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It's nice that we're looking to alternative ways to capture and store atmospheric CO2, but at time it also does look like we're working too hard to replicate a
by VeejayRampay 10y ago
It's nice that we're looking to alternative ways to capture and store atmospheric CO2, but at time it also does look like we're working too hard to replicate a system that does that already (and has for a long time): plants.
Or does it mean that the time of planting trees and preserving forests is over now and we have to do it another (most often less efficient) way?
- jjawssd 10y agoI thought algae was far more efficient than plants?
- TheAdamAndChe 10y agoIt is, but where would you get the nutrients needed to grow the algae at a scale needed to offset global climate change?
- jjawssd 10y agoHow about (farm) waste water runoff?
- ChuckMcM 10y agoThis has been suggested before. Scale is still hard. I read an article in the UC Davis algae magazine (http://www.algaeindustrymagazine.com/department/education/west/uc-davis/ http://www.algaeindustrymagazine.com/department/education/we...) a while ago that talked about flooding a fairly large acre (hectare) parcel with water, growing a layer of algae on it, then burying the algae. (process flood, algae mat grows, drain/evaporate, and plow it all under, then repeat.) The algae decomposition process releases methane (worse than CO2).
- jjawssd 10y ago> The algae decomposition process releases methane (worse than CO2). Under what conditions does this happen?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bluGill 10y agoonly if we cannot capture methane. If we can capture it, we can run it through an engine and get the energy back. Most landfills are already doing this: it adds some extra profit to the bottom line. I have no idea if this stores any carbon anymore though.
- ramblenode 10y agoThere is research being done on iron seeding/fertilization of barren ocean waters [0]. In such places, iron is the limiting factor for algae growth. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
- Daishiman 10y agoThe problem with plants is that they do not sequester CO2 permanently; plants grow, die, and decompose, releasing carbon back into the atmosphere. Trees certainly work as a buffer in the sense that carbon in plants is carbon not in the atmosphere, but the amount you could hold is tiny in comparison to the amount that must be sequestered back in order to make a meaningful change in atmospheric and oceanic CO2 composition. Nonetheless, plants have important benefits, since they alter the local climate by changing the albedo and perspirating. Perspiration of plants in jungles helps to create clouds and regulate humidity, and would help to counteract some of the negative effects of climate change.
- TheAdamAndChe 10y agoBiochar is a possible method to permanently store the CO2 captured from plant matter. Playing devil's advocate here, water vapor is an incredibly powerful greenhouse gas, even more so than CO2.
- m_coder 10y agoI was hoping that someone would mention biochar. Heating your house using the leftover heat from the process of creating biochar could be carbon negative.
- TheAdamAndChe 10y agoI agree there's potential in its use, but what I'm afraid of is 1) the high nutrient requirements needed to grow the biochar at a scale useful to offset global warming, and 2) Biochar is basically coal, which could be burned and converted into CO2 again.
- nine_k 10y agoBury it back. We seem to have huge cavities from used-up coal mines. We could refill them.
- 10y ago
- mikeash 10y agoPlants don't usually store CO2 long term. You have to do something with them after they grow, or else they decompose and put the CO2 right back into the air.
- nerdponx 10y agoYou mean like eat them?
- masklinn 10y agoCutting them will indirectly release the carbon. Making plants into building materials or cabinetry keeps the carbon locked.
- nothrabannosir 10y agoNo, eating a plant turns it into CO2. Our / animals' bodies burn the sugars (which were the store of C) into co2 and energy, using the original o2 produced by the plant to convert that co2 into those sugars. It's more meaningful to reason about co2 storage in terms of area dedicated to plants, than the plants themselves.
- masklinn 10y ago> Plants don't usually store CO2 long term. That's not true, a stable mature forest is a long-term carbon store, the release from decomposition being offset by capture by new growth. And depending on the underlying soils it may be a net sink until it's clear cut and burned away (e.g. peat swamps as in south-east asian islands).
- TheAdamAndChe 10y agoWe pull almost all of the CO2 we burn from coal and oil, which were basically underground carbon reserves. To replace all of that CO2 with plant matter would take an immense amount of nutrients, which have to come from somewhere. Then there's the chance that the plant matter will turn to coal or oil again, meaning it may be used again. By turning the CO2 directly into carbonate, you both remove the need for nutrients and turn the CO2 into a form that is both incredibly stable and not useful for any energy purposes, lessening the chance that it will make its way back into the atmosphere.
- lend000 10y agoExactly. We have pulled an unnatural amount of "usable carbon" to the surface, which, even if it becomes a part of a natural, stable, cycle, will leave us with a higher net amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We can only go back to "natural" CO2 levels through unnatural means, unless we are willing to measure time on a geological time scale (the millions of years it will take to replace oil reserves from the swamps of today). So until then, we would still be dealing with an acidic ocean and a greenhouse atmosphere.
- schiffern 10y ago>We can only go back to "natural" CO2 levels through unnatural means Ok, but let's be careful not to exclude the middle here. "We got here by mining (an industrial activity), therefore we can't use plants in any part of a carbon sequestration chain (even one that also involves industrial activity)." Trying to use this argument as a blanket ban on plants becomes little more than an appeal to sympathetic magic. The only thing that matters is how much CO2 a technique can buffer (annual production x time constant), not whether or not it uses plants at any stage. Plants already have enormous annual production, but for economic/thermodynamic reasons it's hard for purely factory-based techniques to achieve sufficient scale. It becomes a money sink both up-front and operationally, respectively because A) factories are expensive, and B) hard thermodynamic constraints mean that it's at a fundamental competitive disadvantage compared to any typical [reminder: energy consuming] factory.
- 10y ago
- the8472 10y agoReforestation is good in regions that used to have forests. But using rocks might also work in ardi regions where freshwater is a limited resource (I assume they can just use salt water to pump CO2 into the rocks). And you can't just plant forests everywhere, for example china experiences issues with its Green Wall, where the trees soak up so much water that it causes the ground water level to fall.
- ph0rque 10y agoFor $15/US resident/year (on average), you could sequester all the carbon you produce that year by having 150 trees planted in return for your donation: http://shindyapin.tumblr.com/post/141034501197/climate-change-solution-simplified http://shindyapin.tumblr.com/post/141034501197/climate-chang...
- saycheese 10y agoREVISION: If true, seems like it would feasible for the US, but unclear how regions like Africa & Asian would do the same. Any ideas? Below is the original comment with correction for accounting error. _________ $15 per person per US person[2] per year does not sound like a lot, but in sum per year it's a massive amount of money; amount would be $4,847,228,805. For example, per person using the 2014 net collections[1] of the US's net tax collections divided by the population estimate for July 2016[2], the US revenue per person is $8,000. [1] ($2,690,755,432) https://www.irs.gov/uac/soi-tax-stats-collections-and-refunds-by-type-of-tax-irs-data-book-table-1 https://www.irs.gov/uac/soi-tax-stats-collections-and-refund... [2] (323,148,587) http://www.census.gov/popclock/ http://www.census.gov/popclock/ On the spreadsheet, money amounts are in thousands of dollars.
- smarterclayton 10y agoThe US tax charts are reported in thousands, so 2.6 trillion / 323 million = 8k per person, not 8
- saycheese 10y agoThanks, missed the "Money amounts are in thousands of dollars" - corrected the comment above.
- woofyman 10y agoYour first link, the numbers are in thousands of dollars so the correct amount is $2,690,755,432,000 nearly 3 trillion dollars.
- 10y ago
- padiyar83 10y agoIts not either or at this point, you need both (as many as possible) solutions. In some regard CO2 storage solutions are better because you can make use of lower priced real estate like ocean floor vs growing plants and forests which take away real estate that can be used for human habitation and agriculture. Also CO2 storage is more stable in time. Like 100 years from now, people might just choose to cut down the forests and just release all that stored carbon back.
- bnegreve 10y agoWe burn oil to produce cheap energy and we get CO2 as a byproduct. If you want to reverse the process you need some energy, so what would be the point of burning the oil in the first place?
- ams6110 10y agoThe energy could be from wind, solar -- in fact it might be an ideal use case for those sources if the process can be done intermittently, i.e. whenever the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. Or you could envision large carbon sequestration plants powered by on-site nuclear.
- bnegreve 10y ago> Or you could envision large carbon sequestration plants powered by on-site nuclear. I'm not sure I understand, you're suuggesting that we 1. Burn oil to produce energy (and CO2 as a byproduct) 2. Use the energy to do X 3. Use non-fossil energy to get rid of the CO2 we created during step 1. When we could just do: 1. Use non-fossil energy to do X Am I missing something?
- bhickey 10y ago0. There's a lot of carbon in the air and we might want to get rid of it.
- ams6110 10y agoYes, I was unclear. We've presumably got 100+ years of industrial carbon emissions to clean up if we want to get back to "pre industrial" atmospheric carbon. Plus ongoing emissions from transportation even if all electrical power is converted to renewable or nuclear.
- david-given 10y agoTransport. Fossil fuels are incredibly energy-dense and convenient to transport and work with, while renewables aren't. There's plenty of transport systems that are utterly reliant on fossil fuels and couldn't be converted to renewable energy. Carbon sequestering would allow continued use of these while staying carbon-neutral.
- craigyk 10y agoI've been doing preliminary research on what kind of high-density trees grow reasonably fast in different climates. If the wood has a high enough density it will sink in water without treatment. Wood that has been submerged can take 100s of years to decay. Hence it might be possible to lock away a lot of carbon and give us some breathing room, by repeatedly clear-cutting and reseeding forests and sinking the logs. Even without high-density wood, it might be worth the effort to treat the timber so that it will stay sunken. I did some estimates previously that suggest the amount of land area that would have to be dedicated to this to reduce atmospheric CO2 is not unreasonable.
- aaronblohowiak 10y agoWhy sink when you could dehydrate it in the desert? Rot needs water.
- hvidgaard 10y agoWonder what that would do to the desert over time. If it could reclaim some desert land it would be wonderful.
- craigyk 10y agoPart of the equation is do what makes the most sense locally. So sure, if you are closer to desert, that's the way to go.
- bluGill 10y agoIf you are close to the desert you probably don't have forests though. Tree need a lot of water, as things get dryer the land transitions to grassland before desert. Of course mountains are often a factor. There are deserts at the base of forested mountains. The mountain takes all the rain.