| Mass'Debator | Make oceans vast carbon sinks, U.S. researchers say
 U.S. researchers hope their process will speed up the rate at which oceans absorb carbon. Make oceans vast carbon sinks, U.S. researchers say Quote: Speeding up a natural process through "electrochemical weathering" could be used to absorb carbon in oceans and reduce the impact of climate change, U.S. researchers say.
"Our technology dramatically accelerates a cleaning process that Nature herself uses for greenhouse gas accumulation," Harvard University PhD candidate Kurt Zenz House said in a release Thursday.
The scheme is ambitious, costly and has its own risks, the researchers said. It would require building dozens of facilities on coasts of volcanic rock.
Oceans have absorbed about one-third of the carbon dioxide that humans have produced, but the process is very slow, the journal Environmental Science and Technology said on its website. And the more acidic oceans are, the less CO2 they can absorb.
House and colleagues from Harvard and Pennsylvania State University said they found a way to remove hydrochloric acid from the ocean and neutralize it using silicate from volcanic rocks. That increases the ocean's alkalinity, so it can store more atmospheric CO2 as bicarbonate, already the most common form of carbon in the oceans.
"That means we may be able to safely and permanently remove excess CO2 in a matter of decades rather than millennia," House said, describing the process as accelerating the natural system to industrial rates.
In nature, carbon dioxide is dissolved by fresh water, forming a weak acid. The acid is neutralized as water filters through rocks, producing an alkaline solution of carbonate salts, the release said.
Eventually the water reaches an ocean, where the alkaline solution holds the dissolved carbon until it eventually becomes a sediment.
The researchers' process uses other chemical processes to minimize potential side effects.
There are other plans to sequester carbon in oceans, but this proposal reduces acidity.
House and colleague Harvard professor Michael J. Aziz said more research is needed on the process.
As well as House and Aziz, the researchers include House's brother Christopher H. House, associate professor at Pennsylvania State University and Daniel P. Schrag, director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
| And they're idiots if they think this will work.... sure it'll reduce the issues in the atmosphere... but all they're doing is shoving the problem into the oceans: CDNN :: Scientists Warn CO2 Ocean Dumps will Harm Marine Life Quote:
.....But some scientists argue that engineering nature to avoid environmental damage inevitably causes other, perhaps greater damage.
Writing in the Oct. 12 issue of Science, Dr. Brad A. Seibel of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Calif., and Dr. Patrick J. Walsh of the University of Miami caution that carbon dioxide could harm deep-sea creatures.
Enshrouded in perpetual cold and dark, these creatures like the anglerfish live in slow motion, their metabolisms consuming energy at as little as one-thousandth the rate of those closer to the surface. The slow metabolism makes them particularly sensitive to chemical changes in their environment, the authors say.
When carbon dioxide dissolves, it turns into carbonic acid, making the water more acidic. But biologists have observed that a change of 0.3 in the pH level in the blood of some deep sea creatures can halve the amount of oxygen. "It may not kill them," Dr. Seibel said, "but they may not be able to swim as actively as they could be before. It'd be like they were out of breath."
Damage to deep-ocean ecosystems could eventually alter the mix of nutrients and chemicals that well up from the depths. "It's still not known what the links between the deep ocean and the shallow ocean are," Dr. Seibel said. "If you damage one, you hurt the other potentially."........
.......Carbon dioxide does kill, as researchers demonstrated in even smaller-scale experiments this year in Monterey Bay.
From a small submarine, the scientists, from the Monterey Bay Research Institute, squirted about five gallons of liquid carbon dioxide into each of several small plastic pools at the bottom, 12,000 feet down. They then put cages containing five sea urchins and five sea cucumbers each about a foot and a half from the carbon dioxide pools, wanting to see how they fared compared with others in cages farther away.
When they returned three weeks later, everything in the cages next to the pools was dead. The researchers found that creatures like small crustaceans living in the nearby sediment were also injured or killed. Modifying the experiment, the researchers then placed sea urchins and sea cucumbers 6 and 15 feet away from the carbon dioxide. Those animals survived without visible injury; tissue samples are being examined for cellular damage.
"It seems CO2 injection will have detrimental effects," said Dr. James P. Barry, an associate scientist at the institute involved in the experiment. "That's almost certain. The degree of damage is the question." | The funny thing is I heard this above report last month, and then these smart asses think of this plan?
Oh yeah sure.... we know all the problems now with CO2 in the air, so let's go and shove it all into the Oceans... yeah that's a great idea :rolleyes: Then we still haven't solved the problem with our atmosphere, and then potientially create an even worse problem in our oceans, as this will most certainly reshape our oceans, the life in it, and the effects will trickle down to us once again and our health.
This is more of the same... more plans of just literally sweeping it under the carpet.
We as humans are just starting to learn about the deep parts of the Ocean and what lives down there.... and they think at this time it's a good idea to do this?
Oh but the CO2 turns into sediment thereby reducing the side effects? There's still side effect arn't there? :rolleyes:
They want an easy solution? Stop using fossil fuels and stop wasting our time with stupid plans like this to prolong the use of fossil fuels.... cripes. |
Nov 9, 2007, 12:19 pm
