Burying crop residues at sea may help reduce global warming

Imagine a massive international effort to combat global warming by reducing carbon dioxide - build up in the atmosphere. It involves gathering billions of tons of cornstalks, wheat straw, and other crop residue from farm fields, bailing it, shipping the material to seaports, and then burying it in the deep ocean.

Scientists in Washington and California have concluded that this Crop Residue Oceanic Permanent Sequestration (CROPS) approach is the only practical method now available for permanently sequestering, or isolating, the enormous quantities of CO2 necessary to have a real impact on global warming.

In a report scheduled for the Feb. 15 issue of ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal, Stuart Strand and Gregory Benford conclude that (CROPS) could reduce global carbon dioxide accumulation by up to 15 percent per year. Plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, and release it when they decay. Ocean burial would prevent that carbon dioxide from re-entering the atmosphere.

After comparing known methods for carbon dioxide sequestration on the basis of efficiency, long-term effectiveness, practicality, and cost, the researchers concluded that CROPS is the only method feasible with existing technology. CROPS would be 92 percent efficient in sequestering crop residue carbon. They recommend that crop residue sequestration and its effects on the ocean should be investigated further and its implementation encouraged. - MTS

Citation: "Ocean Sequestration of Crop Residue Carbon: Recycling Fossil Fuel Carbon Back to Deep Sediments",
http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/es8015556

Source: ACS

   

• wawadave - Feb 02, 2009
  • Rank: 4 / 5 (4)
  Wonder what they are smoking?
  • report abuse
  • • Current rank
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5
• barkster - Feb 03, 2009
  • Rank: 4 / 5 (4)

  Imagine a massive international effort to combat global warming by reducing carbon dioxide - build up in the atmosphere. It involves gathering billions of tons of cornstalks, wheat straw, and other crop residue from farm fields, bailing it, shipping the material to seaports, and then burying it in the deep ocean.

  Imagine the number of jobs and wasted effort this will produce to support the GW hoax. Imagine the loss of billions of tons of compost for gardens and plants that...

  remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis

  Imagine Michael Jackson is white.
  
  Just imagine!... Weeee!
  • report abuse
  • • Current rank
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5
• jackj - Feb 03, 2009
  • Rank: 4.3 / 5 (3)
  The only thing that needs to be buried at see is the AGW Cabal.
  • report abuse
  • • Current rank
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5
• Arkaleus - Feb 03, 2009
  • Rank: 5 / 5 (3)
  In the effort to combat global warming and the imminent doom that looms over us all, I propose we immediately embarke upon an ingenious and unprecedented program. I propose that we cultivate vast areas of land, perhaps an area the size of Rhode Island, in every country of the world. There we would cultivate cucumbers to a high density and ripe consistency. The sunbeams absorbed in said cucumbers would effectively reduce the sunbeams reflected back into the sky, preventing global warming. We would then have the added bonus of processing these cucumbers, releasing the sunbeams at a later time to power our neo-stone age huts. These ingenious cucumber batteries might also provide a good fraction of the total electricity needed to figure our carbon taxes.
  • report abuse
  • • Current rank
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5