From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Fri Apr 12 2002 - 05:12:41 MDT
On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, Colin Hales wrote:
> Bad day at the office?
No, just a low tolerance for hare-brained schemes.
> OK. I'd better tell the Los Alamos folks that there's no real CO2 emission
> problem and that they can all stop work. They'll be pleased you sorted it
> out for them. Pity about the years the've spent on it already, though.
Okay, I better explain why this thing is bogus. First, it's a nonsolution.
Quicklime is made by thermal decomposition of calcium carbonate. It's a
low efficiency (since conducted at a high temperature) process, it
consumes (currently, as nuke reactors are not hot enough and solar ovens
is way too expensive, and don't scale) fossil fuels, and it generates
exactly the amount of CO2 it is supposed to bind later, not to count the
Joules you spent roasting it in a hulking big oven. Here's actually a
recipe how to run around, wave you hands, make a lot of noise, and make
the problem actually *worse*. Things would have been different, if they
had figured out a way to enrich and bound atmospheric CO2 with a cheap,
low-energy process (similiar to oxygen enrichment with molecular sieves,
which is bound to take air rectification out of business sooner or later).
But, as soon as they mentioned "quicklime", their fate was sealed.
Here's a solution, for a difference: try to bind atmospheric carbon
dioxide in land biomass (planting and maintaining forest ecologies -- it
looks pretty, and makes nice microclimate, too, and there's timber to be
had there) and sea biomass (e.g. using iron for fertilizer, which allows
you high-productivity aquafarming, or alleviate the overfishing problem).
Secondly, fill up cavities created during (surface) mining with plant
biomass and seal them up, taking bound CO2 out of circulation. Here's
another solution: use hydrogen rich fuel, such as methane, resulting the %
of CO2 produced by Joule burned. Here's another: don't burn at all, but
use fuel cells, not Carnot processes. Here's another: use photovoltaics,
and solar hydrogen. Here's another: save energy, by using it more
efficiently (Gosh, whodathunkit?). There are others, but this short list
will do.
Why is that a nonproblem?
Even if the worst happens, and the Antarctic melts (not exactly overnight,
though, last time it happened it took 0.5 kYears), and the sea level goes
up by 20-something meters, and even if there's a frigging climate flip,
putting further heavy casualties amongst reinsurers, this is not something
which will even hurt us badly. And energy production landscape *will* look
lots different in 30-40 years, delaying the problem further. I'm not a big
Singularity believer, but things will look up lots different by the time
the Dutch and most of Oceania get seriously wet feet. (I wouldn't invest
in seafront property, either, but then, that's always a lousy investment).
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