A climatologist at the University of Toronto says he's devised a new method to help counter global warming, by increasing oceanic uptake of CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels. The method is quite simple, really; you just sprinkle four billion tons of powdered limestone over the North Pacific every year.
...Uh, hold on. Back up there a minute. Say what?
No, that was NOT a typo. This guy proposes, with a straight face, sprinkling FOUR BILLION TONS of powdered limestone into the North Pacific. EVERY YEAR. For a HUNDRED YEARS. (Just to give that number perspective, that's two thirds of current annual worldwide coal-mining production.) And the gain from this? Fifty years from now, he predicts the oceans will be absorbing ... wait for this ... an additional 2% of current annual CO2 emissions derived from fossil fuels. A hundred years from now, that will have increased to a staggering 3%.
Now, I have to ask: Purely aside from the question of where we're going to mine four hundred billion tons of limestone over the next century (at a first approximation, that's somewhere on the order of two hundred cubic kilometers of limestone), just how much fossil fuel are we going to burn mining it? And powdering it? And building the facilities to do it? And hauling it all to the North Pacific? Forty-four supertankers full of the stuff PER DAY for a hundred years? And how much environmental damage is this going to do? I wouldn't be surprised if overall, the project came out with a net increase in atmospheric CO2.
The good Dr. Harvey has also apparently neglected to consider such things as, oh, say, how dumping four billion tons of powdered limestone into the North Pacific every year for a hundred years is going to impact, say, marine life in the North Pacific.
Please, Dr. Harvey. Just ... stop helping, OK? Don't call us. We'll call you.