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First Successful Demonstration of CO2 Capture Technology

Posted by samzenpus on from the scrub-that-global-warming-away dept.

An anonymous coward writes "Global Research Technologies, LLC (GRT), a technology research and development company, and Klaus Lackner from Columbia University have achieved the successful demonstration of a bold new technology to capture carbon from the air. The "air extraction" prototype has successfully demonstrated that indeed carbon dioxide (CO2) can be captured from the atmosphere. This is GRT's first step toward a commercially viable air capture device."

88 of 521 comments (clear)

  1. Uh... by w3woody · · Score: 5, Funny

    Don't they call things that absorb CO2 from the air Trees...?

    And couldn't we sequester CO2 from the atmosphere by converting trees into an inert substance--such as paper--then burying it into landfills?

    I mean--couldn't we get a 'win/win' here by simply outlawing the recycling of paper?

    1. Re:Uh... by CriminalNerd · · Score: 4, Informative

      You create more carbon dioxide emissions by making paper and burying it to get rid of the minute amount of carbon that the tree(s) obtained from its photosynthesis process.

      Also, by outlawing the recycling of paper, you'll reduce the number of trees that are still alive, and eventually wipe out all the trees in the world, and thus, contribute MORE to global warming than minimizing its effect on the planet.

    2. Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually the more people need paper the more trees get planted to supply that demand, trees unlike other forms of carbon is completely renewable.

      Also recycling paper is a load of crap, it adds to polution by needing all sorts of nasty chemicals to bleach the paper so it can be re-used, not to mention all the petrolum needed to cart stuff from peoples homes to recyling centres, here they use multiple trucks, one for waste one for recycling.

      It costs the US$8bill a yr in subsidies to pay for recycling and cleaning up the chemical by-products, it costs much less to plant and cut down trees.

    3. Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Right, because trees grow instantaneously, bleach themselves, and require no transportation or other effort to be made into trees.

    4. Re:Uh... by delt0r · · Score: 3, Informative

      You create more carbon dioxide emissions by making paper and burying it to get rid of the minute amount of carbon that the tree(s) obtained from its photosynthesis process. What the hell. Where else does the carbon come from? Trees don't pull it out of the ground. ALL the Carbon in a tree comes from the atmosphere. Its anything but minute.
      --
      If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
    5. Re:Uh... by TerminaMorte · · Score: 3, Informative

      It was my understanding that lumber companies generally plant more trees than they cut down.

      So by recycling, less trees are cut... and in turn less are planted.

      In fact, we have more trees on earth today than we had in 1970. Hell, even more than we have 70 years ago.
       
        Source

    6. Re:Uh... by TapeCutter · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "Actually the more people need paper the more trees get planted to supply that demand"

      I think you will find most paper pulp comes from native hardwood forests, eg: Indonesia, Malaysia, S.America and even here in Australia. Some wealthy countries replant and/or carefully manage the natural regrowth, most just hack it down leaving large areas of barren hills. In Australia we plant non-native pine trees for timber resulting in vast areas of land covered with a pine tree monoculture that is largely devoid of any other lifeforms (even the bugs refuse to live in those forests).

      Speaking of cost, how much do you think it costs to cut a ton of timber, turn it into chips, ship it from Australia to Japan and then turn it into paper that is shipped all over the planet. I will wager those costs are far more than the cost of an extra garbage run to collect a ton of used paper that is ready for pulping. Having worked at a sawmill many moons ago the waste timber that was chipped on site was collected by a truck and driven ~200miles to a sea port.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    7. Re:Uh... by XNormal · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > And couldn't we sequester CO2 from the atmosphere by converting trees into an inert substance--such as paper--then burying it into landfills?

      Yes we can.

      But instead of trees, use fast-growing plants like switchgrass or elephant grass. Instead of making them into paper you can pyrolize them into a gas with high energy content and charcoal. Burn the gas to make electricity. Bury the charcoal.

      --
      Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
    8. Re:Uh... by Bender_ · · Score: 5, Informative


      Yes, but the paper companies only plant single species fast growing trees. Those can not replace the complex ecosystem in the rain forests.

    9. Re:Uh... by ceoyoyo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're absolutely correct. You should all pay us Canadians (and probably the Russians too) to cut down trees and sink them into the nearby Pacific ocean. It's even all downhill!

      We replant native species here and the forest area in the country has not changed in twenty years despite a thriving forestry industry.

      Seriously, do you think any fancy process that involves heating things to 900 degrees that we come up with is going to be more efficient at absorbing carbon than a forest? A GROWING forest since a mature one doesn't absorb net carbon.

    10. Re:Uh... by jimicus · · Score: 2, Funny

      In Australia we plant non-native pine trees for timber resulting in vast areas of land covered with a pine tree monoculture that is largely devoid of any other lifeforms (even the bugs refuse to live in those forests).

      Maybe they don't like the smell of cheap disinfectant.

    11. Re:Uh... by FredThompson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, but the paper companies only plant single species fast growing trees. Those can not replace the complex ecosystem in the rain forests.

      --

      Modding that post as 5, Informative doesn't make any sense unless it was to illustrate popular misconceptions and propaganda.

      Lumber companies, like any other farmers, would prefer to plant in places where the crops will grow and can be harvested for a profit and new crops grown. Rain forests are particularly POOR places to grow trees. The primary reason the U.S. imports so much lumber is because of Clinton-era restrictions on tree harvesting.

      The myth of clear-cutting as a lumbering practice is also crazy. Think about it, the infrastructure needed to process and move the crop would have to be continually rebuilt. How many farmers do that? They will rotate the harvest areas as a way to let the soil regenerate but they don't strip the surface and continually move on.

      Recycling paper, FWIW, yields a far inferior product in many, many ways. The more paper fibers are handled, the shorter they become. Compare an American corrugated box to one from China or Southern Europe. You'll find the recycled paper does not have the same strength. New fiber must be added or you eventually end up with a useless substance.

      The idea that only one species of tree is planted by lumber companies is pure propaganda and incredibly naive. Like any other plant, different types of trees have different types of fibers. Different types of fibers are used to make different types of papers. It would no more be feasible to plant only one type of tree than it would to plant only one type of any other crop because the soil would become depleted. Paper companies are lumber companies. Are all the boards at a lumber store the same type of wood? Of course not.

      Lumber companies are farmers. Remember that and use it as a way to filter out the propaganda. You might be interested to learn the opinion of one of the founders of Greenpeace: http://www.corrugatedmachines.com/2007-04-09%20BCN %20-%20Trees%20are%20the%20Answer.pdf

      His comment that people should fight the auto and oil industries is more than a little whacked. Imagine what it would be like without plastics and the internal combustion engine. We'd be living the same as people did before the industrial revolution which would be a far shorter lifespan and much, much harder lives...burning coal and wood which genreate far more pollution/energy but that's a whole different topic...

    12. Re:Uh... by simm1701 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Specifically bury the charcoal in your fields - it increase the fertility of the soil (same effects as peat soil or volcanic soil)

      --
      $_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
    13. Re:Uh... by ErroneousBee · · Score: 4, Funny

      back of envelope maths:

      From TFA (or we could go to the Stern Report):
      "A device with an opening of one square meter can extract about 10 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. If a single device were to measure 10 meters by 10 meters it could extract 1,000 tons each year. On this scale, one million devices would be required to remove one billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. According to the U.K. Treasury's Stern Review on climate change, the world will need to reduce carbon emissions by 11 billion tons by 2025 in order to maintain a concentration of carbon dioxide at twice pre-industrial levels. "

      So we need to absorb 11,000,000,000 tonnes per year.

      Assume a tree planted today will weigh 50tonnes in 20 years time.
      So 1 tree absorbs 50/20 = 2.5tonnes/year.
      So we need 11,000,000,000 / 2.5 = 4,400,000,000 or 4 billion trees.

      1 tree needs say a square of sides 3 meters, or 9 meters square.

      A total land area of 4x9 billion square meters = 36billion square meters = 14,000 square miles, or just over one Belgium in old money.

      Seems doable, we don't need Belgium, and the US can chip in a Wales to make up the shortfall.

      --
      **TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
    14. Re:Uh... by gerrysteele · · Score: 5, Funny

      So what about genetically modified trees that consume superstancial amounts of CO2?

      Trees that grow high into the sky. Trees that grow so big we can build cities in their overlapping branches.

      Trees my friends that bear bounties fruits and sustenance for all mankind alike?

      Trees so beautiful they would make a grown man weep in awe.

      And these trees I sayeth, they shall become our new friend. Our new master. Our new servant.

      All hail our new genetically modified tree overlords.

    15. Re:Uh... by sentientbeing · · Score: 5, Funny

      Actally, Ents have been observed in the wild to strip off their own leaves, bleach themselves and climb into recycling chipping machines in paper mills when depressed.

      --

      ------
      beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
    16. Re:Uh... by jonadab · · Score: 5, Informative

      > I think you will find most paper pulp comes from native hardwood forests

      Hardwoods for the most part can be sold as lumber and are more valuable in that form than as paper, even in the poorest countries. Making paper out of oak and maple is financially the equivalent to melting down dimes and reforming them in the shape of nickels. I'm not saying it never happens, but it is not the norm. Paper is generally made from fast-growth wood that doesn't make very valuable lumber, typically pine or other conifers.

      What's really interesting is that it requires less total financial outlay, and less energy (discounting solar radiation that would otherwise not be harnessed), to maintain fast-growth pine plantations and make paper from those, versus recycling paper. Of all the things that you can recycle, paper is substantially the least worthwhile, both environmentally and economically. (The most worthwhile is probably glass, but just about any metal is quite worth recycling too. Plastics vary.)

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    17. Re:Uh... by Curtman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Within the United States, formations in Ohio, Oklahoma and Michigan, among other sites, appear to hold promise for long-term CO2 storage underground.

      So the plan is actually to stick this stuff in barrels and bury it?

      Here in Canada, we've been hearing a lot about how the Conservatives plan to focus on capturing and sequestering carbon instead of actually reducing emissions, and living up to our Kyoto obligations. I think it might be a tiny bit shortsighted to think we can continue pumping this crap into the atmosphere at ever increasing rates, then capture it and stick it underground along with the nuclear waste and other garbage that we bury.
    18. Re:Uh... by sumdumass · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Isn't underground were it came from? I mean seriously, the entire Idea behind using Biofuels instead of fossil fuels is because the carbon on biofuels are already on the earths surface and there is no net gain. Wouldn't this be the same? placing Co2 back underground were is came from?

    19. Re:Uh... by gvc · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So the plan is actually to stick this stuff in barrels and bury it?
      (In Canada anyway) Not in barrels, but diffused through stable geological formations. And the CO2 that they're planning to capture is that generated by the oil and/or electricity production process, not from free air.

      Sure the capacity of the geological formations is limited, but so is the amount of oil or coal that can be recovered from any particular place. While I agree that carbon sequestration have long-term sustainability issues, they are perhaps more managable than the alternative -- simply using the sky as a garbage dump.

    20. Re:Uh... by AGMW · · Score: 2, Informative
      and sure do burn easily.

      Well, Giant Redwood, amongst others, has bark is that is (from the link) "fibrous, furrowed, and may be 60 cm (2 ft) thick at the base of the columnar trunk. It provides significant fire protection for the trees".

      From the 2nd link "The thick, tannin-rich bark, combined with foliage that starts high above the ground provides good protection from both fire and insect damage".

      Oh well. I suppose they might rot.

      --
      Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
      handmadehands.co.uk
    21. Re:Uh... by BigDogCH · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "
      Modding that post as 5, Informative doesn't make any sense unless it was to illustrate popular misconceptions and propaganda.

      Lumber companies, like any other farmers, would prefer to plant in places where the crops will grow and can be harvested for a profit and new crops grown. Rain forests are particularly POOR places to grow trees. The primary reason the U.S. imports so much lumber is because of Clinton-era restrictions on tree harvesting.

      The myth of clear-cutting as a lumbering practice is also crazy. Think about it, the infrastructure needed to process and move the crop would have to be continually rebuilt. How many farmers do that? They will rotate the harvest areas as a way to let the soil regenerate but they don't strip the surface and continually move on.
      ...

      The idea that only one species of tree is planted by lumber companies is pure propaganda and incredibly naive. Like any other plant, different types of trees have different types of fibers. Different types of fibers are used to make different types of papers. It would no more be feasible to plant only one type of tree than it would to plant only one type of any other crop because the soil would become depleted. Paper companies are lumber companies. Are all the boards at a lumber store the same type of wood? Of course not.
       "

      Misconceptions? WTF? I disagree, however I can only speak for what I have seen in the Midwest US.

      I don't know where you live, but in our area the lumber companies do not own the land they are deforesting. They talk land owners into allowing their trees to be harvested, they strip the land down to a point that it doesn't recover for 30-50 years, and they move on. If they replant, it will be whatever tree saplings they have on hand, and surely will be a single species.

      The land is hilly here, so even after 50 years, the bluffs and hills are still scarred and will never recover their beauty. Erosion is nearly uncontrollable for at least a decade after the deforestation. Sure, they only take the "big trees", but the remaining trees die from injury, or loss of topsoil. Those that do live are sickly and unhealthy, usually falling down during storms. The forest undergrowth doesn't even come back because of the topsoil washing down into the valleys and streams.

      In our area of the Midwest US, lumber companies are NOT farmers. It is the farmers that they screw over.

    22. Re:Uh... by MobyDisk · · Score: 3, Funny

      So the plan is actually to stick this stuff in barrels and bury it? Thus, solving the problem once and for all. Once and for all!
    23. Re:Uh... by mysticgoat · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It was my understanding that lumber companies generally plant more trees than they cut down.

      I think when you look at it closely, you will find that "more" is a more subtle and complex concept than it first appears to be.

      In terms of simple counting, the "tree growing company" and others like it do plant more seedlings than the count of mature trees harvested. So if I pick up four pebbles while a backhoe picks up a single boulder, I'm holding more rock than the backhoe is. Yeah.

      In context with air scrubbers, an appropriate kind of "moreness" would be the volume of air swept by needles. In a 10 acre stand of mature douglas fir, that volume begins about 20 feet above the ground and extends upward for another 80 feet. The stand has an active scrubbing volume of 60 acre-feet. Transpiration and the temperature differential caused by its shade assure that there is a constant flow of air through the canopy, even when there is no external wind.

      In a freshly replanted 10 acre plot, the volume of effective scrubbing starts a couple of inches above the ground and is about 6 inches deep, at most. Even if all other factors were equal, the scrubbing volume is no more than 8% of the mature forest it has replaced. Considering other factors, like density of needles and the loss of "churn" on still air days, the effective scrubbing volume is much less than 1% of a mature stand.

      On reflection, it seems we need to know much more about "more" than the forest products industry will willingly tell us.

    24. Re:Uh... by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 2, Informative

      Bull. Shit.

      Do a GIS for clear cut and you get 2,300,000 pictures.

      I live in timber land, and while there are a few who cut responsibly, hardly any corporation does. They do it quick with a bulldozer, and they move on to the next lot. They don't pay attention to stream buffers, they don't pay attention to tree species, and they don't replant in a timely manner.

      And while we're at it, where does the illusion that farmers are models of ecology come from? Erosion, topsoil problems, fertilizer and pesticides. They're out to make a buck, just like the damn timber companies.

      --
      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    25. Re:Uh... by SQLGuru · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think the reason that Glass recycling is mentioned is that it is relatively "lossless" and probably uses less power to recycle than it does to produce initially.

      Paper recycling - shred, treat chemically, reform as paper (which, mind you, would be of a lesser grade than the original)
      Plastic recycling - melt, remove impurities, reform as plastic (again, lesser grade)
      Glass recycling - melt, reform. I believe impurities would be removed (burned off) during the melting process. I also believe that the strength of the recycled product would be no less than the original product.
      Metal recycling - melt, seperate, reform. Impurities and strength comments similar to glass.

      So, from an economical perspective, glass recycling is "easy". The question would be if it was cheaper to make new or recycle old. I have to think that recycle old is cheap, what with it being done for so long (I remember doing it in the 80's) and in fact the most notoriously rewarded (Seinfeld episode anyone?)

      Layne

    26. Re:Uh... by JimBimBam · · Score: 3, Informative

      So the plan is actually to stick this stuff in barrels and bury it? Here in Norway there has been a lot of talk about CO2 capturing technologies, especially a process using amines to bind the carbon. This is because we are running out of waterfalls to pipe into turbines, and some people want to build gas turbines to cover the energy deficit. The drawback is of course the CO2 emissions, and there are plans to capture this and use it as pressure support so as to extract more oil and natural gas from the oil fields in the North Sea. They way they want to do this is to pump it back into the aquifers (permeable rock) that the oil resides in. I imagine that the sites in Ohio, Oklahoma and Michigan have some sort of aquifers as well.
    27. Re:Uh... by inviolet · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hi. I own a pine tree farm outside of Cleveland, Texas, and I am here to reply to your assertions.

      I think you will find most paper pulp comes from native hardwood forests, eg: Indonesia, Malaysia, S.America and even here in Australia.

      Hardwood is a piss-poor way to generate pulpwood, because hardwood grows so slowly. The softwood pines, and some of the new varieties of grasses, are much more efficient. The majority of American industrial woodpulp comes from American and Canadian softwoods (although this is changing; see below). We are also seeing the slow rise of an industry around the pulpy grasses.

      Some wealthy countries replant and/or carefully manage the natural regrowth, most just hack it down leaving large areas of barren hills.

      Not in America. That means that if there is any brazen hacking going on, or urban sprawl, it is balanced by new plantings elsewhere.

      In Australia we plant non-native pine trees for timber resulting in vast areas of land covered with a pine tree monoculture that is largely devoid of any other lifeforms (even the bugs refuse to live in those forests).

      While the pine-trees are indeed bred to be "supertrees", their resistance is aimed at diseases and at early competition (i.e. they are bred to grow a tall canopy as fast as possible in order to beat out woody competition). The bugs don't care -- in fact I will think of your statement next time I'm in my monoculture forest swatting (or running from) the hordes of insects. For that matter, part of my land is wettish river bottomland, completely covered in random wild trees, yet the larger critters and the birds seem to prefer the drier pines.

      Still, you are right that a pine forest's understory and associated critters are relatively sparse... but that is not due to monoculture; it is true of any pine forest, even the much-vaunted old-growth redwoods in California. This is because pine needles naturally acidify the soil, and most other plants can't tolerate that. It is the pine's own natural anticompetitive practice.

      Either way, pines (and other softwoods) are still the fastest way to sequester large amounts of airborn carbon. Your beloved understory vegetation has a fast grow/die/rot cycle which does not permanently sequester any carbon, and which slows down the trees which do. Perhaps you should disentangle your pro-carbon-sequestration argument from your pro-biodiversity argument, because the fastest and most profitable way to sequester airborne carbon is also the least biodiverse. (And if you compromise on "most profitable", then brace yourself for the world's unwillingness to do it.) The reverse is also true: the most biodiverse place in the world is the rainforest, and rainforests have so much rot that they do not consume any net carbon at all. (If you think they do, I'd love to hear an explanation of where they're storing it.)

      Speaking of cost, how much do you think it costs to cut a ton of timber, turn it into chips, ship it from Australia to Japan and then turn it into paper that is shipped all over the planet. I will wager those costs are far more than the cost of an extra garbage run to collect a ton of used paper that is ready for pulping. Having worked at a sawmill many moons ago the waste timber that was chipped on site was collected by a truck and driven ~200miles to a sea port.

      True enough. Domestic timber production is the answer... and indeed was the answer here in America. We had a great pulp market until the feds, under pressure from Environmentalists, banned logging in national forestlands. That drove a lot of the domestic mills out of business, and when they died, the bottom fell out of the pulp market. Presently, I will be paid $0 for the pulpwood take from this year's thinning. Now what effect do you suppose that will have on

      --
      FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
    28. Re:Uh... by zacronos · · Score: 3, Informative

      A GROWING forest since a mature one doesn't absorb net carbon.
      I'm sorry, but this is wrong. From this article on genetically engineering trees (emphasis mine):

      The established myth that forests drastically slow or even stop their carbon sequestration as they mature has been found to be false. Research shows that intact mature forest ecosystems have a net carbon absorption not directly related to the growth of the established forest trees. Undergrowth and natural regeneration additionally contribute to carbon absorption. Forest soils also hold carbon, which is lost into the atmosphere when the forest is logged.
    29. Re:Uh... by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 2, Funny

      If we don't put our waste underground, how will the ants have any fuel for their cars 100 million years from now?

      That's long term thinking. Won't somebody think of the ant children?

      --

      ---
      ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
    30. Re:Uh... by neonfrog · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Depends where you prune the timeline. All that underground carbon started up here, you know. You did call it a fossil fuel, so I think you get that.

      --

      I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.

    31. Re:Uh... by Curtman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      And the CO2 that they're planning to capture is that generated by the oil and/or electricity production process, not from free air.

      Speaking of electricity generation... Where does Alberta get off burning coal to product electricity with B.C. and Manitoba very close neighbours who produce more hydro electricity than than they can possibly use? That would be a great start if they just bought our excess hydro instead of burning fossil fuels. But they won't do that because coal is probably cheaper for them (at least in the short term). This is why we need Kyoto, to bump the cost of doing business with fossil fuels, and make the more environmentally friendly means of production more attractive.
    32. Re:Uh... by zacronos · · Score: 2, Informative
      You know what? I don't know the answers to those questions. But I notice you haven't provided any supporting evidence for your claim, while I at least provided a link -- it may be unreferenced and biased, but it's something, and that beats nothing.

      You can find referenced, peer-reviewed evidence below. However, it gets a little technical, and I honestly find it a little hard to follow since I'm unfamiliar with the terminology and acronyms. If you want anything more thorough than this, you'll have to look for the information yourself.

      Here is the abstract of a 2003 paper (cited 40 times according to Google Scholar) which compares stands of ponderosa pines in Oregon based on their age. One statistic they compare is "net ecosystem productivity":
      • "initiation" stands (9-23 years old): -124 g C m^(-2) yr^(-1) (note that this value is negative -- that's not a typo)
      • "young" stands (56-89 years old): 118 g C m^(-2) yr^(-1)
      • "mature" stands (95-106 years old): 170 g C m^(-2) yr^(-1)
      • "old" stands (190-316 years old): 35 g C m^(-2) yr^(-1)
      I wouldn't know what "net ecosystem productivity" is, except that this other paper summarizes those numbers from the first paper, but uses the terms "carbon uptake" when referring to the young, mature, and old stands, and "carbon release" when referring to the initiation stands. This leads me to conclude that "net ecosystem productivity" refers to the net carbon stored by the ecosystem. Note that the stands labeled "mature" (~100 years old) were doing the most carbon storing, while the initiation stands (the youngest, at 9-23 years old) actually produced more carbon than they stored. The gap in the data for stands in the range of 106-190 years old leaves me wondering where exactly they hit their peak -- it's quite possible the peak is somewhere in the 120-150 years old range, though admittedly I could also easily believe the peak is as young as 80 years, based on those numbers.

      Here is the abstract of a 2001 paper (cited 102 times according to Google Scholar) which has a three-author overlap with the first paper, and which concludes (among other things), that for ponderosa pine stands in Oregon it takes 50-100 years of regrowth to replace the stored carbon which is lost as a result of a clear-cut or "stand-replacing fire". I can't tell you whether that estimate is accurate for "modern" logging techniques or not.

      Care to find similarly-respectable evidence to the contrary? These two papers studied only one particular type of forest in one particular region of the US, so I admit that the results could be idiosyncratic, but until I'm given some reason to think these trees and/or that region is unusual, I'm going to assume something at least vaguely similar holds true in most parts of the world.
    33. Re:Uh... by saforrest · · Score: 2, Funny

      I mean seriously, the entire Idea behind using Biofuels instead of fossil fuels is because the carbon on biofuels are already on the earths surface and there is no net gain. Wouldn't this be the same? placing Co2 back underground were is came from?

      Yeah, that's pretty much the idea. After a century of intense oil extraction at great expense and effort, we end up putting it back. The crowning irony would be if the most efficient manner of underground storage was as oil.

      It would make things a lot easier in the end if we just, you know, stopped pulling it out of the ground already...

    34. Re:Uh... by tehdaemon · · Score: 2, Informative

      So you remove the carbon from the oxygen....


      This requires way too much energy to do.


      And even if we were going to pump carbon dioxide into the ground (no one has proposed any such thing, ...


      Don't be ignorant. This is precisely what is being proposed. It is even being done in some places.

      T

      --
      Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
    35. Re:Uh... by zacronos · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually, the first couple sentences of the abstract of the PSU paper I linked previously say, "Old-growth forests are often assumed to exhibit no net carbon assimilation over time periods of several years. This generalization has not been typically supported by the few whole-ecosystem, stand-scale eddy-covariance measurements of carbon dioxide exchange in old-growth forests."

      Again, I don't know where that carbon goes, but research seems to indicate that the carbon-absorption of old-growth forests may never really drop to totally insignificant levels. However, I'll grant that at some point, it would be more efficient to cut the trees down and and plant new ones, taking the short-term hit to CO2 absorption. However, the ideal time to chop down the trees (in terms of ecosystem carbon absorption) is much later than what intuition would suggest based on the growing cycle of the trees -- I would assume "mature" trees are past peak growth (or else we wouldn't use that term to describe them), and yet that is when the ecosystem is doing the most carbon storing. Based on the numbers given earlier, I would estimate those trees should be cut down no earlier than 150 years after planting, maybe closer to 200. I don't have enough data to calculate the actual optimal age, but I don't expect to be too far off.

      I more-or-less agree with you in principal, but there must be better ways to store carbon than growing trees and throwing them in the ocean (where they'll still rot and release carbon unless we do something to seal them up). If tree stands did most of their carbon storing in the first 20-50 years of their life, then it would be a much better idea. But the reality is that it takes a long time (50-100 years, according to one of the linked papers) just to break even from planting new trees, much less to have a significant net carbon store. Maybe there are better trees for doing this, but I still bet we can come up with something (in terms of carbon capture technology) that would be better than those trees.

  2. New Technology! by Mr.+Flibble · · Score: 3, Funny

    Meanwhile, in a competing lab, scientists have unearthed a competing technology, known in ancient times. These "plants" are rumored to absorb CO2, and unbelivably, some of them, it is rumored, are edible.

    --
    Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
  3. How much coal to power this? by SEWilco · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article does not mention how much carbon needs to be burned to power the device.

    1. Re:How much coal to power this? by Fordiman · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nor does it mention anything about how it works.

      Blueprints or it's bullshit!

      --
      110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
    2. Re:How much coal to power this? by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ohhh... I know, a whole new idea. Make it solar powered!

      Dibs on the patent! Nobody's ever invented anything that uses solar power to split CO2!

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re:How much coal to power this? by mrogers · · Score: 3, Informative
      Here's an academic paper by the designers of the system described in the article. Unfortunately the paper's only available to journal subscribers, but someone seems to have published it on Freenet, or you can find a preprint version here. From the paper:

      The minimum energy required to capture CO2 from the air at a partial pressure of 4×10^-4 atm and deliver it at one atmosphere is therefore about 20 kJ/mol or 1.6 GJ/tC (gigajoules per ton carbon). If we add the energy required for compressing the CO2 to the 100 atm pressure required for geological storage (assuming a 50% efficiency for converting primary energy to compressor work) the overall energy requirement for air capture with geologic sequestration is about 4 GJ/tC.

      The 4 GJ/tC minimum may be compared to the carbon-specific energy content of fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas have about 40, 50, and 70 GJ/tC respectively. Thus if the energy for air capture is provided by fossil fuels then the amount of carbon captured from the air can in principle be much larger than the carbon content of the fuel used to capture it. The fuel carbon can, of course, be captured as part of the process rather than being emitted to the air.

    4. Re:How much coal to power this? by Fordiman · · Score: 2, Informative

      The problem is that the reaction is endothermic by nature. Even by splitting it apart using solar, you're essentially just making a *really* inefficient battery (as most energy producers that use carbon compounds as fuel run at about 25-50% efficiency though, there are those with better returns. Still the best I've seen is DMFCs, which get about 80% efficiency).

      The problem with converting CO2 into Oxygen on an industrial scale has always been one of energy. You need to dump in a LOT, whether by photosynthesis in plants or through electrolysis. Since it's endothermic, catalysts won't help; all a catalyst does is reduce the starting energy for an exothermic reaction, which is great for a fuel cell, because it allows you to control the rate of reaction so that you don't need to actually combust fuel to get it to react, as in an ICE.

      The best bet for carbon sequestration, in my mind, is using something like a large scale scuba scrubber to sequester CO2 from the air, and feed it into greenhouses and tree farms; the plants like it a LOT, and it essentally traps CO2 by bonding it to the plant's materials.

      And, of course, to stop dumping it into the atmosphere.

      Power plants dump a significantly larger percentage of CO2 into the atmosphere than our cars do, on the whole (though smog is icky, car exhaust constitutes a minority slice of the human CO2 production pie). Of course, you can SEE car exhaust; you can smell it. It's very easy for power comanies to make us feel guilty for a problem that, by and large, they're causing by resisting the shift to cleaner energy production technologies.

      In my opinion, we really need to move our coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear plants to something clean, like liquid thorium flouride reactors (which are also nuclear, but don't produce a significant amount of transuranic compounds - ie: industrially useful products as nonradioactive nucelar waste). Also, I think wind needs to be moved from windmills to helical turbines - they're more efficient and less dangerous than their propeller-based cousins, and you don't need a servo to point them at the wind. Lastly, I think it would probably be wise to cover a few strips (and I mean, like a highway's worth) of desert with solar, once if becomes affordable enough to push such a venture.

      --
      110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
  4. It's a start... by Biff+Stu · · Score: 4, Insightful
    From TFA:

    The air extraction device, in which sorbents capture carbon dioxide molecules from free-flowing air and release those molecules as a pure stream of carbon dioxide for sequestration

    I assume that this is more energy efficient than the usual refrigeration based methods for generating pure CO2. This is a good thing. However, they don't say what they're going to do with the CO2 once they purify it. If you can't answer that question, you haven't solved the sequesteration problem.
    1. Re:It's a start... by interiot · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's a market for 11 billion tons of CO2?? Even if there were a market for that much CO2, the point of carbon capture isn't to use the carbon in a way that will be re-released into the atmosphere, the point is to store it away for as long of a time as possible (millions of years, preferably).

      The very specific problem with burning fossil fuels is that it's liberating carbon dioxide that hasn't been part of the natural carbon cycle for hundreds of millions of years... it hasn't been in the atmosphere or part of plants or anything like that... it's been buried underground. By burning the fossil fuels, humans are introducing that carbon back into the atmosphere at a very rapid rate, and the only way to make sure we don't increase the amount CO2 in the atmosphere is to semi-permanently store as much carbon as we're mining from underground in the form of oil.

    2. Re:It's a start... by tjl2015 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, guess I should have Googled first.

      Google: "synthesizing hydrocarbons from water and carbon dioxide":
      http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox- a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=1QI&q=synt hesizing+hydrocarbons+from+water+and+carbon+dioxid e&btnG=Search

      Apparently they've been working on this technology for awhile. I think they were originally planning on using the exhaust gases from a coal plant or something as a source of raw carbon dioxide. But I don't see why you couldn't use this new technology!
      http://www.inl.gov/videos/sc/syntrolysis.pdf
      http://www.kpk.gov.pl/images/i7pr/bb295736b8d250fc 0ccf0a0742b164c1.pdf
      http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/artic les/olah/index.html

      I think this could work. Imagine a facility centered around a nuclear reactor. It draws water from a lake/river, uses what energy is needed to power an array of these atmospheric C02 extractors, and combines them to produce usable fuel! This could change everything. At our current level of technology, we don't have a problem with clean energy. If we had the will power, we could turn off all the coal plants, build a bunch of reactors, and remove that component of global warming overnight (relatively speaking). However, we would still need a source of portable power. A facility like this would be an "instant oil field." Any nation on Earth can become its own Saudi Arabia.

      I really hope this CO2 extraction technology proves viable, because if it is, we have on our hands nothing less than the solution to the entire global warming problem.

    3. Re:It's a start... by mrogers · · Score: 2, Informative
      There's a market for 11 billion tons of CO2??

      Ironically, one of the biggest markets for CO2 is oil extraction: you pump CO2 into a dying well to force out the last of the oil. (Air is unsafe for obvious reasons.) Afterwards you leave the CO2 underground in the same chambers that previously held the oil, so you get sequestration for free. From the press release: For example, the CO2 originating from all those vehicles in Bangkok can be captured in an oil field in Alberta, Canada, where it could be used on-site for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations or it could be captured in South Africa to feed a growing demand in that country for feed stocks for petrochemical production. If the goal is to sequester a given quantity of CO2 in a specific geological formation, the air capture system could be located at that physical location.

    4. Re:It's a start... by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So, what you're proposing is:

      1) Burn oil like mad.

      2) Using nuclear energy, extract the resulting CO2 from the atmosphere.

      3) Using more nuclear energy, synthesize oil out of it.

      3) Burn that oil like mad.

      The problem is, steps 2 and 3 are incredibly inefficient, which means we'd probably be using five times more nuclear energy than if we simply powered all our activities with nuclear power in the first place.

      Without knowing precisely how much energy it takes to sequester a given amount of CO2 in this fashion, you can't really run the numbers. But it's safe to say that, if you hooked a square mile grid of these extractors up to a coal-fired plant, you'd be raising atmospheric CO2 levels dramatically. Lesson: It's far, far better to not burn the coal in the first place. Derived lesson: If we're going to build new nuclear plants, it's more effective to replace current energy usage, rather than cleaning up after previous energy usage.

      To put it another way: Assume that every joule of energy produced by burning fossil fuels commits us to using ten joules of energy to undo those CO2 emissions in the future. Is there any point at all in running these machines before we've completely eliminated fossil fuels from our energy system? It doesn't seem like it.

      --

      You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

  5. Re:Dry ice by Richard+McBeef · · Score: 2, Informative

    Dry ice is usually made through chemical reactions that produce CO2.

  6. The spice must flow. by Meph_the_Balrog · · Score: 5, Insightful
    FTA:

    Extensive deployment of the GRT air capture system makes it possible to envision an actual reduction of CO2 levels in the atmosphere, perhaps even to pre-industrial levels.

    I find this idea somewhat concerning. All too often the human race is guilty of doing things because they can, before they learn whether or not they should. I'm all for reducing carbon emissions, but in all honesty, what the hell will we break if we start trying to extract too much carbon from the atmosphere.

    Mind you, find a way to quickly and efficiently separate the carbon from the oxygen, install in long range space craft and you suddenly have near limitless air for deep space voyages.
    1. Re:The spice must flow. by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2, Funny

      I find this idea somewhat concerning. All too often the human race is guilty of doing things because they can, before they learn whether or not they should. I'm all for reducing carbon emissions, but in all honesty, what the hell will we break if we start trying to extract too much carbon from the atmosphere.

      I agree! The precautionary principle says that you should change with the natural world unless you know it's safe. Historically, atmospheric CO2 levels have been rising slowly for a hundred years or so. Possibly some of that is caused by humans, but it seems we should stick with the status quo until we have more evidence as to how much, and whether increased CO2 is a good thing, a bad thing or doesn't matter at all.

      It's possible that lowering CO2 suddenly might cause the climate to flip into a new stable state, like a new Ice Age. Since the costs of this would be vast, it's very important not to take any measures which could allow it to happen. If irresponsible Europeans persist in sequestering carbon, the US should increase it's carbon emissions to compensate to ensure that the current trends continue.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  7. Re:Dry ice by evanbd · · Score: 4, Informative

    No it doesn't. Dry ice is made from commercial CO2, which comes from fossil fuels. In fact, the manufacture of dry ice releases additional CO2 beyond just what ends up as dry ice. The reason is that air is only a few hundred ppm CO2, which is not normally economical to capture and do anything with. Industrially it often comes as a byproduct of ammonia production -- natural gas, CH4, is converted into hydrogen and CO2; the hydrogen is used in making ammonia.

    See Carbon Dioxide for details.

  8. Capture, then split into CO and O? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/07041 8091932.htm

    There's some work going on at UC San Diego to use solar power to convert CO2 into CO (carbon monoxide) and O. Apparently, CO is useful in industrial chemical processes like making plastic. There's also some talk of using it as a fuel.

  9. How it Works by mrcaseyj · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article doesn't say how it works. They link to a Discover Magazine article that describes one of their methods.
    http://discovermagazine.com/2005/oct/climate/?sear chterm=heading%20toward%20twice%20the%20CO2

    Liquid sodium hydroxide turns to sodium carbonate as it absorbs CO2. Then you percolate it over solid calcium hydroxide and the calcium captures the carbon. Then you heat the calcium carbonate to 900 deg Celsius to get it to release the CO2.

    They claim to have developed a new sorbent that isn't as nasty as sodium hydroxide, but none of the articles seem to say what it is.

    1. Re:How it Works by mrcaseyj · · Score: 2, Informative

      They say the CO2 can be stored underground till we run out of space after a while. Then they say maybe entire mountain ranges of magnesium silicates can be converted to magnesium carbonates, because over the millenia that's what would happen to them naturally anyway. But Wikipedia says preparing the rock may be expensive. Another suggestion is to put the CO2 in the oceans where at depths below 10,000ft (3000m) the pressure keeps the CO2 liquid, and it's denser than water so it pools on the bottom. The CO2 might also be dissolved in worthless salty underground water deposits. It can be pumped into coal fields that aren't economical where it sticks to the coal and displaces methane which can then be used. It can be pumped into oil and gas fields. It can be dissolved in the ocean at shallower depths like 1000m or so, but it would make the water acidic and some would eventually re-enter the atmosphere. Of course Wikipedia has more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_st orage

  10. Don't store it! by glasspanic · · Score: 2, Funny

    They should so like, seperate the carbon and oxygen, turn the carbon into diamonds, and then sell the oxygen at an oxygen bar. They they would make like, infinity million dollars!

  11. Can some provide a useful link? by msevior · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As others have pointed out, this article is almost entirely useless.

    Can someone provide a link to something that answers the obvious questions:

    1. How does it work?

    2. How much energy does it take to extract it's 10 tonnes of CO2 per year?

    3. How does this compare with refrigeration or plants as a means to reduce CO2 concentration?

    4. What is it's likely cost?

    1. Re:Can some provide a useful link? by bakuun · · Score: 3, Informative

      3. How does this compare with refrigeration or plants as a means to reduce CO2 concentration?

      Plants die eventually. And when they do, they release the carbon dioxide again - that is why plants and bio-fuel are said to be carbon-neutral

      Being able to extract carbon dioxide from the air and store it - for instance, in crevices deep in the ground (just like the oil we are so merrily pumping up!), will actually reduce the levels, though.

      However, it would be more efficient and more interesting to apply this technique to power plants. Coal is really cheap, everybody knows that (besides which, there are huge amounts of coal lying around). What if we could actually use this coal in power plants without the environmental cost that carbon dioxide introduces? Simply imagine one of these carbon-dioxide sequestering gadgets at the top of the chimney of the power plant, and you have that. (Well, there would of course not be a need for any chimney. But you get my point, I think.)

      That is the future. (or will hopefully be, anyway - the IPCC recommendations for how to survive global warming relies heavily on carbon sequestering later on.)

      (Granted, as people have pointed out, this requires that you solve ways of doing this storage - for instance underground - securely. Having the gas leak back out again wouldn't be such a big hit once you have some thousands of these facilities.)

  12. What about the oxygen? by ars · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Something very important that this project and other ideas to sequester CO2 have forgotten: what about the Oxygen?

    If you start sequestering CO2 on a massive scale, it could work to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere - but at the same time you will permanently remove Oxygen from the atmosphere as well!

    Now sure, at 21% there is plenty, but if removing CO2 is the plan, and it's a long term plan, slowly but surely there will be less and less oxygen in the air.

    --
    -Ariel
    1. Re:What about the oxygen? by physicsnick · · Score: 3, Informative

      Your post doesn't make any sense. If we start stripping CO2 out of the atmosphere, it will not (immediately) affect the amount of oxygen. They are two entirely different molecules which interact differently with matter, and in this context the fact that CO2 actually contains oxygen nuclei is irrelevant.

      In any case, the atmosphere is 20.946% oxygen and 0.038% carbon dioxide (by volume). Even if we strip all the carbon out, the overall amount of oxygen nuclei in the atmosphere will remain essentially unchanged.

      Obviously removing ALL of the CO2 would be an insanely bad idea; not because we'd be removing oxygen from the atmosphere, but because all the plants would die.

    2. Re:What about the oxygen? by w3woody · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you start sequestering CO2 on a massive scale, it could work to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere - but at the same time you will permanently remove Oxygen from the atmosphere as well!

      CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere is measured in parts per million, while O2 levels are measured in percentage points. The amount of oxygen that may get trapped by such a scheme is minute relative to the total amount of oxygen in the atmosphere.
    3. Re:What about the oxygen? by Ihlosi · · Score: 2, Insightful
      We are changing the atmosphere by adding roughly one part in 10,000 of a relatively inert gas that serves as a vital feed stock to all plant life on the planet.



      We are changing the atmosphere by raising the concentration of the second most important greenhouse gas by 30%. That's what you were trying to say, right ?

  13. Mod GP up by physicsnick · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, but the paper companies only plant single species fast growing trees. Exactly, and that's what goes into paper. We're not cutting down the rain forests. Something like 80% of the pulp that goes into paper comes from tree farms. By recycling paper, you're ensuring that less trees get planted. If you want more trees, waste more paper.

    It's not hard to understand. Say five of us are living in a closed environment (i.e. earth). All five of us want to eat potatoes. Okay, so we'll plant a five foot wide garden. What if ten of us want potatoes? We'll planet a ten foot wide garden. What if ten of us want to eat twice as many potatoes? We'll plant a twenty foot wide garden.

    Now say five of us want to use paper. We'll plant five trees. What if ten of us want paper? We'll plant ten trees. What if we want twice as much paper, even if we're just throwing half away? We'll plant twenty trees. What if we recycle half that paper? Oh, now we don't need twenty trees anymore; we'll only plant ten.

    I'm not saying recycling is bad, but the allegation that we're chopping down the rain forests is just plain wrong; it's sensationalism. We've been planting tree farms for over fifty years, and that's what we use today to make paper. That's why the amount of trees in North America has been steadily growing over the past hundred years. There are more trees today than there has ever been, and the simple reason is because we use a lot of paper.
    1. Re:Mod GP up by bigmammoth · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We're not cutting down the rain forests.
      right we are burning them, for bigMacs ...

      (and the process of modernization and industrialization of previously subsistence populations into a global economic framework. Basically a lot of people became really poor and desperate to make money once neo-liberal policies forced the integration of local economies into the global market. Survival instincts quickly take over and once the race to the bottom takes full swing. Who can make deals with corrupt officials the fastest and stake a claim to land & burn the most rain frost possible, grow your net worth, integrate indigenous populations into a profitable business. Have them work for you instead of for themselves in a system outside of global capitalism.

      Ofcourse even the boss won't make shit compared to the corporate execs, pushing the deals, pushing the neo-liberal reforms, and "new" economic models of production... but that is the beauty of capitalism makes selling out/buying in much more attractive than the actual participation.

      For the majority at the bottom, raising beef simply becomes much more particle when local means of substance are debased via privatization of previously subsistence resources such as land, watter and the flooding of the local food markets with foreign subsidized imports eliminating diversity in local economies and pushing people into the global market where burning Rainforst is simply the best they can offer.

      And what to do... We live in a culture where the aesthetics of consumption is hole-heartily disconnected from the means of production. Consuming the bigMac brand and animal caucus is completely disconnected from torching the Rainfroest and watching the last family of a particular species of some fury creature in a failed attempt to escape a fiery inferno.

      But I imagine most people understand from since childhood when they first see a picture of earth from outer space at night and bother to ask what are all those lights doing in the Rainforest Mommy? That's the rain forest burning for progress, economic growth and global market integration honey, now finish your bigMac or you won't get a frosty (or whatever the fuck they call their ice cream now) :P

  14. Re:Dude, it's a CROP, ffs by xarak · · Score: 2, Insightful


    Good points well made.

    Two issues issue you are missing however:

      - recycling reduces VOLUMES of trash. Glass is not a raw material problem, but a landfill one.
      - burning paper in incinerators (Europe style) effectively releases into the atmosphere all the CO2 that the trees absorbed.

    --
    Atheism is a non-prophet organisation
  15. No, not so much by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wood pulp is mostly soft wood, with spruce, pine and fir being real popular. Hardwood is sometimes used, but much more rarely and then generally birch. In the US at least a large amount of it is grown just for that purpose. There is neither the need nor reason to use old growth. Young, small, even diseased and dying trees do just fine. Thus it is fairly economical to farm them.

    Old, large trees of the hardwood variety are much more valuable for construction and thus you see them used there. No point in using an expensive tree for paper when a cheap one does quite well.

    That's not to say there's no reason to recycle, but please let's not spread BS about paper production. It is not people sneaking in to the rain forest and cutting down huge, thousand year old trees. It's tree farms in the US growing some scraggly pine and pulping that.

    1. Re:No, not so much by TapeCutter · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "but please let's not spread BS about paper production"

      If you look at my post I was not attacking US forestry, as I said most wealthy countries look after whatever they have left. But lets not kid ourselves that the bulk of the worlds woodchips come from from wealthy countries. High quality hardwood chips from the places I mentioned are extremely cheap when compared to what the original resource is really worth.

      "It is not people sneaking in to the rain forest and cutting down huge, thousand year old trees"

      Not sure about 1kyrs but the mill I worked at (early 80's) used 350yro mountain ash (Australian version is a huge tree) for house frames and bridge timber, the substantial amount of waste was chipped, the "hearts" are full of red dirt and are burned. The area is now a national park but the practice continues in other areas. Even in the eighties that was small scale and highly regulated compared to the modern day practices in the other places I mentioned, look it up - these people aren't "sneaking" they are large companies with the type of political clout the *IAA has wet dreams over.

      And if bulldozing eveything in sight is not bad enough, take a look at the Shell's practices in Nigeria or Texaco in Ecuador, or any of the countless number of times that western society has shat on it's neighbours veggie garden.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  16. And for one very simple reason by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative

    Cost. Pure and simple there is no reason to cut down trees in another country and ship them back here to make paper. Paper is made form pulp, you literally grind up a tree. Thus really any tree will do. Softwood is fine, young trees are fine, even dying trees work fine. Thus is is by far the most economical to just grow them.

    If you are going to go to the trouble of shipping rain forest wood over you are going to use it to build something. A tree fetches far more as some nice mahogany tables than it would ground up and made in to newsprint.

    For whatever else you might think about companies, they don't waste things just for the fun of it. It all comes down to economics. No company in their right mind is going to waste money on importing expensive wood when cheap wood will do. Especially when rainforests are a touchy topic and doing so brings bad PR.

    I really think people who wish to push environmental action would do much better if they got their facts straight and stopped trying to make everything out to be a crisis.

    1. Re:And for one very simple reason by Pharmboy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think you hit the nail on the head: Those of us that are for CONSERVATION are put off by Environmentalists. The "all or nothing" approach of the Crisis Crowd leads to a lack of cooperation. I can't stand most Environmentalists, even though I agree with about half of what they are asking for.

      Some of us think that pollution should be reduced because it sucks to breath pollution. If it helps a spotted owl, then thats good, too. Water should be clean because I drink it. Hunting should be allowed but regulated because it helps manage populations. We believe minimum gas mileage standards for cars is at least as important for national security as it is for the environment. Some people like myself actually believe that "Global Warming" is likely overstated, but if you phase in carbon reduction gradually and provide some tax incentives, you can actually IMPROVE the economy and make our own immediate environment nicer. Oh yea, and the whole lower CO2 thing as a bonus.

      Of course, everyone has different opinions. It doesn't matter. If people would bother finding common ground on environmental issues instead of pointing fingers, I might enjoy some better fishing, and you might enjoy whatever is important to you. Then again, for some people on the fringes, it isn't about getting the net result, it is about CONTROL over others.

      --
      Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
  17. HEMP by essence · · Score: 3, Interesting

    All this recycling and tree replanting should be avoided in the first place. We should be planting hemp everywhere. It has many more benefits than growing pine, for instance. Less to no chemicals needed. It's a nitrogen fixer (in the soil). Grows quickly. Hemp is the answer. Leave the forests to become old growth again.

    1. Re:HEMP by FredThompson · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You can make paper from hemp. Curiously, people burning hemp paper don't care about the smoke. Go figure.

    2. Re:HEMP by Johnny5000 · · Score: 2, Funny

      All this recycling and tree replanting should be avoided in the first place. We should be planting hemp everywhere.

      Sure, hemp may be a great plant to fulfill many of our needs.

      However, your plan fails to think of the children, and thus will be doomed to failure.
      Why, hemp is sort of like mari-juana. You might as well inject heroin directly into fetuses.

      --
      The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
  18. so is this a new kind of by jonathan3003 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    vaporware?

  19. Interesting coincidence by XNormal · · Score: 4, Informative

    The MIT Technology Review has just posted an article titled The Case for Burying Charcoal. It showed up on my RSS reader shortly after I posted my comment.

    --
    Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
  20. Feasibility? by Langos · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Another exciting benefit of the GRT device is that it faces down this challenge by capturing the emissions from existing power plants without imposing retrofit costs." It is certainly true that it opens a possibility for the Energy companys to keep spewing out CO2 and take little or no responsibility for their operations. Who is going to pay for these CO2-extraction units? Swedish company Vattenfall (Watter fall) made a profit of 150 000 000 000 SEK last year (divide by 9 to get the numer in euros) and invested less then 0.4% of the profit in R&D into renewable energy and CO2 emission control technologies. So who would be paying for these installations? I think it's pretty clear who I think should pay for it...

  21. Re:By capturing CO2 you capture C and O2 by yoprst · · Score: 2, Funny

    The best way to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere still is and always will be to not emit it in the first place
    Stop breathing now.

  22. Why? by BlueParrot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So just why would you recover CO2 from the air when it would be much easier to do so before it leaves the chimney? Until every single fossil fuel plant uses CCS, this is a waste of time, and if every fossil fuel plant used CCS we wouldn't really have much of a problem anyway. The easiest way to recover CO2 is to not emit it in the first place.

  23. making gasoline from CO2 by brunascle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    and once you capture the CO2, you can use it to make gasoline.

    ;-)

  24. Re:This is a money making scam! by had3z · · Score: 2, Funny

    You should apply for a middle management job in IT. you are highly qualified for it :)

    1. Extract Carbon from the Air.
    2. Sell extracted carbon as combustible fuel
    3. Profit
    4. Return to Step 1

    there, fixed it for you

    --
    funny pics
  25. Re:Rainforest != paper farm by Ihlosi · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I'd like to see something to backup those assertions.

    You need to re-read the parent first. He's talking about rainforests. How much rainforest does the US have ?

  26. Some grasses sequester AND give fuel by mdsolar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This article points out that carbon can be sequestered in soil with the right mix of plants. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/314 /5805/1598. Those plants can at the same time be used to make fuel.
    --
    Get off carbon: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

  27. wake me later by Rixel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Bah! Call me when they have bottled Lightning.
    (and John McCain as well)

    --
    Never play chicken with a passive aggressive.
  28. Uh, somewhat no, somewhat yes. by WindBourne · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Think about your logic. If it was true that they were planting trees, then we would have LOTS more, not less. The reality is that the lumber companies who take from federal/state lands do NOT replant. Their argument is that other trees will do the seeding. OTH, when they take from private lands esp their own, then they are forced by contracts to re-seed. More expensive, but better results. Here in American, we WERE moving to trees being taken for private lands, but W. re-opened the forests and now allow them to take a great deal more (including LOTS of clear cutting). EU currently does that (they developed their woods long ago). But a number of nations still have loads of national forests so they allow the timber industries to nicely cut through them. A good example is Canada and Russia.

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    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  29. Re:More nonsense from scientists. by Goaway · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In short, you have absolutely nothing to say, but you are very certain that you are smarter than everyone else?

  30. Commercially viable? by mdsolar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is important to remember that this is an added cost to the price of fuel. The cost, maybe $0.30/gal is not so large that it looks like a killer, but you can't make money from this without making this connection. To go beyond just compensating for emissions and beginning to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations requires further cash input. So, perhaps you require each pound of coal used to pay for 8 pounds of CO2 sequestered and that raises electric rates by 4 cents per kWh. Pretty soon you put coal generation out of business since renewables will fill in.

    I think that what we should call this is potentially commercially feasable and reserve viability for things that increase economic activity.
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    Solar power for what you pay for coal power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

  31. Egellhard and Ford by adsl · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Some 10 years ago wasn't Engellhard (now a part of BASF) producing a compound which was painted onto Ford radiators. The idea was it would take CO2 out of the atmosphere?

  32. Oops! (was: Uh...) by mysticgoat · · Score: 2, Informative

    The scrubber volume of a mature 10 acre stand of douglas fir is around 600 acre-feet (not 60). The freshly replanted plot would have scrubber volume of no more than 0.8% of this; its effective scrubbing volume would be less than 0.1% of the mature stand that it replaced.

    Apologies about the original figures. They were calculated using pre-coffee wetware, which has a local reputation for being notoriously unreliable.

  33. Re:Dry ice by Technician · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Dry Ice is a by-product of the air products industry. Air is cooled to condense it. Valuable gasses are fractionaly distilled out such as Oxygen, Argon, etc. CO2 is mostly a byproduct of the process. It is one of the reasons it is relatively cheap in bulk compaired to the other gasses. The bulk of air is Nitrogen. It is cheap enough to be used as a refrigerant in addition to being used for it's chemical properties.

    Argon is a valuable inert gass used in welding and manufacturing. Oxygen is valuable in medical, manufacturing and welding. By comparison CO2 and Nitrogen are surplus gasses left over from the manufacturing process. CO2 and water must be removed ahead of time so the solids do not plug the plumbing. (Helium comes from natural gas. It's too rare in the atmosphere to distill commercialy. It is present in natural gas as a by-product of radioactive decay.)

    http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Oxygen.html

    "Most commercial oxygen is produced using a variation of the cryogenic distillation process originally developed in 1895. This process produces oxygen that is 99+% pure. More recently, the more energy-efficient vacuum swing adsorption process has been used for a limited number of applications that do not require oxygen with more than 90-93% purity."

    "Because this process utilizes an extremely cold cryogenic section to separate the air, all impurities that might solidify--such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, and certain heavy hydrocarbons--must first be removed to prevent them from freezing and plugging the cryogenic piping."

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    The truth shall set you free!
  34. Confusion by Ihlosi · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Beside, I can't get an accurate 3 day forecast, now I am supposed to rely on a 50 year one? Get the week right first, then I will listen to your models.



    You're confusing weather forecasts with climate prediction. They're two very different things.