Ants could save us from Global Warming

Found this an interesting read about Ants and how they could help or have been helping with Carbon Emissions. However, as I live in the City and am seeing less and less Ants, I have to wonder what we are going to do, and its not just Ants but there aren't many trees left in the City either. Anyway, if you are interested, check the Story:

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Yes, its in The Daily Mail but don't let that stop you.

Here is a snippet:

Ants ‘weather’ minerals in sand to produce calcium carbonate - or limestone
This conversion traps and removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
It is unsure how the minerals are converted, and theories range from ants licking the sand to excreting it
Researcher Ronald Dorn buried sand at six sites in Arizona 25 years ago
Every five years, he measured how much minerals in the sand had degraded
Ants break down minerals up to 300 times faster than sand left undisturbed
Dorn thinks the ants may be scavenging calcium and magnesium from the minerals and using these elements to make limestone

So.... basically if we keep building over everything and knock down Tree's we will be funked and I'm pretty sure these people who keep doing it, know the consequences but I have to ask why do they keep doing it? A growing population? Yes but we must find a solution to this growing population otherwise we will be funked.

Thanks for reading. Not sure I'll be back to reply.

a reply to: TruthxIsxInxThexMist

You're seeing less ants in the city because they're all in my kitchen.

But seriously, it sounds like good research. Thanks for bringing this to us.

You beat me to this by 48 min....ROFL! I found the article intriguing. It may seem like what difference will some ants make, but they number in the bazillions ( maybe more I'm clueless) and as a bio-mass working on this over time it has to make one hell of a difference!

Now if we could get locusts & cockroaches to be as productive?

We'll here in bristol there seems to be flying ants all over the damn place

Horrible little gits

a reply to: Caver78

I guess the Ants are either fleeing the City areas via flight to Bristol or they are gradually being killed off.

As much as all these facts and theories about how certain organisms, from trees, to bees, to ants and how they work wonders in the environment seem great to hear and a solution to our problem but they are just doing what they always have done. The only difference in the eco-system now is us. We need to take care of this ourselves, since we created this.

the one thing i don't need is more friggen ants around. the dammed things bite, get into and onto everything including sealed containers,my bed and kitchen table and counters, they screw up electronics and light switches. one electrical outlet always has hundreds of dead ants to clean up as they fry themselves, heck i even have had an ant colony in a USB hub. and there are MILLIONS of the tiny buggers. i can't even kill enough to make a dent in their numbers. i have watched at least THREE colonies strip a mouse carcass in a couple hours leaving nothing but fur and bones, as well as dead ants (colony war over the carcass?). i always see them outside solid lines of thousands of them going between their colonies and food. just think ten to twenty foot long lines (sometimes even longer) of ants going back and forth with few breaks in the line. you can even see their paths through soot on walls, so many go through dislodging microscopic amounts at a time. and those are the small ones only a couple millimeters long. then there are other sizes/varieties that span in size from them to a centimeter or so long (i do my best to avoid those red monsters lol).

Howdy,

This is some really nifty stuff. Thanks for posting the article.

That said, I don't think that this will stop global warming. Ant mounds are relatively porous soils, right? Well, calcite/dolomite (CaCO3 and CaMg(CO3)2 respectively) are the minerals that make up most limestones (calcium carbonate). These mineral species are highly soluble in acidic conditions. Even slightly acidic rain (as in most rain nowadays) can dissolve the mineral. I've been on an outcrop of soft limestone (rock, not just grains of mineral in loose soil) in the rain, and it bubbles.

Now, dissolving the calcite will only release the CO2 back into the atmosphere... (Funnily enough, most rain is acidic because of dissolved CO2 in water, which will form carbonic acid...). It's neat, but it is already a part of the cycle, and sequestration would likely only be for a short period of time. You could consider it something akin to growing a tree, then burning it for heat, and then growing another tree. Really, the CO2 isn't permanently captured (or even captured in the long term) from this, and I think the ant calcite would likely be a similar scenario.

Of course I'm not expert, so take all I say with a grain of halite. Thanks again for the post.

Regards,
Hydeman

The Ecosystem that keeps life on this planet is dependent on a lot of things. Mankind takes these things for granted. He alters the ecosystem saying there is no proof that it hurts, no proof because nobody wants to look for it and avoids researching the impact. It would be counter productive to the economy to do the research and generate laws that are an overkill.