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Goodbye Global Warming!...Hello Terraforming?
silance writes "Here is an article from Science Daily detailing a new method for extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on a large scale and at normal concentrations. Previous systems require placement near high concentration centers such as power plants, and do not address low-concentration sources (such as internal combustion engines) which are responsible for half of the world's carbon dioxide pollution. The article descibes the technology as scalable to the point of repairing Earth's atmosphere to pre-Industrial-Age levels! Next stop, Mars..." I seem to remember something like this in SimEarth ? - but I'm not going to hold my breath (Ha! I pun!) waiting for this.
I managed to get Mars terraformed in SimEarth within 50 years... wonder how quick it'll be able to happen in real life, since there aren't many ice meteors floating around for us to grab...
Then again, it doesn't have to be done all at once. Scientists can start by just terraforming one chunk of Mars, and then build out from there. It would make sense to start near one of the poles, where there's a large concentration of ice; that would definitely make things easier at the start.
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Aww, FSCK!
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
Wouldn't such an operation require rather a large power budget?
I think the first step in reducing athmospheric CO2 must be to stop the use of fossil fuels for large power plants where clear alternatives (eg, solar/wind/wave/tidal/nuclear) exist.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
So, in effect, they are using the chemical reaction to create limestone, and then change the limestone back into the original chemical agent using lots of heat, releasing pure CO2 for collection.
They then say that if this was done on a large enough scale, it could reduce CO2 levels.
What I'd like to know is how large is "large enough"? Sounds like to me that for every coal-burning plant, we'd need a CO2 'eating' plant to compensate for the CO2 release.. that is, unless they were integrated. And if they were integrated, it would most certainly just cost us more for our electricity.
This doesn't appear to be very profitable. The company that does this will get lots of CO2, which can be sold to oil companies, as the article states. But is CO2 valuable enough to make a decent profit out of having hundreds of these CO2 extration plants running?
The article also states that the cost of doing this would cost about 20 cents for each gallon of gas used, to reclaim the CO2. Well, for one, gas prices are already very high in some places in the world (Europe comes to mind). But one thing isn't noted: 20 cents a gallon for the millions of gallons of gasolene used every year is a whole crapload of money.
I'm not a CO2 extraction expert (INACO2EE?) but this plan does not seem as economically feasible as the article seems to suggest.
Imagine No Restrictions On Fossil-Fuel Usage And No Global Warming
I kind of found this headline a bit disturbing... I hate things like this because they really discourage any responsibilty... It reminds me of all those miracle diets; "Eat all the fatty foods you want and don't gain a pound." Seems like people today just don't want responsibility.
I'm sure it would be a lot better on the planet on a whole if we aimed to reduce emmisions gradually, thus *if* there were any consequences to the environemnt they could probably be dealt with a lot easier than massive forest die-offs or the like.
Of course reducing emissions need some sort of united effort *cough* kyoto *cough*...
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Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
They'll be rightly sceptical, because the holes in the theory as presented in this article are big enough for you to drive your SUV through them quite comfortably.
More to the point, how many people want to wager that the energy / motoring lobbies will take this single study and claim it as proof that people can pollute as much as they like, because their children will have the technology to clear up after them?
A general heating of the atmosphere may support a great deal more plant life than we have now.
Seems like a fairly dangerous experiment, however. But, if as some are saying that some global warming is here and there will be a trend for some years that's irreversible even if we drastically cut emissions, it might not be a bad thing.
Human climate control has been bantered around for some time now. In fact the Global trade in CO2 emissions encourages the idea. The simple fact remains that the existing CO2/O2 global regulations is poorly understood. (The ages of Gaia)
Some more feasible suggestions include the fertilising plankton with the bio-available iron to promote blooms that would mop up a significant amount of CO2 and deposit it on the ocean floor. It is then bound in the sedimentation process.
But despite the ideas there is only one planet and no chance for a f*** up.
I personally subscribe to James Lovelock's Gaia theory of global climate regulation. The climate has controlled itself quite well for the last 3.4 - 4 billion years (with no climate regulation tax or middle management layer!) the real need is to limit our climate impact.
Climate regulation is a dangerous idea steaming from fix-it style engineering ethos.
Enjoy :0)
A pantheist
Yes, I couldn't find a good graph of this reaction. A good amount of information can be found in regards to CaO production - since it is the whole point of sintering in the cement industry.
I did take a little leeway with the calculations - but thats what happens with a napkin and 5 minutes. There were quite a few things I did not account for - all of which would take up energy. For example, the ingestion and extraction of CO2 would need to occur in two seperate units - likely requiring energy to move the CaCO3 between the units. Also, CaO readily absorbs other interesting gases like the SO's, which I'm not going to drag the CRC back out, but I'm assuming they would require even more energy than the CaCO3 to reclaim the CaO.
As far as efficiency goes - a typical fossil fueled power plant is around 30% efficient. Can be up to 40% maybe even 50% if they implement newer heat reclaiming devices. If you managed to reclaim 50% of the heat from the CaCO3 formation, and you have a 50% conversion efficiency in your blast furnace - you end up in the same place as what I gave. That's why I stuck with giving a 100% conversion efficiency example, and didn't account for reclamation of CaCO3 waste heat.
It appears Ockham lost his razor and grew a beard.
That's not entirely true. Sequestering CO2 can be a valid long-term solution for global warming if the CO2 can be solidified or compressed into a form that occupies less volume than the original fossil-fuel and the process is energy efficient.
You're right, though, in that this does nothing to solve the fuel problem. At some point, the fossil-fuel supply will run out. Perhaps, the sequestered CO2 can be used to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis in plants or be used in some other fuel production process.
False!!
... it doesn't take much "Energy" to convert CO2 back to oil!! And furthermore, it's very earth friendly. The CO2 gets trapped underground and slowly dissipates into the earth.
Currently in Alberta, they are pumping CO2 produced from fuel refineries back into the ground, pressurizing old oil patches and extracting that much more oil from what would be considered a dry well.
So
Wired had an article about a year or so ago (can't remember the issue...sorry) about scientists that tried to promote blue green algae growth by dumping iron shavings into the water (iirc... it was something weird)... in an attempt to get the algae to combat global warming.
... the article was a minor one. I believe the article with in the first half of 2001 if anyone wants to check their archives
It failed. Not only did they not grow enough algae to call the experiment a mild success, but there were side effects, i believe they managed to kill off alot of fish.
I know I'm light on the details, but history is full of these kinds of things... someone thinks there is a simple answer to a problem, but their efforts are short-sighted and only create a larger problem (the US gov't has done this a million times).
Unfortunately, I've looked through www.wired.com/wired
perlgolf: the only place where shorter is better
Later in the article, they actually say that the CO2 is used to process the petroleum. In light of that, I found the following interesting.
So, does that 20 cents per gallon include an estimated return on providing petroleum processors with the large amounts carbon dioxide they need? If not, would include that into the equation yield a solution that is cost neutral? Or maybe even cheaper overall? That would be cool. Those places out west that get to pay a premium for gasoline could reduce their costs because there is a CO2 reprocessing center in the nearby desert.GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I really don't want to get into this, but. First, a lot of countries have not signed Kyoto. Second, Kyoto has more to do with transfer of economic power from the US to other countries than it does with reducing greenhouse gases. Under Kyoto, countries like China are largely exempt and will begin producing more heavily. Either you are for reducing greenhouse gases or you aren't, I say. This treaty is a sham designed to hurt the US.
Bossing? I think we're just buying them. If you don't like losing them, stop selling them to us. Of course, this ignores the fact that US activists are in the forefront of trying to protect rain forests, even establishing funds to buy up huge swaths in an effort to protect them.
Aren't a lot of the rain forest cut down to support indigenous agriculture? If this is the case, stop increasing your population and stop blaming the US on all the ills of the world.
We didn't cut down all of our trees. There are huge forests in the US. I believe I read that there are more trees now than 30 years ago through careful management. We may have increased our consumption our trees from Brazil, but that's because many of the fine woods are not and have never been available in the US are plentiful down there. Oh, I think you'll find the Japanese and others, not just Americans, buy a lot of that wood, too.
I'm no chemist, but I think you'll find that alcohol produces very similar CO2 output to Gasoline for the same energy produced. Alcohol doesn't produce the Sulphur, CO1 and other nasty pollution that Gasoline produces, but similar CO2, I believe.