Climate Change Is Already Here, Says Massive Government Report

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Scientists Turn Carbon Dioxide Emissions into Stone

Problem solved!

It solves one of the myriad problems with mining and burning coal, but it is also likely to be quite expensive. I'd much rather see that money invested in renewables.

LouZiffer wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

How about some (potential) good news for a change...
Experimental new technique to turn CO2 emissions into stone rather than storing it as gas.

I wonder how much energy it takes to grab tons of CO2, grab 20 times that weight in water, and pump it into the ground. Can it be a carbon-negative process in terms of air emissions? Can it realistically be done with renewable energy instead of generating carbon emissions to do the task?

This is exactly what I wondered. I clicked through and read the brief Science article but, of course, it was more focused on the scientific proof-of-concept that the economics of it. Something to note is that this was done at a geothermal generating station, where I presume the emissions are mostly gases coming from the magma-heated ground that they're tapping into (of which CO2 is probably one of the least nasty components). In other words, this looks like a solution that you attach to a CO2-generating pipe, not something that pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere in general. This means that it needs to be applied at the emission site, so you need to have the appropriate rock type and access to lots of water at the site where the pollution is occurring. I'm no geologist, but I expect that large deposits of the basalts they require are mostly on the seafloor, and localized in select areas on land (and likely not where the coal is, but again I'm no geologist). Furthermore, while the water required needn't be high quality drinking water (i.e. seawater might be fine), this technique precludes the use of the water for other things so drawing huge amounts from any river where the water is otherwise utilized downstream (i.e. almost all rivers) is probably a difficult political/ecological proposition. Already this is only a solution for a select few locations, rather than something that can be applied on a wide scale to fight climate change in general. It is a nifty idea though, and it may lead to other clever solutions, but as it is I can't imagine it will have much real impact on CO2 emissions worldwide.

TLDR: This is a cool new technique/technology, but I think it only has potential for specific, rather than widespread, use in the near future.

I'm even less a chemist than a geologist (really not much since high school), but I'm also struggling with the chemistry of it all. If you dissolve a lot of CO2 in water I would think you've also made a fair bit of carbonic acid (H2CO3, if I'm not mistaken). This suggests to me that you're pumping some pretty low pH stuff down into these rocks. I don't know anything about the chemical composition of basalt, but I presume it's releasing a bunch of calcium and magnesium in reaction to this acid, and this is combining with the carbonic acid to create calcium and magnesium carbonates (i.e. calcite/dolomite/limestone). Assuming any of what I just said is correct, wouldn't pumping more acid into it tend to dissolve the newly synthesized carbonate rocks just as much as the existing basalts? Is there a point where this system becomes saturated and adding more CO2 doesn't create more carbonate rocks? Why don't these scientific articles include primers on basic geochemistry so I don't feel compelled to ask questions like these on a gaming forum?

i don't know what you are talking about but I am pretty turned on right now....carbonating my existing basalts? creating calcium and magnesium carbonates...

I am all aflutter.

farley3k wrote:

i don't know what you are talking about but I am pretty turned on right now....carbonating my existing basalts? creating calcium and magnesium carbonates...

I am all aflutter.

So geology revs your engine, eh?
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More hot geology to really get your motor running.

Which one is funniest?

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BushPilot, I love it when someone less lazy than me takes the unanswered questions I have on a topic and proceeds to expand on them in ways which either only occurred in my head and never went into the keyboard, or I didn't even think about. Your posts were fun to read and think about.

I considered whether what has been learned might help with existing CO2 scrubber tech, but we already have more efficient technology which uses similar chemistry. The scale of natural basalt formations and their potential use as huge ready-made CO2 sinks is the exciting part. If there's a way to make that useful (and safely) without generating more than we put in, I'm all for it. Like you, I see it as a nifty discovery with limited impact. We could always use more of those though.

What else am I going to do? Surely you don't think I should be doing my work instead of checking out random scientific rabbit holes?

I'm sure something useful will come of this; it's usually hard to see the end product at this stage, and it's clear that there may be some potential here (there's a reason it got published in Science). I just think this is probably not a path to 'problem solved' as Mao joked on the previous page. One really nice thing about applying it to a geothermal generating station is that they are presumably using geothermal energy to do the CO2 capture instead of fossil-fuel based energy. I also think it's neat to tap into the long-term climate regulation that the planet does (on time scales of millions to hundred of millions of years) through rock weathering and volcanism, rather than the short-term solutions like planting trees and changing agricultural practices (on time scales of decades to centuries) and such that people often talk about.

The world has officially (and likely, permanently) passed the symbolic 440 ppm carbon dioxide milestone.

In the remote reaches of Antarctica, the South Pole Observatory carbon dioxide observing station cleared 400 ppm on May 23, according to an announcement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday. That’s the first time it’s passed that level in 4 million years (no, that’s not a typo).
It’s possible the South Pole Observatory could see readings dip below 400 ppm, but new research published earlier this week shows that the planet as a whole has likely crossed the 400 ppm threshold permanently (at least in our lifetimes).

Next stop: Venus!

The Window for Avoiding a Dangerous Climate Change Has Closed

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Barring some incredible new carbon capture technology, the window for limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius appears to have closed. That’s the stark conclusion of a report out in Nature today, which finds that the carbon reductions pledges penned into the Paris Agreement are ridiculously inadequate for keeping our climate within a safe and stable boundary.

Earthquakes are on the rise and (surprise!) It's our fault.

Some good news for a change.

The Antarctic ozone layer, which shields the Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays, shows encouraging signs that it's beginning to heal, according to research published in the journal Science.

Yep. This has been a denialist talking point for decades. "We spent all this money to end the ozone hole, and it's still here! We can't make a difference no matter what we do!" I expect they will just steamroller past this for another few decades until the results are crystal clear, and then claim that "Nature fixed things".

farley3k wrote:

The Window for Avoiding a Dangerous Climate Change Has Closed

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Barring some incredible new carbon capture technology, the window for limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius appears to have closed. That’s the stark conclusion of a report out in Nature today, which finds that the carbon reductions pledges penned into the Paris Agreement are ridiculously inadequate for keeping our climate within a safe and stable boundary.

I've eaten at that McDonalds.

Was your bun soggy?

The world's first swim thru window!
(how bad is it that auto correct recognizes thru instead of through?)

Freshest Filet 'o Fish in the whole franchise.

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Biodiversity below safe levels across over half of the world's land...

The variety of animals and plants has fallen to dangerous levels across more than half of the world’s landmass due to humanity destroying habitats to use as farmland, scientists have estimated.

The unchecked loss of biodiversity is akin to playing ecological roulette and will set back efforts to bring people out of poverty in the long term, they warned.

Analysing 1.8m records from 39,123 sites across Earth, the international study found that a measure of the intactness of biodiversity at sites has fallen below a safety limit across 58.1% of the world’s land.

Worlds Highest temperature has (possibly) been recorded in Kuwait.

For those struggling to cope with Britain’s minor heatwave it’s an unfathomable idea, but temperatures in Kuwait reached 54C last week, a record for the eastern hemisphere and possibly the entire planet.

A weather station in Mitribah, a remote area of north-west Kuwait, recorded the temperature on Thursday, with Basra, across the border in Iraq, reaching 53.9C (129F).

Heatwaves reaching just 45C have led to hundreds of deaths. In 2015 an estimated 780 people died in Karachi, and in Delhi hospitals often struggle to cope with the number of heatstroke cases.

We have our first certain victim. The Bramble Cay Melomys used to live on a small atoll in the Great Barrier reef. That atoll is frequently submerged now, and they have all perished.

As rising sea levels are the most direct and objective effect of global warming (after the high CO2 and temperatures themselves I suppose) this is the first extinction that can pretty conclusively be attributed to Global Warming.

That sucks.

Every Month This Year Has Been the Hottest in Recorded History

On Wednesday, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that July was the hottest month ever recorded on our planet, since modern record-keeping began in 1880.
Temperature records are falling like dominoes, month after month, year after year. Although July stands out, each consecutive month in 2016 has broken its own previous record (May was the hottest May, April the hottest April, etc.) Consider this:

June 2016 was the hottest on record.

So was May.

April smashed previous temperature records.

March did by a long shot.

February and January were the hottest ever.

According to the NOAA, July was the fifteenth month in a row where the global land and ocean temperature was the highest recorded since 1880. “This marks the longest such streak in NOAA’s 137 years of record keeping,” its report says. (NASA’s analysis varies, but only slightly: It calls July the tenth record-breaking month in a row.)

I kind of wonder if the "tipping point" has been passed.

Well I guess I'd better get out my big diesel and do nothing but mud donuts for the rest of my life ;P
Honestly, I don't think there is a tipping point or at least that isn't an important marker for me.
If the world is going to sh*t, dissolving into anarchy, it doesn't mean we stop being humane.

We'll see what happens when a lot of people start starving in countries the western world cares about because the land is turning to desert and there are water shortages.

fangblackbone wrote:

Well I guess I'd better get out my big diesel and do nothing but mud donuts for the rest of my life ;P

I bet a lot of people will have that reaction. Personally I think we are all going to die so mud donuts was always a possible response to that inevitability, but we don't do that because we figure we want our children (or more broadly humanity) to have a world to live in.

So if that still holds true then, for me, it is about lessening the impact, making the best of reality rather than the opposite ends of "give up" or "ignore the problem"

LeapingGnome wrote:

We'll see what happens when a lot of people start starving in countries the western world cares about because the land is turning to desert and there are water shortages.

The most terrifying aspect of the movie "The Big Short" is the end text where it states one of the guys who made millions off shorting sub-prime mortgages in the USA now puts all his investment money into water.