• Project ‘could turn back clock’ on carbon dioxide
• Guardian conference will select top 10 climate ideas
Putting lime into the oceans could stop or even reverse the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere, according to proposals unveiled at a conference on climate change solutions in Manchester today.
According to its advocates, the same technique could help fix one of the most dangerous side effects of man-made CO2 emissions: rising ocean acidity.
The project, known as Cquestrate, is the brainchild of Tim Kruger, a former management consultant. “This is an idea that can not only stop the clock on carbon dioxide, it can turn it back,” he said, although he conceded that tipping large quantities of lime into the sea would currently be illegal.
The oceans are a key part of the natural carbon cycle, in which carbon dioxide is circulated between the land, seas and atmosphere. About half of the CO2 released into the air by humans each year is soaked up by the oceans. This helps slow the rate of global warming but increases ocean acidity, posing a potentially disastrous threat to marine ecosystems.
Kruger’s scheme aims to boost the ability of the oceans to absorb CO2 but to do so in a way that helps reduce rather than increase ocean acidity. This is achieved by converting limestone into lime, in a process similar to those used in the cement industry, and adding the lime to seawater.
The lime reacts with CO2 dissolved in the water, converting it into bicarbonate ions, thereby decreasing the acidity of the water and enabling the oceans to absorb more CO2 from the air, so reducing global warming.
Kruger said: “It’s essential that we reduce our emissions, but that may not be enough. We need a plan B to actually reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to research such concepts now – not just the science but also the legal, ethical and governance considerations.”
Kruger’s plan was one of 20 innovative schemes proposed at the Manchester Report, a two-day search for the best ideas to tackle climate change staged by the Guardian as part of the Manchester International Festival.
A panel of experts chaired by Lord Bingham, formerly Britain’s most senior judge, will select the 10 most promising ideas. These will be featured in a report that will be published in the Guardian next week and circulated to policymakers around the world.
Climate change secretary Ed Miliband told the conference the biggest danger faced by campaigners was creating a sense of defeatism. “We need to show people how they can aggregate their individual actions and be part of a bigger whole,” he said.
Cquestrate is one of a number of so-called “geo-engineering schemes” that have been proposed to intervene in the Earth’s systems in order to tackle climate change.
Kruger admits there are challenges to overcome: the world would need to mine and process about 10 cubic kilometres of limestone each year to soak up all the emissions the world produces, and the plan would only make sense if the CO2 resulting from lime production could be captured and buried at source.
Chris Goodall, one of the experts assessing the schemes, said of Cquestrate: “The basic concept looks good, though further research is needed into the feasibility.”
Another marine geo-engineering scheme was presented by Professor Stephen Salter, of Edinburgh University.
His proposal is to build a fleet of remote-controlled, energy-self-sufficient ships that would spray minuscule droplets of seawater into the air. The droplets would whiten and expand clouds, reflecting sunlight away from the Earth and into space.
Salter said 300 ships would increase cloud reflectivity enough to cancel out the temperature rise caused by man-made climate change so far, but 1,800 would be needed to offset a doubling of CO2, something expected within a few decades.
Free for all?
The debate about media revenue models is certainly creating revenue for some content – the thoughts of pop culture theorists
If you want to deepen your confusion over the future revenue models for media content, then look no further than the staging of the paradoxical debate between pop culture theorists Chris Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell.
Gladwell’s review, commissioned and published in a magazine you have to buy, is freely available online. Its subject, Anderson’s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, could equally have been titled $26.99: The Price of Hardback Hyperbole. There’s nothing “free” about it, except perhaps its composition. Anderson has already had to apologise for lifting unattributed chunks of Free from Wikipedia including, irony upon irony, the entry on “free lunch”.
But the battlefield for this looking-glass war is the pricing of information, or what everyone is now obliged to call content. Information wants to be free, says Anderson, who elevates it to a principle, and says that free will be the business model of the 21st century.
Gladwell says information doesn’t know what it wants, but digital corporations do, and they want information to be free (from publishers and content creators) in order to make more money.
One of the examples of Anderson’s “free” thesis is YouTube:
Still, as Anderson admits and Gladwell takes pleasure in ramming home, YouTube doesn’t seem to make money from the new “free” business model.
Anderson’s book began cooking before the credit crunch took hold. For a new media dispute this one doesn’t just founder on irony. It also plays out in the past. Anderson’s Free has all the limitations of a timely book which was dated almost before publication. Gladwell’s review was commissioned on the New Yorker’s print lead time.
This is clear when both Anderson and Gladwell ignore the latest analyses of YouTube and its role in its parent company Google’s grander strategy. YouTube’s losses are likely nowhere near as severe as Gladwell portrays. Google can well afford them.
Price-cutting, and giveaways have long been a favoured, and rather unradical, business strategy, as Rupert Murdoch deftly demonstrated in building up the Times in the 1990s. Murdoch, too, knows the power that comes from owning apparently loss-making businesses.
There is a big change coming, and for businesses it isn’t one of the “free” business models that Anderson cheerleads. Content aggregation and distribution is in the process of becoming a global digital utility. The social and political consequences go far beyond pricing and the tech utopianism of Anderson. The point Gladwell makes in passing is in fact the most important – in whose interest will that distribution process work?
There is nothing free about server farms. Google’s digital factories may be hidden in Iowa and Finland but their management lies at the heart of its success. And in the meantime that success is having an impact on content creation at the micro-level. Yes, the writer. There is something very old-fashioned about a literary dispute.
Anderson makes – reportedly – a couple of million dollars a year in speaking fees. Gladwell has re-invented the book promotional tour as a paid-for event. A ticket to see Malcolm Gladwell Live! costs more than the book that the show notionally promotes.
So if the Anderson/Gladwell debate has a future, it’s one in which you’ll pay for ringside tickets to see them engaging in the intellectual equivalent of the Worldwide Wrestling Federation or, to be kinder, heavyweight boxing.
And perhaps a little feuding might add to the showmanship. Don King could probably advise. Still, live performance is once again a business model for writers. There might even be a book in it.