Slashdot Mirror
Scientists In Iceland Turn CO2 Into Stone (theguardian.com)
New submitter Zmobie quotes a report from The Guardian: [Carbon dioxide has been pumped underground and turned rapidly into stone, demonstrating a radical new way to tackle climate change.] The unique project promises a cheaper and more secure way of burying CO2 from fossil fuel burning underground, where it cannot warm the planet. Such carbon capture and storage (CCS) is thought to be essential to halting global warming, but existing projects store the CO2 as a gas and concerns about costs and potential leakage have halted some plans. The new research pumped CO2 into the volcanic rock under Iceland and sped up a natural process where the basalts react with the gas to form carbonate minerals, which make up limestone. The researchers were amazed by how fast all the gas turned into a solid -- just two years, compared to the hundreds or thousands of years that had been predicted. One of the downsides for the project is that it requires 25 tons of water for each ton of CO2 buried. However, seawater can be used. The Iceland Project (also referred to as the CarbFix Project) is already being upscaled to bury 10,000 tons of CO2 each year, in addition to the hydrogen sulphide which also turns into minerals.
Wow. They did it just yesterday too.
Trying to thwart the next Ice Age!
No, wait, I think I got that backwards! They are trying to prevent becoming Texas!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
News at 9! 10! 11! 12!
The summary says "One of the downsides for the project is that it requires 25 tons of water for each ton of CO2 buried. However, seawater can be used." Can any old seawater be used? Would you be able to use the water that gets pumped to the surface with crude oil work? It would be helpful if you could put that back into the ground along with the CO2.
Slashdot your i and slashcross your t.
Dupe?.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I didn't think it was quite that cold up there.
Ever since our newest Slashdot Overlords (Whipslash et al.) took over, things have been improving. With today's dupe, however, this is the day it really, really feels like home.
On topic: This is a story I'm OK with reading twice, because even though it's in the early stages, it shows promise for our ability to use science and technology to overcome the damage our tech-fueled overconsumption has caused during the past two centuries. (And I'm using "tech" here in a broad sense of the term to cover many technologies, from the Industrial Revolution onward.) I'd like to see more investment in this to see if it's really viable at scale.
Classic PR greenwash. No mention of how much energy costs from fossil fuels would rise if this method were implemented at scale or if any energy companies are willing to implement it at scale. Renewables are already at parity with with fossil fuels and in some cases cheaper. Why would investors want to pour good money after bad?
This process is not completely new. A process related (or actually this one) was used by the ancient romans to produce a type of concrete that severely outlasts current commercially available concrete. That recipe was thought lost, but recently someone managed to replicate it. It used see water, high quantities of carbon and volcanic rock/ash. It is good that new uses have been found for the process or to similar processes.
Onda Technology Institute
Humans don't cause global warming, human's machines do.
I've read a greek myth about origins of this technology.. It was all about the bad breath of Medusa...
You must not know what a stone is.
You are a fucking idiot.
...life giving gas.
So says A Mighty Wind. I suspect an agenda.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
They are planning to bury 10,000 tons of CO2 in a year, but a single US citizen pollutes an average of 16,500 tons of CO2. A proof of concept is great, but can this technology be scaled up to a point where it will have a noticeable impact.?
There's the run-of-the-mill False Dichotomy fallacies, but occasionally someone takes it full retard.
You seem to assume (s)he is a citizen of the USA. woi, oh woi?
16500 tons of CO2 per year per person ? Cite? I'm guessing you fucked up by a factor of 1000, which means you are a politician not a techie. So go away and boil your head.
Sending it all to China. Give them a penny per kilo-ton. Problem solveded.
Uhh. When you start something new, you come up with a prediction. You don't necessarily base it on that much information.
Then you observe what happens when you do an experiment. Then you adjust your predictions.
This is how basic science is done. Nothing new here.
HOWEVER; what you're trying to do, is transfer errors in initial prediction into errors in observation and measurements. That is rather disingenuous of you. Please do argue honestly.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
From a population of 400,000 people, what they did is a notable achievement.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
To release it from limestone all you need to do is add acid. Whoever is around then will be able to reverse the process
"The researchers were amazed by how fast all the gas turned into a solid -- just two years, compared to the hundreds or thousands of years that had been predicted."
"One of the downsides for the project is that it requires 25 tons of water for each ton of CO2 buried."
Young earth creationists often talk about rock layers being formed quickly in Noah's flood. This seems to be at least partially supported by both statements above.
I never understand why young earth creationists feel the need to [mis]use science to justify things like the flood. They believe in an omnipotent god that created the world before he created the sun and stars - a god that is clearly capable of ignoring physics.
Just because humans are incapable of operating outside of physics does not mean God is incapable of it.
As opposed to oil where all that is needed is a match, and CO2 stored in tanks where all that is needed is to open a valve...
The CO2 levels on the earth just 100,000 years ago are 3 times what they are now... And there was no global warming.... Matter of fact, there was an ICE AGE going on at the time.
There was an error in a guess at time to happen for something never done before. The geological ages take much longer, but the conditions are different. Their guesses may be way-wrong, but that's in no way a "calculation". To imply it is makes you a liar. Why are you lying?
Learn to love Alaska
So why do the creationists act as if he is?
For that matter, why make a flood in the first place? If God is above physics, he can just snap his metaphorical fingers and make all he want to disappear, disappear. Or reload an earlier snapshot or whatever.
There is no such thing as catastrophic man-made global warming,
Since you need so many disclaimers, one would presume that the drop of any single disclaimer would make the rest true. So by logic, and your statement, there is both "catastrophic global warming" and "man-made global warming". If not, the simpler "there is no global warming" would be the correct statement.
Learn to love Alaska
25 tons of seawater is about 25 cubic meters....
This process, done on a grand scale, might reduce sea level
It is not our fault you flunked chemistry and physics, nor is it our obligation to educate the hopelessly stupid such as yourself.
Your blind faith in capitalism will kill us all. Actually it already has.
It is too late now anyway, water in the atmosphere is the primary problem now. The water that sustained us will now kill us.
So, knowing that it works so well, when the plans for terraforming Venus start?
Won't someone please think of the green plants?!
Physics as we understand is little more than our explanation of our observations. These explanations tend to be consistent across materials and such but by no means do they deny or prevent any other explanation from being true also - even if little evidence is present. This is obvious when you look at the progression of metallurgy and materials like steel became available from the same raw materials as iron.
Now you ask why did something happen or why does the claim happen. Well, first - if you were teaching a lesson to someone, would they learn that lesson if you did nothing in their presence? Of course not. I cannot teach you programming if all i do is give you a compiled program to run.
Next, why do they need to point out an omnipotent being made something look a certain way. Well it is as simple as that way being used to explain the impossibility of the omnipotent being. You cannot really expect to tell someone they are wrong because of X and expect them to stay silent when you refuse to consider Y-1=X as well as Y*Z=X. So when you say X means something and there are more than one ways to find X, you have to also allow the other ways.
And that is even without getting into whether a flood or God is true.
If I were to guess at a reason for a flood like that, probably to make a point.
The fact that you, zenlessyank, cannot understand the OP's words does not mean that they are difficult to understand. It's actually a pretty clear statement; you're just upset because it contradicts your point, and does it well.
The mods should mark your pointless posts as 'troll' soon enough, and then you'll be even easier to ignore.
This kind of chemically reactive rock is necessary to capture CO2. The Iceland proejct used basalt which is mainly just available in Hawaii and southernmost California. Other fresh volcanic rock available in the Cascades and western US may wotk too. But most power plants are not currently colocated there. This would be an issue in Cina and India, the other two largest CO2 producers.
Like I said when this was posted previously this week...
This is the wrong thing to be investing in. All this carbon sequestration technology is pretty much pointless unless you can make it cost neutral on an industrial scale. It this processes costs money, even a little, the production of CO2 will NOT abate world wide. The likes of China, Russia and the Third World will simply choose the cheapest form of energy production and laugh at the western world for unilaterally deciding to only use more expensive energy and putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage. And believe me, it's quite a disadvantage.
What we should be doing is investing in cleaner and cheaper forms of energy technology. Yes, Solar and Wind, but MORE than just that. We need to have a viable Fusion process, push Fission development and use. Invest in energy technology development in areas where there are both the possibility for zero emissions and economic viability and all this carbon sequestration stuff is clearly neither. Sequestration ALWAYS takes more energy and always makes the energy we get cost more because of that. We need to stop investing in loosing propositions and go for the *REAL* solutions.
To put it another way... Would you put your investment money in a business that is loosing money and has no prospects for changing that except perhaps being able to loose less money next quarter by cutting their size and selling less (yet loosing MORE per unit sold doing so)? Of course not, that would be stupid. You want to invest in a company who has a plan that develop a new way of supplying their customer's needs that might someday turn a profit and give you a return... I'm saying invest in things that have a chance to give us a return, not stuff that never will..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If the "upscaled" project sequesters 10,000 tons of CO2 every 2 years, that offsets the emissions of about 300 Americans. But there are lots more of us, and we're not even the biggest polluters. This will only start making a noticeable difference if it could be scaled up further, by a factor of one million.
If it only took 2 years to turn into stone, then maybe the Earth really IS only 6000 years old!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
How much energy is needed?
Can you give an example where creationists act as if God is bound by physics?
As for you second question "why make a flood in the first place?" Why did you have Froot Loops for breakfast instead of Cheerios?
Holy crap, please stop.
We all want global warming, it's way too cold on this here planet.
Water is good, we need it to live.
Especially the fresh water locked in the glaciers.
Just because some elites view things as bad, we shouldn't all.
For example, this horrific process drains precious sea water, what about the fishes?
EVERYTHING freezes up there. Where's the news?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Try again. CO2 levels 100k years ago were about 225ppm. The local peak was around 130kya, at around 280ppm.
Maybe, but I can barely make out what you're saying because your horse is too high.
Don't forget about http://my.freesite.com/users/~...!
Maybe, but I can barely make out what you're saying because your horse is too high.
AP, Earth. It has been discovered that plants take in CO2 and create O2 as a waste product.
So by logic, and your statement, there is both "catastrophic global warming" and "man-made global warming".
No, that's not logical at all. It's a transparent attempt at manipulating the feeble-minded, or grade-B trolling. Perhaps your post history would reveal which.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Any branch of science that has a clue gives a range.. it is 'about' this old. That range is adjusted as new evidence brings to light things we do not know. If physics, geology, cosmology, and chemistry do not agree, then things are revisited.
Trying to say that an estimation error in one chemical process by one research group invalidates all of science is like saying one contradictory verse invalidates the entire bible. I bet you wouldn't like it if I did that would you?
Silence is a state of mime.
You know wouldn't it be so much more efficient if we just planted trees?
They breathe in this co2 stuff and put out air, as well as lower the temperature wherever they are.
Then the govt can buy the carbon credits from people that have more than 5 trees on their property, so much $$ per tree.
Tell me, where do you go to buy carbon credits? Who generates those now?
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
The conditions of the formation of the rock are very different. You are an idiot in search of a fight. And you look to be pushing a particular agenda you know to be stupid, so you don't even want to state or defend it. Just insulting everyone. "Since science isn't perfect, nothing it says can be trusted" What a Luddite.
Learn to love Alaska
If none of the qualifiers are needed, why include those superfluous words?
Learn to love Alaska
They're just speeding up a natural process. If we stopped all CO2 output, natural weathering will cause the excess CO2 to get sequestered into limestone within a couple of thousand years, which is a good thing as without any CO2 sequestering we'd be much more Venus like, a planet with no CO2 sequestering. There is also a feedback loop, the more CO2, the more evaporation leading to more rain, which causes more weathering of rock, which leads to more CO2 sequestering.
Over geological periods this also partially explains climate changes, sometimes the continents are laid out in such a way that there is lots of rainfall on land and CO2 levels drop. Other times the continents (or continent) is laid out in such a way that there is little rain, perhaps a shortage of mountains to block the winds and cause rain or perhaps huge dry inland areas, and the CO2 increases.
There is also the other green house gases such as methane to consider, which is one of the reasons for the faint Sun paradox. The Sun used to only have about 75% of current output yet the Earth had liquid oceans. In the 1.1Gyrs that you mention, the Sun is going to get hotter (it gets denser as the ratio of He to H increases, so burns hotter) , the oceans will boil, introducing more water vapour into the atmosphere, which is a powerful greenhouse gas, perhaps all this limestone will revert back to CO2, and life will be fucked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Now, now, there is no need to call the scientifically illiterate retarded. They are just somewhat cognitively challenged. The few deniers who are not thusly challenged, are the most malign force that we have ever seen in human history.
Plant more TREES
Casteism
You don't exhale or pass gas?
Just another day in Paradise
The evidence from the PETM is more like 100-150 kyr.
Increased [H2O(g)] will happen long before the oceans "boil" - and as you say, water in the vapour phase is a potent greenhouse gas. The calculations are tricky, and depend in large degree on the configuration of the continents in the foreseeable future (a couple of hundred million years), but it is expected that the average temperature on the Earth's surface will rise to the point that most proteins denature ("curdle" ; say 60-70degC for a number) will happen in between 500 and 1500 Myr. There's a lot of leeway on that date, because ife is good at developing and increasing the use of things like "heat shock proteins" to buffer their core biochemistry. But it is implausible that there will be life anywhere on Earth beyond 2000 Myr. Unless we (or the cockroaches' descendants) do something about it.
Changes in the arrangement of the continents altering rainfall patterns, and therefore weathering and the carbon cycle, is certainly part of the bigger picture. But it is not a simple picture. For an example, about 30 million years ago, the Himalayas started rising due to the India-Asia collision, which led to a lot of weathering and a steady decline in atmospheric [CO2] levels, and so a decrease in overall global temperatures. BUT at the same time the Drake Passage was opening between the southern tip of South America and the West Antarctic Peninsula, allowing the Antarctic Current to develop and isolate Antarctica's weather from warming currents from the north. That allowed/ assisted/ encouraged the formation of the Antarctic ice caps and their consolidation into one cap.
Which was the bigger effect? that is, TTBOMK an unresolved question. But the two events were approximately contemporaneous.
Unlikely. The loss of water to the atmosphere (and thence to space, by photo-dissociation) will reduce chemical weathering considerably. I'd expect there to be substantial gigatonnes of carbon in carbonate rocks when the last of the Earth's surface water disappears.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Your premises are messed up. No-one is proposing that CCS would provide a long term (e.g., a single millennium, 1kyr) way to continue to use large amounts of fossil fuels. But let's consider the case that people do actually do it that way, and use approximately the current levels of carbon-based fuels.
Currently we're taking one mole of oxygen from the atmosphere for each mole of carbon that goes into CO2 (other products, e.g. water, are already present to excess in the atmosphere). Since we're talking about gases, then volumetric concentrations are close enough to equivalent to be valid ; so we can equate a 1ppm increase in CO2 to a 1ppm decrease in O2.
We're increasing CO2 at about 2ppm/ year. So if we captures and stored that much CO2 each year then we'd take about 2ppm of oxygen from the atmosphere per year.
The last time I used an oxygen meter to check the safety of a storage tank for entry (yes, you do that in industry ; people die every year because they don't do that), oxygen contents down to 18% were considered acceptable. That's 180000ppm.
The current atmosphere is 21% (210000ppm). Therefore, at 2ppm/ year we don't really have anything to worry about for ( (210000-180000)/2 years = 30000/2 = 15000 = ) 15kyr.
Yes it's a genuine question. The above suggests it is not a particularly urgent question, if we were to capture and store as much carbon as we're putting into the atmosphere at the moment.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Having swum in warm-water springs in Britain with the snow settling in my hair, I look forward to visiting the Blue Lagoon one winter.
What's an Icelandic Slashdottir's favourite song? "Thorn in my side?"
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"