Cooling the Climate with Giant Seaweed Farming

[sue4e3]

Australian climate scientist Tim Flannery suggests we could cool the climate with massive seaweed farms to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Geo-engineering is generally considered the last ditch attempt at preventing climate destabilization, one that could create as serious a problem as it solves.

But one climate scientist has detailed some environmentally safe geo-engineering technologies that could be adopted together with the more traditional way of reducing climate change (such as going solar).

Unlike potentially dangerous geo-engineering schemes, like seeding the high atmosphere with a blanket of sulphur, he proposes "third way" solutions.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/clayton-b-cornell/cooling-the-climate-with-_b_8486822.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change

[TexasProgresive]

1. The only way this would keep CO2 out of the atmosphere after growing is

to be harvested and buried deep in the ground to sequester the trapped carbon. Anything else and the carbon will return to the air as the seaweed decays.

[sue4e3]

3. I think he suggested eating it

[TexasProgresive]

4. And you will exhale the CO2 with every breath

And when you die you will decay releasing CO2 into the air. That is just the natural cycle.

[sue4e3]

5. I wasn't disagreeing

[TexasProgresive]

6. Sorry for the rant

It's my belief that the only real solution is the abandonment of fossil fuels and then to work some schemes like the seaweed farms to draw down existing CO2 and to put it back in the ground.

[sue4e3]

7. it's all good I agree withyou

[RiverLover]

2. Great article & news - "Seaweed farms can also reverse ocean acidification"

Seaweed farms can also reverse ocean acidification. Off the coast of China, there are about 500 square kilometers of seaweed farms producing edible seaweed for the food market. PH levels have been shown to rise as high as 10 around these seaweed farms. At the moment with an acidified ocean it is 8.1.

"You could buffer oceans," he said. "They are fantastic places for growing fish, shellfish, or prawns, just because of that buffering impact."

Flannery lays out this and other ideas in detail in his latest book, Atmosphere of Hope - which has a more optimistic take on climate change than his earlier book The Weather Makers. These include carbon fiber technology that turns CO2 from air into industrial products from cars to skyscrapers and even space elevators.

...Atmospheres of Hope....Thank you Sue!

[sue4e3]

9. welcome

[Ghost Dog]

8. Flannary interviewed here:

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/how_third_way_technologies_can_help_win_the_climate_fight/2923/

eg:

... Flannery: It’s still at an early stage, but all indications are that the plastic industry is set to be transformed by these technologies as we move away from fossil fuels. And the carbon fiber possibilities are just astonishing. If you want a very light, very strong material, carbon fiber is what you use. At the moment it is very expensive to manufacture. But just a month ago a major breakthrough was announced by a company that devised a way of manufacturing carbon nanofibers directly out of C02 in the atmosphere at one tenth of the production cost of other methods. As carbon nanofibers become cheaper to manufacture, they will start competing directly with steel and aluminum, both of which are very energy intensive and produce lots of emissions.

e360: There are already ways to take C02 directly out of the atmosphere or out of the exhaust stream from power plants. But the problem is where to safely store the captured greenhouse gas.

Flannery: Previously, carbon capture and storage was conceived of as something that you would apply to the end of a coal powered power plant, capture the C02, and store it in bedrock somewhere near that plant. But if you put C02 under the ground, the C02 remains buoyant, the stuff is always trying to escape, to go upwards because it is a gas. In the oceans, however, things are quite different. Water pressure at two or three kilometers depth is sufficient that C02 remains stable. And if you try to bury it even in shallow marine sediments it becomes a solid on its own.

When you think about it, the ocean floor is where most of that excess C02 is destined to reside, or most of it anyway over geological time. The C02 is absorbed into the oceans, it is turned into a carbonate on the bottom of the sea as limestone or whatever. So the idea that we should pump C02 into deep ocean sediments at 2 or 3 kilometers is really mimicking what happens over the longer term anyway and it provides a stable environment for carbon to be stored...

[Ghost Dog]

10. Re. carbon fiber from atmospheric CO2:

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33998697

and

http://www.gizmag.com/c02-atmosphere-carbon-nanofibers/39015/