Scientists urge deep-sea cure for climate change
Climate change could be slowed by burying greenhouse gases blamed for global warming deep below the ocean floor under thick, cold sediment that would trap it for thousands of years, said a team of Harvard-led scientists.
The seafloor along the U.S. east and west coast is vast enough to store almost unlimited carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. coal-fired plants, said Daniel Schrag, director of Harvard's Center for the Environment.
"It would make coal a green fuel," he said in a telephone interview with Reuters.
Carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels is the main gas blamed for pushing up world temperatures. Many scientists say the buildup could trigger more floods, droughts, powerful storms, heat waves and rising world sea levels.
Schrag's team at Harvard and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University propose capturing carbon dioxide from power plants, liquefying the gas, pumping it about 2 miles under water and then injecting it below the sea floor.
Many governments and firms are already exploring ways to pump carbon dioxide under land or directly into the sea -- a process known as carbon sequestration -- to meet emissions caps set by the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol for 35 industrial nations.
But such schemes will only help if the gas stays below the ground or the sea for hundreds of years, and studies and experiments to date indicate it may eventually leak.
Schrag said burying the gas under seafloor sediments of sand, silt and clay hundreds of meters (feet) thick at depths of 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) and very low temperatures would guarantee it would stay denser than the water above.
"The only place it can leak is deeper down," he said.
The seafloor along the U.S. east and west coast is vast enough to store almost unlimited carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. coal-fired plants, said Daniel Schrag, director of Harvard's Center for the Environment.
"It would make coal a green fuel," he said in a telephone interview with Reuters.
Carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels is the main gas blamed for pushing up world temperatures. Many scientists say the buildup could trigger more floods, droughts, powerful storms, heat waves and rising world sea levels.
Schrag's team at Harvard and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University propose capturing carbon dioxide from power plants, liquefying the gas, pumping it about 2 miles under water and then injecting it below the sea floor.
Many governments and firms are already exploring ways to pump carbon dioxide under land or directly into the sea -- a process known as carbon sequestration -- to meet emissions caps set by the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol for 35 industrial nations.
But such schemes will only help if the gas stays below the ground or the sea for hundreds of years, and studies and experiments to date indicate it may eventually leak.
Schrag said burying the gas under seafloor sediments of sand, silt and clay hundreds of meters (feet) thick at depths of 3,000 meters (9,800 ft) and very low temperatures would guarantee it would stay denser than the water above.
"The only place it can leak is deeper down," he said.
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