An immodest proposal

[unixronin]

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.

Comments

[dr-nebula.livejournal.com]

Good lord, what a friggen educated moron. I swear, these 'scientists' who propose shit like this have absolutely no grounding in how the real world works.

[house-pundit.livejournal.com]

Expertise in one area does not carry over into expertise in another area. But experts often think so. -- RAH

One mark of an educated fool is how ready he is to expound outside his field, often without even realizing he's outside his field.

(Okay, yeah, everybody who likes kicking issues around bullshits, but these bozos take themselves seriously.)

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

okay, so offer the scientist a glass of water fully saturated with lime/CO2 :>

now ask him what that much limestone would do to the ocean water's pH balance? also would the fish and plankton/plants like that? also, would it raise the water levels? also, would there not be an exothermic reaction? also, did he enjoy his "water"?

also also, i'm imagining the rest of the world laughing at first, and then deciding we were slowly trying to kill everyone and nuking us :) because you KNOW we'd be paying for this one too, save the world, but not our locals because they have money to pay taxes.

#

[http://users.livejournal.com/crossfire_/]

I wonder if this is the same guy who, some 15 years ago, said that dumping tons of iron filings in the oceans would have the same effect?

My physics professor wrote him a letter pointing out that we'd tried that already, during WWII, and it hadn't helped.

[attutle.livejournal.com]

That idea is still active.

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/10/01/seeds_of_a_solution/ (http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/10/01/seeds_of_a_solution/)

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

Wrong coast?

http://www.supernaturalnews.com/?p=14815

Or is he a bad psychic and picked the wrong ocean. ;)

[jilara.livejournal.com]

One of those great ideas right in there with Edward Teller suggesting diverting/breaking up hurricanes with atom bombs.

bad scientist.

[wyrdling.livejournal.com]

no biscuit.

this sounds like one of my freaking exam questions: "in order to reduce net atmospheric CO2 by 2% during given length of time, how much powdered limestone should be dumped in the ocean?"

i could think of way too many ways to complicate the answer with reality and got lost trying to figure out what they wanted to the question to prove i knew :P
well, with a couple of my teachers. most were better than that, really, but, argh