Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 07/21/2008 9:28:27 AM PDT by Abathar
Scientists say they have found a workable way of reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere by adding lime to seawater. And they think it has the potential to dramatically reverse CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere, reports Cath O'Driscoll in SCI's Chemistry & Industry magazine published today.
Shell is so impressed with the new approach that it is funding an investigation into its economic feasibility. 'We think it's a promising idea,' says Shell's Gilles Bertherin, a coordinator on the project. 'There are potentially huge environmental benefits from addressing climate change – and adding calcium hydroxide to seawater will also mitigate the effects of ocean acidification, so it should have a positive impact on the marine environment.'
Adding lime to seawater increases alkalinity, boosting seawater's ability to absorb CO2 from air and reducing the tendency to release it back again.
However, the idea, which has been bandied about for years, was thought unworkable because of the expense of obtaining lime from limestone and the amount of CO2 released in the process.
Tim Kruger, a management consultant at London firm Corven is the brains behind the plan to resurrect the lime process. He argues that it could be made workable by locating it in regions that have a combination of low-cost 'stranded' energy considered too remote to be economically viable to exploit – like flared natural gas or solar energy in deserts – and that are rich in limestone, making it feasible for calcination to take place on site.
Kruger says: 'There are many such places – for example, Australia's Nullarbor Plain would be a prime location for this process, as it has 10 000km3 of limestone and soaks up roughly 20MJ/m2 of solar irradiation every day.'
The process of making lime generates CO2, but adding the lime to seawater absorbs almost twice as much CO2. The overall process is therefore 'carbon negative'.
'This process has the potential to reverse the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. It would be possible to reduce CO2 to pre-industrial levels,' Kruger says.
And Professor Klaus Lackner, a researcher in the field from Columbia University, says: 'The theoretical CO2 balance is roughly right…it is certainly worth thinking through carefully.'
The oceans are already the world's largest carbon sink, absorbing 2bn tonnes of carbon every year. Increasing absorption ability by just a few percent could dramatically increase CO2 uptake from the atmosphere.
The primary evidence that CO2 and the greenhouse effect have anything to do with raising global temperature is missing entirely. It isn't there.
No Smoking Hot Spot (The Australian)
That is a short and easily understandable article showing the plain truth. The hinge pin that links global temperature to the greenhouse effect is missing. It is easily measurable and hundreds of probes have done so.
Just down 37 from me, I’m in Martinsville.
Plenty of clay here if they need that...
Cut back on CO2 then what are the plants goin breathe to make oxygen, hmmmm???
Coal fired power plants already use lime in their scrubbers. This produces a synthetic form of gypsum (CaS04*2H2O). This used to be a waste product, but gypsum companies have increasingly been using this “waste” product to make Sheetrock. In fact my company uses syngyp from coal fired power plants almost exclusively in the eastern US. In the Midwest, and the west, they still primarily rely upon mines and quaries. So if you live in the eastern US, there is a good chance that the walls of your office or house are made from the byproducts of scrubbing power plant exhaust.
Plant more plants!
Oh, no no no no no, save the world by killing all life in the ocean? Bad idea. Bad bad idea. These people claim to be ecologists? See tagline
Damn tree-hugger! ;-)
Something seems funny here. In the 299 years since 1700, we gained 188GT of carbon compounds in the atmosphere. That is an increase of .6287 Gt/Year.
Yet we are now gaining an order of magnitude faster than that in the present, implicitly since 1999.
It will depend on how much is methane and C=O to figure out what to blame it on.
I would tend to suspect the Gas Chromatograph they used in 1700. -Mild questioning sarcasm,( thinking of leather bellows and powder horns charged with quicklime), but not much. Atmosphere recoveries from Civil War Uniform buttons and ice cores should be questioned because of different gas reactivities and diffusion rates, solubilities, etc., and that a tiny amount of the C14 isotope would have been converted to N in that time.
Tinkering with the ocean's pH level (which is what they're talking about) is VERY MUCH GUARANTEED to have a whole bunch of bad consequences for a large number of oceanic life forms
My God, what idiots.
Starting with the premise that human “error” has mucked up the atmosphere with “too much CO2” (if you buy that false premise) we are now to trust human arrogance and hubris in the escapade to artificially, massively and DELIBERATELY intervene in earth’s biosphere (play God) as if we know with total certainty (we don’t) that we are NOT embarked on a “cure” that will have unforeseen consequences worse than the “illness”.
The natural earth history shows there is in fact no such “natural balance” of CO2 in the “air” portion of earth’s biosphere.
There has been greater levels of CO2 (in the “air”), at some times, when the earth’s “temperature” has been lower and there has been lower levels of CO2, at some times, when the earth’s temperature has been higher - and vice-a-versa. The natural record indicates no implied CO2 “balance” and in terms of earth “temperature” changes the changes in CO2 levels have been trailing indicators, not leading indicators. CO2 may be a factor in earth’s layer of insulation, but, just like your house, the insulation does not drive the source of the heating and cooling cycle - the sun.
Put a lime in it? You're such a silly woman!!!!
Brother bought a coconut, he bought it for a dime
His sister had another, she paid it for a lime.
She put the lime in the coconut, and drank them both up
She put the lime in the coconut, and drank them both up
She put the lime in the coconut,
Called the doctor, woke him up, and said,
"Doctor, ain't there nothin' I can take,
I say, Doctor, to relieve this belly ache?
I say, Doctor, ain't there nothin' I can take,
I say, Doctor, to relieve this belly ache?"
"Now let me get this straight;
You put the lime in the coconut, you drank them both up
You put the lime in the coconut, you drank them both up
You put the lime in the coconut,
called your doctor, woke him up, and said,
'Doctor, ain't there nothing I can take, I say, Doctor, to relieve this belly ache?
I say, Doctor, ain't there nothin' I can take,
I say, Doctor, to relieve this belly ache?'
You put the lime in the coconut, and drink them both down,
You put the lime in the cocount, you're such a silly woman!
Put the lime in the coconut, and drink them both together,
Put the lime in the coconut, and call me in the morning."
“One useful definition of insanity might be: searching for solutions to non-problems.”
You’re looking at it the wrong way. Think millions in grant money from the taxpayers for unending studies, hundreds of very scholarly papers to prestigious science journals, doctoral thesis out the wazoo. This could put food in the mouths of countless starving grad students.
The law of unintended consquences comes to mind.
How much sea life do they plan on killing in the process?
maybe just try it around a few major cities. Like LA, they got nothing to lose. =)
Not needed because- CO2 IS NOT A POLLUTANT!!!
CO2 DOES NOT CAUSE "GLOBAL WARMING"!!!
Co2 is PLANT FOOD!!! The more the better. Man made co2 represents .01% of the 600 or so parts per million- that's 6 PARTS PER MILLION PARTS of other stuff.!
Again, CO2 does not cause Gore Bull warming, and man made co2 even less so.
I have that problem when I refill my pool in the spring. But it isn't from rainwater, it's from the high calcium levels in my well water. Huge limestone deposits around here dissolve calcium in the water due to A) pressure and B) the cool temperature of the water. When it warms up it precipitates out.
Wouldn't burning high sulfur content coal in coal fired electric plants accomplish that? It also causes acid rain, dissolving all the limestone works in Europe.
It’s a lot easier to increase the absorbtion of CO2 through the oceans, and through planting more trees and vegetation, than it would be to try to reduce our USE of it.
IN the past, we understood that we had a natural solar energy cycle. We plant trees, they grow absorbing energy from the sun, we burn the trees releasing that energy in ways that is useful to us, we plant more trees, they absorb the C02 we gave off by burning the previous trees.
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