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Scientists Find Way To Make Mineral Which Can Remove CO2 From Atmosphere (phys.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Scientists have found a rapid way of producing magnesite, a mineral which stores carbon dioxide. If this can be developed to an industrial scale, it opens the door to removing CO2 from the atmosphere for long-term storage, thus countering the global warming effect of atmospheric CO2. This work is presented at the Goldschmidt conference in Boston. Now, for the first time, researchers have explained how magnesite forms at low temperature, and offered a route to dramatically accelerating its crystallization. A tonne of naturally-occurring magnesite can remove around half a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere, but the rate of formation is very slow. The researchers were able to show that by using polystyrene microspheres as a catalyst, magnesite would form within 72 days. The microspheres themselves are unchanged by the production process, so they can ideally be reused. Project leader, Professor Ian Power from Trent University in Ontario added: "Using microspheres means that we were able to speed up magnesite formation by orders of magnitude. This process takes place at room temperature, meaning that magnesite production is extremely energy efficient. For now, we recognize that this is an experimental process, and will need to be scaled up before we can be sure that magnesite can be used in carbon sequestration (taking CO2 from the atmosphere and permanently storing it as magnesite). This depends on several variables, including the price of carbon and the refinement of the sequestration technology, but we now know that the science makes it do-able."
Whetherthis works or something as-yet-invented works, THIS is how potentially significant problems are solved. From the population bomb to the threat of mass starvation, it has never been social engineering, but real engineering which has made a positive difference.
https://www.amazon.com/Bet-Ehrlich-Julian-Gamble-Earths/dp/0300198973/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1534338700&sr=8-6&keywords=the+bet
https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/paul-ehrlich-was-wrong-julian-simon-was-right-and-won-the-bet/
http://dailycaller.com/2016/04/22/7-enviro-predictions-from-earth-day-1970-that-were-just-dead-wrong/
Prohibition, punishment, moral posturing, prudish public policies lead to unintended disasters and plutocratic expansion into our lives.
Take a lesson. Technology solves the problems it creates for the same reason it creates them in the first placen because technologically savvy people want to hange the state of the world.
"...thus countering the global warming effect of atmospheric CO2..." which is negligible compared to the warming effect of Methane, and even more negligible compared to the warming effect of water vapor.
Find a way to rapidly remove water vapor from the atmosphere and you may finally be onto something. The greenhouse effect of water vapor is 10,000 times stronger than the greenhouse effect of CO2, at current levels for each. Reducing water vapor by 1% would have 100 times the effect of removing ALL of the CO2 from the atmosphere (which is not to say we shouldn't try to remove all the CO2 from the atmosphere, because that would still be something).
A large industrial chiller hooked up to a nuclear power plant could drain literally hundreds of tons per day of water vapor from the atmosphere. At that rate it would take perhaps just a few years to remove 1% of the water vapor from the atmosphere, with the added benefit of creating potable water for underserved or neglected populations (for example Flint Michigan, which does not have safe water to drink) or even man-made lakes for recreation.
Build 100 nuke plants with these chillers and for 1/4 of one year of the US national budget you could solve global warming in a decade. I honestly don't know why nobody has proposed this, but it probably has something to do with right wing special interests like the Koch Brothers or others who have weaponized global warming against the poor (who are at the greatest disadvantage and have the most to lose as temperatures increase).
The trouble is that trees store carbon far, far slower than we dig it up. You cannot stabilize CO2 levels on human-relevant timescales with trees alone, artificial CO2 sequestration is absolutely necessary.
Yes, I agree, the only problem is that whenever I hear about "solutions" by artificial sequestration of CO2 I rarely hear how much CO2 will be produced by manufacturing and deploying these "solutions" or impact on other human activities (e.g. food production in case of distributing reflective substances in upper atmosphere).