Posted on 05/31/2008 4:05:10 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Scientists say they have invented a machine that can suck carbon dioxide out of the air – potentially creating a vital weapon in the war against global warming.
The blueprint for the CO2 'scrubber' raises the prospect of a generation of machines which would help reduce the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere by the use of fossil fuels.
The team of US scientists now plans to build a prototype which would capture one tonne of CO2 from the air every day.
Though the idea is considered a holy grail in the battle against climate change – and Sir Richard Branson has put up £12.6 million for anyone who makes it a reality – the machines would fall far short of a quick fix.
The prototype, being built at a laboratory in Tucson, Arizona, by a company called Global Research Technologies, will cost about £100,000 and take about two years to construct.
The devices – each nearly the size of a shipping container - would have to be produced in their millions to soak up human carbon emissions.
The idea is bound to be controversial, with environmentalists seeing so-called technological solutions to global warming as undermining attempts to promote greener lifestyles and industries.
But physicist Klaus Lackner, who led the U.S. team behind the invention, said the CO2 scrubber offered more hope than current efforts to cut carbon emissions by reducing fossil fuel use.
' I'd rather have a technology that allows us to use fossil fuels without destroying the planet, because people are going to use them anyway,' he said.
Scientists say it is not difficult to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by absorbing it in various chemical filters. But the problem has been how to clean those filters of CO2 so they can then be reused to carry on the job.
Professor Lackner, of New York's Columbia University, says the solution lies in a newly discovered property of absorbent plastic sheets known as 'ion exchange membranes' which are routinely used to purify water.
It turns out that humid air can make these membranes 'exhale' the CO2 they have trapped – leaving them clean and ready to absorb another load.
The Lackner team says the captured carbon dioxide could then be pumped into greenhouses to boost plant growth.
What is the cost????
(I'm sure Sir Richard will be awarding that prize money to the Pope now, right?)
There’s already a machine that can remove carbon dioxide from the air. It’s called a tree.
Or we could just leave it in the atmosphere...also to promote plant growth.
BTW My oldest son and I were kicking around the idea of making a video of someone holding a tree "hostage" and telling the greenies that unless they send us money we'll torch the tree.
We'll use a propane torch to make the tree "scream" and wait for the bucks to roll in. Could even have the greenies do a rescue effort but they'd be too stupid to know how to dig the tree up and transplant it.
Might be worth a few bucks on Break.com.
prisoner6
Yes, but... Once we remove all the CO2 from the air what will your tree breath then! Or the rest of the plant life for that matter.
You beat me to it.
"Commence Operation 'Vacusuck'!"
Here the green weenies tip their hand, yet again. It is not about global warming. It is about control. They want to require greener lifestyles and industries, which will be defined however they want to define them, and the global warming myth is the club they are going to use.
That's a lot of greenhouses! How about the energy needed to produce all that glass?
..reminds me, anyone interested in buying a sealed bucket of ozone?
The Pope makes trees? I’d never have guessed!
Of course, such a direct solution to a non-problem totally removes the need for the draconian measures that the socialists want. A device like this is their worst nightmare. They will fight it like the plague - proving to all that they really have no interest in the environment (or they don't really believe the Global Warming BS themselves.)
Possibly because the alternative is, it works all too well, and then the VGWC (that's Vast Global Warming Conspiracy ;-)) would have nothing much to complain about -- or to dream up their little international socialist schemes over?
They simply couldn't allow capitalist enterprises to call their bluff...
Ya gotta love how liberal girlymen ALWAYS latch on to "manly" terms to describe things they are doing or farting around with.
Isn’t it a heck of a lot easier to pull carbon out of an exhaust stream at the point of generation, when it might be 5% or more by volume, than to pull it out of the general atmosphere, where it is 0.03%, at most?
My yard is full of machines that suck CO2 out of the air....
They're called Oak Trees; and the little ones are called blades of grass.
Oh, I know... electricity. We'll jut plug them in to the magic sockets on the wall, where the energy just magically appears...
Hah!
And when plants start dying...what do we do...pump it back??
Yes, it's called pagan environmentalism, a form of Hinduism, AKA the Death Culture.
Plants have been reinvented?
These folks should be embarrassed. What nonsense.
1) CO2 has not really been proven to cause global warming. It follows temperature increases on the earth, it doesn't precede them.
2) Plants are good at absorbing CO2 and converting it to hydrocarbons. Why not plant more plants?
3) Has anyone done the calculations to see how many of these devices they would have to build, how they would compress and transport the CO2 to greenhouses, how many air-tight greenhouses they would have to build?
The engineering challenges would be mind-boggling, and the costs would be also. And what about the CO2 generated by energy used to compress the CO2? What nonsense.
What does it matter how much it costs? It will be altogether ineffective anyway, not even able to keep up with a field of corn during the month of July, where if you listen closely, you can literally hear the crop growing, as the nodes elongate in discrete bursts.
The goal here is to drizzle away as much money as possible so it is not available for any productive purpose. The very opposite of the concept of capitalism.
Couldn’t it actually do harm to the Earth and many species of plants and crops to remove a large amount of CO2 from the atmosphere? These hoaxsters are going to be the end of us all.
Then we'll have mandatory SUV driving.
Which goes to prove that Socialism and state control are their true motivation.
Gen 3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. The Pope was nowhere to be found !!
Two comments:
1. When are they going to do something about all the dihydrogen oxide in the air? Don’t they realize how many people die due to elevated levels of dihydrogen oxide at high temperature?
2. How much coal will it take to produce the energy to run the CO2 scrubber?
SO2 scrubbers have been around for a long time.
See post# 3. “(I’m sure Sir Richard will be awarding that prize money to the Pope now, right?)”
Yep.
Plant more trees. Natural CO2 scrubers.
Oooops - too easy and too cheap.
The trees won’t be happy.
SAVE THE TREES!!!
If changing the climate of a planet is this easy, let’s get cracking on Mars.
It’s a great idea: Fight junk science with junk science.
Even more to the point: its all about the $$. What the Greenies really want is all that carbon tax revenue. And ain’t no machine gonna stand in the way of that!
As big as a shipping container? Who the heck (say, Ted Kennedy) is gonna want to spoil his view with a gang of these contraptions just to save the planet?
This just proves these people just want to tell us how to live, what to eat, how far to travel, and how to get there.
This is what LEED construction rules are all about, "solutions" to a non-problem.
Why do I get the feeling that Al Gore will buy his own personal carbon sucking macine to justify his carbon sucking lifestyle?
My question for this new device is - how are they going to power it? Build lots of solar or build more nukes?
Soounds like a machine to suck money out of wallets
Cheers!
Yeah, how much diesel does it take to run it?
This is the kind of thing that will lead science away from global warming. The cost of such machines will outweigh the grants.
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