Slashdot Mirror
Global Warming Stopped By Adding Lime To Sea
Antiglobalism writes "Scientists say they have found a workable way of reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere by adding lime to seawater. And they think it has the potential to dramatically reverse CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere, reports Cath O'Driscoll in SCI's Chemistry & Industry magazine published today."
Here in Bloomington, Indiana, we have a huge number of limestone blocks that were left over from building larger blocks.
You'd think it'd be obvious, but at slashdot, you actually do need to point that out to people.
The process of making lime generates CO2, but adding the lime to seawater absorbs almost twice as much CO2. The overall process is therefore 'carbon negative'.
RTFA. FTW. My acronyms are more powerful than your anonymity.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
RTFA. The article claims this process sequesters twice as much CO2 as is released during the production of lime.
It addresses this.
And then all these fish die because of too much acid in the water! Epic Fale.
Uh, not really - Calcium Oxide reduces the acidity of water: Calcium Oxide
Too much acid? Try it shifting it the opposite way (to the alkaline side). It may still be Epic Fail, but in the other direction.
Wouldn't lime lower the acidity of the seawater?
I know that I personally use it to reduce stomach acid, to reduce the acidity of the soil in my back yard so I can grow vegetables under a pine tree...
This is why we RTFA:
There are potentially huge environmental benefits from addressing climate change and adding calcium hydroxide to seawater will also mitigate the effects of ocean acidification, so it should have a positive impact on the marine environment.
Lime is an alkalide.
Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_oxide
Also here: http://www.cquestrate.com/
And this appears to work. I'm sure some not-rtfa'ing people above me will have got in with a quick "making lime generates carbon dioxide hur hur" but the process already takes this into account. By increasing the pH of the seawater, they claim that it will absorb two moles of CO2 for every mole released in the manufacture of lime. I'm not an environmental chemist so I can't comment on the adsorption gradient of seawater, but if they think it'll work then it'll work.
Carbon dioxide dissolves in water:
CO2 + H2O H(+) + HCO3(-)
As does Calcium Oxide (lime)
CaO + H2O Ca(2+) + 2 * OH(-)
Hydroxide and protons naturally combine to form water - it's another equilibrium but the constant is something like 10**-7 (that 7 is the pH of water)
H(+) + OH(-) H2O
i.e. at pH 7, there will be ten million times as much water as either of the other two.
I'd imagine that various equilibrium constants shift around to prove that there's a net increase in the absorption of carbon dioxide from air. It's pretty elementary science - so elementary, I've forgotten how to do it. by simply ascribing a token amount of competence to the scientific background of the people in TFA, it can be shown that they probably know what the hell they're talking about.
Also, there's no doomsday scenario where a drop of lime juice makes the ocean boil pure CO2 and kill us all. As far as I can see.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
Are you thinking of lye?
The researchers are, surprise surprise, well aware of that, and in TFA they point out that it removes twice as much CO2 as it creates.
Slashdot poster arrogance and failure to RTFA is not on the rise - it's always been this high.
I think you might be thinking of Lye.
Lime is a base. Epic fail at chemistry!
Just a regular fail at spelling.
I think you're thinking of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lye
A solution to nasty-tasting seawater! Lemonade oceans FTW!
Except...it's lime.
Lime (or calcium carbonate, CaCO3) is a base, which is the opposite of an acid.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
> I'll leave out the fact that temperatures globally have been flat for several years now
Wise move, since it's an incorrect statement.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
[TMB]
Well, coral (and shellfish) can sequester carbon, but this only works as long as the water is sufficiently non-acidic. The problem is that as atmospheric CO2 is absorbed into the oceans, some of it becomes carbonic acid -- and the acidification of the water means that corals, and shellfish shells, dissolve.
One nice effect of adding lime is that it lowers the acidity of the water, thereby allowing coral and shellfish to continue sequestering carbon.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
That first equation has a reversible arrow (< - >) in it after H_2O; slashdot thought "-" was an html tag... :-/
maybe that's because in the article they were talking about how they were trying to figure out how to make it practical (and thus cutting down on what you were talking about)
Lye is Sodium Hydroxide. Lime is Calcium Hydroxide.
It will still burn you since it's caustic, but it's very mild compared to Lye. Lime is used in cement and concrete mixes, lye is used in drain and oven cleaners.
Both, however, would be totally harmless in the dilution quantities discussed in the article.
=Smidge=
Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) is chalk, not lime.
"Lime" is calcium oxide, CaO. "Slaked lime" is calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH)2
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
You missed the most obvious one: kudzu, that vine that covers the entire South and chokes out all native vegetation in the same of stopping erosion. On the plus side, it does make for some good jelly...
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
If you'd have RTFA, you'd see they're proposing doing this in places where they've raftloads of SOLAR energy in a situation that's impractical to utilize it for our needs right now- that, amazingly, have raftloads of limestone to convert to Quicklime.
They're not proposing doing it akin to the Lime industry...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Ask anyone with a marine aquarium and they'll likely be able to tell you this exact same thing. We've been doing this for year to maintain alkalinity, calcium levels, and pH in our aquariums. I'm amazed it took these "brilliant scientists" this long to figure out this chemical reaction... And I happen to agree with above posts when I say... What good can come of messing with the environment? This can't be good. Oh, and if anyone thinks this lime tastes good with tequila, I dare them to try it. Please post video for us! I'm sure it'd be a great start to the week. (For us, anyway...)
Bite my shiny metal ass!
You actually need both things... Because all of it has an impact.
That bicycle? It produced as much or more pollution as the car burning the gasoline to produce it unless you're making it entirely out of wood. The same goes for most of the other ones you brought up.
By themselves, they don't accomplish much of anything- and actually in some cases are worse than the "fixes" we've done in the past (Something else you mentioned...).
You've got to take in an even bigger picture than you're doing- otherwise you're no better than the people you're tarring with that brush of yours.
Uhm no?
Making a bike produces a negligible amount of CO2 compared to driving a car, your statement is downright false.
Despite the political rhetoric we have no proof as to how much human activity is contributing to any warming trends, and even less of an idea on the possible side effects of any direct intervention. Other scientists have actually proposed putting more particulate pollution into the air to create a mild 'nuclear winter' style cooling in order to offset any rising temperatures.
I'll leave out the fact that temperatures globally have been flat for several years now, but I will point out in closing that hair brained schemes such as this one remind me of a five year old child trying to rebuild a Formula 1 engine with a pair of chopsticks. We are so very ignorant of how and why we have or can effect the climate. The sheer hubris of some people today who assume we have such great control over climate just amazes, and scares, me.
I agree that the climate is extremely complex, and that while we cannot understand all of the factors involved, we can draw some simple conclusions about some of the effects we are having on the environment.
You probably already know that humans produce a lot of carbon dioxide. We breathe it out, we burn things, and our agricultural and industrial processes create even more.
You probably also know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and that greenhouse gasses increase warming due to sunlight.
You may or may not know that the ppm of carbon dioxide has been increasing over the years.
I propose that you cannot prove that we aren't increasing the temperature of the planet
TFA says they did think of this years ago but the problem was back then they wanted to do it on a truly global scale and, with the exception of a few places, getting the lime out of limestone and to the ocean generally puts more CO2 into the atmosphere than the lime would help the ocean take back out of the atmosphere.
IOW, "net negative". Somebody seems to have had the genius thought that just because it can't be done everywhere and act as a "silver bullet" for global warming doesn't mean it isn't worth getting what help it can provide by doing it in those places where it doesn't produce more CO2 than it scrubs.
If only CO2 actually was the cause for global warming! Every ice core sample taken shows that CO2's only relation to warming is that as sea water gets warmer, it releases more CO2 into the atmosphere. CO2 rises lag behind temp rises by decades/centuries in all samples taken.
I'm kind of surprised you know enough to know that it sounds like him but haven't heard it. It's from his CD, Mitch All Together, on the track titled, oddly enough, Saved By The Buoyancy Of Citrus.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
You mean... calcium carbonate and hydrogen? A common compound in rocks and sea shells and a light gas that combines with oxygen to form pure water? No, it's not harmful.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
I was thinking of agricultural lime:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbonate
"Calcium carbonate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula CaCO3. It is a common substance found as rock in all parts of the world, and is the main component of shells of marine organisms, snails, and eggshells. Calcium carbonate is the active ingredient in **agricultural lime**, and is usually the principal cause of hard water."
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
A budding GW denier eh? Well don't give up! Learn more and get right back to us with your next poorly-researched knee-jerk conclusion!
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It's a way of hardening the water, which in turn increases its ability to absorb CO2 without increasing the acidity of the water. The basic chemistry is used by aquarium hobbyists to keep their acidity stable.
Many fish keepers go to great lengths to keep their water in a tight range to mimic their fish's natural environment as close as possible, but empirical evidence suggests that fish can tolerate a wide range of hardness and acidity provided that changes are made slowly. Additionally, it should increase the growth rate of coral.
However, many types of fish may only breed within a given hardness range, so this may end up being a big problem.
Not a typewriter
Not that I'm claiming Car and Driver has a "stance" on global warming they heavily prefer, but that statement is simply untrue. Volcano CO2 output is dwarfed by human CO2 output.
Not sure exactly what will happen, but it will probably involve the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Sadly, a joke is all that this story is. It's nonsense, as anyone with sophomore chemistry and the ability to google up the quantities of CO2 we're talking about could tell you.
True enough (and no, I'm not the AC/GP), but on a macro scale...
* how much CO2 will get released by transporting the stuff from mine, to mfr. plant, to ocean drop-off points? Simply dumping it at the beach from the end of a really long conveyor belt won't do much good, and would actually do more harm (by turning that locality into a giant caustic soup).
* how much CO2-sequestering plant life has to be cleared away to get at the sheer amount of raw materials needed (e.g. strip-mining)?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Quick Lime = Calcium Oxide
Andy
good job quoting the doctored numbers... I love you envirobunnies.
someone outside nasa proved that that graph is invalid because of a computer error, after the error is taken out, the large spike at the end nearly completely disappears.
I don't have a link, but I know I read about it, and NASA was revising those numbers
Actually, he's the one with the facts on his side. Do some research and then get back to us with your next batch of predictable talking points....
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
It isn't GW denying, it's that CO2 probably accounts for less than 25% of the greenhouse effect. If we're looking to manage the greenhouse effect ("manage" because if we overdo it we get a global cooling problem) then it's no good just looking at CO2. The fact that the effects of greenhouse gasses are often quoted in CO2 equivalent tends to mislead people into thinking that CO2 is the only gas that matters.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
sounds more like a reference to Idiocracy
Oddly enough this has been done in the Reef hobby world for decades. You add what is called "Kalkwasser" which is nothing more then a solution of water and lime. Course I would think to have similar effect on the ocean you are going to need to add MASSIVE amounts.
That bicycle? It produced as much or more pollution as the car burning the gasoline to produce it unless you're making it entirely out of wood. The same goes for most of the other ones you brought up.
Wrong for all the wrong reasons. A (smallish) car has about 1000 kg of metal in it. A (big) bike has about 15 kg. The amount of energy/pollution that goes into making it is, by definition, a tiny fraction of that vs. a car.
You've got to take in an even bigger picture than you're doing- otherwise you're no better than the people you're tarring with that brush of yours.
As do you - you can't go comparing the energy required to build a bike to the energy spent powering some craptastic car or SUV some arbitrary distance. You have to compare like to like, in this case, the energy required to build a bike vs. a car or SUV, and the energy required to propel a bike vs. a car or SUV.
This can be measured in watts, and is fairly straight forward. I can assure you it takes much more energy to hurtle 1400 kg of glass, steel, and plastic down the road at 100 kmph than it does to propel 100 kg of bike and rider at 20 kmph.
If you want to see the "car" of the future, watch this:
Electric velomobile
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I think you're missing something... namely, that sequestered carbon is soluble in acidic water. Sure, the coral can try to sequester it, but as soon as it is exposed to the water, it dissolves. There's no getting around the basic chemistry of this problem.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Huh?
I hate to parse, but I don't recognize any of those statements as having come from environmentalists.
Let's keep around the old trees and kill the young ones.
This overstatement is soooo very hyperbolic, it'd be amusing if it wasn't so pathetic. Old growth forests just don't exist anymore in the US, at least not to any appreciable degree. We've already cut down all the old trees. As a rule, environmentalists are against clearcuts and for sustainable forestry (more expensive to log, but keeps trees of various ages in a given acreage, offers a diverse understory, allows for some logs to lie where they fall and includes fire as part of the natural cycle). That said, it's recognized even by the environmentalist groups that Boise Cascade and other wood & pulp products producers either own or lease their lands outright and can ultimately tree-farm and clearcut to the extent they desire.
You can't clear out any of the underbrush, and we have to stop wild fires right away! (See California)
Wow. What a broad brush you've got there. Brush clearing has always been okay, even on public lands. Some states contract out for it, and others use -=gasp=- FIRE to clear it out. It's taken as a given that any property owner needs to clear brush from their houses. Did it every occur to you that natural wet-dry cycles can leave a lot of dry scrub when drought eventually sets in? In CO, we've got millions and millions of dead trees from pine bark beetle. Do you think those dead trees are all going to sit there? Hell no, the state's already permitting for logging most of it out, on millions of acres, as they should.
You can't have nuclear power plants, the waste contaminates the environment. (Breeder reactors anyone?)
I'm pretty sure that one of the founders of the Sierra club has come to endorse nuclear energy. Regardless, the main environmetalist objection to nuclear energy hasn't been in waste disposal anyway (almost all nuclear waste from power plants is held on-site) -- it's been with the way uranium is mined and what the tailings and ore processing leachfields do to rivers & the water table. Think this is whining? It's not. My state (Colorado) already has a superfund site to show for it... Uravan. Breeder reactor development got squashed 25 years ago, and it's only now being talked about again. Maybe the discussion is ready to re-open. I dunno.
Yep, it's those annoying enviro-hippies. They only exist to make things difficult. They just don't have any other reason for what they do other than being annoying. Oooooh, and they're sooooo annoying. Sooooo annoying that the entire US government has been able to ignore them for eight years. Ooooooh, they're soooooo powerful. Soooo scary! Like martians! Like clowns! BooogaBoogaBooogaBoogaBoooga!
Scared yet? Didn't think so. If you look closely at the issues you'll see that there's a balance to be struck between competing goals. The best outcomes are the ones that nobody's entirely satisfied with, but let things go forward. We can't achieve those outcomes if folks sit back, re-enforce their stereotypes, point fingers and blame blame blame, as you do.
Jeezus, what bunch of hand-wringing whiny pussies conservatives have become.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
CO2 does act as a "greenhouse" gas. However there are some small caveats to the whole "greenhouse" gas concept. CO2 only reflects certain frequencies of light. Therefore there becomes a saturation point at which adding more CO2 to the atmosphere reflects no additional light and causes no additional "greenhouse" effects. CO2 also shares it's light bandwidth with water vapor, causing those bandwidths of light to be completely reflected at even lower densities of atmospheric CO2. There is NO infinite feedback loop. If there was the earth NEVER would have become habitable becuase during the time of the dinosaurs atmospheric CO2 levels were many times what they are now, and yet global temperatures were similar to what they are now. Can you please explain to me how that is the case? During the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods CO2 levels were between 1000 and 2500ppm. Currently the levels are in the 300s. All of the oil, coal, and natural gas we are currently burning used to exist as atmospheric CO2 before it was sequestered by plant and animal life. So please explain how, with levels of CO2 that were 3-8 times as high as they are now the planet wasn't boiling hot.
Callendar proposed the effect of increased carbon dioxide levels causing global warming in the 1930s. Keeling started monitoring carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in the 1950s. If some "environmentalists" were predicting an ice age in the 1970s, it sounds like they were quite ignorant of the scientific research.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Here's the link for you.
The data that was determined to be faulty & was therefore corrected only concerned the US, which accounts for ~2% of the globe.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
The only change having a detectable influence on analyzed temperature was the 7 August 2007 change to correct a discontinuity in 2000 at many stations in the United States. This flaw affected temperatures in 2000 and later years by ~0.15C averaged over the United States and ~0.003C on global average. Contrary to reports in the media, this minor flaw did not alter the years of record temperature, as shown by comparison here of results with the data flaw ('old analysis') and with the correction ('new analysis').
Denial, juvenile insults & proud willful ignorance do not refute reality.
Why would you need extra-ordinary proof by the scientific method before you believe that the 11th time is different? Would you assume the cause is the same before you examine any evidence? I would want to see evidence one way or the other before I decided whether the 11th time is the same or is different. That's what seems scientific to me -- the hypothesis that the 11th time is the same needs evidence before we would be inclined to believe it.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Don't try to teach someone with no grasp of rudimentary LOGIC, ANY KIND of science... It leads to severe exasperation on your part.
Not all life is cyber. Extra Income
Here's the other problem: human activity involving agricultural runoff and overgrazing is driving desertification. Increased CO2 alone would probably cause a bloom in plant life, but that's not the only factor.
Not a typewriter
fish don't fuck in the water, whales, dolphins, seals and walruses fuck in the water but not fish; in fact you should be glad you don't know what fish really do in the water, it makes fucking look pretty neat and tidey!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Algae doesn't cause death. Dead algae cause death.
Algae being (more or less) plants, absorb CO2 and release O2. As long as they're alive, they'll keep doing this, and the surrounding waters will be oxygen rich, which is great for fish. But when they die, the process reverses, absorbing O2 and releasing CO2. That's very bad for fish. If you sniff the nasty smell of a badly cared for fish tank, what you're smelling is the dead algae, not the live ones. What happens in algae blooms is that the algae numbers spike and then die off all at once.
In the case of these ideas, as long as the algae is being harvested out (perhaps for a biodiesel use), it won't have a chance to do any real damage.
Not a typewriter
Chris,
What you say about ice cores and CO2 levels is accurate but incomplete. THe story isn't so simple. In point of fact, ice cores have shown that the atmospheric CO2 levels have been dropping steadily over time, essentially until the bottom of the last ice age, aboujt 11,000 years ago. Since that time, the CO2 levels have slowly risen until about 1800 AD or so, at which time human CO2 production became a significant additional planetary burden,
Prior to the ice ages, in the carboniferous period, planetary levels of CO2 were as high as 1500 parts per million, five times what they are today. One must consider that all that limestone and fossil fuel in the ground (or what used to be in the ground) came from this atmospheric carbon dioxide, over hundreds of millions of years. The CO2 levels reached a planetary minimum during the last series of ice ages. Whether the cooling was due to low CO2 levels, or the low CO2 levels were due to cooling is unresolved.
What is not arguable is that humans are adding to the atmospheric CO2 levels, and that during this microscopic period of geological time, global warming has become very fast indeed.
What is also not arguable is that prior to the ice ages, the planet was very much warmer than it is now, and very much warmer than ecological models predict for tne forseeable future. We're not treading on new ground here, we're retracing steps that occurred half a million years ago. The world is not coming to an end, at least, not yet.
Having said that, going back to a Permian climate would be exceptionally inconvenient to a few billion humans. At those times, the entire interior of the United states was a warm tropical inland sea. Somehow, I think the future residents of St. Louis might object to that. Siberia could become the rice bowl of civilization. From today's point of view, it would be bad, no doubt.
For better or worse, we (humanity) don't really have the option to go back to a small population of agrarians. I might point out that agriculture itself is very recent, only about 6,000 years old. We don't really get to "go back to nature" -- if you doubt this, take a trip to Cambodia.
The only option we have left is to take over engineeing of our planet. This will include finding ways to stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, but also includes things like building seawalls around New Orleans, and in the quite near future, a lot of other urban places, or relocating the entire place to higher locations. Ocean levels have varied by a thousand meters throughout history, and we aren't (yet) in a position to stop them.
The important thing to remember is that our planet is a "complex system" and that on such systems, one never, ever, gets to adjust just one knob. Everything interacts, and we must proceed cautiously so that our "fixes" don't end up causing more damage than leaving things alone.
There is a lot to be done, and predicting that the sky is falling isn't helpful. Pointing out that when a suburb of Los Angeles floods, it is due to increased oceanic evaporation caused by global warming is a lot more truthful, and in my opinion, more effective, than painting pictures of the end of the world.
-- Norm Reitzel
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
It isn't GW denying, it's that CO2 probably accounts for less than 25% of the greenhouse effect.
Less than 25% over what period of time? What is the incremental effect of ongoing CO2 emissions, vs. other gases? What are the chemical sources for all the gases?
In a short snapshot of time, CO2 does not contribute much to the greenhouse effect. Water vapor and methane produce a greater percentage of warming. HOWEVER, the global balance of water vapor is not significantly changing, and imbalances cycle out of the atmosphere within a week or two (as rain). So while water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, it does not contribute to long-term climate trends very much. Methane lasts a lot longer than water vapor, but still quite a bit less time than CO2. That is because methane is not stable in the atmosphere; it breaks down into water, ozone, and...CO2. CO2 lasts a long time in the atmosphere. It is chemically stable and the carbon cycle moves slowly.
We have a situation where mankind produces a lot of water vapor, methane, and CO2. The water vapor washes out of the atmosphere so quickly that no matter how much extra we produce, the balance is back a week later. Plus the amount we produce is tiny compared to say, ocean evaporation.
Methane and CO2 are produced from living plant matter and from fossil fuels. Plant matter is made of CO2 that used to be in the atmosphere, so every plant we convert to CO2 will eventually be plant again, etc--keeping the system in balance. But methane and CO2 coming from fossil fuels are not part of our ongoing balance. And since CO2 lasts a long time, the aggregate effect of increases over decades will actually be the greatest due to CO2.
A metaphor for this is a comparison of growing your money at 20% compounded for 2 years or 7% compounded for 10 years. Yes the former has a "larger effect," i.e. a bigger instantaneous interest rate. But even though the percentage is smaller, the latter produces the larger final effect. This is a metaphor for why scientists are most concerned about CO2 among the greenhouse gases. Whatever we do now with CO2, we're going to be stuck with the results for a long time.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"Switching from beef to rice or legumes has an even bigger impact."
You are of course aware that rice fields are one of the largest sources of methane-gases in the world?
Thought so.
Your Flamebait Post
My Informative Post
You are wrong, this is July. Brush clearing is not 'always' ok, in fact it's prohibited between March 1st and August 15th (about 6 months out of the year). Here's an example reference from the Brush Management Guide for the city of San Diego in California.