What is Digg?72 Comments
- inactive, on 08/19/2008, -3/+25I think this is a great idea and will probably work out well, however I go back an forth on ideas like this. We got ourselves into this mess by trying to conquer our environment. I'm not sure continued conquest is the way to curb global warming. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should forsake technology, but engineering soil so we can bury CO2 sounds a little perverse. Like the article says: "We should just make sure that we don’t create a bevy of new problems by literally burying an old one." I'd like to think making the change to live sustainably is the way to go, but hey, at this point it might be too late for simple/natural solutions.
- jaxontyler, on 08/19/2008, -0/+14"The USGS believes that the rebuilt wetlands could release nitrous oxide and methane, greenhouse gases that are more dangerous than CO2."
"Scientists also admit the possibility that the wetlands could produce methylmercury, a neurotoxin that is toxic to mammals."
Guess its just a wait and see game now. - srodolff, on 08/19/2008, -0/+12Hey you guys! Have you seen this?
It's a big plant, no, no, bigger than a plant. It has a thick brown base called a thunk, no, no, trunk!
And up high on this plant there are hundreds or thousands of these green things.....LEAVES!
Now, I don't want to scare anyone, but this plant asborbs CO2 and releases Oxygen.
No, no, REALLY! Now all we have to plant thousands of these around the planet and water them.
Is this a crazy idea, OR WHAT!?! - MarkusX, on 08/19/2008, -2/+10That's awesome.
- arielh85, on 08/19/2008, -0/+7I definitely agree. I'm interested to see how this all turns out...
- lucy22, on 08/19/2008, -3/+9What a great idea. Now, hopefully they implement it.
- BXRWXR, on 08/19/2008, -2/+7While carbon sequestration is a good thing, wouldn't a better thing be reducing the need for it?
- rmxz, on 08/19/2008, -0/+4Bury carbon? You get the exact same effect by:
1. Not recycling paper & cardboard.
2. Shipping it to a landfill instead. - FuzzyCat, on 08/19/2008, -0/+4
Head meet sand - radiofrequency, on 08/19/2008, -1/+5Scientists discover ways to overcharge for dirt.
- inactive, on 08/19/2008, -0/+4LIES, GARBAGE and *****!
- explnx, on 04/27/2009, -0/+3This isn't quite as unnatural as it sounds. Our burning of fossil fuels really boils down to releasing carbon that has been buried for millions of years. Putting the carbon back, so long as we do it in a way that will keep it buried for a long time, is the only way to truly reverse the damage we are doing. Naturally this would happen through plant life, but just isn't fast enough to make up for the amount we are putting out.
- cognizance8, on 08/19/2008, -0/+3carbon dioxide plus water makes carbonic acid. I can't see how this will help if we start drastically lowering the pH of our soil and water supply.
Honestly sounds like a band-aid fix much like the additives that they put in the gas in Los Angeles (that one is great, slows down the reactions that end up producing what we see as smog. So, instead of Los Angeles having all of the pollution, an area about 1-2 hours East has it). - BillDoE, on 08/19/2008, -0/+3Sounds like sweeping dirt under the rug to me.
- holeymoley, on 08/19/2008, -1/+325 metric tons per year is about the same amount of carbon produced by 10 Americans, so this process isn't a solution to global warming unless the US has plans for 30 million of these farms. At least it's a step in a positive direction though so that an operating farm could be less of a net contributor to CO2 emmisions.
- melfster, on 08/19/2008, -1/+3There are so many problems with this I don't know where to begin.
- kabul2, on 08/19/2008, -0/+2Is that good?
- Seapheous, on 08/19/2008, -0/+2Far out... but wait... photosynthesis uses water. The environmentalists will say if we continue to plant trees we will run the earth dry and polute it with all this sugar and oxygen stuff...
6 CO2(g) + 12 H2O(l) + photons → C6H12O6(aq) + 6 O2(g) + 6 H2O(l)
carbon dioxide + water + light energy → glucose + oxygen + water
Kidding and science lesson aside...
I am a conservationist, but not an evironmentalist. There is a difference. Environmentalists want a way to control the general population (while getting rich doing it) and conservationists just want to use common sense when managing our resources. - KaivenTor, on 08/19/2008, -0/+2So correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't we be converting carbon dioxide rather than burying it? I mean, biology 101 concept here: Plants intake CO2, output Oxygen. Yes, I know it's more complicated than that, but instead of plowing CO2 into the ground, maybe test out additional hybridization of plants to act as CO2 scrubbers?
- cheezintern, on 08/19/2008, -0/+2..it was probably pushed through to study by the white house.
- lazn, on 08/19/2008, -1/+3One thing I wonder about is where did all our Fossil fuels get their carbon from? It seems to me we are just putting it back where it belongs.. It's not like the dino's got their carbon from outer space. I mean Fossil Fuel is already sequestered carbon, and are we supposed to forever and into perpetuity sequester carbon into the earth's crust? Oil came from the air and sunshine in the first place, it's just solar power from long ago.
- darny, on 08/19/2008, -1/+3Mother nature must not win, but she cannot lose.
- Seventus, on 08/19/2008, -0/+2You would have to make sure that you don't have any other trace elements that could kill off the plants that are being used as scrubbers. I've seen several trees along roadsides that should be absorbing the CO2 emitted by cars, but they have begun dying off due to increased traffic volumes. Each plant is effected differently.
- rmxz, on 08/19/2008, -0/+2Why just hope. You can implement carbon burying yourself simply by taking paper&cardboard and putting it in the trash (where it gets buried in a landfill) instead of recycling it.
Then to make more paper they grow more plants which absorb the carbon they need from the CO2 in the air. And yes, there are very fast growing plants (hemp) that make great paper, but they're not used much today. But they could be if there were enough demand for both their paper and CO2- absorbing properties. - TripleNipple, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1Science friday podcast discussing this:
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/2008 ... - IMJGaltstill, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1So the cooling in the aftermath of a volcanic eruption is due to sequestration of carbon and not the release of millions of tons of ash and other particulates? Your argument has a ***** aroma to it.
- wunksta, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1true, both of which are trying to be reduced and controlled as well.
- KingGorilla, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1This guy sounds legit
- jdaniel284, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1SSSSHHHHH!!! You are ruining it!
- mstrebe, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1Up to 25 metric tons of CO2 per year? Pointless.
- Chaoticfist, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1I am also pretty sure that the excesses carbon being stored in the land will make farming and planting of new forests in the area easier as well as produce better quality plants.
- EricAnderton, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1Exactly what I was thinking. Soil pH is a big part of farming and plant health in general. The hilarity here is that anything you'd do to fix the pH, would react with the carbonic acid and re-release the CO2.
Unless someone can find a way to make CO2 react with sand (e.g. the Sahara desert), there's really no way to sequester all that's been released without turning it into something stable that won't upset the environment.
If only CO2 could be turned into some kind of highly stable, dense liquid that could be pumped underground, safely tucked away from the environment. - angryfirelord, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1Why not just remove it?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/31/ ... - janeuner, on 08/19/2008, -1/+2Actually, that's retarded. If you want to capture carbon, plant some friggin trees.
Bonus: Free lumber in 20 years. - compulsive1, on 08/20/2008, -0/+1Unless you can tax it, it won't ever materialize. The well-meaning scientists and inventors keep coming up with methods to reduce CO2 or to combat warming, but they never get implemented. Carbon taxes and credits that can be traded and made profit on are the preferred solution to the "global problem".
- crazyate, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1All it seems they are doing is attempting to restore wetlands and then measure the changes. The "Carbon Farming" is just an attempt to call it something more glamorous to get attention. I'm all for the restoration of wetlands, but lets call a spade a spade...
From http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2008/2008-08-18 ... "Usually, the term refers to paying farmers to plant trees and other vegetation that stores carbon for longer periods than crops; or to less frequently till the land,"
There are quite a few research projects analyzing the effects that no-till practices and crop rotation has on the carbon content of soil, but as of the last time I'd heard much about it (~2 years ago) the effects were too ephemeral to really do any good, unless you dig up the soil after ~10 years of only no-till maize and bury it, but that's not a solution for what I hope are obvious reasons... - TetchyTony, on 08/20/2008, -0/+1...and stop the locals cutting them down for cooking-fires.
- inactive, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1not a chance. politicians are interested in nothing other than regulating corporations. Watch, this story will get zero attention.
- TheInformer, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1Anyone know that the ocean already does this by leaching the CO2 out of the atmosphere? If it didn't, our atmosphere would now resemble Venus'.
- domokunt, on 08/19/2008, -0/+125 tonnes of Co2 is a drop in the ocean.
- inactive, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1Exactly. Cant believe how many braindead cult leader followers there are in this world and how easy it is to lead dumbass goyim cattle around.
- rxbudian, on 08/19/2008, -0/+11. Think of a sponge. If you soak a small amount of water into it, the sponge will absorb all of it, if you soak too much water into the sponge, the sponge will start leaking the water.
2. Think of a balloon. if you fill the balloon with a lot of air, the air will eventually seep out until there's not enough pressure inside to push more air out.
Here's the concept: There is only a certain amount of capacity for a container to hold whatever you want. over fill it and the container will start to spill out the content and only if you put some effort to contain it that you'll able to keep it in.
The same applies to storing CO2 in Soil.
Most of the time, the current state is the most optimum state and any change to the current state will create an opposite force to move the state back to the optimum.
In plain English: The current CO2 Content in the soil is the optimum and natural state. if you try to take out or add in more CO2, the soil will naturally try to go back to it's natural state and people have to put more and more effort to keep the CO2 in or out of the soil.
Conclusion: It's not a very good idea to do unless you want to waste more and more energy to keep the CO2 in the soil and when it fails, like a balloon bursting, there will be more CO2 in the air than there will ever be. - rmxz, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1And then plant trees -- or, better, more efficient paper-producing/CO2-absorbing crops (some say hemp, but there are others too) where those trees were.
- secrity, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1Then it will be necessary to cut down trees to replace the paper that wasn't recycled.
- wissler, on 08/19/2008, -1/+2Idiotic waste of time by a bunch of lemmings.
- liuite, on 08/20/2008, -0/+1instead of just rebuilding wetlands. let's just start Algae farming.
- liuite, on 08/20/2008, -0/+1With Algae farming, algae grows incredibly fast. It sucks CO2 out of the air. And some strains of the stuff are more than 50% vegetable oil, which is very cheap to convert into BioDiesel.
- makenshin, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1So umm... since we get diamonds from carbon+heat+pressure.. can we instead use the O2 as fuel and pressurize it all to turn global warming into global enrichment? Hmmm.. doubt it, but if possible, what better way to pay for such an operation than having diamonds as a biproduct? Could even advertise them as 'Green Diamonds'. Not that normal diamonds aren't better for being created naturally, but as opposed to the thought of blood diamonds instilled into people, 'Green Diamonds' sound better.
- inactive, on 08/19/2008, -0/+1What did you do with grandma's rotting body?
- looselips, on 08/20/2008, -0/+1I feel in the earth is a better place than in our oceans ready to be released if conditions are right.
One thing much worse than heat, is ice miles high leveling our great cities as they crush all in their path.
That would ruin everyone's day for a decade or more. -
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