shadron
Philosopher
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2005
- Messages
- 5,918
A handful of ridiculous examples don't make the concept itself ridiculous. I can imagine a couple of sinks which would make more sense than dry ice or burying cans of carbonated beverages.
Suppose a process was developed which could split atmospheric CO2 into oxygen and carbon. The O2 could simply be released into the atmosphere, diluting the remaining CO2. The carbon could be used to make fine graphite particles, which could be released in the upper atmosphere to absorb the sun's energy in the "transmission" frequencies, where they would readily radiate most of the heat captured into space. Alternatively, the carbon could be used to make industrial quantities of carbon nanotubes, which could begin to replace wood and steel in construction and manufacturing.
Admittedly, I don't know if it's feasible to make carbon nanotubes in the same quantities as steel girders are manufactured today, or whether the energy to manufacture such quantities could be obtained from alternative (solar, wind, nuclear) sources so that net atmospheric CO2 would be guaranteed to decrease. I don't know if spraying graphite particles into the stratosphere is a bad idea for reasons that have nothing to do with global warming.
I don't see the idea of sinks as wrong. I do, however, see the probability of something useful or cheap, and simultaneously locking up the carbon, being pretty far-fetched. The reason we burn coal is to obtain the energy available from the exothermic reaction for useful purpose, with relatively low efficiency. Inevitably, cracking that gas from the atmosphere will prove to be at least the equal in energy input as was obtained from burning it in the first place. That doesn't count what we do with all that carbon, or the methods by which we extract it from the atmosphere or the ocean in the first place. Perhaps if we can find a cheap way to convert it into diamonds..., ah, but then who needs the surface of earth covered in grit of the highest known hardness? Talk about pollution!
There are only two ways out of that box as far as I can see: one can perhaps sequester CO2 at it's source. That may help the problem of dumping more CO2 into the atmosphere, but doesn't address the current over-abundance, and even that is too expensive to implement (witness the recent decision of a coal power plant to drop plans for simultaneous sequestering). The second is the availability of abundant, non-combustion power, from renewables, fission or fusion, or perhaps even more exotic sources. These all face problems, of course, but are the final answer to the AGW problem, as I see it.
As for carbon for carbon nanotubesWP, they are very useful and will no doubt hold a big place in our future (see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3401/02.html for one very interesting application, and data on nanotube manufacturing and characteristics). Watch it, though - there has been speculation that nanotubes, like asbestos fibers, may be a powerful irritative carcinogen. The wiki article mentions that the toxicity of nanotubes is still very much open to investigation. I doubt we will be hurting for a source of material, however, as the earth is about .03% carbon and life is an ideal force with which to concentrate it. We won't soon run out of it, the universe as a whole is .02% carbon, and scientists have noted that the most common material in asteroids is carbonaceous chrondites, so there are likely other, as yet unknown, concentrative forces at work.
But I don't necessarily see the idea of carbon sinks as a bad idea. Suppose an industrial process was developed that would combine atmospheric CO2 with water to create hydrocarbons and release O2. Suppose the industrial process could run on solar power, and became our sole source of gasoline (or other fuels) once fossil fuels became prohibitively expensive. We'd
Well, dang it, neither do I. Love to see sinks implemented. You propose here to use carbon as a medium for energy transfer, much like many people propose hydrogen. Great, but it doesn't solve our current problem. If we have abundant energy available, then AGW is no longer a problem by definition, and we can even contemplate remediation, and then we can pick and choose a way to transport it; that's a minor problem compared to AGW - the kind of problems we can wish for.