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posted by chromas on Friday July 17 2020, @06:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the dust-bowl dept.

Spreading rock dust on farms could be a major climate action:

Eventually (ideally sooner rather than later), efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are going to have to be joined by a technology that actively removes CO2 from the atmosphere. There are a number of options [...] and a new feasibility study suggests that one of them—spreading crushed rock on farm fields—deserves serious consideration.

[...] Using crushed rocks isn't a new idea. Some common minerals react with water and CO2 as they weather, converting CO2 from the air into bicarbonate dissolved in water. That bicarbonate (along with some calcium and magnesium) may hang out in groundwater or make its way into the ocean. And along the way, it can also turn into solid carbonate. Whatever route it takes, it's no longer a greenhouse gas in the air.

Over hundreds of thousands or millions of years, this process has an important stabilizing influence on Earth's climate. Warmer climates encourage more weathering, pulling greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere.

[...] One way to accelerate weathering is to grind up that rock into small particles. Just as powdered sugar dissolves in water much more quickly than a large solid candy would, these small particles will weather much faster. Spreading that crushed rock over farm fields not only nicely exposes it to the elements but can also be beneficial for the soil, replenishing nutrients and counteracting pH changes in heavily farmed soils.

[...] Globally, the researchers estimate that this process could be used to capture 500 million to 2 billion tons of CO2 per year in 2050. For comparison, scenarios that limit global warming to 2°C generally involve capturing something like 2 to 10 billion tons per year in a few decades from now.

[...] In the US, EU, and Canada, the researchers estimate that all this would cost about $160 to 190 per ton of CO2 captured, while China, India, and Brazil could do it for $55 to 120 per ton. That's in the same ballpark as other some options for atmospheric CO2 removal..

Journal Reference:
David J. Beerling, Euripides P. Kantzas, Mark R. Lomas, et al. Potential for large-scale CO 2 removal via enhanced rock weathering with croplands, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2448-9)

Additional Information:
Johannes Lehmann, Angela Possinger. Removal of atmospheric CO2 by rock weathering holds promise for mitigating climate change, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/d41586-020-01965-7)


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @09:13AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @09:13AM (#1022811)

    I already apply crushed rock on my fields. If this stuff ends up a similar cost, accomplishes the same thing, and helps the environment to boot, then why not do this stuff instead? Of course, I'd actually have to see numbers on those first two points.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 17 2020, @09:38AM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 17 2020, @09:38AM (#1022815) Journal

    If this stuff ends up a similar cost, accomplishes the same thing, and helps the environment to boot, then why not do this stuff instead?

    Of course you will need to see those numbers to understand if applying crushed rock is beneficial or not.

    What I can tell you is that the energy required by crushing those rock is more likely to be obtained by emitting more CO2 than they'll ever capture by weathering.
    And it won't be just probability, it will be certainty if everybody rushes to spread crushed rocks on their fields at large scales.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @07:59PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2020, @07:59PM (#1023046)

      I am unsure if you understand that we are already crushing rocks and putting it on fields. Due to this fact, comparison shouldn't be between zero and the new system but between the old one and the new one.

  • (Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Saturday July 18 2020, @12:15AM

    by pdfernhout (5984) on Saturday July 18 2020, @12:15AM (#1023134) Homepage

    https://www.remineralize.org/ [remineralize.org]

    Example: https://www.remineralize.org/2019/09/planting-a-trillion-trees-to-save-earth-remineralization-can-help/ [remineralize.org]
    "In an RTE study, Dr. Goreau found that Acacia Mangium tree seedlings planted in a thin layer of local basalt rock dust from a Panama quarry had an eight-fold increase in biomass, 2.17 increase in tree height and four times the survivability over five years when compared to other study samples. Trees planted on the local soil did not survive. Hard silicate rock is one of the most abundant resources on the planet. It is readily available as a byproduct from the aggregate industry, and RTE promotes its simple, low-cost application to soils and forests."

    --
    The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.