Global warming can be reversed - scientists claims

[LionHart]

Hi-tech new bio-energy plants could “reverse” global warming by pumping carbon dioxide into old gas wells - lowering temperatures by 0.6°C per century, according to a study.

There are already 16 projects around the world working on the technology - aiming to generate power for local homes by burning vegetation such as wood or straw and then burying the carbon dioxide it produces deep underground.

“It’s like drilling for natural gas, but in reverse,” says Niclas Mattson of Chalmers University, Sweden, co-author of the study.

Because trees and other plants absorb carbon dioxide while they grow, the technology, known as BECCS - Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage - is “carbon negative”.

The bio-energy plants will capture thousands of tons of CO2 per day, and then pipe the gas down into rock formations, or depleted oil and gas wells. By 2050, the researchers believe, the BECCS plants could bury billions of tons of CO2 per year.

The first BECCS plants will be here within a decade, Mattson says. They are likely to be expensive relative to coal-burning power stations - but the researchers say that even if the technology only becomes widespread in 2050, it would enable governments to beat current climate goals.

Study author Professor Christian Azar said: “We can reverse the warming trend and push temperatures back below the 2°C target by 2150.”

Around 60 per cent of global CO2 emissions come from power plants fuelled by coal, natural gas and oil.

“Bioenergy plants are already widespread, especially here in northern Europe,” says Mattson. “The new part is applying carbon capture. This could be done by retrofitting existing plants, but we believe this will primarily happen by building dedicated new plants.”

“After being separated in the power plant, the CO2 needs to be transported (by pipeline or shipped in liquid form) to an underground storage facility. Alternatively, you can build new power plants directly by the storage sites. Then you pump the CO2 underground (same as drilling for natural gas, but in reverse). Suitable storage sites that can keep the CO2 intact underground can be: depleted oil and natural gas wells, coal beds or possibly saline aquifers.”
 
Plants that burn a mixture of coal and vegetation (such as straw or wood), could also be “carbon negative”.
 
“Carbon dioxide separation, transport and storage are already being done for various purposes on a fairly large scale, but only individually,” says Mattson. “The first combined full-scale power plants will probably be here within a decade, so it will take several decades for this to become significant on a global scale. We consider this delay in our model, however, and still find that the technology has the potential to help us meet or even beat the two-degree target.”

“Even if current political gridlock causes global warming in excess of 2°C, we can reverse the temperature trend and reach targets later,” Azar says.

Azar says that the technology shouldn’t be used as an argument against reducing emissions.

Azar says: “BECCS can only reverse global warming if we have net negative emissions from the entire global energy system. This means that all other CO2 emissions need to be reduced to nearly zero.

“To do so requires both large-scale use of BECCS and reducing other emissions to near-zero levels using other renewables – mainly solar energy – or nuclear power.”

Full Link: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/global-warming-“can-be-reversed---scientists-claim-124259208.html


-LionHart

[fayt]

Very nice... Suppression of temperature to .6 degrees per century.. hope they materialize this concept and able to upgrade hehe

Sent from my Yahoo using Google

[caligula]

Remind me again how long has the world exist? 4.5 billion years? At kailan nila inumpisahang sukatin ang global temperature and its ascend? Was it only in the 19th century? That is not even a 0.00001 of a fraction of the earth's age and we are now going crazy that the earth is getting warmer?

[LionHart]

Remind me again how long has the world exist? 4.5 billion years? At kailan nila inumpisahang sukatin ang global temperature and its ascend? Was it only in the 19th century? That is not even a 0.00001 of a fraction of the earth's age and we are now going crazy that the earth is getting warmer?

Taking account of Earth's temperature from the point when human couldn't possibly exists is simply irrelevant to this topic.

Bottomline is, human enhanced green house effect to climate change will affect us. Good news is we now have the technology to restore it.



-LionHart

[caligula]

Come again? If you start attributing this global warming pro tempore to the industrial revolution that occured in the past couple of centuries and believe you can reverse it, then it's a pointless waste of time.  What is it? Milankovitch Cycle nga ba yon?

[LionHart]

Come again? If you start attributing this global warming pro tempore to the industrial revolution that occured in the past couple of centuries and believe you can reverse it, then it's a pointless waste of time.  What is it? Milankovitch Cycle nga ba yon?

That is a gradual cycle spanning about every 26,000 years - too small to account to a dramatic climate change. If humans will be fortunate, we will surely be able to adapt. Human enhanced green house effect to global warming is sudden, accounting to 0.8 deg (C) increase of temperature in a span of century.


-LionHart

[¿m☺ÿ]

If this is true then it is a good start to atleast limit the effects of global warming and hopefully reverse it in the long run.... i say lets give it a chance.....nice share sir +karma for you

[LionHart]

If this is true then it is a good start to atleast limit the effects of global warming and hopefully reverse it in the long run.... i say lets give it a chance.....nice share sir +karma for you

Well said bossing. Thanks sa karma.


-LionHart

[hahaha123]

global warming..greenhouse effect..eto lang ang mareresolba nila...ang ozone layer n sira di na mareresolba yun.. tapos ang laki ng gagastusin para sa project na to...in a span of a century..and not quite sure sa outcome...
such a waste of money...syempre may side effect pa rin yan...

irreversible na talaga ang nangyayari sa mundo... and they cant do anything about it... because even a well educated man may not care about his surroundings...
ano pa kaya yung walang pinag aralan... eh ako nga lasinggero eh...tapos pag nasobrahan hala suka...
di po b?bigyan niyo kong jacket!! hahaha


ang siste...kung lahat ng tao eh matino...mangyayari yang reverse n yan...naku eh dito sa pinas kukurakutin lang ang pondo para jan..hahaha



btw thanks sa info sir lionhart

[LionHart]

THE RISING AND SINKING THREATS TO OUR CITIES



Sea-level rise due to climate change has already raised the risk of extreme floods in major coastal cities around the world, and many are slowly sinking into the oceans.

Half of us now live in cities - the concrete, steel and glass landscapes that make up the world’s great urban sprawls. Our cities have spread and replaced wild lands, and they roar and blaze with the energy from fossil fuels. They’re colossal – sometimes magnificent – and they are growing ever bigger and more numerous in the Anthropocene, as humans carry out the greatest ever urban migration.

But on a geological timescale, cities, like all human constructs, are likely to be temporary. Many won’t survive the changes humanity is wreaking on the planet, let alone natural upheavals.

Historically, cities were built in fertile river valleys and at river mouths. Agricultural run-offs of sediment, water and nutrients created rich coastal deltas that could support greater food production. This and the good maritime and river connections for trade and transport made these ideal places to live. But as populations grew, rivers were tapped and diverted for irrigation, industry and canal transport. They were also trapped behind dams and reservoirs for energy and water storage, and depleted by droughts and other extractions.

Sediments are therefore no longer flushing downstream in the quantities needed to maintain deltas against the relentless erosion of the oceans. Meanwhile groundwater is increasingly being extracted from beneath cities, and sea levels are rising because of the run-off from the melting of glaciers and thermal expansion of the oceans. As a result of these changes, many major cities are slowly sinking into the oceans.

Our rapid industrialisation over the past century has sped these processes, so that now, many urban centres face inundation by storm surges, and we stand to lose many of the most economically important parts of our planet. Cities from Bangkok to New York have experienced emergency flood conditions, and many more are to follow – those most at risk include Mumbai, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Miami, Ho Chi Minh City, Calcutta, New York City, Osaka-Kibe, Alexandria and New Orleans.

More than 3 billion people live in coastal areas at risk of global warming impacts such as rising sea levels – a number expected to rise to 6 billion by 2025. Sea-level rise due to climate change has already doubled the risk of extreme flood events in coastal cities, and the greater population of Anthropocene cities only puts more lives at risk. For example, a study shows that during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, as many as 100,000 extra people were at risk of flooding for every foot of water in New York. More than half of the population of America’s coastal cities live below the high-tide mark.

In the Netherlands, some 50 million cubic metres (1.7 billion cubic feet) of sediment has to be dredged from inland water channels or the sea every year to help maintain current shorelines. Globally, the urban construction boom is causing flooding, erosion and loss in water and soil quality elsewhere, as sand is mined and rivers are dredged to provide building materials for the new cities.

Located on the Yangtze River delta, Shanghai (which means ‘above the sea’, is particularly vulnerable to flooding as groundwater extractions and sea-level rise hasten the sinking of its massive high rise buildings into the East China Sea. Parts of the city have sunk three metres. In response, the authorities have begun pumping 60,000 tonnes of water a year back into wells to reduce the subsidence, built hundreds of kilometres of levees and are planning an emergency floodgate on the river’s estuary to protect the nation’s most prosperous city and its 20 million inhabitants. Mexico City is suffering a similar fate, with parts of the city subsiding 9 metres (30 feet) since 1910 through over-pumping of groundwater.

Life is becoming more and more unbearable in many areas of flood-prone cities, such as Ho Chi Minh City, where high tides can cause floods for as many as 10 days per month. Sandbags are often ineffective because the water comes up into the house through the sewage systems.

What’s the solution? Some cities are investing in new sea walls, dykes and polders, or high-tide gates – like London’s Thames Barrier – to hold back high waters. In poorer places, people simply endure the problem until they are forced to abandon their homes.

Insurance is already a big problem in many coastal cities. The US government had to underwrite policies for residents of New Orleans after their city was inundated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But that is a costly and, many would say, doomed enterprise. Coastal cities around the world will likely have to be abandoned and relocated as the cost of saving lives and repairing infrastructure becomes too great. Even important port cities, like New Orleans on the banks of the mighty Mississippi will eventually become unliveable. And these abandoned cities will leave their marks in the sedimentary layers forming all the time, to be discovered like mythical Atlantises by divers of the far future.

The coastal cities with the best chances of being preserved for posterity are those built on parts of the Earth’s crust that are being pulled ever so slowly downwards by the movement of tectonic plates, such as London. Cities drowned and then buried in silty blankets will persist in a petrified form. The subways and sewage pipes will perhaps resemble the traces left by some giant burrowing creature, and the deep foundation piles of high-rises will linger as uncharacteristic stripes in the layers of a future cliff. Little will remain of cities built in deserts, such as Las Vegas and Lima, those built at altitude, such as La Paz, and those exposed to violent destruction from cyclones, volcanoes or earthquakes, like Kathmandu.

These seemingly permanent symbols of our species’ great civilisations are as vulnerable as we are to the ravages of time, and to humanity’s destructive practices. Our industrial pollution is impacting the man-made world as surely as it is affecting the natural world. Millions of years from now, there may be few signs of the mighty cities that have transformed our planet.

Full Link: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130613-the-rising-threat-to-our-cities/all


-LionHart

[Marcus]

Tingin ko hindi kaya ireverse talagang nangyayari.ito.parang cycle ng earth

[charliehouse]

global warming..greenhouse effect..eto lang ang mareresolba nila...ang ozone layer n sira di na mareresolba yun.. tapos ang laki ng gagastusin para sa project na to...in a span of a century..and not quite sure sa outcome...
such a waste of money...syempre may side effect pa rin yan...

irreversible na talaga ang nangyayari sa mundo... and they cant do anything about it... because even a well educated man may not care about his surroundings...
ano pa kaya yung walang pinag aralan... eh ako nga lasinggero eh...tapos pag nasobrahan hala suka...
di po b?bigyan niyo kong jacket!! hahaha


ang siste...kung lahat ng tao eh matino...mangyayari yang reverse n yan...naku eh dito sa pinas kukurakutin lang ang pondo para jan..hahaha



btw thanks sa info sir lionhart

What makes you think na hindi mareresolba ang ozone layer? Is there any known laws of nature that will be violated sa processo? if there is wala na bang ibang solusyon? Malaki ang magagastos? in what scale? Let me tell you something dude, when there is an impending doom money flows like river. and for the pinas asal part: culture, the last resort of a man with cynicism on his side, can you please take a look back on what happen in the early 1950-1960 and see what happened in those times?

[kyris]

good news para sa mundo.. malaking pakinabang to

[Itachi101]

pwede ba ito
parang hindi rin

[xxxchoholic Rai ♥]

well for me this one is too late..

yeah things can be reversed but it will take a millenia to see the fruit

of such effort poh... its not an easy task but it's doable naman eh

sent from Tamagotchi using Taktetalk 9000