Cutting CO2 Levels Back by Adding Lime to the Ocean
I seem to be doing a lot of environmental posts recently, but it is definitely something I am passionate about so I guess it makes sense for me to write about it. A recent study conducted by scientists suggests there is a way for us to cut back on CO2 in the atmosphere by adding lime to sea water. Before you get excited, I don’t mean lime as in the fruit you may cut up and put in a Corona. I mean lime as in calcium oxide (CaO). Scientists have found that when you add CaO to water, it increases the alkalinity which allows the water to increase its CO2 in take. But not only can the water take in more CO2, it also releases a lot less because of the increased alkalinity.
The downfall, though, for some time was how to get the CaO in high levels. It was argued for some time that it was too expensive to get that much limestone (where CaO comes from) and that the amount of CO2 that is released into the air from the process was too much to bother trying. However, scientists now have the hope that if they do use this technique, it could help get rid of double the amount of CO2 that it takes to make the CaO; therefore, it’s a negative CO2 release.
In essence, if 1G of CO2 is released because of the extraction of limestone, then that lime that is used in the water will remove 2G of CO2 from the atmosphere, thus removing a total of 1G from the atmosphere after the release of the limestone. In other words…It’s good! Already the ocean absorbs 2bn tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. Just imagine if a lot of lime was added and just a few percent was increased in the amount of absorbtion in the ocean. Imagine how much CO2 could be removed from the atmosphere.
This idea really is a fantastic one and one that I support completely. If scientists can remove the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it can definitely decrease global warming which is incredibly important. Using nature to try and clean up the world is a great technique, but it can be very costly. I see this as being a very good way of cleaning up the atmosphere. Add in Gore’s plan to decrease our carbon-foot print and we can definitely have a very clean environment. What do you think? A good idea.
