A Modest Proposal For Sequestration of CO2 In the Antarctic 243
First time accepted submitter Alienwise writes "Judith Curry reports a scientific concept of an atmospheric CO2 sequestration plant. It would be based in the Antartic to profit from the cold weather, which would facilitate the creation of CO2 snow — which would then be buried. The plant could be powered by windmills." The lead author has agreed to let Curry link to a copy of the final manuscript, if you'd like to read more.
Wait a minute... (Score:5, Funny)
This doesn't involve eating babies, does it?
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Biochar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
Lock the wastes up in a high-temperature, low oxygen charcoal. The carbon will be locked for centuries to aeons, and the process creates 3-9 times the energy necessary to run the pyrolysis process itself.
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This doesn't involve eating babies, does it?
For those who aren't English majors (or married to one ;-), 93 Escort Wagon is referring to a satirical essay [wikipedia.org] written by Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public". Swift's "modest proposal" is that children of the poor Irish could be sold as food to wealthy English.
I can't tell if the authors of the article we are discussing are alluding to Swift's essay [gutenberg.org] or whether they are t
Why bury it? (Score:2)
Sell it to Coca Cola and Pepsi for making all our drinks fizzy!
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Seems feasible (Score:5, Interesting)
This actually seems like a feasible plan.
It plans not just for the extraction of atmospheric CO2, but the long-term storage of it. The power source is wind, so it doesn't fall into the trap of generating more CO2 than it generates.The choice of location makes sense for both the temperature and for the political neutrality. They don't list an actual cost, but it would likely be only in the tens of billions, hundreds of billions in the worst case. Which is a lot of money, yes, but not the trillions or quadrillions some plans have required. And it calls for a demonstration plant first, which would be just a few dozen million.
The only thing I see stopping it is politics. In particular, America and China. Europe seems to at least recognize the need for action, and they're willing to work together to try things. China is generally too selfish and shortsighted to worry about the environment, but you could probably convince them if you could make it somewhat-profitable for them (just have the wind turbines and such made in China, that should satisfy them).
But then it falls on to America. And you're going to need America at least not fighting this plan, because if the US decides to actively fight it, it's not happening. Period. You'd also need them to at least chip in a good chunk of the funding if you're going to do the full plan, make a serious dent in CO2. Problem is, denying the very existence global warming is a political *requirement* for half the country. They'll fight it just on principle, and I can't see the rest of the country fighting back for a project that doesn't have any immediate gains for the US specifically. While some sort of "compromise" could probably pull it off, or with luck it could be swept under the rug and never become a political issue, that's not guaranteed.
Still, it's the best plan I've seen so far.
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Still, it's the best plan I've seen so far.
THIS WILL WORK!!!
Whenever man dips his whick in the FUD things always work out for the best! My hope for the future level is at PEAK!
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If it is feasible (and he has a rather odd title for a feasible plan), I wonder how it compares to fertilizing parts of the ocean with iron to encourage carbon sequestration through plankton growth. (Short explanation - in parts of the ocean, plankton growth is limited due to low iron levels, this plan adds iron to the ocean, the plankton take up CO2, die, then some of that CO2 ends up in the ocean abyss, where it tends not to escape (hopefully).)
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The problem with that plan is that it's not completely under our control. It could bloom out of control, causing even worse climate change in the opposite direction, and we'd have no way to stop it. And it would cause damage to the regular oceanic ecosystem even if it did work perfectly - plankton blooms already cause mass killings of fish.
And I've also heard that it may not actually sequester the CO2 all that well (much of it returning to the atmosphere), but I can't be assed to check up on that.
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the downside i see would be the CO2 thermal timebomb in that if nothing else is done about AGW and carbon emissions remain near sequester rates for a long period of time then exceed them, if the sequestered CO2 gets warmed and creates a runaway release.
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It isn't a feasible plan. It isn't meant to be, hence the "Modest Proposal" title. For those who don't get the reference, read here http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html [art-bin.com].
Let me ask you a question. If your options were 1) Use a power source that doesn't require emission of CO2 to clean up CO2 or 2) Replace CO2 emitting power plants with power sources that don't require emission of CO2, which do you think would be more efficient? If you said #1, you missed a law of physics or two.
The point of the article was to
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From the physics and economics POV the easiest way would be mass extinction of humankind. The "don't emit CO2" idea is not a very realistic one as far as reality is concerned.
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China could probably be convinced to do this on their own. A carbon credit right now is about $10 if I remember correctly. It's equal to 1 ton of carbon dioxide. If this plant cluster sequesters 1 billion tons per year, then that's China banking 10 billion per year. That would surely be a very short payback time for China, and if the program were expanded significantly enough, then China could eventually keep reinvesting the money from carbon credits into the wind farms, to eventually balance out the entire
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To break it down, the climate change has to do with the production of energy, either to run our machinery or run our bodies. It is basically a result of a system that has not scaled well to out current level of consumption. For an end user solution we might help fix this problem by using less energy. This can be done by eating lower on the food chain
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So I am assuming that this proposal is meant to be tongue in cheek. While completely workable, it kind of throws the baby out with bath water, so to speak
I agree. You can state it even simpler: The best CO2 capture can do is undo the burning of fossil fuels. Due to inefficiencies, one needs more than 1 joule of sequestration to undo 1 joule of coal burning. Thus, to undo the total effect of burning fossil fuels, this plan requires more than our total energy production in wind farms. And if we are going to build those wind farms, why not build them closer by and stop burning fossil fuels in the first place?
The only reasons this plan could have merit is (1) if
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If you look at the article, it says that about 18GW of wind power can sequester 1 billion tons of CO2 per year. Humanity's entire CO2 output per year is, I believe, estimated to be 22 billion tons per year according to this website.
http://www.undeerc.org/PCOR/region/sources.aspx [undeerc.org]
however, under the wikipedia article on world energy use
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption [wikipedia.org]
It can be extrapolated by the chart at the bottom, that world energy consumption is somewhere around 11TW.
I'm pretty sure t
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There is no reason Europe couldn't just do this themselves. I don't see why the US or China need to be involved at all.
You suggest the EU should try and solve a global problem by themselves, rather than the global comunity solving a global problem.
You seriously cant see the issue with that, or are you fail troll ?
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Yes I can't see an issue with that. Sometimes its easier to do something yourself than ask others to participate. CO2 is one of those issues. Europe should just take control and do it.
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Sometimes its easier to do something yourself than ask others to participate. CO2 is one of those issues. Europe should just take control and do it.
I agree, its much easier when someone else just does things for me instead of them wasting all their time trying to get me to contribute to society.
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It isn't a question of contribute. This is like defense spending and the US. The US wants way more NATO defense than Europe and so after failing to get Europe to contribute the US just does it themselves.
Europe has tried for a global agreement and failed.
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If Europe prove it can be done, China may happily offer to sell them windmills etc to do it on a massive scale (and burn all the coal to do it
The US might sue them all for patent infringement. But other than that, no I don't see an issue with it.
Some observations (Score:4, Interesting)
Hm... the abstract appears to convert 1 B tonnes (1 billion, I assume) into 1012 kg. It also omits a lot of words and is generally difficult to read because of it. They appear to use the coldest ever recorded temperature as their working temperature. They also don't talk about how they're going to keep all that CO2 frozen, or how much energy that's going to cost. Or what you do with the plant after five years when it's surrounded by CO2 dumps.
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1 B tonnes (1 billion, I assume) into 1012 kg
The dumbfucks who wrote the article copypasted the 10^12kg without copying the font. In the original abstract, the 12 was a superscript, indicating exponentiation.
Skip the article and read the abstract directly:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JAMC-D-12-0110.1 [ametsoc.org]
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1 B tonnes (1 billion, I assume) into 1012 kg
The dumbfucks who wrote the article copypasted the 10^12kg without copying the font. In the original abstract, the 12 was a superscript, indicating exponentiation.
I don't know... Formatted copy and paste fail? Yeah, I'm going to put part of the blame the shit state of software in general -- That's something that could have been fixed a long time ago.
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At the same time sequestering 1 gigaton of CO2 a year as in the proposal is a drop in the bucket compared to the approximately 30 gigatons currently emitted by humans yearly. It's not that helpful unless we reduce emissions below 1 Gt and even then the reduction will be slow compared to the rate we've increased CO2. And you are right, those deposits of dry ice will have to be maintained essentially forever to keep the benefit. The plan just doesn't seem that practical to me.
Modest proposal (Score:4, Insightful)
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Probably not.
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When he calls it a modest proposal, does he realize he is copying another title, which essentially indicates he is being completely sarcastic, and not serious at all in what he proposes?
Swift was being sarcastic?
Shades of ERB... (Score:2)
Arxiv, for Pete's sake (Score:2)
Dr. Agee et al.. If you want people to read it, submit your paper to Arxiv [arxiv.org]. Publishing via Slashdot is just not the same.
Modest Proposal (Score:4, Insightful)
I am amazed at how many people can't figure out that the dude is joking.
If you are saying that you need to create a power source to convert the CO2 from the atmosphere into a form that can be buried, then the logical choice is why you can't simply use this power source to eliminate CO2 producing power sources in the first place.
His 'modest proposal' should have tipped you off. Apparently, it was far too subtle for Slashdot.
Re:Modest Proposal (Score:4, Informative)
The words "modest proposal" do not appear in the actual article.
Because this power source is in Antartica (Score:5, Insightful)
A big point of this proposal is the strong, constant katabatic wind currents around Antarctica, which make the generation of large amounts of power feasible. But that power is in Antarctica, not New York, so you can't do much with it.
And, yes, you can extract much more CO2 from the air with a unit of power than is produced generating that power, even from Coal.
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...why you can't simply use this power source to eliminate CO2 producing power sources in the first place.
WE might want to fund a project called: HOTH Cli GigA DRIL (Halt Overt Terran Heating of Climate via Gigntic Arctic Death Ray and Intercontinental Laser), but one has to be a bit more subtle when presenting plans to the general public.
Re:Modest Proposal (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are saying that you need to create a power source to convert the CO2 from the atmosphere into a form that can be buried, then the logical choice is why you can't simply use this power source to eliminate CO2 producing power sources in the first place.
It takes far less energy to compress CO2 into a liquid than you get from burning fossil fuels. Most estimates of CO2 sequestration and storage are that it will add about 20% to the cost of power generation.
But this is still a silly idea because even though it requires less energy to compress cold CO2, there is no market for CO2 in Antarctica. But if you compress the CO2 in someplace like Texas, you can sell it. The buyers pump it into oilfields where it flushes out and displaces the oil, which floats above the liquid CO2 and is then pumped out. Once all the oil is recovered, the well is sealed and the CO2 remains underground.
Bon Appétit (Score:2)
Too bad you can't complain to the original producers.
Profit? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Build plant in really cold place
2. Profit from cold weather
3. Pull CO2 from atmosphere
4. Bury CO2 snow
5. Mankind benefits
You must be new here, because you've got this all out of order. Here's how it's supposed to go:
1. Build plant
2. Pull CO2 from atmosphere
3. Bury CO2 snow
4. ???
5. Profit!
If profit is not the end goal, then fail. If "mankind benefits" is the last item on the list, then fail. Go back and try it again. You don't have to be evil to get this right, but it helps.
Good idea (Score:2)
I have to admit, this idea is pretty cool. :-)
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Ferret
Carbon can be sequestered on any good farmland (Score:4, Insightful)
With the appropriate farming techniques, which have pretty much been forgotten in the age of high-volume industrial farming, carbon sequestration can be greatly increased [perennialsolutions.org].
It frustrates me beyond measure how our society tends to want to solve things with big, sweeping high-cost measures, and then when that becomes a problem, add yet another layer of over-engineering on top of that. Modern farming is one of the biggest problems in the carbon debacle. Cows are kept on bare concrete and fed a steady stream of grain, and the waste is just sloughed off to be turned to muck and eventually dried. Meanwhile, farms that grow produce tend to focus on only one crop (corn, wheat, whatever), thus progressively depleting the soil of resources for that crop, necessitating the high-volume production of fertilizer. Simple measures [homegrown.org] that can both increase the yield of farmland and create much healthier food, also happen to increase and thrive on carbon sequestration. If this were done on a major scale, I suspect our carbon problems would start to reverse.
But I know... promoting wholistic measures like this make one seem like an old hippy. Honestly, it's too bad. There are so many ways to save effort and improve things, but instead we focus on the dramatic high-effort, high-risk solutions.
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It does seem as if the American (and to a lesser extent the European) approach usually involves "large sweeping solutions" when millions of "little" solutions can work more efficiently and more effectively. Part of this is, I think, the nature of the issue and those concerned about it--they feel that only if "the government does something" can it be solved, and by default that means a big program.
Then you get into who trusts individuals and who doesn't, and of course
An even more "modest" proposal: (Score:3)
Use orbiting shades to shade much of Antarctica so that it is dark most of the summer. This should make it cold enough to form CO2 snow, removing CO2 from the atmosphere. It also would increase H2O snow accumulation, but that's ok as it would bury the CO2 and also tend to counteract sea level rise.
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Two words: partial pressure.
The partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere would require both cold temperatures and higher pressures for CO2 to precipitate.
This is a stupid idea (Score:2)
Second, why on Antarctica? His argument is the environmental temperature, which is 226K on average. The process should run at 133K or 152K. The maximum the
On the other side (Score:2)
So if the lifetime of such a landfill is really
Are we gods? (Score:2)
When did the human race become omnipotent? How can we have so much faith that we can 'fix Earth' when we don't even really understand how it works (follow _any_ science blog and note how many time scientists are 'surprised to discover that ...')?
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Ferret
Stupid Idea (Score:2)
We are thinking like slave owners, try desperately to annex new land to move an increasingly inefficient economic model to. It doesn't work on cold economic grounds, because this is capital that will be very far away from all other human activity, and have no follow on applications. If you want giant
Re:This is a joke right? (Score:4, Insightful)
Summary suggests wind. Makes sense.
Re:This is a joke right? (Score:5, Funny)
Your reading ability will one day be the stuff of legends.
Are you serious? (Score:2)
I know it's already been said, but the summary itself mentions the proposed power source (not to mention the article!). Is it really too much to ask that you read the few sentences you are replying to before you hit reply? Really?! How fucking lazy can you be? At least it seems like you read the whole entire headline so there's that.
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The problem, of course, is that he believes in his hate for whatever so he didnt bother to learn anything about things that confirm that hate. Such as in this case, where he is blindly trying to use a confirmation from another scenario in this obviously wrong way. The lack of knowledge he has is overshadowed by his lack of understanding. His beliefs are empty of any critical thought on his part.
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You've heard the explanation from a few other people, so I'm here to tell you the really important thing that most people won't tell you:
Please kill yourself.
Re:This is a joke right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, read the article as others have suggested. Secondly, even if you didn't read the article, did you really, really think that the real scientists (I make the distinction in case you think you're one) who came up with this idea hadn't thought of those things? Or were you hoping they'd drop by Slashdot, see the holes you've ingeniously managed to poke in their scheme in 30 seconds when they've spent months coming up with it, bow before your mighty intellect and pop a Nobel prize in the post?
Scoffing at something you don't understand is not an intelligent response. Asking questions (or in this case, simply reading TFA) is.
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It takes energy to make CO2.
Err, actually no, the reason we're in this mess is because CO2 is a by-product of our favourite way of liberating energy.
That energy will probably come from burning fossil fuels
If the process was (possibly magically) efficient enough, you could run it on fossil fuels as long as you put away more than you create. You may also be fascinated to know that the back of your fridge is hot.
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Re:Also known as (Score:5, Insightful)
the sweep-it-under-the-carpet method of trash removal
works great for the inlaws, the planet? not so much
Well, given that most of the newly minted CO2 that we are concerned about is produced by digging up carbon that was swept under the carpet and setting it on fire(with a side of deforestation), I'd say that under-the-carpet storage is a time-proven part of the carbon cycle.
Now, techniques for sweeping it under the carpet without titanic amounts of energy and in less than geologic time... that's still in progress.
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Global warming is moving in from the seas over 100-300 years. Nobody dies.
More hurricanes, droughts, floods.
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Global warming is moving in from the seas over 100-300 years. Nobody dies.
More hurricanes, droughts, floods.
And wars over farmland and fresh water.
Re:Also known as (Score:5, Insightful)
So, in order to combat global warming, we install 400+ heaters on Antarctica? I'm sure the science behind it will work, but my initial response is: uuh... what?
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uuh... what?
It's Judith Curry [scientificamerican.com]
Re:Also known as (Score:4, Interesting)
It's Judith Curry
Now I'm confused. Are you suspecting me of being a skeptic?
Either way, I simply just don't understand the logic. Antarctica is being threatened by melting ice, and now a scientist (who I'm sure is very intelligent) comes up with an idea to install huge heaters in that area. I'm sure they will remove co2, but won't the side-effects be worse than the medicine?
(honestly, not trying to troll here).
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Lol. Think about that for a second. Even if we wanted to melt the Antarctic with the industrial equivalent of a whole bunch of space heaters, do you honestly think we would have the means? That would be a bigger project than anything ever undertaken. It would probably be easier to make a base on Mars. The difference with CO2 is that we are amplifying the effect of the heat of the sun on the earth, rather than directly raising the earth's temperature.
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To be fair, current global climate change could also probably qualify as the "biggest project humanity has undertaken." We are releasing all the stores of carbon on the planet into the atmosphere, and it's a project that the vast majority of the planet is directly or indirectly contributing to, and has been for the past several decades/century and thus far we've *only* changed the average temperature a degree or so?
And that's only amplifying the sun, as opposed to applying heat directly.
So yes melting the i
Re:Also known as (Score:5, Informative)
The amount of heat produced directly by all human activity combined is tiny compared to the heat applied by the sunlight the earth receives. The contribution of all human direct heat production is so small that no large-scale analysis of global heat retention even bothers to include it. Global warming is effectively entirely the result of increasing CO2, which increases the amount of incoming solar heat the Earth retains. Removing significant amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere would relieve global warming regardless of how much direct heat the process generated.
Re:Also known as (Score:5, Funny)
...heat produced directly by all human activity combined is tiny..
Even in election years?
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The web site in your sig is broken.
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In other words, you're a liberal.
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That's odd. I seem to remember rather heated...oh discussions not all that long ago about this. And people keep saying that the sun has a negligible impact on the earths temperature? Especially in relation to Co2 levels. Especially with past relations to sunspot activity. And yet, this study came out the other day.
http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2012/2012-39.shtml [agu.org]
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Last I checked the moderation system here, there was not choice for "bald faced lie." It is posts like yours that argue persuasively for the need for such a classification.
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We are saying that the observed variations in the Sun's output in the last 50+ years have had a negligible impact on the Earth's temperature. But we still know that the Sun is essentially the only* source of energy driving the Earth's temperatures and any significant change in the Sun's output would be reflected on Earth.
* The other sources of energy are so small relative to the Sun that they can be ignored in first order calculations.
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I saw a counter-argument there that this was an issue / bounding limit for human growth / use of energy:
``Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist''
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ [ucsd.edu]
``Alright, the Earth has only one mechanism for releasing heat to space, and that’s via (infrared) radiation. We understand the phenomenon perfectly well, and can predict the surface temperature of the planet as a function of how much energy the human race produces. The upshot is tha
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On a global scale, maybe, but many cities have become what is known as "heat islands."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island
That is not because of heat directly generated by human activity, but a change in the heat retention properties of a large area of land due to human engineered changes in the landscape.
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Yes,in the TFA directly linked to, there is no mention of what is to be done with the heat that is pumped out of all that CO2 in order to solidify it. There is only a brief mention that it might be somehow put to use. But how? This part of the concept needs to be developed further.
Could the heat be used to melt Antarctic ice that could be hauled by refurbished oil tankers to Saudi Arabia for irrigation and bath water? Or should it just be dumped willy-nilly into the Antarctic environment? Maybe the penguin
Re:Also known as (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but this guy says if we don't have more CO2 we're not going to be able to grow enough food for the planet.
http://www.liebertpub.com/MContent/Files/Kleinman_ch19_p379-398.pdf [liebertpub.com]
I hate to state the obvious but do you suppose there's a chance that the balance of trees to CO2 got a bit messed up when we cut them all down?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j2BAdNIG5Q2FJlEdac1l-KXiTSCA?docId=CNG.dfe97e07f144a2d29eb615412e0c12be.a81 [google.com]
Maybe... put the trees back? If everybody on the planet planted 10 fast growing and 10 slow growing trees... well, do the math.
Or maybe a lot of C4 plants, the ones that use crazy amounts of CO2 and do really well when CO2 is high (the historical maximum is 7000ppm, we're at about 400ppm now).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C4_carbon_fixation [wikipedia.org]
"Today, C4 plants represent about 5% of Earth's plant biomass and 3% of its known plant species.[13][9] Despite this scarcity, they account for about 30% of terrestrial carbon fixation.[10] Increasing the proportion of C4 plants on earth could assist biosequestration of CO2 and represent an important climate change avoidance strategy. Present-day C4 plants are concentrated in the tropics and subtropics (below latitudes of 45) where the high air temperature contributes to higher possible levels of oxygenase activity by RuBisCO, which increases rates of photorespiration in C3 plants."
And no excess heat. The plan in TFA sounds to me like introducing cane toads to Australia.
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Trees and plants are a method to kick the can down the road at best. Unless you actively plan to go and bury all these trees and plants into some deep holes, most of the carbon absorbed by aforementioned greenery will eventually be returned back into the air via decay and decomposition. Hence the word cycle in "carbon cycle". If it is still on the surface, it is still going back into the system.
Not only that, but in order to have any meaningful impact on atmospheric CO2 levels you would need to plant a HUG
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Explain where all the CO2 we produce went. We KNOW how much we produce from burning fossil fuels et al. 30 billion tons a year.
And the increase in atmospheric CO2 is about equivalent to about 17 billion tons of CO2 a year.
But if it were the trees dying off doing it
a) where is all the 30 billion tons of our production going to
Much of it is going into the oceans. There, it is leading to acidification of the water, which could have much more dire consequences for the global ecosystem than "global warming". All of the shelled creatures in the seas have calcite shells, which could be more difficult for them to grow/maintain in more acid waters. And since many of them are near the bottom of the food chain....
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Not quite. The CO2 maybe sweeped under the carpet, but if you would actually read the paper, page 21 shows that there may be a significant amount of excess heat produced by the process, which needs to be release to the environment. The CO2 is not the problem. The heat is? So, in order to combat global warming, we install 400+ heaters on Antarctica? I'm sure the science behind it will work, but my initial response is: uuh... what?
They aren't really talking about introducing any additional energy into Antartica. They said the power supply would be local wind turbines. So the only real heat difference will be the heat taken out of the CO2 and released into the remaining atmosphere. That should create small, localised heat bubbles in the atmosphere, which would probably be fairly rapidly dissipated by winds. And even if it does have a noticeable effect during the summer, the Antarctic interior winter atmosphere has relatively little mo
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Um, you do realize that no human activity *creates* carbon, right? It just moves it around; in the case of global warming, we're moving it from in the ground (where it's not a problem) to in the atmosphere (where it is a problem). This moves the carbon back into the ground. How does that not work?
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What fusion reaction where you planning on using ? I don't think you are going to get much out of triple alpha.
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Because clearly this plan is well thought through and has no obvious but overlooked side effects?
I feel a bit uneasy about storing megatonnes of frozen CO2, that has to be kept refrigerated below -80C, at least 20 degrees below ambient, indefinitely. Makes storing nuclear waste for centuries look simple and safe by comparison.
As you're in a nitpicking mode, you might note that a question mark normally terminates a question; your sentence is simply a statement.
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Um... I missed the point where this firmly puts the carbon in the ground, and does not heat up the surrounding atmosphere enough to cause carbon release. Since this sounds to me like a giant bunch of heaters installed in a cold area, maybe you could show me what obvious detail I have overlooked?
Installing a bunch of heaters in a cold area assumes the intruduction of an external power supply to fuel those heaters. This plan does not include introduction of external energy to the local system.
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the sweep-it-under-the-carpet method of trash removal works great for the inlaws, the planet? not so much
Where did you think all the carbon from man made CO2 came from? We're just putting it back in the Earth.
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It got rid of the carbon from the carboniferous era for a hundred million years or so.
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Well, it'll make for one very interesting iceburg (Score:2)
...In a few million years
I hate ice ages (Score:2)
KENT
Our top story, the population of parasitic tree lizards has exploded, and local citizens couldn't be happier! It seems the rapacious reptiles have developed a taste for the common pigeon, also known as the 'feathered rat', or the 'gutter bird'. For the first time, citizens need not fear harassment by flocks of chattering disease-bags.
Later, Bart receives an award from Mayor Quimby outside the town hall. Several lizards slink past.
QUIMBY
For decimating our pigeon population, and making Springfield a less oppressive place to while away our worthless lives, I present you with this scented candle.
Skinner talks to Lisa.
SKINNER
Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
LISA
But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
SKINNER
No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
LISA
But aren't the snakes even worse?
SKINNER
Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
LISA
But then we're stuck with gorillas!
SKINNER
No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
Messing with the environment because we messed with the environment before, what [wikipedia.org] could possibly [wikipedia.org] go wrong? [arstechnica.com]
I was about to post something very similar. (Score:4, Informative)
Am I the only one ... to think that this is a really terrible idea.
It sounds like a great way to enable massive CO2 release just by any heating accident or lack of maintenance.
I was about to post something similar but was checking whether anybody had beaten me to it. You came close.
This looks like a DANDY way to set up a runaway-positive-feedback event:
1) Make gigatons of dry ice by freezing CO2 out of the atmosphere.
2) Bury it in Antarctica.
3) Pray that it stays cold.
4) If the temperature of the burial site rises above â'78.5 ÂC (â'109.3 ÂF) the dry ice starts sublimating, releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere.
5) The released CO2 increases the greenhouse effect, which captures more heat, which raises the temperature, which sublimates more dry ice.
6) Rinse and repeat.
7) Prophet!
Even if the global warming observations aren't the sign of an oncoming anthropogenic overheating disaster, THIS could create one. Artificially sequestering the CO2 would retard natural sequestration mechanisms (such as increased photosynthesis stimulated by higher CO2 levels). Then suddenly (in geologic time) releasing the stockpile back into the atmosphere could leave you with a substantially higher CO2 level than if you hadn't run the project in the first place.
Oops!
Typo fixing (Score:2)
Make that:
4) If the temperature of the burial site rises above -78.5 C (-109.3 F) the dry ice starts sublimating, releasing the CO2 back into the atmosphere.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably better to trap it underground, just in case it's needed later. You never know. Could be useful for geo-engineering our way out of an ice age at some point.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I had wondered about artificially creating methane hydrate crystals ... it'd involve mostly pumping CO2 into the deep ocean.
No, methane hydrate is formed from methane (natural gas), not CO2. Pumping CO2 underwater will not make it turn into methane (first law of thermodynamics, etc.).
perpetual motion machine (Score:2)
You are describing a kind of perpetual motion machine, which like all such schemes fails when you consider the thermodynamics.
Methane is a reduced form of carbon. CO2 is an oxidized form of carbon. The energy from burning fuels like methane (and other fossil fuels which are also reduced carbon) comes from the thermodynamics of converting reduced carbon to oxidized carbon.
In other words, to convert CO2 from fossil fuels back into methane, we'd have to put all the energy we got out of burning the fuels back i
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly - the solution is to plant more trees - the most efficient carbon capture mechanism devised.
Even if you just fell trees and convert them to furniture, they take at least twice or thrice the time to decompose, than they took to grow.
Either way, we're ahead - and that's ignoring the carbon trapped in the root systems of felled trees left in the ground (that effectively increase the carbon content of the Canadian host soils.)