Can We Really Scrub Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere?

Jack Kochansky

AP Biology EF Even

Mr. Ippolito

2 March 2018

Can We Really Scrub Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere?

By Henry Fountain

Fountain, Henry. “Can We Really Scrub Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere?” New York Times, New York Times, 28 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/climate/remove-co2-from-air.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fclimate&action=click&contentCollection=climate®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront.

In recent years, bleak reports about carbon emissions and the climate have led some people to believe that the only hope for climate stability is to remove carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the air.  But, as Henry Fountain points out in his article “Can We Really Scrub Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere?”, this is easier said than done.  He outlines a few different proposed methods of removing carbon dioxide from the air, a general field known as “negative emissions”.  He begins by explaining the potential and also the limitations of negative emissions technologies, quoting the European Academies Science Advisory Council, which said that there was only “limited realistic potential” for real success.  Fountain then gives brief summaries of the five primary proposed methods for lowering atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.  The first and probably most feasible method is to plant more forests.  Already, forests around the globe take in about 1 to 2 billion tons of CO2 annually, which offsets some of the 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide human activities put up into the air.  If we planted more trees, it could help to assuage this problem all around the world.  Considering space limitations and massive industrial emissions, it might not be able to completely equalize air pollution, but it could make a big difference.  Another proposed method is known as enhanced weathering, and it entails crushing certain types of rock and spreading them out on land to react with carbon dioxide and take it from the air.  However, a huge amount of energy would be required to process and transport these rocks, and the solution would still be slow and minimal.  Another proposed method, one which has showed some promise, is known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.  In this technique, certain types of vegetation are grown, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and then are burned in a facility that can capture the CO2 released in burning.  This technique has potential because in addition to removing carbon dioxide from the air, it results in a net gain of energy that we can use.  Fountain then describes one of the less-likely solutions, adding iron into parts of the ocean to stimulate the growth of phytoplankton, living organisms that take in carbon dioxide then bring it to the bottom of the ocean when they die and sink.  He does point out that “putting large amounts of metal or chemicals into seawater is considered ocean dumping,” and it could have severe negative ecological effects if misused.  Finally, Fountain describes a technique that is already in effect at power plants but could be used for the atmosphere: direct air capture.  In this method of negative emissions, chemicals are used to bind to carbon dioxide and then treated to release the gas in an area where they can be captured and stored.  Even though some industries have begun doing this at smokestacks, where carbon dioxide is up to 5 or 10 percent of the emissions, it is a lot more difficult to apply such technologies to the atmosphere, which is only about 0.04% carbon dioxide.  Even with all of the expectation for technology to resolve our climate crisis, it is clear that it will not be easy easy as people think.

Climate change is one of the world’s most pressing problems today, and it will not go away anytime soon.  Even as scientists and governments alike have asserted that climate change is very real and very bad, some industries and leaders refuse to change their ways.  Right now, when we need to be making the shift to renewable energy sources as quickly as possible, our president is trying to revive the dying and dirty coal industry.  Part of that nonchalance might be a result of an unreasonably inflated hope in the development of negative emissions technologies.  We need to keep in mind that as quickly as technology is progressing, trying to lower the amounts of a certain gas in the atmosphere is a mind-boggling task.  It’s also worth noting that the two most likely solutions, planting forests and bioenergy, involve plants, the very things that we’ve been destroying.  The best course of action seems to be to directly solve the problems we’re causing, so maybe we should just avoid cutting them down in the first place.  Climate change is going to impact everything, from our lives in the cities to the existence of ecological diversity in the Amazon rainforest.  If we continue blundering along poisoning the atmosphere now, we’re going to face a nasty surprise when we realize that our technology cannot perform the impossible.

Although this article was short, it was fairly well-written.  It touched one five of the main ways in which we could use negative emissions technology to curb air pollution by carbon dioxide, while giving a brief but accurate description of each.  It chose a relevant topic for today’s ecological and environmental concerns.  However, there were also a few ways in which the article could have been improved.  It only mentions five types of negative emissions technology, but there are more than ten plausible solutions.  It would have been better for Fountain to offer descriptions of some of the other possibilities, some of which are more likely to work than a few that he mentioned.  It also focuses a little too much on the unlikeliness of these technologies to work and not enough on what they actually are.  Overall, though, the topic is very important, and the article did a good job at summarizing its main points.