My idea to eliminate greenhouse gases

[herpguy]

I have an idea of how to eliminate some of the greenhouse gases; burrying it.

 

We could somehow suck large portions of air into a filter that filters out non-greenhouse gases. The greenhouse gases will then be compressed greatly for easy storage underground. In a short period of time, the warming should decrease.

 

Above the storage area, parks, buildings, etc. could be made. In my opinion, it's excelent use of land, and will definetly help the economy by providing jobs. Engineers will be needed, along with people to build the storage areas and for maintainance. Maybe, in the future, there could even be a way to convert the gases into clean, cheap energy.

 

Whay do you think of this?

[insane_alien]

Its a possibility...

maybe the tanks could be used to provide high speed wind tunnel tests. i mean if they are underground we can have insanely high pressures. Although we are talking huge volumes here even when they are compressed to liquids. besides it would only act as a buffer since emissions seem to be increasing exponentially.

the gases could be slowly released after we have changed over to hydrogen fuel cells or something.

 

Then the tanks could maybe store water or something.

[YT2095]

how about MASSIVE air bursts of NaOH soln?

 

I recon a few million tonnes high up in the Stratosphere ought to bring the levels down quite nicely a few % at a time

[insane_alien]

how about MASSIVE air bursts of NaOH soln?

 

I recon a few million tonnes high up in the Stratosphere ought to bring the levels down quite nicely a few % at a time

 

Wouldn't that cause alot more problems than it solves?

[bascule]

I'm really hoping that carbon nanotube manufacturing takes off and replaces many materials whose manufacture is presently increasing CO₂ concentrations. If you can make it profitable for people to suck CO₂ out of the air for manufacturing processes (and expelling O₂ as a "waste product") you'll have gone a long way towards solving the problem.

 

Not to mention that nanotube-based products have an immense potential to replace a number of petroleum-based products, especially in the realm of synthetic fabrics.

[ecoli]

Right now, the process decribed in the OP would use too much energy, I think. It would be expensive to run enough filters to make a difference.

[silkworm]

I'm really hoping that carbon nanotube manufacturing takes off and replaces many materials whose manufacture is presently increasing CO2 concentrations. If you can make it profitable for people to suck CO2 out of the air for manufacturing processes (and expelling O2 as a "waste product") you'll have gone a long way towards solving the problem.

 

Plants do the same thing. Problem solved (for CO2 anyway). We just have to plant anywhere we can and take over Brazil before they ruin the rainforrest with their bizarre farming practices.

[YT2095]

Wouldn't that cause alot more problems than it solves?

 

I`ve no idea, I envisage it locking up CO2 and Halogens then falling harmlessly into the oceans as salts.

sounds just as practical as the other idea

[Severian]

I have an idea of how to eliminate some of the greenhouse gases; burrying it.

 

This idea has been around for a long time' date=' and is seriously proposed by some politicians. The actual suggestion was to capture CO2 which is being emitted and pump it into depleted gas fields underground.

 

I think this is a terrible idea. People complain about burying small amounts of nuclear waste and then contemplate burying billions of tons of toxic gasses (which will [b']never[/b] become non-toxic)! What if there were to be a leak while burying it? A cloud of CO2 would kill everything inside it (except plants of course).

[YT2095]

I think one of the Best ideas I`ve heard was to react it with Calcium Hydroxide to from limestone or something and then it form calcium Carbonate which is then used to make Building materials like bricks and things, I`ve no idea how plausible it is, I know it can work on a small scale quite easily and cheaply in a Lab, but on a Global scale with 1000`s of these plants???

[bascule]

Plants do the same thing.

 

Yes, but there's not much economic incentive for anyone to go around planting plants for the good of the earth.

 

With carbon nanotubes, we replace one industry which increases CO₂ concentrations with another which decreases them.

[Edtharan]

Plants are not endless C02 soaks. Plants also release a lot of CO2 over it's life time. At best a forrest should have a neutral CO2 input/output.

 

As a forest matures it will have decaying plants that relesae the CO2 that is stored over it's life time. Also animals will live in the forest and are CO2 emmiters (from eating the plants). Infact at night plants use op oxygen and emit CO2.

 

Because of this forrests are not an endless carbon sink. The may help to smooth out the peaks and troughs in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, but they will not sove the problem of too much carbon in the long run.

[silkworm]

Yes, but there's not much economic incentive for anyone to go around planting plants for the good of the earth.

 

Well, I've always felt that agriculture and timber were both extremely valuble from an economic standpoint. We also must take into account that the biosphere is delicate and the Earth should be considered an isolated system, so burrying carbon and taking it out of the biosphere may, in the long run, put is in debt.

 

And, going along with my money is fiction, but even when we apply the economic principle of opportunity cost, the effort of planting and creating oxygen, food, and raw materials is a Hell of a lot more beneficial than trapping everything.

 

Honestly, the only thing worth trapping are the CFCs that have travelled to Antrartica, which I think can be done physically (with a little enginuity) and it's also the less dangeous than cause chemical reactions that will create salts that will raise the freezing point of the ice there and making it easier to melt.

 

Plants are not endless C02 soaks. Plants also release a lot of CO2 over it's life time. At best a forrest should have a neutral CO2 input/output.

 

As a forest matures it will have decaying plants that relesae the CO2 that is stored over it's life time. Also animals will live in the forest and are CO2 emmiters (from eating the plants). Infact at night plants use op oxygen and emit CO2.

 

Because of this forrests are not an endless carbon sink. The may help to smooth out the peaks and troughs in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere' date=' but they will not sove the problem of too much carbon in the long run.[/quote']

 

What are you talking about? Judging by the fluctuations in atmospheric composition throughout Earth history, and the fact that plants use the carbon as part of their structure, using what has worked in the past makes the most sense to me. True it is not an endless sink, pretty much everything has a limit, but replanting what has been destroyed and going a step further will restore what we had, and valuing that and maintaining these plants will help achieve a healthy balance. I don't want to eliminate all CO2 from the atmosphere, because doing so would kill everything on this planet, except for deep ocean organisms that get their energy from thermal vents.

[Sisyphus]

This idea has been around for a long time' date=' and is seriously proposed by some politicians. The actual suggestion was to capture CO2 which is being emitted and pump it into depleted gas fields underground.

 

I think this is a terrible idea. People complain about burying small amounts of nuclear waste and then contemplate burying billions of tons of toxic gasses (which will [b']never[/b] become non-toxic)! What if there were to be a leak while burying it? A cloud of CO2 would kill everything inside it (except plants of course).

 

CO2 isn't toxic, is it? I guess you must be talking about suffocation rather than poisoning.

[Airmid]

Plants are not endless C02 soaks. Plants also release a lot of CO2 over it's life time. At best a forrest should have a neutral CO2 input/output.

 

As a forest matures it will have decaying plants that relesae the CO2 that is stored over it's life time.

 

What are you talking about?

 

What Edtharan says is true: mature forests do not take up net CO2. Young' date=' growing forests, however, are a great sink for CO2. So what we could do is plant young trees, cut them down as soon as they reach maturity, and make sure their wood never decays or burns, since that would release all the carbon it has trapped again. Burying large amounts of wood would be a good idea, perhaps we would even provide future generations with fossile fuels. An other idea is to use more wood in buildings and furniture. It must be wood that is grown and harvested wisely, of course, and there will be another catch: once you own a nice wooden table you wouldn't be allowed to throw it away when you get sick of it.

 

On a sideline, but I couldn't help reacting to this:

... and take over Brazil before they ruin the rainforrest with their bizarre farming practices.

You realize this is actually our own fault? We want our burgers, and we want them cheap. Countries like Brazil, where wages are low and where there's no environmental regulations, provide us either with cheap meat, or cheap soy, that's being used to feed cattle elsewhere in the world.

 

Airmid.

[Edtharan]

Judging by the fluctuations in atmospheric composition throughout Earth history, and the fact that plants use the carbon as part of their structure, using what has worked in the past makes the most sense to me.

If you kill off a lot of plants they will rot and give off CO2 (also if you burn them). If a plant decays in the right environemtn then this can be different. The organisms that would normaly break downthe plant material are not there and so the plant will not release CO2. This carbon get sequested underground as coal (oil usualy comes from single celled organisms like algae AFAIK). We have been buring these carbon sinks and releasing them as CO2 (and other polutants).

 

This process is what is changeing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Replanting the forests will not fix the CO2 problem as those trees can only soak up a tiny portion of the CO2 released. They will soak it up for a short period of time as they are growing, but as they mature and die (and the forest around them) they will turn into carbon emmitters and re-release that carbon that they accumulated over thier life span. This can be as short as 5 years or up to 50 years (as an estimate). Not enough to stop the effect of us buring the carbon in the coal and oil reserves.

 

To soak up the carbon released from the coal and oil reserves we would end up having to plant more trees than there were before we started using coal and oil. It is this reason that plants can not be used as a solution to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It might help reduce the impact over the short term, but in the longer term (greater than 20 years) it will fail as a solution. We can use it to buy us more time to get the technology together to combat the CO2, but only a few years.

 

Ironically, plastic makes a good carbon soak, as it will lock up the carbon used in it (most plastics are made from oil) in a very stable state. The problem with plastic is that it has other pollutant effects on the environment. Other materials could also work. Certain types of concrete can be a carbon sink, but ther is problems with this too. We would need to pave very large areas with concrete to have any effect.

 

One soultion useing trees is to grow forests, cut them down and burry the resulting wood deep underground and thereby making future coal reserves and replaceing the CO2 that we have extracted from coal and oil. The problems with this is it would have to be done on a massive scale, and that would incure a gret expense.

 

No solution is perfect, and all have soome form of draw back. That is what make this kind of debate difficult. We can state the problem, but when it comes to a soulution there is the problem of "Not in my backyard" and the sheer cost of what it would take. The only answer to these conserns is that if we do nothing the the problem will be in your backyard and what is the cost of doing nothing.

 

there are a lot of sticky tape solutions, but they will only give us a bit more time to get things sorted and come up with an acceptable solution that we all can agree on.

[silkworm]

What Edtharan says is true: mature forests do not take up net CO2. Young, growing forests, however, are a great sink for CO2. So what we could do is plant young trees, cut them down as soon as they reach maturity, and make sure their wood never decays or burns, since that would release all the carbon it has trapped again. Burying large amounts of wood would be a good idea, perhaps we would even provide future generations with fossile fuels. An other idea is to use more wood in buildings and furniture. It must be wood that is grown and harvested wisely, of course, and there will be another catch: once you own a nice wooden table you wouldn't be allowed to throw it away when you get sick of it.

 

Taking carbon out of the ecosystem is dangerous (through polymerization, not burying which would cause decay even underground), being that it is fundamental to all organic molecules, although taking CO2 out of the atmosphere may be beneficial (as long as we don't get keep oxygen content below the point where lightning becomes very dangeous), and using energy to change it to some polymerized form takes energy, and guess what is the result of the most popular form of energy production?

 

Going along with that argument that you and Edtharan are supporting, if we use solar energy or anything else the energy cost in producing the apparatus that produces the solar energy we could use to make polymers to trap carbon would make paralysis the best option. Planting and harvesting is the best option because it produces oxygen and raw materials, without having to spend energy ourselves to trap the carbon. Outside of CO2, many of these plants even take other gases out of the air. The best way to clean the air is through the use of the warriors who have done it on Earth for a very very long time, plants. And since eliminating all CO2 would be ridiculous because it would kill us all, the exchange of CO2 coming back into the atmosphere is good, because even while they rot, their existence and the fact they have substantial mass shows that is has made progress, done more good than harm, at eliminating CO2 even as it rots and the gases it release will be food for other plants so we don't end up killing all of the plants, and thus the lower part of the food chain, by not having food for them.

 

Hell, we can even use rotting wood to make methane (natural gas) if we store the rotting wood in such an environment with termites and let them break down the wood and trap the gas they produce. ANOTHER raw material and viable economic benefit of simply planting.

 

You realize this is actually our own fault? We want our burgers, and we want them cheap. Countries like Brazil, where wages are low and where there's no environmental regulations, provide us either with cheap meat, or cheap soy, that's being used to feed cattle elsewhere in the world.

 

Actually, because you're implying rainforrest destruction for ranching, I'll have to ask you to take note that under my avatar it says Location:Kansas. If my state were a nation, it would be the third leading beef producing nation in the world behind the UK and Argentina. I know where beef comes from. The problem in Brazil is that a substantial portion of this rainforrest destruction is caused for a need for farm land, crops not animals. But they destroy their topsoil and need to destroy more, so they don't get much time on the land they clear. They're not getting much bang for their buck. And, a note should also be made, that the oxygen, and CO2 taken out, produced by cutting down mature rainforest to plant new crops is substantially diminished by the activity. It's an idiotic activity that is slowly but surely screwing us all.

[Edtharan]

The problem in Brazil is that a substantial portion of this rainforrest destruction is caused for a need for farm land, crops not animals. But they destroy their topsoil and need to destroy more, so they don't get much time on the land they clear. They're not getting much bang for their buck.

And to top it off as the siod degrades it looses carbon as CO2.

 

Hell, we can even use rotting wood to make methane (natural gas)

Methane is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2. Also if we burnt the methane to produce power then we would not be taking carbon out of the atmosphere. We would essentualy just be cycling it back into it. Carbon sequestration in the form of burried logs (I mean deep under ground like they are proposeing to burry the CO2 extracted from industry) might be viable but expensive.

[gcol]

Actually' date=' because you're implying rainforrest destruction for ranching, I'll have to ask you to take note that under my avatar it says Location:Kansas. If my state were a nation, it would be the third leading beef producing nation in the world behind the UK and Argentina. I know where beef comes from. The problem in Brazil is that a substantial portion of this rainforrest destruction is caused for a need for farm land, crops not animals. But they destroy their topsoil and need to destroy more, so they don't get much time on the land they clear. They're not getting much bang for their buck. And, a note should also be made, that the oxygen, and CO2 taken out, produced by cutting down mature rainforest to plant new crops is substantially diminished by the activity. It's an idiotic activity that is slowly but surely screwing us all.[/quote']

Try this, re. cows and methane:

 

http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/1997/Dec/hour1_120597.html

 

Methane is a 50 times more potent greenhouse effect agent than CO2. If all the Kansas farmers gave up their SUVs, then Kansas would still be responsible for......etc, etc.

[silkworm]

Methane is a 50 times more potent greenhouse effect agent than CO2. If all the Kansas farmers gave up their SUVs, then Kansas would still be responsible for......etc, etc.

 

Thanks for the link, but I'm already very well aware of methane's stature on the hierarchy of greenhouse effectiveness. What I was responding to there were earlier comments about how planting was not economically sound, but with all of the other benefits I mentioned earlier even a rotting log can give us natural gas to use as fuel. It is true that burning it would release more CO2 into the atmosphere, but the new plants will trap it and convert it to oxygen.

 

Essentially people, our debt that we're experiencing by this increasing presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is not only from the contribution of combustion reactions, respiration, and taphonomonic processes, but also because we're cutting short the natural and well proven contributor to eliminating these greenhouse gases, plants. It's a cycle people, and it's pretty basic.

 

As a sidenote, termites contribute more methane than cows because their numbers are great right now with all of the food provided by abandoned houses.

[Royston]

The problem is achieving a steady state without dramatic changes. We've created our own (very temporary) steady state through global warming...and pollutants in clouds causing global dimming, so solar radiation is having more of a problem getting through, whilst the release of energy through compounds in the atmosphere is raising the GMST.

 

I had a couple of ideas...though a bit far fetched. Maybe a GM crop that releases CO2 into the ground through the roots only, not sure how that could be achieved ? Breeding of vast blooms of phytoplankton that consume C02 and somehow obtain the carbon clouds that get released in the ocean...and storing this carbon very deep indeed, where the carbon cycle is slow.

 

These methods would have to be done on a vast scale to succeed. At the same time cutting down emissions so more solar radiation is getting through to keep the mild climate...and if the former is successful, not plunging us into a premature ice age.

 

I've just been covering this subject in my course...though only half way through the section, so it's probably daft.

[Airmid]

Actually' date=' because you're implying rainforrest destruction for ranching, I'll have to ask you to take note that under my avatar it says Location:Kansas. If my state were a nation, it would be the third leading beef producing nation in the world behind the UK and Argentina. [/quote']

But Brazil is since 2003 the world's leading beef exporter, with Australia as second.

The problem in Brazil is that a substantial portion of this rainforrest destruction is caused for a need for farm land, crops not animals.

Yep, that's why I mentioned soy beans in my previous post. Brazil and Argentina are the top soy exporters at the moment, and alas, a large part of this soy is used to fatten up animals fast.

But they destroy their topsoil and need to destroy more' date=' so they don't get much time on the land they clear. They're not getting much bang for their buck. And, a note should also be made, that the oxygen, and CO2 taken out, produced by cutting down mature rainforest to plant new crops is substantially diminished by the activity. It's an idiotic activity that is slowly but surely screwing us all.[/quote']

I completely agree.

 

Airmid.

[Edtharan]

The problem is achieving a steady state without dramatic changes.

Actually the problem is that we have put more CO2 in the atmosphere than was before the industrial revoultion. We need to take some of it out (not all just the stuff we have put in scince the industrial revolution). To achives a steady state we will need to control the input and out put. So if we do choose to continue to burn coal and oil and farn meat, then we will need to balance that with the amount of CO2 we take out of the atmosphere.

 

As a forest will eventuall become neutral in the amount of CO2 uptake then we will have to keep planting forests to keep soaking up the CO2 we pump out. If we keep this up and ignore the forests we planted before then we will eventually run out of room for new forests. If however we knock down the first forest and put a new one in place then that area will continue to be a carbon sink (another problem for mature forests is that the produce a lot of methane but only soak up CO2 and as methane is 50 time more potent greenhouse gas as is CO2 then the forest must soak up 50 times more CO2 to balance it).

 

Maybe a GM crop that releases CO2 into the ground through the roots only, not sure how that could be achieved ?

Unfortunalte thsi wont work as the soil will release the CO2 and microbes in the soil will convert some of it into methane. Some will get retained in the soil, but not enough.

 

Another problem of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere is that it will also take out some of the oxygen as well (2 oxygen atoms for each carbon atom - C O2)

 

but also because we're cutting short the natural and well proven contributor to eliminating these greenhouse gases, plants.

No there not. A new forest will soak up CO2 but not a mature forest. And roting trees (they do die you know ) release methane and CO2.

 

When they cut down trees to make farmland, they usually just let the trees rot (or burn them) which releases the methane and CO2. It is this aspect that has contributed to the green house effect as it has put the methane and CO2 out in great quantities quickly and hasn't replaced the trees with new ones which would soak up the greenhouse gasses released fromt the trees that were removed.

 

If the replanted the forest after they had farmed it it would balance out their greenhous gass emmissions from the clearing of the trees.

 

But Brazil is since 2003 the world's leading beef exporter, with Australia as second.

Yup, and the Carbon that is used in growing their feed is a carbon soak. It is the fact that the plants take up CO2 and the cows release methane that is the problem. If they didn't release methane then they would be greenhouse gass neutral.

[Royston]

I had a couple of ideas...though a bit far fetched. Maybe a GM crop that releases CO2 into the ground through the roots only' date=' not sure how that could be achieved ? [/quote']

 

LOL, I must have had my mind on other things when I wrote that !

 

I was supposed to say a GM crop that releases carbon through it's roots. So very little enters the atmosphere through decomposition, but yeah, it's a silly idea.

 

Actually the problem is that we have put more CO2 in the atmosphere than was before the industrial revoultion. We need to take some of it out (not all just the stuff we have put in scince the industrial revolution). To achives a steady state we will need to control the input and out put. So if we do choose to continue to burn coal and oil and farn meat, then we will need to balance that with the amount of CO2 we take out of the atmosphere.

 

My point was that we've created global warming and global dimming. If global dimming is cured...we're gonna be screwed!

[Edtharan]

If global dimming is cured...we're gonna be screwed!

Arn't we ever...

 

Some effects of global warming are not countered by global dimming. And we are starting to see these effects NOW. Governments need to wake up and look beyond the next election and start looking out for the world and the country that they represent.