Reduce CO2 With Phytoplankton Seeding 54
JediJeremy writes "Nature has this article on a team of scientists who want to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by increasing the amount of phytoplankton in the oceans. Phytoplankton thrive on iron, so the scientists are going to conduct a study to better grap the affect of an increase of iron in the water will be. They plan to dissolve an iron sulphate solution in a 150-200 square-kilometer patch of the Southern Ocean, near Antarctica to maximize the containment of the iron. The major flaw in the plan is it will only work if the phytoplankton die and sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking the CO2 with them, otherwise, the carbon will be reintroduced into the ecosystem. Interesting idea, but big design flaw."
I didn't hear about mines, I thought it was... (Score:5, Interesting)
The previous responder's link [abc.net.au] identifies "abandoned mine shafts" as one of the several possibilities, but I suppose those mines would have to be very deep and have few fractures, else the CO2 would leak right out again.
FWIW, one of the advantages of using "spent" oil wells is that you can't recover all of the oil just by pumping. CO2 is a nice non-polar solvent and it dissolves the remaining oil stuck in the pores of the rock, so you can circulate it and boil off the CO2 from the stuff you bring back up, leaving oil as the bottoms. This might not be economical to do for its own sake, but if you are already paying for the CO2 disposal the oil recovery would be icing on the cake.
"Easy" global solution? (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Grow trees, grass and stuff
2. Cut the grown trees, grass and stuff
3. Bury the cut down trees grass and stuff
Keep doing this at same scale as we use fossil fuels, and make oil companies to pay for it (and add it to the price of fossil fuels). For extra value, turn trees into paper, use it, then bury the scrap paper.
Now there must be something seriously wrong with this, since I haven't seen this suggested anywhere. Is it sheer scale, us using far more fossil fuels than we can practically grow and harvest plants for burial?
Just like in the books (Score:3, Interesting)