared to the changes and gradients currently in the ocean that life seems to have adapted to.
    Second, the vast majority (99.999+%) of the ocean is sub-saturated with respect to CO2. Also, the vast majority of the ocean is held at a nearly constant temperature (the deep water). It would take a more than major climatic shift to significantly warm or cool this water, and even then, the extra dissolved CO2 would most undoubtedly stay in sub-saturated waters.
    Lastly, since the density of CO2 is greater than the main components of the atmosphere (N2 and O2), the gas, if released from the ocean at sea level, would only really affect places that are lower than sea level. And since the diffusive time scale of turbulence in the boundary layer is quite small, the gas would not be available for long in high enough concentrations in a significant enough area to do much damage, really.
    Either way, I agree that it's a bad idea, for the reason that a better ideas, some of which have been mentioned here already, exist.
    -Jellisky
  • If you want to increase the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, the way to do it is to use the plankton in the ocean. All we need to do is fertilize the ocean. There was a CNN story [cnn.com] earlier this year about experiments designed to test the hypothesis. Both approaches use iron-based fertilizers, and have the advantage of being much more economical than Kyoto-type proposals.

    What will doom them is politics. Even if, as the article suggests, a producer can operate a fertilization system that removes from the air more carbon than their products generate, that just won't be good enough for the hard-core Greens.

  • Okay, so we think this is probably safer, right? Blah!

    Just like you, I don't consider myself an enviornmentalist but damn... it feels like we're just doing the same thing over. I've heard evidence both supporting and disproving global warming and now that we're starting to get worried we're going to pump this gas into the ocean. <sarcasm>Super! Terrific! Let's wreak some havoc on a new eco system!</sarcasm>. Even if it doesn't harm the fish and oceanic life in the experiment, we're not going to know the long term effects for decades! It's taken us how long to realize and then accept the fact that we may be facing a serious problem with global warming?

    It's true there aren't many other options but it just feels like we're playing with a loaded gun.
  • Why don't we devote our unparalleled technical prowess toward conservation and energy efficiency? I have trouble believing we can land a man on the moon, carbonate the ocean, and build a magical shield to stop nuclear missiles, but we can't build more efficient cars and air conditioners.
  • In the main, you're right. However, one of the reasons efficiency doesn't matter to purchasers of vehicles is that fuel prices are distorted so that incentives toward buying them are low. Government should use taxation to encourage purchases of efficient vehicles and marketing/development of same. What government should NOT do is work to artificially depress the price of gasoline so as to remove market mechanisms that would otherwise drive people toward more efficient vehicles. However, some people seem to believe that gasoline that costs $1.99 a gallon (in nominal, non-inflation-adjusted terms) is sacred, and they seem to have the ear of the government.
  • Your argument, then, is that only market forces should drive innovation? Clearly, an anti-missile shield, a moonshot, or an ocean carbonation project would not ever come to fruition if only market forces were allowed to come into play (i.e., no government-funded research or subsidies). Your objection also ignores the social costs not captured by the market ("negative externalities," in economics terminology)--in this case, global warming, a cost which is not included when a consumer pays for an air conditioner, but which is eventually borne by society. [ Incidentally, a project like a missile shield also involves market imperfection--missile defense is a "public good"--which is why it would never come about through market forces alone. ] Imagine, on the other hand, that the government spends the money it intends to spend on its Rube Goldberg projects and instead diverts that spending to, say, energy-efficiency research or industry tax credits that encourage air conditioner manufacturers to build more efficient models.
  • You'll be sorry you said that in 1100 years when my stocks in landfill-mining corporations start pumping my pockets full of filthy luchre.

    --Blair
    "For the love of god, make me immortal!"
  • The things I would worry about most are life-forms like tube worms around hydrothermal vents. They may be the descendants and symbionts of some of the oldest forms of life on earth. What would we lose, if it turned out that they could not withstand an environment with greater acidity, more CO2 and less oxygen?

    That said, I think there are other things to consider here.

    1. Humans are selfish (as is every other life-form on the planet). If there is a choice between saving the environment and keeping life good for humans, they're going to choose the latter.
    2. This probably means that we are going to see more use of fossil fuels no matter what we'd like to do (the only way to avoid it would be for non-fossil fuels to somehow become cheaper and easier to use, eliminating the conflict with consideration [1] above).
    3. If fossil fuels are used, the CO2 has to go somewhere. Pumping it into the ground is probably the least-problematic option, but there is the question of feasibility. Pumping it into deep ocean water may be less damaging than releasing it into the air. Given the potential for climate shift to re-arrange ocean currents wholesale, and the effect this might have on near-surface sea life, dumping into deep ocean water may be one of the best options available.
    FYI, Mars already has about as much CO2 as it can take. The excess freezes out on the south polar icecap during the winter until the atmospheric pressure is in equilibrium with the vapor pressure of dry ice. There may be quite a bit of CO2 adsorbed in the soil, too. Ironically, transporting our other greenhouse gases (like fluorocarbons) to Mars might help to terraform it. (Of course, it would make more sense just to manufacture them there.)
    --
  • Why I remmber when water pollution was first recognized as a problem, how to solve it? "Dilution is the Solution"
    And so it is if you are talking about small amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus and the like. Dilute it enough and you won't see any untoward effects. Of course, we are long past the point where we have enough air and water to adequately dilute everything we make...
    It is unbelieveable that we still fail to realize the folly of this mindset.
    I think it's telling that you don't recognize that there are situations where it works, and works well. What's the point of this ocean-carbonation scheme? It's to slow the atmospheric release of the CO2 to a vastly lower rate. What's the deal with CO2 emissions? It's that we are dumping CO2 into the air faster than processes can take it out. If we slowed the progress of the CO2 into the atmosphere far enough the problem would go away. Capisce?
    --
  • If you had just read the article [salon.com], you wouldn't have been in the dark.
    You are right by saying that pressure will play a much larger part in this artificial injection experiment since the gas will meet the water at a pressure presumably much greater than 1 atmosphere.
    The article [salon.com] quotes depths of 780 meters (at which CO2 dissolves, forms a denser-than-water mixture, and sinks) and 930 meters (from which their calculated CO2 release is less than 0.5 percent over the next 70 years).

    The water pressure at 780 meters is roughly 78 atmospheres, and at 930 meters it's roughly 93 atmospheres. So, duh! (pun intended)

    1.) how much pressure will they have to exert on the gas to get it down to this level? (remember, you must displace ALL of the water for the entire length of the tube going down)
    From the looks of it, quite a bit. This properties table [pump.net] lists the density of liquid CO2 at 70 F as 0.76, so the liquid would have to be pressurized to perhaps as much as 20-25 atmospheres just to guarantee flow down the pipe.
    2.) will this pressure be greater than that needed to liquify or solidify CO2?
    You can solidify CO2 at sea-level pressure. It looks like it would require more pressure to liquefy the CO2 at reasonable temperatures than it does to pump it down to the required depth. Two birds, one stone.
    maybe transporting large quantities of dry ice to the bottom of the ocean is the answer! surely it won't melt or sublime at such low temp and high pressure ;)
    CO2 melts at -55 Celsius. (You didn't really study physical chemistry, did you?) Someone beat you to the "dropping dry ice on the sea floor" idea, check this paper [ei.jrc.it].
    --
  • Not if you want to be picky about it. CO2 sublimes at -78.5 C at 1 atmosphere, but that's not really melting. The triple point is -56.6 C, and you have to have at least enough pressure to get to the triple point before you truly have something melt as opposed to subliming. So no, CO2 does not melt (go from solid to liquid) at temperatures colder than -56.6 C.
    --
  • The only thing that is new here is the fact that they want to stimulate further absorption by injecting it. The only problem with this is that they will have to pump it *very* deep to get to water that is cold enough to make this process as efficient as possible.
    It's not the cold, it's the pressure. At high pressure, water will hold many times more CO2 than it does at sea-level atmospheric (think about bottled soda for a second). With the combination of cold water and high pressure, the mixture of CO2 and H2O is more dense than the water and it will tend to sink and stay sunk. (It would be much easier to get rid of the stuff for the long term if CO2 formed a clathrate (a solid crystal) with water as methane does, but we can't always be lucky.)

    Soda water on the bottom of bodies of water can present a danger [mg.co.za], as the unfortunate people living near Lake Nyos in Cameroon can attest. However, the water in the deepest parts of the oceans probably cannot be churned easily enough to present a short-term threat.

    Even carrying this out with stunning efficiency, it is doubtful they will *ever* be able to pump enough CO2 out of the atmosphere to make a tiny dent globally... and NO, this will also never be enough to disrupt the highly buffered pH of the ocean.
    Want to place a small bet on that? I seem to recall recent articles about stresses on coral reefs which included the increase in global CO2 concentrations driving the buffer system away from CO3-- ions to HCO3- ions. As the coral animals require carbonate to build their skeletons, this deprives them of an essential nutrient (and the increased CO2 concentration tends to dissolve what they've already built, by converting CO3-- + CO2 + H2O -> 2HCO3-).
    --
  • This is a bad idea. No really. A really bad idea. There was a village in Africa that got wiped out by CO2 poisoning when the temperature of the local lake fell and could no longer hold CO2 in solution. The CO2 crept down the hill and smothered the whole village. Wiped em all out at once. All we need is a sudden temperature change and all that stored CO2 comes out at once and kills us all.
  • "...a large test is needed to answer questions such as the effect on sea life. Dissolved carbon dioxide could slightly increase the acidity of the water, they found, and an experiment would show whether that injured fish and other life forms."

    I hate the thought of harming sea creatures, especially when you consider how unexplored our oceans are. It goes back to that old addage about the cure for cancer being undiscovered in a rainforest somewhere. I'm not an all out environmentalist hippie, but there's reason for concern here. I don't think they'll go through with it to much extent.

    In other matters, I've thought before about how interesting it would be if we introduced all this gas into the atmosphere of Mars. Okay, so there's the (nearly impossible, very impractical) matter of getting it there, but the gravity is sufficient to keep it and we could do interesting things to the climate. Am I wrong?
  • Well enough, if humans are the problem, then we need to get rid of them. So the new bumper sticker slogan will read "SAVE THE PLANET...KILL YOURSELF."

    On a more truthful note, we did our damnedest to kill the ecology of the New Mexico desert, radiation and the like, stuff won't grow there for many many years. Lo and Behold, plants are growing there. I'll concide that humans can force a change in the ecology of an area, I somehow doubt we will ever destroy it forever. And ya, we've knocked a few species off of the evolutionary train, but I wonder if we aren't also responsible for pushing evolution along for a few others. Personally I think a lot of this, "humans are destroying the world" hue and cry is just egotistical bull$h!t. The Earth has made it through fire and brimstone while forming, several catastrophic meteor impacts, huge volcanic explosions (which thorw out enormous amounts of greenhouse gases), and lots of other little things; isn't it just a bit infalamatory to claim that humans are doing what these things failed to do? Ya, we'll change the planet, but isn't that a normal thing? Afterall, the Earth isn't exactly the same place the dinosaurs saw.
  • > CO2 melts at -55 Celsius.

    No, CO2 melts at -55 Celsius at one atmosphere.
  • ...we will have created the world's first fish programmers. Do fish dream of electric eels?

  • Quick, hide the evidence (Score:3)

    by cpl almost ( 458247 ) on Wednesday June 20, 2001 @01:58PM (#137727)
    It really is terrifying that as a society we are unalbe to avoid repeated disasterous mistakes.

    Why I remmber when water pollution was first recognized as a problem, how to solve it? "Dilution is the Solution"

    Granted this took place a decade before I was born but the point is valid; we continually try and hide/ bury/ burn/ put somewhere else our collective waste. It is unbelieveable that we still fail to realize the folly of this mindset.

    -Simplify-

  • What? You mean we've got the chance to get rid of all of the Silicon Valley dot-commies with one good earthquake, and you're calling this a bad idea? Where's your sense of priority?

  • "This means that the CO2-enriched water masses in the abyss Atlantic will remain isolated from the atmosphere for centuries,"
    This is the type of thinking that makes me wonder if we even care anymore. I'm shocked that this idea has reached this stage. Wouldn't it be better to use whatever funds this to go to alternate fuel sources?

    -------------------
  • The Ocean ALREADY absorbes 3/4 of the world's CO2. They have these funny creatures called PLANKTON, that if they could just get sunlight and a break from the dioxins we dump into the seas each year, they could eat all the CO2 we give them.

    These days scientists are very knowledgable about one subject and complete ignoramuses about everything else.

    Yeah...don't solve they problem, create a new one for our grand-children to sort out.

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