Remove CO2 from air? Experts working on it

[OKIsItJustMe]

(More at the link...)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21902036/

Remove CO2 from air? Experts working on it

One approach uses lye to absorb greenhouse gas

By Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience
updated 2:08 p.m. ET, Tues., Nov. 20, 2007

Emerging technologies could pull carbon dioxide straight from the air to potentially attack global warming directly.

Carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun, and humanity generates roughly 27 metric tons of the gas per year. To address concerns regarding global warming, inventors in recent decades have devised carbon dioxide scrubbers that absorb the gas from power plant exhausts, which account for half of all carbon dioxide emissions.

But how technology might take care of the other half — which spews from tailpipes, homes and other sources — remains an open question. Some approaches contemplate modifying the oceans to make them capture the global warming gas.

Increasingly, research now suggests devices could literally suck carbon dioxide straight from the atmosphere.

...

[begin_within]

1. Isn't that called

what a TREE does?

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Only technological fixes can save us!

After all, it was technology that got us into this mess ... surely it can get us out! :sarcasm:

[begin_within]

4. If every person on earth planted one tree,

I think things would take a turn for the better for everyone. In most cases, nature is wiser and better than mankind, in my opinion.

[OKIsItJustMe]

12. Sure... but...

Nature in the past has dealt with high levels of CO₂ without any help from us. Unfortunately, it's taken it on the order of 100,000 years to do so.

(Check out the sharp increases, followed by the long/painful decreases. Note that those high peaks are nowhere near as high as where we're at right now.)

Now, to put things into perspective:

• Roughly 230 years ago, a bunch of colonies in the "New World" declared their independence from England.
• Roughly 2,000 years ago, Jesus was in elementary school.
• Roughly 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians were in their heyday.
• Roughly 10,000, years ago, humans started farming in the Indus valley.

Are you prepared to wait 100,000+ years for nature to take care of the CO₂?

Nothing against planting trees, I do it myself, but:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_sink#Forests

... To further reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 7%, as stipulated by the Kyoto Protocol, would require the planting of "an area the size of Texas (8% of the area of Brazil) every 30 years", according to William H. Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University, in Durham, N.C.. ...

[Richard D]

3. This number can't be right

Carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun, and humanity generates roughly 27 metric tons of the gas per year.

Can it? I thought it was a whole hell of a lot more per year.

[GliderGuider]

5. The reporter dropped a few decimals

Nine decimals, to be exact. The number is 27 billion metric tonnes of CO2 per year. One of the little problems with innumeracy is that you don't pick up boners like that.

[Richard D]

6. Bit of a difference there.

[pscot]

9. The actual number is between 8 & 9 billion

tons per year. The total atmospheric burden of CO2 currently stands at around 880 billion tons.

[GliderGuider]

11. 8 to 9 gigatonnes of "Carbon" = ~27 gigatonnes of CO2

Don't forget the mass of the bound oxygen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth's_atmosphere

[Nihil]

10. Accidentally?

I suspect it is simple incompetence but it has "coincidental benefits" ...

1) It suggests that the use of technology to "capture" that amount of CO2
per year is actually achievable (in theory albeit not in practice yet).

2) It suggests that the "big fuss about greenhouse gases" is those silly old
scientists worried about small things again.

3) It gives a little fig-leaf to cover up the fact that there is NO reliable
technology to do anything WITH the CO2 after capture.


There is a hell of a difference between "capturing" 27 tonnes and "capturing"
27 billion tonnes ... similarly between finding somewhere to "safely sequester"
27 tonnes and finding somewhere to "safely sequester" 27 billion tonnes.

Again, I suspect that the dipshit who wrote it simply didn't register his/her
error but I can't help suspecting that there will be some readers out there
who are delighted to see this sort of error in circulation.

:shrug:

[DU911]

7. Capturing Carbon Dioxide Directly from the Air

Pulling CO2 from the air has been proposed by scientists at Los Alamos:
http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/recycleco2.html

Their idea is “artificial trees”. Other scientists are exploring technology that would mimic photosynthesis directly.

[NNadir]

8. Um...um...um...

"Experts" are working on it, eh?

Are these "experts" the same "experts" who inform NBC of the rest of their science news?

One wonders, where NBC gets the idea that "27 metric tons" of dangerous fossil fuel waste are released each year. Maybe they heard about it in an email from Amory Lovins.

I mean, could our media possibly get any more stupid than this?

Most people who take high school chemistry - and this goes back to the 1920's one would think - learn that "lye" absorbs carbon dioxide. If one takes high school chemistry and one doesn't learn this, than someone should talk to the school about the curriculum.

The problem is not one of chemistry at all. It is a question of energy.

It is astounding, really, that this kind of thing can pass for "news." I mean where do these journalists get their scientific educations, from reading about Krytonite in Superman comics?

[yop]

13. Read the article

The research is to reduce the energy requirements. They've brought the requirements down by half, so far. They're not doing basic research, it's process engineering.

I hope we don't ever need to do this, but it is definitely worthwhile for the experts to figure out how to optimize the process, just in case.