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Scientists Push For Government Research Program Focused On Sucking Carbon From Air
In a 369-page report, the nation's leading scientific body (consisting of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine) is urging the federal government to begin a research program focused on developing technologies that can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to help slow climate change. It is now believed that in order to avoid significant further warming of the planet, big chunks of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may need to be removed. The New York Times reports: The panel's members conceded that the Trump administration may not find the climate change argument all that compelling, since the president has disavowed the Paris Agreement. But, Dr. Pacala said, it's quite likely that other countries will be interested in carbon removal. The United States could take a leading role in developing technologies that could one day be worth many billions of dollars.
Right now, there are plenty of ideas for carbon removal kicking around. Countries could plant more trees that pull carbon dioxide out of the air and lock it in their wood. Farmers could adopt techniques, such as no-till agriculture, that would keep more carbon trapped in the soil. A few companies are building "direct air capture" plants that use chemical agents to scrub trace amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, allowing them to sell the gas to industrial customers or bury it underground. But, the National Academies panel warned, many of these methods are still unproven or face serious limitations. There's only so much land available to plant new trees. Scientists are still unsure how much carbon can realistically be stored in agricultural soils. And direct air capture plants are still too expensive for mass deployment. One solution that the National Academies panel recommended was for the United States to set up programs to start testing and deploying carbon removal methods that look ready to go, such as negative emissions biomass plants, new forest management techniques or carbon farming programs.
"At the same time, federal agencies would need to fund research into early-stage carbon removal techniques, to explore whether they may one day be ready for widespread use," reports the NYT.
Right now, there are plenty of ideas for carbon removal kicking around. Countries could plant more trees that pull carbon dioxide out of the air and lock it in their wood. Farmers could adopt techniques, such as no-till agriculture, that would keep more carbon trapped in the soil. A few companies are building "direct air capture" plants that use chemical agents to scrub trace amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, allowing them to sell the gas to industrial customers or bury it underground. But, the National Academies panel warned, many of these methods are still unproven or face serious limitations. There's only so much land available to plant new trees. Scientists are still unsure how much carbon can realistically be stored in agricultural soils. And direct air capture plants are still too expensive for mass deployment. One solution that the National Academies panel recommended was for the United States to set up programs to start testing and deploying carbon removal methods that look ready to go, such as negative emissions biomass plants, new forest management techniques or carbon farming programs.
"At the same time, federal agencies would need to fund research into early-stage carbon removal techniques, to explore whether they may one day be ready for widespread use," reports the NYT.
Mmmm so to trap a negligible fraction of the carbon we release, we should massively multiply herbicide usage, and make sure that it never drains away because no till reduces soil erosion and drainage...
I'm ready for the smooth buttery acidic taste of glyphosate raisin crunch cereal, are you?
There are these things called "trees". They take carbon from the air.
How Do Trees Turn Carbon Dioxide into Oxygen? (April 5, 2018 )
Now cutting down the Amazon and other forrests has NOTHING to to with global warming: Discuss.
It allows trees to grow faster and with less water usage.
http://co2coalition.org/
That's probably why total plant life on earth has increased by 14% in the past 30 years:
https://i.imgsafe.org/35/352a2...
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Renewable energy, such as off peak wind & solar could be used to to make hydrocarbon fuel from water and carbon dioxide. It would be carbon neutral and replace our dependency on mineral hydrocarbon fuel. Longer term we could remove atmospheric CO2.
Research plants for this are emerging now.
You could keep your gas guzzlers and air travel and still be environmental, a win all around in my book.
This is a far better solution than EV vehicles, we already have the infrastructure and would not require expensive batteries made from rare earth minerals.
Well done people you win, this is a perfect example of really dumb smart people, well done.
Please, note that even after a forest fire the significant part of trees, the root system, remains intact underground. So trees reduce the CO2 even in areas with forest fires. Trees' roots are also built from CO2 through the photosynthesis.
So a while ago I had the idea of removing CO2 by freezing it IN ANTARCTICA. See the freezing temperature of CO2 is about -80C whereas the Antarctic winter is about -60C. So there's only a difference of about 20C (which is less than what your home refrigerator does). This would drastically reduce the energy (and cost) of removing CO2 and that isn't even without using newer technologies like that "cheap film that reduces whatever it touches by up to 10C" (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/cheap-plastic-film-cools-whatever-it-touches-10-c).
I'm not sure of the other methods but they seem to involve 1) large amounts of expensive chemicals 2) storing the extracted CO2 in pressurized underground facilities (and keeping it there). This doesn't sound cheap.
Of course after a quick search, I found out that I wasn't the first person to think of this. There have been several studies on this, one by the chair of the climate department of Purdue University. That study even pointed out various locations on Antarctica where the cold, strong winds flowing from the interior would not only bring chilled air but would provide (wind) power to drive the refrigerators.
One thing they didn't (in my opinion) have a good solution for was where to put the CO2. They proposed to bury it which seemed to be problematic at best. Not just because excavating enough room for several billion (hopefully) tons of CO2 a year in the rock hard frozen permafrost would be difficult but because they would have to keep it cold for forever(?). Insulation and the sheer size of the amount buried would slow the sublimation process but still they'd have to monitor it for perhaps centuries!
So I suggested something else. Why not dump it into the DEEP ocean? Below a thousand meters, the pressure would be great enough to keep the CO2 from becoming gaseous again (it would change, over time, to liquid CO2) even at 0C (the temperature of the antarctic seas). Better yet, both solid and liquid CO2 are denser than sea water so it would sink to the bottom AND STAY THERE. Finally, after looking at some bathymetric plots of the Antarctic seas, I found some locations where the "deep" ocean was relatively close to shore; like a few kilometers and not hundreds of kilometers. A few were even at the same spots that the Purdue climatologists recommended. So at these locations after it was frozen, either short range vessels could transport the CO2 and dump it overboard or perhaps even a pipeline or conveyor belt of some sort. (Again, while they would sublimate/evaporate on the way down to the thousand meter threshold, losses wouldn't be so great considering the gigantic quantities involved and because the loss is based on the surface area of the CO2 ice whereas the amount transported goes up with the volume).
I sent this proposal to the chair of the climate department and he said the idea had merit! Of course he wondered about the environmental impact like ocean acidification of several billion tons of CO2 being dumped into the abyss. While I too am concerned about this, you should realize that on a planetary scale this may not be a problem. Assuming that the CO2 is as dense as water (it's denser) a billion tons of it is a cubic kilometers. Well the oceans around Antarctica are kilometers deep and thousands of kilometers in extent. So the CO2 would "likely" only affect a small portion of the seas (and remember, it would be "locked up" in liquid form). Still, I agree, more research needs to be done.
Obviously the best solution would be not to put the CO2 in the atmosphere to begin with but with science challenged Republicans running the country they are ruining any chance of the U.S. dramatically slowing emissions (and giving cover to other nations to procrastinate. So much for American leadership). In that case, I humbly suggest a serious examination be made of the proposal of CO2 freezing in Antarctica with deep sea disposal.
Celebrate our coal miners and the industrial revolution, lets get people achieving great things again and going home at the end of the day with a sense of achievement, while lifting the world out of poverty, we can do that while caring for the planet, but it's time we call bullshit on GWT. If gravity didn't adiabatically compress our atmosphere and was not responsible for the observed greenhouse effect and GWT was right, there wouldn't be snow on mountains, as they're closer to the sun and that hot CO2 blanket.
Sorry chaps, it's not science look up Popper.
Only weeks ago, the most alarming IPCC report ever was published, stating that very drastic measures, at a planetary scale, are necessary in a very short time frame, to keep global warming at less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. In the Neherlands, in the wake of this report, environmental ngos scoffed at corporations advocating exactly this approach, as it would, they fear, give them a blank check to keep polluting and not do anything about the root of the climate change problem: emisison of CO2. And although I would advocate the measure (and developing the technology for sure would be a cool thing), I do indeed see a problem here. Relying on CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) could make entire societies dependent upon it, a bit like taking fentany for a toothache, instead of doing the sensible thing and going to the dentist. Donella Meadows, in her seminal book "Thinking in Systems", names this as one of the classical "system traps".
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Like most problems, it will go away if you just wait long enough.
Thanks to the weathering of silicates, atmospheric carbon is slowly being absorbed over geological time.
Finally, a government program that doesn't suck!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... plant can remove trichloroethylene, benzene, formaldehyde, ammonia, and other chemicals from the air as per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
All carbon in limestone, marble and coal on this planet originate from the atmosphere, which once consisted of 95% CO2, similar to Venus and Mars, nature will continue to remove this now depleted trace gas from the atmosphere until eventually none will remain, life that survives will not be green. LET'S just leave it alone please.
When I got my Ph.D. in Geology, we had to take three public policy classes that taught just one thing and one thing only: how to suck money out of government. One of the three classes was devoted to the ethics of taking money to do research. Of course this class was purely political indoctrination that taught that only government money could avoid creating bias, only government money was ethical, private sector money was evil, blah blah blah.
Of course, if you think government money does not have strings tied to it, you don't deserve to be in a Ph.D. program, because you're a moron. In fact, government money not only has strings, but ropes and chains, and there's a nice jail cell in there called the "political blacklist" that your name gets dropped into if you do not toe the government line in your research.
I speak all of this from experience - having gone from a reasonably well-published atmospheric researcher to a high school teacher (at a private high school since I cannot get a job in the public sector), all because I refused to give my government benefactor the results they wanted.
I know everyone is joking about trees, but a much more effective way, according to many researchers including this guy, are by restoring grasslands.
If we covered the entire surface of the USA with trees, it'd hide away just 10% of all the CO2 we put into the atmosphere... ...for ONE year. How are we going to cover the entire surface of the USA with trees ten times over, -- per year?
Tree decomposition times: 15 years for fine roots, 100 years for bark, 120 years for branches, 500 years for 2' diameter trunks. Forest fires can cause it all to go up immediately. (source)
So trees aren't a viable answer. They can only be PART of a solution -- and likely a small part as well.
And you believed them without any proof or clinical trial studies.
Yeah ok.
According to wikipedia, extracting CO2 from seawater is an order of magnitude cheaper than doing so directly from the air.
Makes it humongous scale algae production. Algae oil can easily be used as diesel fuel and can also be turned into a petrol like product.
Portland cement is made from limestone (primarily calcium carbonate) in a process that emits CO2, and slowly converts back over time by absorbing atmospheric CO2. If you can make cement production near-CO2-neutral with carbon capture and storage, everything built out of concrete will turn into net absorbers that suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Nobody pushes buttons like our bunny. Big red buttons with labels that say "IGNITION", apparently.
Maybe it's more effective, isn't it?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
...focused on keeping them employed for a lifetime.
Stupid Gits like you are the model for the NPC Meme.
10 If Source believes that humans cause climate change Goto 30
20 Print "He's a nutcase."
30 Print "I'm going to believe him"
40 End
Why are you repeating things from the summary, and act like you somehow oppose what is said in the summary?
I truly wonder what goes on in the minds of people like you... That must be considered some form of mental disability.
How CO2 Could Be The Future Of Fuel | VICE on HBO
Anyone know how accurate this report is?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Oh wait, something being a bad idea does NOT mean there's necessarily a good alternative available at all!
Maybe, if there is simply no option to keep going, what we need to do, is fucking stop going!
Instead of demanding that anyone who warns us of the impending crash into the wall should also tell us how to magically not do that, while we keep going at 200mph and accelerating at the wall. No, there is no alternative route! Because you chose to want to keep moving towards the wall! What you need is none of the above, and to use the damn BRAKES!
[citation required]
Scientists push for government research program that would need to employ lots more scientists...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
There's no research grants to be had for it. People can plant them on their own and there's no central point to control the supply from.
Sorry this whole plant a seed and let it suck CO2 out of the air idea just doesn't grease any palms (well unless it's a coconut plam)
of an early prototype
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Scientists Push for Sucking Money from the Public Till.
We are going on the dream of some piece of technology that will solve all our problems.
There isn't any.
This isn't fatalism, there are things we can do make the world better, but there will always need to be work around it.
Global Warming, and Water Quality seem to be the big environment problem. So effort in those areas can solve the problems, but make others worse. However if we fix those issues, we can re-adjust and focus on the problems these cause before they become unmanageable, then we may need to go back to the original problem or to others.
Complex problems needs complex solutions, and there isn't a number that you can dial that is just right, it needs to always be in motion.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
They'll just be replaced, like the teeth of this corporate oligarchy shark.
What you need, is to kill the shark! Which requires a change in mindset, so drastically, that "job creator" becomes an offensive insult! That "profit" (as opposed to earned money... from actually doing work) becomes a straight-up crime.
And then, to turn the USA into the world's first (actual) democracy since the ancient Greek times, so you get an actual government. (Because what you despise so much right now, couldn't be further from that. A government is a good thing. This, right now, isn't either of those.)
Global Warming has 2 causes; NOT ONE!!!
First cause is the burning of fossil fuels & the second cause is the destruction/reduction of forests of the Earth!!!
Also, forests are more effective against Global Warming than ANY OTHER METHOD, & BY FAR!!!
(I am sure some climate scientists easily can verify/confirm this is true!!!)
Forests are a ready to use & proven & scale-able method/solution TODAY; unlike any other methods proposed & still researched!!!
What exactly needs to be done?
A GLOBAL UN AGREEMENT TO RESTORE FORESTS OF EARTH!!!
Which country needs to plant/create how much new forest areas (& by when exactly) need to be determined/agreed first!!!
Also, all new forest need to be created to be LONG TERM!
Meaning, a few teenagers playing w/ fireworks shouldn't be able to easily burn down a whole forest!!!
All new forests need to be created in a well planned way that is extremely resistant against any wildfires going out of control!
(And I think today there are known forest management methods which could achieve that!)
Also, tree types for each new forest should be selected well, to be useful for multiple purposes!
(For example, which trees have more dense/strong/durable wood?)
(Or, imagine growing trees that has kind of wood that does not float in water, so excess wood can be dumped into ocean, in the future, if ever needed!)
It's got CO2 that plants crave
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If we covered the entire surface of the USA with trees, it'd hide away just 10% of all the CO2 we put into the atmosphere... ...for ONE year.
Mature trees sequester more carbon than young ones, because they are so much larger and they don't just stop growing. You have this ass-backwards. Trees sequester carbon every year.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"...big chunks of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may need to be removed."
I keep bumping into them, it's really annoying.
>in order to avoid significant further warming of the planet, big chunks of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may need to be removed.
If all they need to do is remove the big chunks, couldn't they just use nets or something?
This sig has exceed its monthly bandwidth allotment.
Trees sequester carbon every year.
Until they die, fall down and rot.
The only credit trees should get for carbon sequestration is the weight of the carbon removed from forests on logging trucks.
Have gnu, will travel.
This sounds like an attempt to focus people's attention on wrongheaded approaches and debates to demotivate them and prevent any real change. There's lots of effective measures we can take right now to mitigate climate change. The obstacles are political rather than technological.
If you examine crude oil pumped straight from the ground you'll find the fossilized single-cell plants that produced the oil - algae and related diatoms. The slow, natural processes involving pressure and heat that convert this natural vegetable oil from everything between natural gas to heavy crude just contaminates the feedstock with nasties from the ground (arsenic, cadmium, etc) and makes processing into usable products more expensive and environmentally polluting. So your idea has great merit.
Under the Carter administration, as a result of the politicalization of middle-east oil and the subsequent embargo and US oil crisis, a program was initiated to do just what you propose - the massive, large-scale biological production of oil using algae. This program was called the Aquatic Species Program..
The program started by identifying and isolating strains of algae that were the most efficient oil producers, then setting up a pilot-scale plant. The challenges were that these strains of algae were easily taken over by more dominant, less efficient strains, so open-air ponds were problematic. More elaborate infrastructure to isolate the algae while exposure to sunlight have been proposed and tested on a small scale by others.
The most problematic aspect of this program was that it was political in nature. As soon as the Saudis/OPEC called off the oil embargo all political will to spend money on such a scheme evaporated, along with the Carter administration's energy independence initiatives. Reagan began dismantling and de-funding Carter's programs almost immediately upon entering office.
Solar PV in the 70's was an expensive side-show with future potential, at best. What was immediately available at that time and somewhat economical was solar thermal. In a bizarre and sad twist of fate, the solar thermal panels that once sat atop the United States White House now reside in a museum in China.
Sequestering CO2 probably won't get much serious attention from the US government until the 'politics' of global warming get personal - i.e. when sea levels rise by a few meters, which would put much of Washington DC under water. The Lincoln Memorial is currently 4 meters above sea level. The White House is approximately 15 meters above sea level. The ground level of Trump Tower in NY is at 18 meters above sea level. Currently.
Source: https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/vie...
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
This government has 'an instinct for science.'
It will suggest that 'when you take the coal and clean it' as POTUS has said, you could just remove the carbon from the coal before burning it. That way it can't bind to the oxygen.
Easy as pie.
Just ask a stable genius, duh!
... so this is a good focus :)
The same group that is pushing this, is the same group of ppl that push for utility solar grids that go over land.
Instead, if they would put the solar on rooftops or over parking lots, it would take sunlight that is today converted into heat, and convert it into electricity.
Yet, the far left will push the lot thing while at the same time, ignoring the fact that they are also saying to use that same land for plants.
Far right and left extremists are total idiots.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Probably we need to plant more trees and prohibit to mown grass?
Let's hope they build these huge carbon sucking machines in cities so that when all of the nearby parks and trees die, the message sinks in before any real damage is done. Because plants grow bigger when there's more CO2 around and they grow smaller or die when there's not enough CO2, building these machines in the countryside would be a good way to risk a famine.
... the scientists are volunteering to personally fund this, no doubt !!
It's all well and good for researchers to think about the problem, and make calls for action and funding of solutions. Nothing is going to actually happen until it becomes a real problem that's undeniable to nearly the entire planet. In the past, humanity was able to do things like agree to limit fluorocarbons for the greater good, but a lot of that sort of cooperation has died. At least for the time being. The bar for action on climate change is currently very, very high.
A slight rise in temperature isn't real enough.
A slight increase in storm severity isn't enough.
The loss of one or two major breadbasket regions isn't enough. Food production will just shift around.
Anything that happens in a poor country isn't enough, including starvation. Poor people simply don't count to those in power.
Any effect that is limited to the coasts isn't enough. People will just move.
Any extinctions short of full ecological collapse isn't enough. Most people don't care about critters beyond eating them.
Anything that is limited to the arctic isn't enough. Nobody lives there.
Mass migrations from poor countries won't be enough. Rich countries will just put up barriers and allow populations to die.
Things that will eventually force humanity to deal with the problem:
Costal or storm-related destruction that renders entire cities in the rich world uninhabitable. That level of economic damage won't be deniable.
The full loss of enough major food-producing regions to affect the dinner tables of people in the rich world.
A thick band of desert across the equator of the planet. The starkness of an image like that *might* convince enough people to act.
Haven't read the article, but do we seriously need this? Aren't there more efficient ways of getting carbon than trying to suck it out of the air? Has carbon gotten so rare?
How can smart people be so dumb?
Don't you know if there is too much oxygen in the air that you will create another snow ball Earth and kill everything on the planet.
O, that is right you only look at the last hundred years in Earth environment history to get you information.
Trees sequester carbon every year.
Until they die, fall down and rot.
Even then, a portion of their carbon winds up in the soil. In fact, that's true even when they burn.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
wrap your lips around my precious butthole and such every last bit of of carbon out into your mouth, you hockey stick graph loving tea-baggers
Yeah we already know the other thing they need is ELECTROLYTES and what has those?
Fucking Brawndo.
Piss of faaaaaag!
Go ahead, build your tech and suck out the CO2 as much as you can. I should think Steyer and perhaps Greenpeace could pool their resources if they really believe it's important. "Deeds not words" was one of the mottos of my clan, back in the day.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
nt
Scientists Push for More Money
This is why we can't have nice things. This isn't about science or politics, it's about individuals asking for funding so they don't have to find another job.
"... replace the Sahara with forest."
Interesting.
But there is a mistake in the thinking. To put forest in the Sahara, there must be lots of water. If there is a lot of water, there will be a lot of evaporation. The evaporation will create clouds in the sky.
Clouds reflect sunlight out into space, very efficiently.