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The hard part is the first step: finding a cost-effective energy-efficient way of creating CO from CO2. The simplest route is to heat CO2 molecules to around 2400 °C, at which point they spontaneously split into CO and oxygen. The problem is finding the energy to do this.
One obvious candidate is sunlight. Los Alamos Renewable Energy (LARE), a company based in Pojoaque, New Mexico, has built a small-scale prototype reactor that demonstrates how it can be harnessed. In the LARE reactor, CO2 ..
Originally posted by plumranch
environment.newscientist.com
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Simple organisms can be genetically re-engineered to produce vaccines or octane-based fuels as waste, according to Venter.
Originally posted by plumranch
Anyway, I thought it was ironic that we think genetic alteration of biological organisms may save humanity while last night in the news we watched several large buildings in NW Washington burn to the ground because some radical group torched them thinking they had produced the wood with GM trees! I don't understand the anti GM mindset yet.
All viruses have an organic outer shell, but it turns out that with a little genetic tinkering they can be trained to produce an inorganic outer shell made of gold or cobalt oxide. Angela Belcher's lab at MIT has created an entire factory of trained viruses whose genes have been reprogrammed to grow battery ingredients. They're also growing ingredients for solar cells, as well as computer monitors and water-purification systems.
Your work on atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons led eventually to a global CFC ban that saved us from ozone-layer depletion. Do we have time to do a similar thing with carbon emissions to save ourselves from climate change?
Not a hope in hell. Most of the "green" stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It's not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it'll make a lot of money for a lot of people. - (skip a few questions)
There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste - which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering - into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO2 down quite fast.
Would it make enough of a difference?
Yes. The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms. What we can do is cheat those consumers by getting farmers to burn their crop waste at very low oxygen levels to turn it into charcoal, which the farmer then ploughs into the field. A little CO2 is released but the bulk of it gets converted to carbon. You get a few per cent of biofuel as a by-product of the combustion process, which the farmer can sell. This scheme would need no subsidy: the farmer would make a profit. This is the one thing we can do that will make a difference, but I bet they won't do it.
It is called Algae Oil and it is ready to go. See this link for everything you need to know...