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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."
A solution to nasty-tasting seawater! Lemonade oceans FTW!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"Look at all the limes in this god damn thing! This fuckin' thing is tropical! Look at the limes, how they float. That's good news. Next time I'm on a boat and it capsizes, I will reach for a lime. Like I'll be water-skiing without a life preserver, people will say "What the hell?" and I'll pull out a lime. I'm saved by the buoyancy of citrus."
This couldn't possibly have any additional side-effects, right?
Next they'll want to add tequila and filter the salt to the coasts.
There goes my giant vacuum cleaner idea. But seriously, maybe I'm remembering it wrong but doesn't lime burn people's skin? So wouldn't it kill sea creatures?
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Here in Bloomington, Indiana, we have a huge number of limestone blocks that were left over from building larger blocks.
...thus solving the problem forever. FOREVER!
Adding ten million square kilometers of lime from Australia's outback to sea water...
...yeah, no chance for any unintended consequences here.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
how to prepare 10 billion tons of fried fish
As long as they don't start putting the lime in coconuts and mixing it together, we haven't entirely lost our sanity.
You know...
Based on the success of introducing the cane toad, tamarisk, the bark beetle, the banana slug, the mongoose, or the brown tree snake!
Any time humans screw something up, the best bet is for humans to go double-or-nothing.
Sure beats efficiency, responsible building practices, responsible reproduction rates, or simply riding a bike to work! Surely, changing the pH, salinity, disolved o2, and turbidity of the oceans will have no unwanted effect.
You'd think it'd be obvious, but at slashdot, you actually do need to point that out to people.
I, personally, prefer my lime in the coconut.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
Who knew that Budweiser was on to something by adding Lime to Bud Light?
This next Bud's for you, Earth.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
I've heard Corona very closely mimics the behavior of seawater. I personally pledge to begin extensive testing with these materials.
Scientists add tequila to ocean. Party ensues.
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.
Napalm, eh?. it should fix a couple of things.
On a chemical level, how does this differ from growing coral?
A coral bred / genetically modified to grow in a wider variety of climates could also scrub CO2 from the air. Though the 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong' crowd might be concerned with over scrubbing by the GM coral.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
...There was an old lady who swallowed a cat. ...
Imagine that, she swallowed a cat.
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wriggled and jiggled and wiggled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
But I dunno why she swallowed that fly
Perhaps she'll die...
Help test the
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
It's more sensible and cost effective for mankind to use technology to adapt to climate change rather than to try to change the climate. After all, some climate change isn't caused by man and can't be stopped. Witness the last little ice age, and the last ice age before that that glaciated much of the northern hemisphere.
Eventually some idiotic scheme like dumping X in the oceans is going to cause a truly great disaster. We need to stop screwing around with the Earth. Climate science is still in its infancy.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
Are these scientists' research being funded by Sprite?!
But what happens when one nation decides this is a great idea while another fervently disagrees? Water doesn't obey boundaries.
So you're saying we need to get a zillion of those little lime ph-adjusting blocks people use in their fishtanks?
stuff |
yeah that will have a SLIGHT effect on ocean ecosystems /sarcasm
pH (cough) pH
in related news, looks like those guys who were going to seed dead zones with iron and create algal blooms to suck up co2 gave up the ghost:
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0219-planktos.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
What happens to the sealife when we....
"boosting seawater's ability to absorb CO2 from air and reducing the tendency to release it back again."
Will the ocean flora be able to convert all this extra CO2 back to the O2 that many other ocean species need?
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...
Yeah, they'll die because the water isn't acidic enough.
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.
Do I sense a terrorist threat?
Shadow_139, why are you making terrorist threats towards innocent civilians?
You make lye by electrolyzing seawater. Sure it would release tons of chlorine, but we could always use that. There really isn't much of a use for CO2 except to carbonate beverages and pump into oil wells to try and force more oil out.
I am also a bit confused about the chemistry here:
If they put "lime" in the ocean, and it absorbed co2, it becomes something else, and even if this has a good effect on the ph of the water, the chemical itself could be harmful right?
Is this a substance common in the water already?
I wish this were discovered 20 years from now, after we had switched our processes to something more green. As it is this might just prolong on the bad habits we have now.
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.
Frozen Lime Margaritas ARE the answer to all of life's little problems!
Now, I'm not saying this is a great idea, but I'm getting pretty sick and tired of people bashing scientific findings simply because of who sponsored them. Why is Al Gore's sponsored research any more compelling than Shell's?
Instead of a knee-jerk attack on the messenger, why don't you discuss what's wrong with the research, like every one else ("lime" jokes aside) is doing?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Lime is a base. Epic fail at chemistry!
Just a regular fail at spelling.
Science ignorance on the rise
I love it when people think they know everything and don't even see if these scientists even considered the issue.
So, correction:
Reader ignorance on the rise.
Because it's not as if global warming, ozone layer depletion and such haven't taught us that creating unnatural chemical imbalances in natural systems causes problems or anything is it.
I risk getting modded troll here, but what if we are wrong about the Co2? I know this has been discussed here at slashdot before but I am one of those who subscribe to the cosmic rays/sunspots theory. What might go wrong when we start f*cking around with the environment on a truly global scale?
We are not talking about moving a bunch of carnivores to another land to deal with a large population of herbivores, we are talking about actual ATTEMPTS to change the climate. Even if the CO2-theory is correct: Haven't we messed around enough?
Why not just use duct tape on the US and see if that fixes anything.....
There, fixed it for you. There ain't no problem that duct tape can't fix!
You know, I think you're on to something. The reason why we haven't solved global warming yet is because nobody has tried duct tape!! Quick, get me a patent lawyer!
In case anyone was wondering:
Lime = CaO
CaO + H_2O Ca(OH)_2 + 63.7kJ/mol of CaO
Ca(OH)_2 (aq) + CO_2 (g) -> CaCO_3 (s) + H_2O (l)
CaCO3(s) + CO2(g) + H2O(l) -> Ca(HCO3)2(aq)
Some of these compounds are strong bases that may be dangerous for both human consumption and wildlife contact. If this were done in segregated water areas, however, it may be possible to utilize the properties of the first reaction to produce energy via a heat engine.
Heh... Because of the CO2 we already have in the atmosphere, it's too acid right now. All they're doing is a process mother nature already does (Much like Thermal Depolymerization does with biomass and plastics to break it down into natural gas and sweet crude...). Strange as it seems, it might actually do some good- but it's a bold thing they're proposing.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
We salute you, Mr. CO2 Reducing Ocean Lime Dumper.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
They're not fairing too well because the sea is actually too acidic as it is.
=Smidge=
Who will pay for this? It's gotta be a pretty ridiculously large-scale effort to put enough lime into the ocean to counteract both the CO2 output of the operation and to have significant effects on atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
-Bucky
Home Depot: Hello, Home Depot, how can I help you?
Spongebob Squarepants: Do you guys carry Lime-Away?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I was saved by the buoyancy of citrus! /Oblig. Mitch Headburg
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Of course, you know this project isn't going anywhere until Bechtel, Parsons, Boeing, BAE Systems, Halliburton, Blackwater, and the rest of the gang get some serious action.
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]
Throw lime in the sea, I said. Nobody bothered listening. Now they pretend they don't know me.
If it can't be duct, it's f***ed...
That's a lotta limestone.
Which, unless we're going to use carbon-neutral machines to dig out and transport will be a big loss of petrol...
Unless this is done with Nuclear Power (or solar/hydroelectric/wind/tidalelectric), this is a net CO2 loser. Anything else will pretty much fail if the Goal is to cause CO2 reduction. Try to imaging the transportation of VAST Quantities of Lime around the oceans without the burning of fossil fuels... nope..
If you re-RTFA. you'll see the proposal is to capture and use the energy in places it is currently "stranded"--e.g. the middle of the desert in Australia has lots-o-guaranteed-sun. So, they do try to address this.
However, your comment on "imaging" [sic] the transportation of the lime (from assumedly very remote locations), is a concern. No idea what the math says on that.
I have seen a number of schemes that talk about dumping mass amounts of something into the ocean (before I had read about iron oxide to encourage plankton growth). This is yet another great example. Or not so great, in that the prospect of totally unbalancing the ocean in basically a light terraforming effort should scare the bejeebus out of anyone.
If you must do something, consider please measures which only affect things that are already artificial and man made by nature - like changing cement production to sequester CO2. That approach will do just as much (possibly more) for carbon reduction without the potential for mass species extinction.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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)
Addressed by the article....towards the bottom. Claims that the over all process is still carbon negative.
"Fortunately our handsomest politicians came up with a cheap, last minute way to combat global warming. Ever since 2008 we drop a giant lime into the ocean every now and then."
Isn't it better that Shell uses some of its unbelievably vast resources to actually find a solution to the problems they have partly created, than that the taxpayers do?
That's not Picasso, that's Kandinsky!
I thought I read something a few weeks back about NASA revising those numbers, but it was in a printed publication. I'll try to find an online reference.
Yeah, they'll die because the water isn't acidic enough.
'basic' i think they call it ...
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
This makes a lot of sense. We're concerned about some damage we THINK we did do the environment. So we're going to dumps tons of chemicals into our oceans to counter act something we THINK we may have done?
It seems to me that historically the Earth has had dramatic changes in climate that hasn't been explained with certainty. Species has gone extinct. The landscape has changed, life has changed. I challenge anyone to produce a 50 million year history with temperature variations. I bet it looks pretty fluid over time.
Global warming? Global cooling? Global changes? Global life?
Now I think global warming needs to be proven before a half ass untested theory to "fix it", is implemented.
The article suggested the use of solar power for this process (though to be fair they also said natural gas) which could be a viable carbon-free option in desert environments rich in limestone.
I never did understand the idea of carbon trading.
>> You buy carbon credits from someone who doesn't create CO2 or has a process that absorbs it.
I DIDN'T produce 1000 tons of Steel today, can I get a carbon credit for that? Suppose I did produce Steel, what's the benchmark for my 'savings'?
-Bucky
Though there's still the current rising cost of fuel to consider before you do that....
Shell promotes quick fix to combat global warming. Still treating the symptoms and not the cause. Best case scenario: the effects of global warming are halted for a little while. Shell sells more oil... Worst case scenario: introduce another sudden environmental change thus componding new unforseen problems onto old ones...Shell sells more oil... At least its win-win for someone.
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
I wrote a real quick firefox extension to filter out everything that's a lime joke.
Sorry, your's is the only post left ;)
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
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
Why not just use duct tape on the US and see if that fixes anything.....
There, fixed it for you. There ain't no problem that duct tape can't fix!
You know, I think you're on to something. The reason why we haven't solved global warming yet is because nobody has tried duct tape!! Quick, get me a patent lawyer!
Indeed.. I think we should try catching carbon molecules in the air with duct tape! May I suggest vast arrays of duct tape in a desert area in the American south-west?
You just got troll'd!
You're absolutely correct. There's no end to the number of environmental "solutions" that led to far greater problems down the road. And the sad thing is that they were not unforeseen problems. The people who thought up the solutions figured it was easier to let subsequent generations deal with the mess; they were more interested in a quick fix for political expediency.
Anyone else of a certain age remember the animated bit from The Electric Company (then-unknown Morgan Freeman was one of the cast members) wherein the wife is freaking out about a mouse in the house? To cut a long story short, as the problems cascade, the husband gets a cat, then a dog, then a tiger, then finally an elephant to scare away the tiger. When the wife complains about the elephant, the husband says "Everyone knows elephants are afraid of mice" reintroducing the original problem and losing an entire wall of the house in the process as the panicked elephant stampedes through it. The punch line is the battered husband lying on the ground saying to himself, "You know...maybe I should have just gotten a trap...". I think that little cartoon is one of the great cautionary tales of environmental engineering.
That is pretty much it. People who keep trying to come up with stupid ass ideas to fix the environment are almost always dumb asses anyway. First of all there is nothing wrong with the environment that needs fixing. We are not yet at the point of no return. What the environment needs from us is for us to start acting in a more reasonable manner.
Once we start doing that the environment will correct itself. It has gotten along fine without our help for 3.5 billion years. I'm pretty sure if we left it alone and fixed our issues then it will do just fine.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
This sounds a lot like that episode of the Simpsons where Bart unleashes some lizards that spread all over and end up killing off the pigeons which annoyed the town:
Skinner: Well, I was wrong; the lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Depending on how the lime interacts with the Sun's Corona, it may create a tasty drink.
Charlie. Tuna just tastes better with a squeeze of lemon...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_the_Tuna
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Only on /. does this:
"Remembrances of my chemistry classes tell me this is not practical... "
magically make one person more qualified than dozens of environmental scientists with PhDs.
I feel better knowing that the /. crowd is on the job.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
It's a lot more clever than seeding with iron filings and some of the other stuff thats been explored. It's fucking genius actually, because lime will hoover up CO2 like it's going out of style...the only thing limiting it is the concentration of CO2 and the problem is the oceans are concentrating too much CO2!
Actually, this is so hilariously simple I can't believe no one thought of it before...I throw a pile of lime on my garden every year to raise the ph of the soil, and I know they use it in water treatment as well for the same thing.
And lime, jesus, it's abundant and the reaction of lime->calcium carbonate is ancient and extremely well understood. Hell, the calcium carbonate mostly came from the oceans in the most place (limestone). The only issue is having to calcinate it (cook it)...I wonder what the energy cost/return is...
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The scientists have since discovered that their initial findings were incorrect - adding lime to the sea does not reduce CO2. However, they do reiterate that it adds a bit of zing to a grilled tuna.
--- What?
How much CO2 is going to be introduced by the quarrying of limestone, shipment of limestone, shipment of lime, etc?
I know that TFA says they'll more than offset the carbon created in the transformation of limestone into lime and CO2, but how much carbon is going to be released by all the trucks, ships, etc involved in the process of shipping a few billion tons of rock from one place to another?
I like music
What about the fish children?
There. Fixed that for you.
Exactly. Particularly to reef life, a hard, alkaline water is essential, and this will actually improve conditions for it. I keep a salt water fish tank, and making sure the water is at a PH from 7.8 to 8.4 and contains high levels of dissolved calcium is something you have to pay attention to.
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 might not be in Margaritaville - but you might still get plastered.
WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I love when environmentalist believe THEY can fix the problem. It reminds me of one time, to help the deer population on this one mountain range, they killed all the mountain lions. Horray, the deer will live. Then, a few years later, uh oh, the populations got too big, out ate their food supply, and had mass die-offs of starvation. The enviro-geeks have not made much progress sense then.
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
You start.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
If we throw something out of balance, Nature will find a way to adjust.
What?
They seem to have an answer for that. Lots of potential availability of sun for solar power in the Aussie Outback where one of the prime sources for limestone is located. Good solar energy for many other potential limestone sources.
Like many of these potential alternative energy proposals, it's hard to envision any one proposal being the entire solution to global warming. However, they could come up with a solution to the global warming problem by going forward on a number of different proposals, with this proposal being a part of that.
Natural Gas because one of the sponsors is Shell Oil. They've got lots of excess Natural Gas that is being burnt straight into the atmosphere during oil drilling. Using that burn to actually do something useful is a step forward (if the burn is inevitable).
Planktos went under, but didn't Climos take it's place?
Iron seeding. Generates algae blooms and feeds the fish and sucks down carbon.
That's what this is all about. Lime is widely used to raise the ph of acidic soil and water already, and as anyone who has used it knows, while it has a high capacity to reduce the acidity of whatever its added to, its not a strong base, so your water won't end up with too high a ph.
It's also commonly used as an antacid...Tums for example contains a ton of calcium carbonate.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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
There are two forces in this world keeping the pirates in check: ninjas and scurvy. If the seas were suddenly full of lime, scurvy would be vanquished. The balance of power would be horribly altered, and no one's booty would be safe.
Please, everybody, write your congressman about this!
Sand + Water + Lime = cement
So we have;
Sand (or seabed),
Water (or Sea),
Lime (we provide it),
Anyone else see the problem???
I dunno what the hell you're trying to babble about. The proper reference for /. readers goes like this:
Skinner: Ahh, but as it turns out the lizards were a godsend since they've eaten all the pigeons.
Lisa: Isn't that a little short-sighted? What happens when we're up to our ears with lizards?
Skinner: Ah, well we shall simply release wave after wave of Chinese needlesnakes.
Lisa: Then what about the snakes?
Skinner: We simply import gorillas who will eat all the snakes.
Lisa: Well what happens when we're up to our ears in gorillas?!
Skinner: Ah that's the beauty of the thing, come winter the gorillas will freeze to death.
I work for an oil company. My big fat bonuses should handle the cost of fuel.
Besides, Ford is practically giving away their pickup trucks. Apparently they're not moving off the lot as well as they did.
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.
Sounds like another shell game. But, where to begin? Oil and farm lands in Africa, or cerveza and shrimp of Guadalajara?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
It's not something you'd normally do, really. It's only useful in the manner they're proposing it- the process is hideously energy hungry and it's only useful in the sense of taking a bunch of solar thermal energy that'd go unused, wasted, and apply it aggressively to the limestone from the area.
This dumps reagent pure CO2 into the environment, which could be used to help enrich certain agricultural aspects in arid areas, and produces quicklime. From there, you cart the stuff out to the ocean, where the shift of acidity back to more of an alkaline nature and the absorption of part of the CO2 from the water to re-make limestone eats nearly twice the amount of CO2 dumped into the environment because of a stacked-deck condition that's only applicable for a while. IF your transportation emissions cost is negligible or reasonable, this whole thing works rather well, actually, so long as you're being cautious with the process.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Or you could just use a lifesaver :).
Based on the speed at which the we are progressing through the Kubler-Ross model of grief, the world governments should hit "acceptance" sometime around 2025. Then maybe we'll start hearing some sense out of people.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
The ignorance here astounds me.
Do you know what most limestone is made of? The fossilized shells of happy little sea creatures! You think adding a bunch of calcium carbonate to their environment is going to help them or hurt them? Right now the calcium carbonate in their shells is getting stripped by the acidic water, resulting in die-offs.
It's not unreasonable to expect that a large quantity of available calcium in their environment will improve their growth, not to mention the whole acid reduction thing.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Where are working these "Scientists" ? Monsanto ?
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.
Fish, and more accurately, fish eggs need a fairly steady Ph to live. If the Ph drops below about 6 then fish eggs won't hatch and if it goes too high the adults start to die off as well. 6-8 is the best range and we propose to change the Ph is what is already natures delicate balance!! Will we never learn?
http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/effects/surface_water.html
Hey. This is not global warming, this is ocean acidification. The rise in CO2 in the last two centuries coincides exactly with the burning of fossil fuel. The acidification, which will kill of corals and other shellfish is an easily derived consequence of rising CO2.
If you want to dispute the effect of CO2 on climate, fine. I disagree with you, but there are valid questions. There are no valid questions on ocean acidification.
I wonder how altering the rather slow adaptation to environment (read: evolution) will affect the life in the ocean by dramatically changing the target ocean's ph.
Second Subject: 6 headed biped killer humans from hell
Aside from relatively cleaner air to breathe, I wonder what will happen to the upper food chain when they eat said (potential, but nevertheless altered) mutant life from said target ocean.
42?
Add some onions, a bit of salt, sprinkle some parsley, and serve with corn, lettuce, and sweet potatoes and you have yourself the biggest ceviche serving ever accomplished.
[alk]
"All they're doing is a process mother nature already does"
Cuz we all know that doing much (much) more of what mother nature already does never has unintended consequences.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
DING! Give that anon coward a cigar!
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
"Scientists say ..." implies that there is some global consensus that lime will allow us to keep burning oil foreever.
I heard an NPR interview where an oil exec stated that the company strategy had three concerns, in the following order:
1. demand
2. supply
3. environment
First, increase demand, to make the product more valuable.
Second, invest in research to make sure supply can keep up.
Third, invest in research to minimize the environmental impact, or minimize the public impression of environmental impact. PR.
This is a successful, but unsustainable formula. The diamond industry uses the formula, and I assume many other companies do as well.
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
Epic Fale.
What's that? Like a really big Samoan thatched roof house?
"And there be unix which have made themselves unix for the kingdom of heaven's sake." - Matt. 19:12
Umm...RTFA!
The lime is being added to REDUCE the acidification of the ocean which will then better absorbe CO2...which will return the ocean to the current acidity and rate of CO2 absorption. The excess CO2 will generally precipitate out, collect on the bottom and form...lime stone.
It's an interesting place... And it sustains a substantive portion of the GDP of the US. I think there's a reason for the negotiation, though- Texas wasn't a territory or a former Colony of the British Crown, it was a Republic in it's own right.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
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.
I propose that you cannot prove that we aren't increasing the temperature of the planet
Every time you post a logical fallacy, God kills a kitten.
Please, think of the kittens.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
Despite the political rhetoric we have no proof as to how much human activity is contributing to any warming trends
If it contributes or not first of all pretty irrelevant when discussing the effects of global warming (of which there is proof); since the effects of global climate change isn't necessarily a positive thing for us. It is at least responsible to study the effects of climate change, as well as the possible effect of human activity upon the climate and ecosystem.
Spreading pollution, sending co2 and chemical compounds into the air, water and ground without carefully studying the effects of this and contemplating ways to minimize waste is unreasonable and short-sighted.
The sheer hubris of some people today who assume we have such great control over climate just amazes, and scares, me.
When I see pictures of smog covered Chinese cities and read about Microscopic Pollution May Trigger Heart Attacks/Strokes" http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2007/09/mutlu.html It scares me that people don't take the problems and side-effects of the energy inefficiency seriously. This is not a political issue, it is about taking responsibility for our actions. Understanding the effects and causes of the actions we take; and creating a healthy environment (literally) for us to live (and hopefully prosper) in.
The Long Now Foundation
I do like "bobdotorg's" post about growing more coral, that's a good thing. Not killing it in the first place would be good, too, but that would mean we couldn't have cheap tuna, and we would stop bottom-drag fish harvesting. We could also plant more trees. Amazing thing, plants. They actually consume CO2. A second-grader told me that. Brilliant kid. He had this idea of planting lots of trees, all over the country, and founding a national holiday where people plant trees (instead of cut them down for fun and profit).
I'd really like to contrast, for a moment, the industry of forestry with... fishing. Forestry is all about treating trees like crops. You concern yourself with soil chemistry, erosion, biodiversity, replanting, and disease/outbreaks. Fishing is all about what, dropping a line or a net and hauling it back? Well, that sounds like a lot of fun. Remember when just swinging an axe at a tree and seeing it fall was fun? Fishing the ocean needs to be treated as carefully as forestry treats the forests, but I'm not sure that licensing alone covers all topics. I suppose the same could be said about mining. I think anything involving natural resources requires a certain stewardship. If the responsibility were a cultural mandate for natural resource industries, nobody would be fretting over the chemical make-up of the atmosphere.
It requires greater genius to assemble an approach that is cost/labor saving and not also destructive, but with the right cost model (not a per-season approach), I think this is provable for all industries.
Been over thirty years since Chem H101, but doesn't that mean a lot of calcium carbonate when/if the carbon dioxide combines with the calcium oxide? (Fishing for someone who actually knows what they are talking about to speak up to confirm/deny.)
I'm not familiar witht he process you're talking about, but what happens naturally in ocean water is that CO2 from the air binds with H2O from the ocean and forms H2CO3, which is acidic. They want to add CaO, which combines with water to Ca(OH)2, which is a base, which means it makes the ocean less acidic.
The less acidic the ocean is, the more CO2 it can absorb from the atmosphere, is what TFA is saying.
So, first we made the atmosphere off-kilter, and now we're going to fix it by unbalancing the oceans too?
The proposal appears to work by making the oceans absorb the extra CO2, like a giant sponge—because after causing problems in the air all this CO2 will somehow be fine in water. Adding a zillion tonnes of CO2 to the air worked so well that we'll put it in the water too, plus a zillion tonnes of lime. What could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile, CO2 production continues unabated.
Maybe later, once the air and water are both full of CO2, we'll find a way to put it into the earth too.
I'll leave out the fact that temperatures globally have been flat for several years now
I'm glad you "left that out". If you'd actually included that, someone might ask for the source. THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
I saw no plan addressing the sequestering of VAST quantities of CO2 produced in the 'manufacture' of the Lime (not to mention what mineral/surface owner is going to allow the refrigeration/compression/storage of VAST quantities of CO2 in their terrestrial strata if they even are porous and isolated enough to 'store' high-pressure CO2), nor the plan for the infrastructure *for the VAST energy needs* TO sequester the liberated CO2 from the Limestone, nor a mention of a PLAN on how to TRANSPORT the VAST quantities of Lime produced, nor a CO2-free Plan on the extraction/quarrying of the limestone source rock and its transport before it becomes lime.
...I mean "Climate Change"... (Sorry, I missed the 'new directive from HQ' to change out the buzz terms).
Running around with your arms waving in the air and yelling "Change!, Change!, Change!!!", does NOT make it a PLAN.
I want to see the *actual numbers*, the real logistics, and the bottom line cost in "Dollars per Gigaton of CO2 sequestered" in the ocean (less the total amount of CO2 released in the atmosphere in the manufacture, transportation/distribution, and extraction of Lime *AND* the energy production needed to power this proposed CONCEPT.
And, oh yes, and WHO THE HELL PAYS FOR IT? I Smell the scent of *Heavy Taxation* for the funding...
It may just well be cheaper to relocate our coastal cities and deal with higher oceanic levels...
Plus, think of the positives to "Global Warming"... er, uh, um... ya,
Plus, think of the positives to "Climate Change", It could really free up lots of new real estate in Alaska and Asia, not to mention Greenland and the Antarctic...
Me thinks this is akin to sausage making... tastes good, looks good all covered with kraut, but you don't want to know how its made...
What you're saying is that the release of carbon dioxide was not the cause of past global warming. It does not follow that the release of carbon dioxide cannot be the cause of global warming this time. If you show up to work late ten times in a row because of bad traffic, it does not mean that the eleventh time you're late it cannot be because your car didn't start. It looks like you could benefit from learning more about science.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
If you hadn't stopped reading "scientific" literature in February of 2007, you might know that claim has since been retracted. No, "big science" didn't get to him -- it's just that warming due to Solar forcing (which accounts for Martian heating) is already accounted for in terrestrial models.
You put the lime in the coconut and mix them both together
put the lime in the coconut then you feel better
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Careful with the lime please!
If you put a lot of lime into the ocean, in places where coconuts might fall into the water, you'll end up poisoning the whole area.
This is a dangerous game.
To wit:
Brother bought a coconut, he bought it for a dime
His sister had another one, she paid it for the lime
She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up
She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up
She put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up
Put the lime in the coconut, she called the doctor, woke him up, and said
Doctor, ain't there nothin' I can take, I said
Doctor, to relieve this bellyache, I said
Doctor, ain't there nothin' I can take, I said
Doctor, to relieve this bellyache
Now let me get this straight
Put the lime in the coconut, you drank 'em both up
Put the lime in the coconut, you drank 'em both up
Put the lime in the coconut, you drank 'em both up
Put the lime in the coconut...
(repeat until you're out of CO2)
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
Yes, but coral thrive off that stuff, so it's a win in this case.
Not a typewriter
... but I will point out in closing that hair brained schemes ...
It's hare brained. Actually, it's harebrained. No space. Put this on the list next to "Wala!" and "for all intensive purposes", please.
Instead of putting lime in the ocean, they should figure out a way to convert the ocean into Guinness. The only problem is that if you're stranded files from shore in a row boat, you won't be able to piss into the sea.
Oh, and about that global warming bullshit... has anyone figured out why Mars is heating up the same amount (proportionally to Earth) when there are neither SUVs nor Al Gore on Mars?
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
... Ouigian Zoda will still be safe
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Put de lime in de ocean and mix dem both togedder.
Put de lime in de ocean and make it feel better.
And, it makes a refreshing after dinner drink!
I am my own gestalt.
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?
You think if cement manufacturers thought this was economically feasable they wouldn't be doing this?
The OP is correct.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I propose that you cannot prove that we aren't increasing the temperature of the planet
Every time you post a logical fallacy, God kills a kitten.
Please, think of the kittens.
It is awfully hard to debate your point when you don't actually mention what you feel is a logical fallacy.
Are you claiming that one of the statements I made was false or that my reasoning was bad? If so, please show me where I am wrong so that I can correct it.
I'd also like to add that the original comment that I was disagreeing with may use chagrined language, but has some good points. I strongly disagree with the troll moderation, even if you do not agree with what someone is saying, you should still value the points they are trying to make.
Water vapor is a major greenhouse gas but that seldom seems to enter discussions of global warming. In fact, a number of potential "solutions" have water as a by-product. Do we really understand all the factors in global warming?
This lime idea sounds like another attempt at a quick solution to a long term problem. I fear the long term consequences will be worse than the problem.
Quick Lime = Calcium Oxide
Andy
Not mentioning that I did study Engineering and Chemistry for my undergraduate should not make my points here any *less valid*.?
I do have an ugly do too, I bet your dog could probably beat my dog also.
I remember many PhD-holding professors (including some environmental scientists) who knew very very little about engineering and how real-world logistics work.
I agree that this Concept and Hypothesis of dumping Lime into the Ocean to increase oceanic CO2 absorption is theoretically possible and chemically sound.
My background and experience and education all tell me that the brains behind it have not fully accounted for *many* of the other factors I have posted here.
This will require MUCH more than the proposed solar power plants in energy requirements when the *actual* quantities of CaO to be produced to have any real actual reduction effects on CO2 levels are considered. We are talking Several Gigawatt-Class Nuclear power plants or large hydroelectric generation stations in the least.
Lime is one of the most energy-consumptive substances Mankind has yet learned to create from raw materials (considering how much we ALL consume yearly). This CO2-Reduction Concept and proposal is dead in the water (pun intended) without some very clean, non-CO2 releasing, method of CaO (Lime) production...
There are two forces in this world keeping the pirates in check: ninjas and scurvy.
What about the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, FBI, and other organizations involved in copyright enforcement?
If the seas were suddenly full of lime, scurvy would be vanquished.
This means the sea would be safer for pirates, and (per Pastafarianism) the global temperature would go down.
But here's what I don't understand about Pastafarianism: Shouldn't the rise in piracy under Napster and its children have sent the global temperature into a nose-dive over the past decade?
It is awfully hard to debate your point when you don't actually mention what you feel is a logical fallacy.
The line from your post that I rendered in italics would be a good start. But just to make it crystal clear, exactly how do you propose that I prove a negative, that humans aren't increasing the temperature of the planet? When you can instruct me how to do that, I'll prove beyone any reasonable doubt that you aren't a duckbill platypus.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
They want to do all this using stranded energy-- wind or solar which no one uses because it is located in the middle of nowhere.
Their analysis makes no mention of the energy cost of transporting zillions of tons of limestones from the middle of nowhere to the ocean. Or, rather, to all the world's oceans (since we don't want to cause one region to spike in alkylynity.)
And if it doesn't cost that much money/energy to transport those zillions of tons of rock, then it presumably costs even less to transport the electricity (Electrons don't weigh that much). In which case, the resource wouldn't be stranded.
But, it is good to see people thinking about this sort of thing, however incompletely.
It works by the same process I once saw in bootleg distilling: you use limewater to trap (or convert, or get rid of) CO2 and feed O2 to the liquid undergoing fermentation.
I always wanted to try it.
Yeah, planting trees and regrowing forests to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide is just too f***in' hard. So instead lets start converting 10 000 cubic km of limestone into lime and dump it in the sea. That's a heck of a lot cheaper and easier. Onwards with deforestation!
This is Slashdot.
I think you mean:
Reader ignorance holding steady
... What a future.
/LabMonkey09
While I agree with you totally, you're asking him to prove a negative (we aren't affecting our climate), which is significantly more difficult than proving the converse (we are affecting our climate).
-Bucky
the idea of nuking out humanity from the planet sounds more and more attractive AND eco-friendly.
Why are so many misanthropes masquerading as environmentalists these days?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Maybe it's time to upgrade to Sea++?
Adding lime to water, sugar, and Cachaça may stop you from worrying about global warning.
Er, Um, there seems to be a wide gulch here.
World production of CaO ( white lime powder, not the fruit ), is around 200 megatons/yr
World CO2 is about 40 billion tons/yr.
That's a mismatch of about 200 times.
Also making lime is not free, it now costs about $60/ton. That's $240 buillion per year just for the lime, never mind the cost of moving it to the oceans.
By burning limestone (CaCO3) which releases CO2 So we have CO2 released by the fuels to burn the stone, and CO2 released by the stone itself. Pretty nasty equation
This is why we RTFA:
quote>
One letter off, it should be RTFM!
Who has the owner's manual for the Earth anyway? We need to look under the section titled Tech Support Then we get the Green Squad, that's where Best Buy got Geek Squad, everyone knows that! They'll show up in a black and white UFO, work their voodoo, and then watch out for the bill.
If it were only this easy. Hey, someone use the Easy Button!!!!!!
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
So we have water and lime, and ice of course. Pour in a few thousand tons of cachasa and we'll have a gigantic caipirinha coctail. Awesome!
It's not something you'd normally do, really. It's only useful in the manner they're proposing it- the process is hideously energy hungry and it's only useful in the sense of taking a bunch of solar thermal energy that'd go unused, wasted, and apply it aggressively to the limestone from the area.
I'm sure you realize this already, but it's also useful at night pretty much anywhere you have a fossil-fuel power station, since base power is going to waste during off-peak hours.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This sounds kooky to me.
If you find this idea interesting at all, please keep in mind that you have to burn limestone at 1000 degrees just to get the lime. Limestone is not a renewable resource any more than hydrocarbons are anyway. And that only indicates a tiny part of the resources that have to go into this.]
As you might imagine, lime has a lot of other uses. If you want all those other things to be drastically more expensive (we're not also talking about spending billions of dollars and carbon fuels in building new infrastructure are we???) due to the increased demand, then I'd say you're not thinking straight.
Maybe this can make sense in terms of dollars, I dunno. I'm sure construction companies and other parts of industry would stand to make oodles of money from such a project. I do know it doesn't make sense if you look at it rationally. Reducing our CO2 input to the atmosphere is much more sensible.
Also, google the term kalkwasser (aka limewater) if you want to see discussions of actual use of lime in saltwater in laymen's terms. People who keep hobby-sized coral reefs in aquariums use this chemical, but for a slightly different purpose. Still pollution control in a way though.
My analysis: No surprise this plan comes from a management consultant. Perhaps there are environmentalists behind this as others in this thread have inferred or stated directly, but at least from their own promotional material Corven Group doesn't appear to be so - they're primarily into manufacturing and engineering (per them, not me). Please RTFA and tell me it doesn't say they're the ones behind this plan, along with Shell Oil. I have a hard time imagining anyone who does consider themselves an environmentalist advocating dumping a bunch of chemicals (on top of the waste discharges we already make into the ocean) into the ocean to fix the problems created by us pumping chemicals into the atmosphere.
Absurd. Next idea.
-Matt
I wrote a real quick firefox extension to filter out everything that's a lame joke.
Can someone tell me what the parent said?
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Wise move, since it's an incorrect statement.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533290/Climate-chaos-Don%27t-believe-it.html
If you take a non-biased, fresh look at all the data, there's actually more evidence that says that global warming increases carbon dioxide levels rather than increasing carbon dioxide levels increases global warming. It's still very chicken-egg, but the chickens have never stopped clucking about how they were first, so no one has ever really taken a look at the egg's story.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
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.
One of the things that have me worried is the ever present unintended consequences that no one every considers.
My unintended consequence is weather momentum. The weather system on this planet is a fairly will balanced machine. While global warming is affecting it, it is slowly adjusting.
Now, the CO2 has been rising, the weather patterns are adjusting creating severe weather. The jet stream and other wind currents are still fundamentally working. Now, we dump a bunch of lime into the oceans, reduce the acidity, make it a nice place for the fish (assuming their gills can still extract dissolved oxygen in the CO2 rich sea water.)
The CO2 levels drop. The atmosphere no longer holds the heat it once did. A lot of energy in the weather system is lost. What happens? Isn't this like slamming on the breaks of a moving train?
Next ice age? HUGE storms?
Can't we just plant some more trees and drive less?
http://www.brawndo.com/
I see a large problem ith using lime to reduce atmospheric CO2. First of all, I fail to see how going from calcium carbonate to calcium hydroxide back to calcium carbonate will have a net reduction in carbon dioxide. By saying "twice as much carbon dioxide is used" there are more likely referring to the creation of calcium bicarbonate, which does happen to some extent. However, calcium bicarbonate is simply not as chemically stable as calcium carbonate and is only preferentially formed under certain circumstances, and the bicarbonate will them generally precipitate back to the carbonate form with the release of carbon dioxide. Essentially, if this reaction were favorable in seawater it would have already happened to the large amounts of calcium carbonate in the oceans. It would make as much sense to simply drop crushed calcium carbonate (limestone) into the ocean as it would to dump calcium hydroxide.
The only way this process would have a net reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide would be to sequester the carbon at the factory producing the calcium hydroxide. If we were to develop the technology to sequester carbon dioxide on this huge industrial scale, it would make more sense to simply apply it to our current carbon dioxide releasing processes.
Additionally, making the calcium hydroxide in the Australian desert as suggested in the article would have a huge limiting factor. The hydroxide group will have to come from water on any large enough scale to have an effect on worldwide atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. This simply is not present in adequate quantities in the desert. Simply performing this step by dumping the calcium oxide straight into the oceans would be a no-go as the chemical reaction releases large amounts of heat which would significantly impact the oceans if done on a scale large enough to have a significant environmental impact. So the operation of making calcium hydroxide on a level large enough for eco-engineering would use vast amounts of fresh water in a desert, and likely need even more water to cool the plant down. It may be possible to pump some of the heat released from this stage of the reaction to earlier stages in which the calcium carbonate is heated to form calcium oxide, however heat pumps require energy to run. This may end up being slightly more energy efficient than using the original energy to heat the calcium carbonate, but I doubt it would be that much more efficient.
Unless someone shows me some hard numbers on this process that account for all of the needs (transportation, water, heating, cooling, mining, crushing, purification, lighting, secondary services required for the employees running the vast industrial complexes that would be needing for this level of eco-engineering and so on) my guess is that using the water and energy needed for this process would be better spent irrigating the Australian desert to grow trees, grasses (or the perennial favorite - hemp, which would actually be a good choice due to its high growth rate and low fertilization needs) which are simply buried in a big pit which is cut off from the atmosphere to sequester the carbon, eventually turning into coal. I'm not saying that this large scale irrigation project would have no environmental consequences, just that I am highly skeptical that it would be any worse than the process as offered in the article.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Did you READ me say that in my comment? NO.
Hush. Don't be reading things INTO what I'm commenting on.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
There is no way they can be serious. First we screw up the atmosphere, now we're thinking about tinkering with the balance of the oceans? What about the life in the oceans? This is a food chain, we eat the stuff that comes out of the oceans last time I checked.
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
People should not be allowed to moderate unless they can demonstrate a sense of humour.
We're going to fix a weather problem, which may be cyclical, that we don't understand that may not be a problem because there may be solar interactions we don't fully understand as well as Earth core changes we don't fully understand by dumping lime into the ocean?
Camping on quad since 1996.
This idea is almost as unbelievably stupid as the previous, geo-sequestration idea.
From the article:
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'.
1. To absorb 1 mole of CO2, you need 2 moles of CaO (one mole of CaCO is used to negate the effect of the production of CaCO), that gives is a ratio of 2:1
2. We are producing almost 30 million metric tons of CO2 per year from fossil fuels (and accelerating).
http://www.eia.doe.gov/iea/carbon.html
These numbers look suspicious, but remember that the weight of CO2 is huge due to the fact that burning fuel (which almost only made of carbon) adds 2 atoms of oxygen to carbon, therefore quadrupling the weight:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/Feg/co2.shtml.
3. Divide the weight of CO2 by atomic weight of 44g/mol, multiply by CaCO atomic weight of 84g/mol, and then multiply by the ratio of 2:1, you get:
115 million tons of lime per year (roughly 4 times the weight of CO2)!
Thus is huge: in comparison, the world is producing just under 1 billion tons of mineral ore per year, which means that we would have to divert the equivalent of 12% of that effort to the task of producing and transporting lime. Imagine the cost!
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/iron_ore/340302.pdf
In comparison, saving one pound of oil which produces 4 pounds of CO2 would save 16 pounds of lime.
Me thinks this is akin to sausage making... tastes good, looks good all covered with kraut, but you don't want to know how its made...
Soylent Green!
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.
this article is 'carbon negative' by using 'local, remote renewable energy sources' if you were burning coal to make all the limestone lime, it wouldn't help at all. oh, and irony of irony most limestone deposits came from the ocean in the first place.
seems to me to be a red herring, why not just built up efficient transmission systems and reduce the fossil fuels burned? AC power does lose efficiency, but HVDC is very efficient, over long hauls and under sea water, and hey, if the HVDC ends at a data center, or telecom facility they can convert the HVDC straight to low voltage DC, without making it AC current at all.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
warming due to Solar forcing (which accounts for Martian heating) is already accounted for in terrestrial models
And only accounts for a small fraction of the observed warming.
Also, don't forget we're at a solar minimum at the moment.
Nitrogen fertilizer and calcium-rich deposits of limestone have little to do with one another, other than that the fertilizer goes on top of the ground and the limestone is under it.
According to the link you provided, the dead zone is caused by nitrogen fertilizers growing algal blooms to massive sizes which then collapse and decay. They produce a lot of oxygen at first, bringing in extra animal life. Then the blooms die and give off CO2 as they rot, leaving too little oxygen (hypoxia).
Most nitrogen compounds used as fertilizers also lower the pH of soil over the long term. Limestone (calcium carbonate, not simple lime) is then applied to raise the pH back towards neutral.
I'm not a chemist or an environmentalist, so I won't pretend to know what nitrogen fertilizers do for the pH in the long term around oceanic algal blooms. I do know, though, that if the problem is too much CO2 being taken in by plants which then die and release the CO2 and you then take a bunch of the initial CO2 out of that water, the blooms won't grow so large in the first place.
Here's a no-hype view from the global warming perspective.
Looks like we clearly need more pirates. What could possibly go wrong?
$
The United Tree Organization (UTO) anounced today that they have come up with a way to get the oceans to absorb more of the REAL green house gas, Oxygen.
Just mine the SHIT out of the land to dump a bunch of lime into the oceans.
Anyone ever notice how friggin' HUGE the oceans are? Anyone volunteer to give up their land for massive lime mining operations?
There would be a side benefit to this, however: de-acidification of the oceans. Global Warming means more CO2 in the oceans. More CO2 in the oceans means higher acidity. Higher acidity means even faster decline of coral reefs.
I would see this more as a stop-gap, emergency remedial activity until REAL solutions come to the fore: renewable energy, sharp decline in use of fossil fuels of all kinds.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Stop reading the Mainstream Media and start reading the scientific journals.
Only 150 years worth of reading to catch up, but I'm sure you can do it and report back by noon tomorrow.
you put the lime in the coconut you drink them both up
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Its takes energy to make lime (CaO). You need to start with limestone (CaCO3) and drive off the CO2. Eventually the CaO added to the water will become limestone and precipitate out. There is no magic here.
So where will this energy come from? Ans: Presumably the great new oil finds that Shell has been announcing on a regular basis for the last 30 years. Folks - oil prices might be down a little bit now but they won't stay down. And if you actually check the numbers you'll find that Shell has NOT been making much progress in replacing the oil we burn. So how about Natural Gas? More insanity.
Methane is a chemical source of hydrogen. Alkanes are C(n)H(2n+2) and for octane n=8. For methane n=1. The issue is that our liquid fuels have n>=7 so they are much closer to a 2:1 ratio of hydrogen to carbon. Now consider that coal is C(0.6n)H(n) so coal is hydrogen poor. Bitumin is about C(n)H(n). Its actually a little hydrogen rich but the issue is that if we want to produce liquid fuels via coal->liquids or via bitumin->liquids or for that matter from oil shales then we are desperately short of hydrogen and without it we leave about 1/2 the carbon we mine sitting around in piles which we call COKE. And the only other option is if we try to get energy from it and create copious amounts of CO2.
This would have to be the most INSANE use of our non-renewable natural resources that I can possibly imagine. It will result in more carbon in the atmosphere and not less.
Its a very good thing that CO2 is not responsible for global warming. It hasn't been responsible in the geological record other than back in the precambrian when CO2 concentrations reached 130,000 PPM. The levels are now about 370-380 PPM which is a rise of about 100 PPM over the last 100 years or so. Meanwhile water vapour is anywhere from under 1% (10,000 PPM) to over 10% (100,000 PPM). The issue is that water vapour acts closer to the surface of the planet and that its a stronger green house gas than CO2 and we have no idea if there has been a net positive change or a net negative change in average water vapour levels over the planet in the last say 100 years. We don't know the sign and we certainly don't know the magnitude but a 100 PPM change gets swallowed up very quickly when one considers the uncertainties involved here.
Read this: http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar
There is a high correlation between climate and sun spot activities. CERN is undertaking experiments soon to confirm this linkage. We are fortunate that solar cycle #24 is looking to be about 2 years late and if so will probably be very weak and this will provide us with the opportunity to actually do some measurement.
Rather than go berzerk with crazy ideas it will probably make more sense to see what influence solar cycle #24 has.
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.
The numbers you are viewing are the revised numbers.
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').
Listen to me everyone. It'll work!!! You see, oceans are the source of all life on the planet. If we dump enough of anything into them, it will kill all the life in the seas and eventually lead to the destruction of life world-wide, even the cockroaches. And since life is the primary source of CO2 in the atmosphere (even plants produce a net amount of CO2 at night when they're not photosynthesizing), this will decrease the level of CO2 in the atmosphere and prevent global warming. Of course, it seems a lot simpler to just let Global Warming kill us all by itself, but that's beside the point. Lime in the oceans, if we can get enough of it, will surely work.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
consultant at London firm Corven is the brains behind the plan
Figures it would be those damn limeys behind it.. ;)
But seriously.. the 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong' tag is well deserved here..
Science ignorance on the rise
I love it when people think they know everything and don't even see if these scientists even considered the issue. So, correction:
Reader ignorance on the rise.
You must be new here.
A few of the oil companies actually realize that selling oil is not a sustainable business, thus they are funding research. For example BP has put a lot into Biofuel. Just because Shell is a big bad oil company doesn't mean that it can't do good.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
Look deeply into the arguments for and against anthropogenic warming. The most interesting thing isn't global warming, but the sociological issues surrounding the head-in-sand propaganda campaign. Truly an eye-opener into how far we can trust corporate america, and mainstream media - which is to say not at all.
Take everything you read with a grain of salt. When you read a website - look at the references. Read the references. Examine the arguments for yourself, instead of trusting someone else's analysis.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
al gore's sponsored research? what, the almighty powerful and vastly wealthy windmill cartel that pays al gore to put forward its agenda? here's the deal: outfits like shell and exxonmobil fund scientists who agree with their agenda; whereas outfits which attempt to fight global warming and/or protect the environment are funded by scientists who agree with their agenda. quite a fundamental difference, really.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Just relax. The world is ending in December 2012 anyway. So why get all excited over a little extra CO2 for a few years.
Sig temporarily out of service.
Directly improving the climate falls under the term Geoengineering. Here's a wired article on the subject that explores other viable ways to solve the CO2 problem or help cool the planet: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-07/ff_geoengineering
More is here:
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/10/geoengineering-.html
Basically there are three other ways that can help to alleviate the problem and any or all of them could be used:
* Seeding the oceans with iron to promote algae growth and thus CO2 sequestration
* Introducing Sulfur Dioxide into the upper atmosphere (per wired article) which deflects sunlight.
* Detonate nukes to inject dust into the upper atmosphere which also deflects sunlight.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Really, now? Scientists are funding their own research? You don't believe scientists have an agenda outside the realm of science, like grant money?
The fact of the matter is that I wasn't defending this research... I'm not smart enough; I was pointing out that merely pointing out where the sponsorship comes from is not a refutation of any findings. Research is ALWAYS sponsored by someone with an agenda; simply citing the sponsor doesn't refute a damn thing.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
posting such stories is a disgrace to slashdot. Maybe this is because creationism allows to modify the mass equations in chemical reactions?
Everyone needs to eat steak and mushrooms cooked using solar ovens, and quit eating the damn vegetables.
Cows and mushrooms convert oxygen into CO2 (and methane for the cows, too). Vegetables convert CO2 into oxygen.
I've always found it ironic that many of the "eco-friendly" people are vegetarians, resulting in them saving the problem and killing the solution.
I am not a chemist and I'm sure I'm missing something here, but I don't understand how changing the acidity of the ocean is going to make it capable of absorbing more CO2.
Neither am I and neither do I, but apparently the people behind this article claim that the less acidic water is, the more acid it can form by absorbing CO2. Whether that's true I don't know, but I suppose it could be true. I'm willing to believe them until someone points out it's not true.
If both the lime and CO2 bind with water molecules, isn't adding lime reducing the amount of water molecules that are left to bind with CO2?
I'm not sure, but I suspect there's no serious scarcity of water in the ocean. Mind you, I'm just guessing here.
I just read the title and double checked to see if Id overslept for 20 years.
It just floors me. In 1974 "they" were predicting an ice age. Now "they" say it is global warming. Here is a well thought out examination of the climate and "they" says its another ice age... http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html
Fool me once, same on you...
Not sweet. Not acidic. Lime.
If you use all the Calcium Carbonate to battle global warming, there won't be any left to make antacids, and I'll have to quit eating pizza!
Unfortunately, it is. Because apparently no one wants an LNG port to be built within 50 miles of where they live, or on any body of water where rich people might have boats for a day or two, two months out of the year. Even if it means lower home heating, transportation, etc. bills.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Not hydroxide.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Uh, so they're saying "Ignore 4.3 billion years of what's happened to Earth - only the last 2-3 millenia count."
I didn't get any further than that - talk about knee-jerk; anybody who doesn't see that it's obvious that all which is wrong with the world is mankind's fault is just wrong? No trial, no evidence, no investigation.
Broaden your horizons, dude. Look at references which don't agree with yours; you may not be convinced, but it's just barely possible you'll learn something.
The largest, unforeseen side effect of all is how this would completely undercut all the green efforts taken thus far. It would undo all the 'we are better (because we are more green) than you' positioning that we've been witnessing in recent years.
Its like 'carbon credits' only it actually does something about the problem.
I'm willing to bet that no one took into account that certain individuals are Inconveniently gaining power over the trend in our society, and perhaps - just perhaps - an actual solution isn't the only thing they're after.
Food for thought, no?
You mean... calcium carbonate and hydrogen?
Hydrogen? WTF? You must live in a different universe.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Oh, I love NASA.
Especially when they pull shit like this.
FYI, the temperatures in that chart are in comparaison to 1940-1970, the coldest period in recorded times.
So someone's bright idea is to poison the sea to save the sky? *blink* *blink* With help like this.... *sigh*
Forget the lemon/ade jokes -
Wasted away again in Margaritaville...
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'.
There is a little bit of truth in this, but not much, and it cancels itself out eventually.
So where do you get lime (calcium oxide/hydroxide)? From heating limestone (calcium carbonate) which releases CO2.
CaCO3->CaO + CO2
Then you hydrate it:
CaO + H2O-> Ca(OH)2
And add it to water. What happens is it absorbs 2 carbon dioxide, initially - and if the pH is right:
Ca(OH)2 + 2CO2->Ca(HCO3)2 that is calcium bicarbonate.
I guess this is why they say "it absorbs twice as much CO2".
The problem with all that is, calcium bicarbonate is unstable and will eventually decompose, liberating back CO2:
Ca(HCO3)2->CaCO3 +H2O +CO2
And there you have it, all the CO2 is released (2 molecules in, 2 molecules out), and all you accomplished in the end is just moving the limestone from the mountains to the bottom of the ocean.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
RFTA. For every unit of CO2 generated by the lime production process, 2 units are sequestered when it is used.
So the claim is that it will be net negative.
Dumb idea, if you ask me, but at least you should bother to read it before making assumptions.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
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.
No. [H+] [OH-] = 10^-14, where [H+] and [OH-] are concentrations of the respective species in M. At pH 7, concentration of each is 10^-7 M. Water is about 56 M (18 g/mol, density 1000 g/L). There is no "ten million times as much" of anything going on.
In other news Budweiser has pledged 500 billion gallons of their Bud Light Lime to be poured into the oceans in the fight against global warming.
1. Unprocessed limestone comprises the earth's bottom.
2. Doesn't have CO2 absorbing ability.
Er, fish need oxygen, not C02...
Before we get too far here, a cubic mile of seawater with 1 part per million of carbon dioxide will require 11,765,131 pounds of CaO to sequester the carbon dioxide. Anyone want to calc the carbon foot print of the vehicle(s) that transport the lime to the ocean? Diminishing returns, anyone?
C8-)
I think I have a great solution to stopping drowing, lets put cement in the ocean!
That's the difference between the Shell scientists and the ones Al Gore works with is this: All corporations are required *by law* not to consider the public good, but only consider their bottom line. The "scientific" research that tobacco companies did into whether or not smoking causes cancer had the same problems. A company can use smoke and mirrors to protect their bottom line for years. When you look at what Al Gore is doing (all left wing conspiracy theories aside) it's pretty much summed up this way: he wants to clean up the environment. Most of the scientists he works with are funded via nonprofits or grants. These are organizations that seek to understand environmental problems and find solutions to them. Both could be biased, but that's the beauty of science. The scientific method holds up pretty well against bad science ... or things that just aren't science at all (see: "Intelligent" design)
"Remembrances of my chemistry classes tell me this is not practical... "
magically make one person more qualified than dozens of environmental scientists with PhDs.
Unfortunately, we so seldom hear from environmental scientists with PhDs. For the most part, info comes second hand through a media which doesn't always do the greatest job of reporting faithfully. I say bless the slashdotters who paid attention in chemistry class. Wish I had.
Loose lips lose spit.
Tim Flannery is a crackpot. He lost all credibility when he suggested filling the air with sulfur.
Just because we couldn't have survived in the environment 3.5 billion years ago does in no way invalidate my statement. We clean up our act and the environment will do just fine.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Think about it. Suppose the U.S. cut fossil fuel burning 50%. Under Global warming theory, this would mean we would still be going to hell only half as fast. No, it would not even be half as fast because the developing world would not make similar cuts. But a 50% cut is totally politically impossible. It would cause a depression that would make the 1930s look like a picnic. Several years ago, when a drought caused a small electric energy shortage in California, Dianne Feinstein, one of the most liberal senators in the Senate, was demanding that the power of the federal government be used to force out of state power producers to sell power at less than market prices! No questions were asked about the CO2 produced while creating that power. All this over a small percentage cut in one state for only one mode of energy production. A 50% cut in all states for all energy sources would create a political firestorm that Washington has never seen. Anyone with half a political brain knows this.
The leadership of the global warming people also knows this. They do not intend to cut CO2 production enough to actually have an effect on total CO2 and cause economic and political chaos. That would just undermine themselves politically. It would be cutting off your nose to spite your face. They plan to cut fossil fuel burning just enough so that Joe Sixpack feels a little bit of pain, to make it feel like something is actually happening, but not enough so that the peasants with pitchforks throw them out.
Fossil fuel burning is fungible. If you squeeze the balloon in one spot, it just gets fatter somewhere else. In order to cause a 1% decrease in fossil burning, you have to control all burning everywhere. But this is just what the leadership of the Global Warming people want. A global warming bureaucrat everywhere important enough to have a campfire. Think of the bribes and campaign contributions this will generate. This is a total victory of politics over every other mode of decision making.
This is why politically minded people like Global warming.
OK, so now the whole problem is going to be solved by throwing some lime in the oceans? What transfer of power does that achieve? This "solution" can not be allowed.
By the way, if Global Warming advocates are motivated by the good of humanity, why is it that no one is concerned about the erruption of the Yellowstone super volcano/caldera? It has the power to wipe out several year's harvests. Killing billions by economic disruption. Why are no plans being made for national survival when this MF blows? FEMA is not going to come to the rescue. IC engines do not work with air filters filled with volcanic dust.
The answer is that this problem does not transfer power to governmental functionaries. It does not fit environmental dogma that only humanity is the problem.
The erruption of this super volcano is established scientific fact, not speculation like global warming. It is supposed to be 10**5 years overdue.
If someone does not solve this problem of the volcano, then we, or our children, or our grandchildren are all dead. Dead people do not have to think about global warming.
Interesting but untrue. Such a right doesn't exist (unless you're of the opinion that it's implicitly allowed of every state--but there's nothing specific to Texas there).
Texas did, however, negotiate control over mining rights up to 3 leagues (10+ miles) out to sea rather than the usual 3. That's come in handy with the off-shore oil. And they did hold on to almost all public land rather than ceding it to the federal government (again resulting in a lot of oil money for the state).
rage, rage against the dying of the light
The ocean has been consumed by thirsty mexicans. Scientists hoping to cure global warming by adding lime to sea water have instead made it irresistibly tasty to the people of mexico. Where will all of those fish sleep?
They're using their grammar skills there.
we should just drop giant ice cubes into the ocean periodically thus solving the problem forever.
I did Read the article. I also read all of the links on the cquestrate.com web site.
My Chemistry degree tells me that although the chemistry as stated is possible, even likely, there are so many factors left egregiously unmentioned from both the article and the cquestrate.com web site. Both fail to concretely account for *many essential requirements* and all of the needed logistics necessary to mine Limestone, cook it in kilns, create Lime (CaO), transport the Lime, and deliver Billions of pounds of that same Lime throughout our oceans...
My point is that these *unaccounted logistical and process details* will create, in fact, MORE CO2!
This in all likelihood will negate the net sequestering of existing CO2 from the atmosphere into the oceans.
People need to remember their chemistry and realize that the Reduction/Dehydration of Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3 AKA 'Limestone') into Lime (CaO) + CO2 requires HUGE amounts of energy. This energy must come form somewhere and solar is nowhere close to these needed power levels. Lime manufacture is a very endothermic reaction (it absorbs heat energy) and releases vast amounts of CO2... This heat CANNOT come from any source that also creates CO2, or if it does, there is the additional cost of sequestering all that CO2 created in addition to the CO2 released in the reaction... The authors do not account for fact and they completely neglect the logistics of moving billions of pounds of mass around as well. I suppose they will have to invest a fleet of Nuclear ships and Electric excavators and to invent massive electric Dump Trucks to move the stuff around.
I would love for a Process Engineer and/or Chemical Engineer to weigh in on the actual energy energy requirements for processing a single Ton (2000lbs.) of Limestone into Lime.
Also, would someone send the link for the solar powered 2,700 degree 'calcination' Lime production Kiln facility that is scalable for the amounts of Lime needed?
All of the kilns I have visited use Hydrocarbons as fuel and some use old tires as a supplemental fuel source. Read away: http://www.sierraclub.org/planet/200307/burningrubber.asp
(Also review the Dirty Jobs Episode 13, Season 2 where Mike Rowe shows how 'recycled' tires are used to help fuel the 2,700 Degree kiln needed to make Lime from Limestone. http://www.tv.com/dirty-jobs/shrimper/episode/573544/recap.html )
Technically, GP didn't commit the logical fallacy of Negative Proof. Instead, GP proposed a bet whereby he will win with 100% certainty. Of course there is the implied "X is true because there is no proof that X is false." where X is "we are increasing the temperature of the planet." If the implication was the desired communication, then Parent post's accusation holds.
-1 gibberish
Beyond that a lot of plankton has a shell and stands at the root of the foot chain (or is the larvae of other animals). Animals with shells don't like acidic environments as a rule.
Oceans with a low pH could be a major problem at numerous levels.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
But you neglect to mention that it also raises the pH of the water. Take that science!
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
SUZIE: How do we get wid of the gweenhouse grasses?
NARRATOR: Fortunately our handsomest politicians came up with a cheap, last minute way to combat global warming. Ever since 2063 we drop a giant ice cube into the ocean every now and then.
SUZIE: Just like Daddy puts in his drink every morning! And then he gets mad.
NARRATOR: Of course, since the greenhouse gases are still building up, it takes more and more ice each time. Thus solving the problem once and for all.
SUZIE: But...
Ooooh... duct tape to harvest stray electrons!!!
I can't believe no one has thought of this. The solution to cheap electric is in every home!
Let's see... a roll of duct tape cost $2 (or a little more for higher quality tape which could grab more electrons)....
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
What is stopping YOU or a million other environmentalists from buying forested land, throwing your home on it, and declaring it OFF limits to anyone you don't permit to be there... then maintaining it as you see fit, selling lumber, firewood, etc, while tailoring that to be your environmentally "perfect" forest.
Try it... then whine or scream. My lands are setup the way I want them, and short of invasion by federales with guns, nobody else has permission to tresspass. Thinking about it, neither do federales, WITH or WITHOUT guns, but they won't listen to those no tresspassing sings. Laws are for other people. Other than that... however, I don't seem to have issues with anything on my land. Nice trees and deer grow on one lot... only problem is my dog picks up ticks every time I take him out, and they drop off him and wander about the house / yard afterwards since he's on meds and it seems the ticks aren't stupid enough to bite him.
Otherwise, I quite enjoy my old and new growth mixed... and I'm scheduled to build a very NICE log home out of some of those "old growth" on there. I use a lot of the underbrush for kindling when I enjoy my nice fireplace. I use all the fallen limbs after storms for firewood too. I haven't had to cut a tree for firewood since I've had those lots. Amazing? You betcha. Did the government tell me how to do it? Nope, not that I can recall. A few hundred years experience by my farmer/landowner ancestors did. See, the commies back home killed them off to steal their lands, but they passed their knowledge onto their kids before that... and their kids passed it onto me through their various descendants up to my parents. Beauty of "ancient" knowledge. You don't need million dollar studies by government tax fed parasites, or billion dollar 3 letter agencies to figure out how to get optimal use from your land. You just need to HAVE your land, and then to declare it yours and off limits to parasites of all colors, civil or uniformed. After that, take care of that land as no public agency could.
First things first, of course, you have to actually go out and BUY land... you know... forested land, and then live on it.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
The parent said...
aw shit, your firefox extension filtered my post since it contained the original lame joke as well as my own.
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
.. how when an article makes sense and no one has anything to rebuttle with, people tend to crack jokes, which are funny :)
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Have any of you read "The King, the Mice and the Cheese"? It's a children's reader.
Mice are eating the King's cheese. So the King gets cats to eat the mice. Then the cats become a pain so dogs are brought in. Eventually, lions get rid of the dogs and finally elephants scare the lions. But what do we do about elephants? Why, mice of course. Elephants are terrified of mice.
It's a wonderful book.
"Only 150 years of research shows that science has been in dilemma about where the temperatue has been going for the last 150 years."
4 times scientists have pivoted their position on global warming and global cooling. 4 times in the last 100 years. 50 years of research before that did not address "Global" climate whatsoever, but sure, lets listen to your history as you call it.
I am just waiting until we hear that the sky is falling because of an impending ice age, because lets face it, if history teaches us anything, it teaches us that it just repeats itself over and over again.
Then again, maybe it appears we are warming since 1820 because that was the end of the little ice age.... If you start your data points where you want to, the results the computer produces will always be favorable. GIGO.....and if you don't understand that, then you really don't need to be looking at computer models to begin with, much less posting about your opinions.
So the cake is a lye?
In other words, what are the chances that this is going to look really foolish in a decade or so?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
you bastard, all that exercise will likely make you live a longer more active life. You propose millions of people doing this? Or do you plan to start running them over with your SUV to save the earth? Not to mention all the extra methane produced from all these extra people being active, and farting. (also all the extra food consumed is all being raised burning tons of petrol products.)
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.
The great part about this plan is that if it turns out we don't need it, we just stop dumping lime. I'm not a biochemist but I believe a strength of this proposal is that the process is lime-limited. Stop dumping the lime and the process stops. It cannot go "runaway."
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.
their solution to rising levels of C02 is to pollute our seawater with lime...
hmm what absorbs C02 and produces O2... holy humping hand-grenades batman, let's plant more trees!
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
If you take a non-biased, fresh look at all the data, there's actually more evidence that says that global warming increases carbon dioxide levels rather than increasing carbon dioxide levels increases global warming.
This is true and not true at the same time. Ice core and other historical climate proxies show that CO2 levels have lagged temperature trends. Some people have taken this to mean that warming causes high CO2 levels. Not exactly true because rising CO2 levels themselves cause warming (no historical data needed, this part is pure chemistry). So in the past what you've had is an initial "kick" of warming from something (most likely orbital variations), followed by a self-reinforcing process where warming releases more CO2 from oceans, which adds to the warming, which releases more CO2, etc.
The big thing to wrap our heads around is that warming is possible without that initial "kick." Humans are producing CO2 from fossil fuels, which is raising CO2 levels without the kick. But just like before, the CO2 will lead to more warming (remember: chemistry), and potentially another self-reinforcing cycle.
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.
"I propose that you cannot prove that we aren't increasing the temperature of the planet"
I propose that you cannot prove that there is no god who will miraculously get us out of this mess!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Texas
"The resolution did, however, include two unique provisions: first, it gave the new state of Texas the right to divide itself into as many as five states (a proposal never seriously considered). Second, Texas did not have to surrender its public lands to the federal government. Thus the only lands owned by the federal government within Texas have actually been purchased by the government, and the vast oil discoveries on state lands have provided a major revenue flow for the state universities."
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http://tafkac.org/politics/texas_secession_rights.html
"Texas does not have the right to secede, any more than any other state does. Which is not to say that Texas, or any other state, can't secede if it has a mind to; after all, 11 states did back in 1861. Many modern Texans have the vague idea - as did most secessionists - that because Texas entered as a former republic, it retained the right to leave the Union if it saw fit. However, no such clause appears in the congressional act authorizing Texas to join the Union. Because it was once independent, because it at one time did secede frmo the Union, and because its ideology is far different from that of the rest of the US, Texas has always clung to the idea of a guaranteed right of secession as a mark of its specialness and as a source of reassurance in case all else fails.
One privelege Texas does reserve, and a condition that appears in the resolution approving its statehood, is the option to subdivide itself into as many as four states (a total of five). But Texas is more likely to leave the Union again than to fragment its identity and its land. "
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http://www.texassecede.com/faq.asp
Q: Doesn't the Texas Constitution reserve the right of Texas to secede?
A:
"No such provision is found in the current Texas Constitution[1](adopted in 1876) or the terms of annexation.[2] However, it does state (in Article 1, Section 1) that "Texas is a free and independent State, subject only to the Constitution of the United States..." (note that it does not state "...subject to the President of the United States..." or "...subject to the Congress of the United States..." or "...subject to the rest of the United States...")
Neither the Texas Constitution, nor the Constitution of the united States, explicitly or implicitly disallows the secession of Texas (or any other "free and independent State") from the United States. Joining the "Union" was ever and always voluntary, rendering voluntary withdrawal an equally lawful and viable option (regardless of what any self-appointed academic, media, or government "experts"--including Abraham Lincoln himself--may have ever said)."
---------
I wonder if NorCal would consider liming the water it sends downstream to LA, hehehe. I bet SoCal would divide and then try to CONQUER (or, KONK-WAR) NorCal.... Seems the Peripheral Canal is in the news/on the talk show circuit, again...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
We Southern Californians are like so ahead of you on this issue. We have a pool boy that comes once a week and measures the water. Too much CO2, he adds a little calcium hydroxide from Home Depot. Just scale this to the whole planet and you're totally there.
You're agreeing with your parent. It stated "This is not global warming, this is ocean acidification." The only way to parse that and for it to make sense is that this refers to, not the solution (pun intended), but the problem -- the environmental situation we are seeking to ameliorate.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
That may be true, I'm not familiar with lime production, only a little chem ;)
OK. Now breath... Feel better?
You should stop typing 'cause with your brain power, you certainly can't breath and type at the same time.... Stick with breathing. It's obviously more productive for you....
Thank you! I was beginning to think I was the last sane person on Slashdot....
I think they're going for Sea# with all this talk of limes.
Of course I didn't RTFA... why would I do that? You really are new here aren't you? Don't let my UID fool you.
"Global Warming Stopped"
Great! Now can we get back to vi vs. emacs.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
From what I've read and seen in the last few dozen "Greenhouse Effect" and "Global Warming" demonstrations I've witnessed, as well as articles I've read on the matters, the existence of CO2 doesn't chemically warm things, rather it emits low levels of infrared radiation that it initially must absorb (the "greenhouse effect" being an extremely deceptive name, because glass greenhouses block what CO2 doesn't absorb, and allows through what CO2 blocks) but it's potentially "sending back" as much radiation as it allows through. It wouldn't be so popular as a refrigerant/fire extinguisher if it heated things chemically.
In short, I've seen data that shows correlation, but never causation. I'm welcome to being enlightened on this subject if you have material for me to read up on. The global warming "experts" I've talked to have been less than helpful, but they were never chemists.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Yes, I RTFA. And couldn't believe my eyes. This is another wacko scheme to derail real climate change remediation, and create a distraction.
I'd love to change the world but I can't find the source code.
i wasn't saying scientists fund their own research, i was saying that organizations such as Union of Concerned Scientists don't fund scientists; scientists in fact contribute to them. on the other hand, rightwing organizations such as the Heartland institute or the TASSC most definitely do pay handsome fees to scientists who sing their tune. i'm not implying that there is a deliberate lie for pay, but as noted before, it's pretty hard to convince somebody of something when heir paycheck requires it to be false. as for the agenda of every funding organization, what is the agenda of the nsf? noaa? nasa? it isn't obvious to me that these organizations are dedicated to stamping out fossil fuels for some reason, and will invent global warming if that's the only way to do so. on the other hand, i feel the interest of shell, exxonmobil, et al in sponsoring research is fairly clear. furthermore, the public funded research gets published whether the outcome is pro or con; private research is very rarely published if it's contrary to the sponsor's interests; it's their intellectual property to do with as they wish. (not just in climate, but in all fields; food/nutrition, drugs, etc.)
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
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.
And I feel better now that you have pointed that out.
They are bound to change their ways now.
I am anarch of all I survey.
That's interesting; I've been combating Global Warming by adding lime to gin and tonic. It's worked pretty well so far.
Great idea,
But wouldn't it be easier to stop global warming by nuking all the humans? It would also solve a lot of other problems like poverty, racism, traffic, smog and cancer. Think about it.
Agreed on the inapt name, but it's one of those terms that is now so common that it's probably impossible put the genie back in the bottle.
CO2 absorbs infrared (IR) light of certain wavelengths and then re-emits IR light. It passes visible light. This acts to warm the surface of the Earth in the following way. Let's say 100 units of sunlight pass through the atmospheric CO2 and hit the Earth's surface. 30 are immediately reflected, while the other 70 are absorbed, and then re-emitted as IR light.
Of those 70, let's say 10 are absorbed by the atmospheric CO2, and re-emitted in all directions evenly...for simplicity's sake let's ignore the sideways and say that 5 are emitted up into space, and 5 are emitted down toward the ground. The lower 5 are absorbed by the ground and then re-emitted upward, where they are once again absorbed and re-emitted by the atmospheric CO2. So now you have 2.5 going out into space, and 2.5 going down to the ground again. Iterate by halves until there's no more light left.
But the key is that these are all cumulative. So between the ground and the atmospheric CO2 you have an energy influx of 70 of visible, plus 5 of IR, plus 2.5 of IR, plus 1.75 of IR, etc. The end result is that between the CO2 and the ground, the number is over 70--the climate experiences an energy level greater than expected. In other words it is warmer than the sun would seem to provide in influx.
If the percentage of molecules of CO2 in the atmosphere goes up, it's obviously going to have a better chance of catching those IR photons and re-emitting them. The ultimate CO2 greenhouse effect is on Venus, which has an atmosphere of over 90% CO2. It is farther from the sun than Mercury but its surface is hotter than Mercury's because of all that CO2 trapping IR (heat).
This is grossly simplified of course, but the basic concept is there...IR is intercepted on its way back into space and partially re-emitted downward. This IR back-and-forth effectively "traps" some energy and produces a climate on the surface that is warmer than would be otherwise expected, say if calculated using only a black-body radiation model. In fact this discrepancy is what led to the initial concepts of "greenhouse gases" in the 19th century.
The big difference today is that quantum mechanics provides a detailed model for why CO2 absorbs or emits certain wavelengths of light. I'm not going to pretend to understand that...I was a geology major not a physics major.
More on the "greenhouse" effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
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.
Er, fish need oxygen, not C02...
Also true, but not really the point here.
Nixon: ... thus solving the problem once and for all. ...
Little girl: But
Nixon: ONCE AND FOR ALL!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Oh please. You just sit back and watch what happens to the arctic ice shelves in the next decennium. Then think about that a couple of years and then open your mouth again.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
No I'm Irish, I dont need to make terrorist threats. We have also completed are place of taking over the worlds by setting up secret bases hidden inside Irish Pubs all over the world.......
Sweet Jesus you're right. This is easily the most depressing thing I've seen all day.
It's an astroturf campaign aimed at free software/anti-patent advocates, brought to you by the allegedly reformed "energy sector". From the style, I'm thinking it may have been built by people like these guys, or a similar outfit, that do stuff like this.
Even if you're a climate-change flat-earther, you all have to realize that you're being manipulated. "Developing An Open Source Solution to Climate Change"? What does that even mean?
And have any of you read the comments? The already totally-populated tag cloud? The keyword metadata?
This is a PR campaign, what these fine human beings in marketing call "online strategies". I wouldn't be surprised if some of the ACs on this discussion aren't part of this "campaign" (You all suck, btw. Trolling for the lulz is fine, but trolling for a paycheck is just fucked).
Reducing net carbon emissions by not putting millions of tons of it into the atmosphere is apparently way too difficult. Much easier to change the chemistry of earth's oceans (wtf?!).
Well they were talking about the Nullarbor Plain. Now, I know nothing about lime and amount of CO2 and such like, but I do know a little bit of Latin and a little bit of Australian geography — enough to know that "null arbor" means "no trees" and that that's an accurate description of the place. The Australian outback's already a great big mine feeding the Chinese economy; we could do worse than to make our giant brown coal-burning powerplants a little less dirty.
Look out!
That's complete and utter crap. While it's true that some shareholders have successfully sued companies for allowing profit opportunities to pass (it's usually a negative... meaning the company DIDN'T do something they had the opportunity to do), it's certainly not true that "by law companies are not to consider public good."
Do realize how paranoid that sounds? How completely irrational?
Do you think scientists are going to get funding from non-profits and government grants when they say "no, there's nothing wrong" or "it's not really that bad?"
Everybody has an agenda; there's absolutely no reason to believe anyone over anyone else, you simply have to look at the facts. Given your attitude, it doesn't matter if the findings are factual.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Iron Fertilization is a far more effective way to sequester carbon.
According to wikipedia, worst case, 16 supertanker loads of iron costing 27 billion dollars total dumpped in low iron areas of the ocean would sequester the 3 gigatons of CO2. At that rate, to nullify human carbon emmissions by sequestering it all would mean fertilizing the ocean with enough iron to sequester 30 gigatons of CO2 per year at a cost of 270 billion dollars per year.
This would actually be quite affordable when you consider that "the annual value of the global carbon credit market is projected to exceed $1 trillion by 2012 "
Of course there is the law of unintended consequences to deal with, and also it's possible that only the first 3 gigatons of sequestration would be possible to so efficiently bring about. It might be that after fertilizing the ocean to sequester the first 3 gigatons, that the next 27 gigatons would require dumping iron where it would less efficiently sequester CO2, or perhaps not.
...
I agree with you to an extent, but the problem is denouncing factual findings simply because a certain source sponsored the research. You can't hand-wave and ignore factual findings just because the research was sponsored by some "evil" oil company.
Environmentalists have been playing your game for years - they get to ignore any research they disagree with because they can point a finger to a source of funding that has an agenda. EVERYONE has an agenda.
If you don't think NASA, the NSF and NOAA, as well many university scientists, don't have agendas to gain additional funding and status, you're truly naive.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
All the lime you need. No questions asked.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
but "agendas to gain additional funding and status" involve things like "proving that idiot gabnowskowich at university of london doesn't know a gymnosperm tree ring from a stress artifact in a cycad trunk", rather than proving that petroleum will destroy the earth. and the granting agencies operate on that basis. in fact, the majority of the calls that "more research on global warming is needed" come from the unbelievers; who then argue six months later that the scientists are just doing it because that's where the grant money is. look; if my agenda is to get home from work and have dinner, and somebody else's agenda is to smack me over the head and take my wallet, even though we each have an agenda, it's not exactly symmetrical.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
http://www.desmogblog.com/who-is-rocket-scientist-david-evans
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/the_australians_war_on_science_16.php
Yah, I know, typical liberal media, cirkular links, etc.
http://www.google.com/search?q=rocket+scientist+david+evans
Not a rocket scientist. Not a climatologist. Not a top anything. Average Windows programmer. Cashing in on "consulting" for think-tanks.
So you're saying environmental scientists made global warming up for financial gain? If so, that's a pretty laughable conclusion. Do you have any idea what kind of shoestring budget a non profit environmental scientist works off of? I mean, really, what do you think, they make up "lies" about global warming so they can live paycheck to paycheck? Don't you think they would just go work for a corporation and make the big bucks if they had so little integrity?
I said nothing of the sort; what I did say is that everyone has an agenda, whether they are puppets for a big corporation or someone trying to make a name or score a big grant.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The author (Mr. Evans) begins his article with an appeal from authority, i.e. "I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol".
My apparent ad hominem was actually not fallacious, in that the claim of authority, which I might have been willing to accept, turned out to be false. So the first paragraph of Mr. Evan's article (of which there are several in the same vein) actually begs for "questioning who wrote".
Honestly, I didn't pursue his claims after it became obvious that he wasn't a climatologist working for the Australian government, as he implicitly suggests. He was a programmer who wrote the desktop client software, apparently.
His resume turns up in the first page of google results. In it are references to two scientific papers that had been published, twenty years ago, in an unrelated field (electronics, right?). IANACS, but I think it is reasonable to expect that as a truly credentialed academic (Stanford), he has the skills to submit a paper, if indeed he is on to something that the whole field of climatology is missing.
This is very familiar to all who remember the campaigning on behalf of the tobacco industry in the 80s. Asking me to put on my oncologist hat and prove to you that smoking causes lung cancer isn't fair. The circumstantial evidence that he is full of it (gets paid by a pro-coal think tank, lack of credentials in the field, no papers in journals, lying about his experience) is strong enough to dismiss this, imho.
Checking sources is one way we navigate through fields not in our specialties. This guy is not a good source of information about climate science. The Lavoisier Group is not a good source of information about climate science. Infowars, obviously, is not a good source of information about anything at all.
Do you think scientists are going to get funding from non-profits and government grants when they say "no, there's nothing wrong" or "it's not really that bad?"
I agree that everyone has an agenda. I'm just a lot more skeptical of findings from corporate research, than I am of findings from people not making money from it. That's the beauty of the scientific community though, it can all be tested. If it is good research then others outside of the oil industry should be able to corroborate it.
Yes, it's recursive. And I type this knowing I'll never be able to read it again.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Nothing wrong with being skeptical... I'm skeptical of everything anyone says on the matter, regardless of which "side" they happen to be on... but that was my point; skepticism is one thing, but entirely dismissing research because of who sponsored it is not a rebuttal; it's practically an admission of not being able to fight facts with facts.
That's what the first post I was responding to did.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
So if I understand what you're saying, then you're more frustrated about the prejudice any side exhibits when they clearly aren't considering the facts? I respect that. I think I could use a healthy does of skepticism for people who "agree" with my point of view. Honestly, after so many years of this being a political issue instead of a scientific one I'm just feeling a little bit frustrated. If you don't mind my asking (b/c I'm genuinely interested), what do you do to separate propaganda from science? It seems like the integrity of our media outlets has been waning for quite some time ... but maybe that's just my perception and they've always been this way.
You have to look at the sources... I don't mean the sponsors, I mean you have to look at the research, and often enough you need to wait to hear a rebuttal from the "other" side of the issue.
What I've often found on one side of this debate (and I'm not going to say which, I'm not trying to take sides) is that if you follow the trail of cited sources, they often lead to the same evidence - some of which has been found.. let's say "lacking."
I'm still basically up in the air on the whole issue... because I AM skeptical. I hear it's warming, but the last ten years are cooling, but the anecdotal evidence says otherwise, but this is the coldest summer in Alaska in many decades, but it's due to La Nina and not any world wide climate trends, etc., etc..
I also KNOW for a FACT that both sides of the issue have used incredibly misleading data, and I look at appeals to the heart as negatives. For example the picture of the polar bears that long ago was used to show polar bears "frolicking" had been used to show polar bears "stuck on melting ice." Conversely, every time I hear about the coldest day here or there, I know the people making an anti-GW case are being disingenuous. But more than anything else, I know both sides have lied.
That's why I find all evidence "interesting" until I can figure out how valid it is, I don't just say "so and so sponsored it so it must not be true."
Stupid sexy Flanders.