Combating carbon emissions, with a twist

Posted By Aditi Nangia Monday, July 6, 2009 - 1:04 PM Share

Climate change conference The Manchester Report has revealed a surprising suggestion not only to curb, but also to reverse carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere: Add lime to seawater.

Oceans play a crucial role in slowing down the process of global warming, currently by absorbing about half of the CO2 released into the air by human activity every year. Doing so, however, dramatically increases marine acidity and threatens ecosystems.

Advocates of the Cquestrate project insist that the added lime produced from heating limestone will not only boost the amount of CO2 absorbed, but will also reduce the water's acidity. If the technique were employed on a large enough scale, proponents argue that it would be possible to return global carbon dioxide levels to their pre-Industrial Revolution amounts. The project's founder Tim Kruger said:

It is essential that we reduce our emissions, but that may not be enough. We need a plan B to actually reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

EXPLORE:EUROPE, ENVIRONMENT, GLOBAL WARMING

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OBUSQUETS

2:30 PM ET

July 6, 2009

Irrational Climate Desperation

Now add lemon, I'm pretty sure the fish will enjoy it.

None of the proponents of all these non-sense ideas will be around to repair the damage they'll generate with this.

Deal with the polically driven climate change by ignoring it.

JGARZIK

3:07 PM ET

July 6, 2009

Geo-engineering = pollution

At the end of the day, dumping massive amounts of lime into the ocean is geo-engineering — another word for attempting to fight pollution with more pollution.

Speaking as an engineer, solutions such as dumping lime into the ocean are inherently impossible to test. Unintended negative consequences will abound. This is not engineering, it's gambling, on a planet-wide scale.

There are two facets to the climate change debate that I think warrant far more attention than the rest:

Atmospheric pollution will likely continue, even if pollution generated by the United States goes to [the impossible level of] zero.
Climate change is a continually occurring, unstoppable process. Even if all humans vanished from the Earth, climate change would still occur.

Therefore, it seems logical to me that greater emphasis should be placed on dealing with climate change: its impact on water resources, agriculture, human and animal migration, etc.

Geo-engineering solutions like dumping lime are a complete waste of time, because they are so wildly unpredictable, and because it wastes effort on something unlikely to succeed — you might as well try to stop the earth from spinning, as to try and control the climate of the entire planet.

Jeff @ Armchair FP

OGEEZER

2:25 PM ET

July 14, 2009

much to the dismay of Brock

much to the dismay of Brock Obama's administration, the oil & gas industry has a method of sequestering co2 that permits drillers to extract petroleum and methane gas that would not otherwise be possible using previous methods, and would not have happened in a non-global warming scaremongering world.

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