Carbon Sequestration
My sister is a pretty typical environmental activist. Inclined to panic at any suggestion that something bad might be happening somewhere in the environment, to something. A bit of a technophobe. Disdainful of western "progress" and culture. Plastic is the Devil. Thinks the US is the most evil country in the world -- because clearly every single thing happening on the planet can be traced back to irresponsible actions of the US ... etc. All that rot.
She knows my position, that emissions reduction is a completely worthless "solution" to "the global warming problem" (actually, as I have said, it's really the "excess atmospheric CO2 problem"). She also knows that I say that carbon sequestration is the ONLY possible answer to the problem. Surprisingly, she is actually coming around to agreeing with me.
She recently sent me an email about a new method of carbon sequestration. After thinking about it, and running a few numbers, it seems to be an AMAZINGLY good idea if it pans out! So, I wanted to pass it around a bit.
The best solutions to the CO2 problem would be win-win, of course. What I mean is that, not only would they reduce the amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, but the carbon/CO2 would then be used to also solve some other problem.
Here are 3 methods of carbon sequestration, that I think would turn out to be win-win -- including the new one she sent me: agricultural carbon.
Solution #1: Agricultural Carbon.
New Agey types get all starry-eyed, imagining all the wonderful ancient wisdom that humans are supposed to have possessed, and lost. In reality, of course, very little of it actually worked very well, or was very wise -- which is why we don't remember any of it anymore.
But there seems to be one bit of ancient wisdom that really and truly was lost, and WORKED. At least according to preliminary studies.
If you know much about gardening, then you probably know the concept of compost, and "humus content" of soil. Having plant material breaking down in the soil improves the fertility of the soil. It releases nutrients that growing plants can absorb. It also helps drainage, keeps soil "light", etc. But, it really does break down quite fast. You need to add more in just a year or two. And more and more and more. The carbon in the humus gets stored in the soil for a short while, but then gets re-released into the atmosphere.
You may not know that there was an ancient farming civilization in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. You can actually see the traces from an airplane during a flood -- there are huge areas laid out in squares. Anyway, there is one thing that they did, that we do not do now: they worked CHARCOAL into the soil. (It is an open question as to exactly how and why they did it, but it really doesn't matter.)
Charcoal is just pure carbon. Several interesting things:
Pure carbon is not exactly like humus -- it never breaks down and it does not provide nutrients.
The soil with the extra carbon seems to be quite a bit more fertile than "regular" soil -- even several thousand years later!
The soil seems to be mixed as much as 11 to 1, with carbon.
Now, there are 400 million acres of farmland in the US, alone. Working 1 inch of carbon into the top 11 inches of soil, over that area, would require about 200 billion metric tons of carbon, according to my quickie calculation. If you get the carbon from the CO2 in the air, this would require around 600 billion metric tons of CO2. Which is significantly more than the entire excess amount in the atmosphere! Just to ENHANCE the fertility of farmland, in just the US! No cooperation of other countries necessary (because that is always the very hardest part).
The other nice thing is that getting the carbon is profitable. You grow fast growing "trash trees", such as empress trees -- or there are many others. Once the tree has absorbed a maximal amount of carbon, you cut it down, dry it, and heat it (in an oxygen free vacuum, is good). You get a lot of free hydrogen (which you can use for heating trees + electricity), and a bunch of charcoal.
Now, I want to point out that the supposed fertility enhancement from agricultural carbon hasn't been fully proven to my satisfaction. Some experimental trials need to be done.
But doesn't this sound like a hell of a lot better idea than spending trillions of dollars on emissions reductions that won't even solve the problem?
Solution #2: Ocean biomass catalyst.
200 billion metric tons of atmospheric CO2 is a lot. It's still an "industrial sized" quantity, mind you, but it's big. Manageable, with a lot of infrastructure. There are only 360 CO2 molecules out of every MILLION molecules in the atmosphere. (And if you saw Al Gore's movie, the hydraulic lift thing was ridiculous theatricality that could easily be explained away, if anyone cares.)
But if you want to deal with a large amount of stuff, and you want to do it as easily as possible, then chemistry tells us that you should look into using a catalyst, if at all possible. You want "leverage". So that you only need to produce a million tons of some kind of stuff, for example, in order to sequester the 200 billion metric tons of CO2.
If you look at the natural "carbon cycle" of the planet, then you see that lots of CO2 gets absorbed in the oceans every year. The little phytoplankton algae in the water need it to grow. And phytoplankton are the base of the ocean's food chain. It turns out that phytoplankton could absorb a LOT more CO2, except they are lacking some other important nutrients -- especially iron. This has been studied, and well documented, scientifically. And the interesting thing is that the amounts of iron needed are pretty tiny, compared to the amounts of CO2 absorbed. So you can use small amounts of iron, to "enhance" the planet's carbon cycle.
At the same time, the ocean's ecosystem is in a bit of trouble from overfishing. It would be a really great thing if we could bring the total quantity of "ocean biomass" back up to a healthier number. And to do that, you need to start at the bottom of the food chain: if you feed more phytoplankton to more zooplankton, then you get more zooplankton. Feed the zooplankton to the baitfish, and the baitfish to the toplevel predator fish. This is the most important point -- you need a very large quantity of feeding to be going on.
So this can be a win-win situation, if done carefully. Get rid of the excess CO2, feed the fish, and make lots of baby fish. There are even more benefits. There are a lot of nutrients flowing down rivers. If the rivers just flush into the sea, then you get "blooms" of BAD phytoplankton (red tides). When the bad phytoplankton does not get eaten, and runs out of nutrients, it dies. This sucks all the oxygen out of the water, and you end up with a "dead zone". If you add just the right extra minerals/nutrients at the river mouths, AND A NICE STARTER BATCH OF *GOOD* PHYTOPLANKTON, then you can "outcompete" the bad phytoplankton. (We need to do lots more studies on which species of phytoplankton "taste" the best.) But with this deal, you could end the red tides too.
But this all leaves a difficulty. You have to do this *carefully*. A huge algal bloom, even of good phytoplankton, can still die and produce an anoxic dead zone, if it is not eaten. So you may need to add a starter batch of zooplankton to the mix, too. And maybe protect the area from birds -- because they will transfer biomass back to the land, and that is not what you want to happen.
I understand that the government of California is going to try adding some iron to the ocean to see what happens. Somehow, I doubt they will be careful enough to do it right. If you hear of bad results from their experiment, please remember that.
Solution #3: Be direct!
Do you know what dry ice is? It's frozen CO2.
Do you recall how I said that a billion metric tons is an industrial-sized quantity? Why don't we just turn all the excess CO2 in the atmosphere into dry ice? We can. It's just a question of doing it efficiently enough. It works best when it gets really cold sometime during the year at your processing plant. You would need a small city of workers to deal with the hardware. You would need a "green" source of electricity. It would be nicest if it was in the US. Do you know of any city in the US, where you can do all those things?
Barrow, Alaska.
You make a big geothermal energy plant or three, around some of the active volcanos up there. Build insulated holding tanks for the CO2. During winter, you freeze a whole bunch of CO2, and fill your tanks. The tanks would be quite large -- 100 meters, by 300 meters, by a kilometer, perhaps. (If you don't like meters, then think "yards".)
But it's certainly doable ... for a lot less money than what you would need for emissions reduction! And you end up with a nice supply of pure CO2 for industrial use. You could release and store CO2 on very short timescales, to try to modulate the climate, if you like. It's not as much of a win-win as the other solutions, but the added simplicity is a benefit, in itself.
Other Solutions:
Back in 1992, the federal government published a study suggesting quite a few methods of carbon sequestration as a solution to the excess CO2/global warming problem. The ocean biomass/iron suggestion was one of them. For more than 15 years, we have known solutions. Since then, inventors have come up with more. I know there are many patents around the world for carbon sequestration ideas. All we have to do is pick a few of the best sounding ones, and try them. So, once again, I will say to anyone reading this: it is not necessary to get into a hysterical panic about the CO2 problem!
They are certainly all much better solutions than stopping CO2 releases, and then hoping that the planet will somehow, magically, fix itself.