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Can We Fight Climate Change With Carbon-Absorbing Rocks? (indiatimes.com)
The New York Times reports on rocks in the country of Oman that react naturally with carbon dioxide, turning it into stone.
Scientists say that if this natural process, called carbon mineralization, could be harnessed, accelerated and applied inexpensively on a huge scale -- admittedly some very big "ifs" -- it could help fight climate change. Rocks could remove some of the billions of tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that humans have pumped into the air since the beginning of the Industrial Age. And by turning that CO2 into stone, the rocks in Oman -- or in a number of other places around the world that have similar geological formations -- would ensure that the gas stayed out of the atmosphere forever...
Capturing and storing carbon dioxide, is drawing increased interest. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that deploying such technology is essential to efforts to rein in global warming... At a geothermal power plant in Iceland, after several years of experimentation, an energy company is injecting modest amounts of carbon dioxide into volcanic rock, where it becomes mineralized. Dutch researchers have suggested spreading a kind of crushed rock along coastlines to capture CO2. And scientists in Canada and South Africa are studying ways to use mine wastes, called tailings, to do the same thing.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reports an alternate perspective from 86-year-old social scientist Mayer Hillman: "We're doomed." He's predicting the end of most life on the planet, citing the lack of any way to reverse the process that's already melting the polar ice caps.
"Optimism about the future is wishful thinking, says Hillman. He believes that accepting that our civilization is doomed could make humanity rather like an individual who recognizes he is terminally ill. Such people rarely go on a disastrous binge; instead, they do all they can to prolong their lives."
Capturing and storing carbon dioxide, is drawing increased interest. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that deploying such technology is essential to efforts to rein in global warming... At a geothermal power plant in Iceland, after several years of experimentation, an energy company is injecting modest amounts of carbon dioxide into volcanic rock, where it becomes mineralized. Dutch researchers have suggested spreading a kind of crushed rock along coastlines to capture CO2. And scientists in Canada and South Africa are studying ways to use mine wastes, called tailings, to do the same thing.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reports an alternate perspective from 86-year-old social scientist Mayer Hillman: "We're doomed." He's predicting the end of most life on the planet, citing the lack of any way to reverse the process that's already melting the polar ice caps.
"Optimism about the future is wishful thinking, says Hillman. He believes that accepting that our civilization is doomed could make humanity rather like an individual who recognizes he is terminally ill. Such people rarely go on a disastrous binge; instead, they do all they can to prolong their lives."
Actually, we are all going to die... just not from climate change.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Cement already does that. The problem is that far more CO2 is produced when making the cement, than what it absorbs again.
No, we can fight climate change by emitting less CO2. And that's the only way we can fight it.
That's simply not true. The best, long term solution is definitely to stop, or least reduce, CO2 emissions. However, we have a legacy of what we have already emitted and for the forseeable future we are still going to be emitting sizeable amounts of CO2. Hence, capturing and trapping the CO2 we have already emitted plus what we are going to emit is a very sensible way to fight climate change if we can do it.
What we should definitely NOT do is listen to a 86 year old social scientist making apocalyptic predictions which are unsupported by real science.
But plants, by themselves have a finite life. They grow, absorbing CO2. And then they die, rotting and releasing it. So plants are carbon neutral over a long term. What we need to to is to interrupt this cycle and remove the sequestered carbon before it is returned as CO2.
Trees make an excellent carbon sink, as long as you can remove them with logging trucks before they die.
Have gnu, will travel.
The problem is, CO2 holds the atoms at a very low energy state. So you get energy out of creating CO2, and converting CO2 into a different form usually involves putting in energy. But if that energy came from burning fossil fuels, then the second law of thermodynamics says you're creating more CO2 than you're capturing. So most of these ideas for pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere involve putting even more CO2 into the atmosphere to generate the materials used to pull out the CO2.
Whether the goal is reduction of CO2 emissions, or sequestering CO2 already in the atmosphere, the solution is the same - we need to switch away from hydrocarbon-based fuels for energy. This is why decommissioning nuclear plants is extremely short-sighted. You're putting all our eggs in one basket (renewables) and gambling with the future of all life on Earth that we'll be able to develop renewable energy quickly enough before climate change reaches catastrophic levels. Why gamble when we already have a carbon-free energy source which we could ramp up within a decade or two, to provide the energy needed to power all these carbon sequestration strategies? Nuclear doesn't have to be the end-solution. We just need it to buy ourselves more time to develop renewables, then we can slowly phase out nuclear plants and replace them with renewables.
There is one way to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere without us having to do anything. Plants do exactly that via photosynthesis. They take the energy from sunlight, break the CO2 up into O2 (released into the atmosphere), and lock the carbon up in a hydrocarbon chain forming sugars, starches, and cellulose. Normally that carbon is released again when the plant dies and bacteria decompose it. If we can figure out a way to seal cellulose against decomposition, then all we'd have to do is let forests grow, chop them down, seal the wood and bury it, and plant new trees to continue the process.
Hopefully not many people think that only man affects the climate. Really it is like a river, the idea that man is the only thing that affects a rivers flow is stupid as obviously the weather has an affect. It is just as stupid to say that man doesn't affect the river as he dams it, dredges it and paves over the surrounding drainage lands. Anyone of those things can seriously affect the rivers flow. Climate is similar, we're not the only affect but we're a big one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
... and as soon as those plants die, fungus and bacteria eat the plants and release that same CO2.
The only way that CO2 get stored for very long time frames is indeed in rocks. Typically, that involves the very slow process of sediment accumulating at the bottom of seas and oceans.
There's a limit to what trees can sequester. There's a limit to how many trees you can plant, trees die and rot releasing most of that carbon back into the system and if you keep harvesting them, eventually the soil runs out of other nutrients that trees require.
Historically, on geological time scales, it seems that half the carbon has been sequestered in plants and half in rocks. This is good as the Earth continuously replenishes the carbon through volcano-ism and it needs removing. Venus is an example of what happens when carbon is not removed from the eco-system over billions of years.
There's also natural feedback mechanisms, more CO2 raises temperatures, causes more evaporation which leads to more rain, more erosion and more natural rock sequestering, and this increases when there are lots of new volcanic rocks. Of course this feedback takes a while to work.
Planting trees is beneficial and the more planted the better in general though I don't know about sacrificing grass lands. But they're not a magic bullet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Every single mass extinction has happened when the environment changed too fast for life to adapt. Give polar bears 20,000 years to move and adapt, and they could change from hunting seals on ice flows to climbing trees in tropical rain forests. Give them 200 years and they'll all die. Humans will be up a shit creek as well. Yeah, it's gonna be great if you can grow bananas in Siberia. Not so great if half the world's population dies off from famine.
When you're climbing down a stairwell, you aren't going to get hurt if you jump a few stairs at a time. So, might as well jump off the staircase entirely and save yourself climbing down a hundred feet of stairs. Same logic.
If by using them you mean burning them, then yes the carbon escapes now and then, making trees carbon neutral. That doesn't help with carbon from other sources, but at the same time can mitigate some of them, such as burning oil for heat.
On the other hand, you can also use these trees to build houses and other useful structures.
Then that carbon is 'fixed' unless those structures burn down.
Coal and fossil fuel deposits of many types are from a time when there were no bacteria to break down cellulose. Ancient trees died and fell and were buried without ever rotting. Things are not the same now as when that "coal" was created.
Some of it turns into soil.
Very little. Go into a forest that's been growing for the last 20,000 years, since the last glacial retreat. You can dig through the organic layers* of the soil pretty easily with a hand shovel. So, where did that 20,000 years of carbon accumulation go? When the trees died, fell down and rotted? Some was taken back up by new growth. Not all of the carbon in live trees was pulled out of the atmosphere. The rest was eaten by microbes and expelled back into the atmosphere as CO2.
*Peat bogs are a notable exception to this. But the anaerobic conditions required to form bogs are rare.
Have gnu, will travel.
Making new plastic instead if recycling can only be cheaper in money id you have retarded taxes and laws.
It can't be cheaper in energy and CO2 emissions.
You second link is explicitly about cheaper in money. That exactly is why we have recycling laws in the EU, recycling is about protecting the environment and saving resources not about saving money.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The Elections Project notes that there were 251,107,404 people who classify as members of the voting-age population, therefore 115,449,897 of the voting-age population (or 46.3 percent) did not vote.
So 251 million voters, but only 63 million voted for Trump.
Trump: 62,979,636 (46.1%)
Looks like I way overestimated, you only need 25% of people to vote for you to win.
Mod these facts down too if you like.
Everyone knows it's not true if you can hide it, and your snowflake feelings won't get hurt.