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Re: [school-discuss] a way for humans to control global warming without a behavior change ?



Or if we just let the trees grow they will take in the excess CO2 from
the atmosphere.
Dave Prentice
prentice@instruction.com
http://www.originsweb.info
-----Original Message-----
From: mike eschman <meschman@engima.com>
To: School Forge <schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net>;
seul-edu@seul.org <seul-edu@seul.org>
Date: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 10:36 AM
Subject: [school-discuss] a way for humans to control global warming
without a behavior change ?


  Media Alerts Stories Archive --->
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/2002/20020820103
67.html

August 20, 2002

LIVERMORE RESEARCHERS SHOW DEPTH OF INJECTED CO2 INTO THE OCEAN
CRITICAL AS A
GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTION

LIVERMORE, Calif. ? Researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory have determined that the depth of an injection of carbon
dioxide
into the deep ocean is a good predictor of how effective that location
is at
sequestering carbon away from the atmosphere.

Direct injection of CO2 into the deep ocean has been proposed as a way
to slow
the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, one of the
causes of
global warming. In the direct injection scenario, fossil-fuel carbon
dioxide
is injected into the ocean interior, bypassing the mixing processes
that
would otherwise cause a relatively slow transfer of excess atmospheric
CO2 in
to the deep ocean.

In a study released today in Geophysical Research Letters, Ken
Caldeira and
Philip Duffy of the Climate and Carbon Cycle Modeling Group and
Michael
Wickett of the Center for Applied Scientific Computing, all at
Livermore,
show that the depth, rather than radiocarbon, is a relatively good
predictor
of the effectiveness of CO2 injection.

The researchers studied both radiocarbon dating (typically used to
date
anthropologic items) and the depths of injection to determine the
effectiveness of direct CO2 injection as a carbon sequestration
strategy.

Scientists used one-dimensional box-diffusion models and
three-dimensional
simulations run under the radiocarbon and sequestration scenarios
described
in Livermore's Ocean Carbon-cycle Model Intercomparison Project
protocols.

"These simulations indicate that the amount of time it takes for a
water
parcel to return to the ocean surface increases with depth, but is not
related to the amount of time since that parcel was last at the
surface,"
Duffy said.

Injections were simulated at 800 meters, 1500 meters and 3000 meters
for 100
years near the Bay of Biscay, New York City, Rio de Janeiro, San
Francisco,
Tokyo, Jakarta and Bombay.

The models showed that injection at 3000 meters is quite effective at
sequestering carbon from the atmosphere for several centuries while
injections at shallower depths are less effective. In general,
injections
into the Pacific Ocean (San Francisco and Tokyo) were more effective
than
injection at the same depth in the Atlantic Ocean (New York City, Rio
de
Janeiro and the Bay of Biscay).