Scientist Who Coined "Global Warming" Calls for the Deployment of 20 Million Carbon Scrubbers
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 06. 1.08
When the man who coined the phrase "global warming" speaks up, people tend to pay attention. So it was that when Wallace Broecker, a professor at Columbia University, recently called for the use of millions of giant tree-like "scrubbers" (see here for another recent example) to fight global warming, observers didn't immediately dismiss the scheme as harebrained.
The BBC reports that Broecker, addressing a literary festival in the U.K., said that roughly 20 million scrubbers would be needed to suck up all the carbon dioxide produced in the U.S. A grand total of 60 million would be needed worldwide to trap all carbon emissions; he estimated that the entire scheme would cost $600 billion a year -- though how he came up with that figure is unclear. Each scrubber would be 50 ft high and 8 ft in diameter and use a special plastic to capture CO2. The gas could be either pumped underground or liquefied under pressure.
Echoing many scientists who support geo-engineering, Broecker said current climate mitigation efforts are "just sort of crawling along at a slow pace." Sixty million may seem like a lot, he acknowledged, but, pointing out that the world produces 55 million cars a year, he says building that number over the next 3-4 decades should be feasible. One could argue that it took many decades -- more than 3-4 -- for automakers to optimize their assembly lines and reach such high figures (and that's with the whole world involved), so it remains to be seen if his ideal scenario pans out.
The best place to put these huge tree-like scrubbers would be in the world's desert regions. The toughest obstacle to getting the plan implemented will be political interference, Broecker said. Bringing China, India and other developing countries onboard will be key to ensuring the scheme's longterm success.
Via ::BBC News: Giant trees 'to clear excess CO2' (news website)
See also: ::Scientists Develop Air "Scrubber" Capable of Sucking Up One Ton of CO2 a Day, ::UCLA: New Super-Porous Materials Can Trap CO2
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NOT ENOUGH
Hes a great man but we are not going far enough.
Weve got to save even the deniers.
We owe it to ALL
It seems a shame to spend$600 billion a year on a scheme to clean up when it would cost less to change to non-polluting energy.
Consider $600 billion a year invested in wind generating power ... and changing coal fired generating plants to standby, and run them on hydrogen produced in times of high wind. That would be both cleanup and improved power capacity.
My real question is what happens to captured CO2 in Broecker's scheme. shuffling it underground changes an ecology we know little about. Liquid CO2 tends to be sold and used resulting in it's eventual release.
Instead of just trapping it all underground, why not store it so that when the next ice age comes around (which we all know will come eventually) we can release it back in to the atmosphere in the hope that it's enough to save us all.
I could see these being deployed in an event of a volcano eruption, not much else
I wonder who happens to have a patent on a "special plastic" that does this job?
Life can imitate art until the reality of 600 billion dollars per year in special plastic sets in. Perhaps he is identifying with Dustin Hoffman's role in The Graduate.
Given that he has not publicly identified this "special plastic" nor a means for extracting, diverting, compressing, transporting, and injecting C02 from said collecting polymer, I am entitled to call him an addled old geezer until he coughs up the details. After all,if life on earth is truly at stake, what has he got to hide? Profit intentions? If so then shame on him. If not, he is blowing smoke I say.
Life imitates sci fi: In an episode of the show "SeaQuest: DSV," the villain threatens to destroy the CO2 scrubbers that are stopping global warming.
And this was back in the mid-90s!
There's another device that pulls CO2 out of the air, no plastic -
http://www.gizmag.com/go/7341/
As far as sequestering CO2, whether you're talking about gas or liquid it's a boondoggle down the road. The best way is to separate the C from the O2 and sequester the carbon. It's nontoxic, chemically inert and actually used (read marketable) as a component of production in many industries.
No one thing can fix the atmosphere, but this kind of tech could be a solid spoke in that wheel.
Besides the comments made above, I'd think that investing that amount of money in forestation would be much better, where every year's expense would be to expand the forests, instead of maintaining them. And we'd all have more trees to hug! :D
Broecker certainly is good at creating crackpot ideas. Already there are problems setting up windmills in America with the NIMBY crowd so we'll have to deal with that plus $600 billion that doesn't generate revenue or electricity? That's not going to go over well either.
The better way to spend the money is to invest in solar and wind and shut down the coal plants that produce a lot of the carbon, increase energy efficiency, and harvest the methane from landfills.
First replace the system we have with one that pollutes less then talk about ways to reduce the remaining carbon that is put into the air. The scrubber idea does nothing to change our wasteful lifestyle anymore than putting a peace symbol on a rifle makes the gun any less lethal.
Rapid transit, high-speed rail and cycling facilities would be a better investment. Lets create a better transportation system rather than the crappy one we have now based on the automobile and airplanes.
Surely this very clever man is simply saying that we need to plant that many trees, it will cost (less) than 600 billion and we should do it like , yesterday, Otherwise... we will need....
Maybe in the same way that i heard a Mr Dawkins mention something about nuclear power and sulphur pumped into our atmoshere to cool (!?) our planet... this being our little blue bubble in space he's talking about... some help from the airlines maybe?!
Noooo! Just plant those trees... one at a time and plant up heaps!
Is he kidding? If we suck all the CO2 out of the air, what will the plants thrive on?
See my article on the topic -http://www.maccompanion.com/macc/archives/May2008/Greenware/Global%20Warming.htm
Just a warning about the above link: pritchet1 belongs to LDS... (the mormons): another world "organization" try to impose their cult upon others.
As a side note: as a scientist working in an Agricultural School, my plants would love to get all the CO2 you scrub. l guarantee their scrubbing service otherwise I'll double your CO2 back :)
Ins't it cheaper and more feasible to spend billions a year to the countries on tropical region to keep and increase their rain forest levels? By this way you also spend the money to keep the ecosystem of rain forest instead of pouring it to plastics in a desert.
We know alot about the chemistry and physics of our and other climates. What we want and what we (all life on Earta) need are different things. First what do we want? then What do we need, bare minimum!!!! Rather we ahould rebuild our natural habitats and then look after them , First ....and maybe reevaluate our Industrial techniques and requirements too....than Second to what we need, space suits and steel boxes to live in with huge guzzling industrialists dreams sucking up gasses and feeding us everything through tubes! *u*
But hey! We HAVE got to do somthing pretty clever....may i suggest a GLOBAL rainforest ...everyone who has a garden could have a big tree.... oh yes, how about starting by not cutting any more down, could YOU do without wood?