Have you considered calcium carbonate (ie limestone)for storage? Perhaps someone could fiddle with diatoms to get them to make heavier shells. Grow them in ponds with extra carbon dioxide. Eventually the ponds would fill up with pre-limestone.

Isn't there a not very unhealthy chemical substance that can be given into the atmosphere, bind CO2 at it and cause a precipitation of it that can be disposed somehow?

I am an electrical engineering student with an avid interest in pro-environment solutions.It seems to me that the final solution(if one exists)must come from what is naturally available itself.Any and all external solutions will change energy levels in some form and this change will then have to be dealt with like the current CO2 problem...am i wrong?

I thank the authors for an excellent book about our planet's climate. Defining and presenting the "Ocean Conveyor" is a tremendous scientific contribution providing a basic understanding of how oceans circulate heat.

Regarding our future climate, I suggest that the Arctic Ocean is our planet's biological thermostat--- in combination with Wallace Broecker's concept of the "Ocean Conveyor"

Thermodynamically, I suggest that ice---(both Arctic & Antarctic plus all glaciers) which needs latent heat of fusion to melt--- is our temporary insurance policy that prevents some type of 'tipping point' for our planet's climate. When that policy runs out ( when the Arctic Ocean loses all ice---perhaps by 2025) we may be in for the start of a new ice age as previously hypothesized (Ewing-Donn theory...circa 1958 @ page 44 of the book).

CO2 scrubbers to capture and reduce CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere? A possible, but maybe not practical solution to the problem.

As an engineer, I suggest gradual conversion to more efficient energy service provision including CO2 isolation as a nearly pure byproduct. Some of this is described in my 1996 US Patent 5,537,823.

This patented heat flow process is capable of isolating CO2 at the point of origin as a byproduct of combustion.

Technologically, why not try stopping the largest CO2 discharges to the atmosphere at their point of origin.

Respectfully posted April 18, 2009

Richard H. Vogel

Hi I'm very interested in the cause of reducing global warming. Whether or not it is right we at least have to try. I'm trying to build a device for home use by everyone using technology similar to the carbon scrubbing trees. I'm still researching the plastic that is used to absorb the co2 form the air. I've got some basic facts, like the plastic/resin holds the co2 in the form of sodium bicarbonate in the plastic/resin. Does anyone know what the plastic is, it's chemical make up or basically what it is called any help would be much appreciated I want to try and make it on my own, but I have no Idea what is is. Only that its been used in water purifiers or softeners for several years.

Dear Mr. Broecker, I love this article!!! I you could send me everything you have on carbon scrubbers it would help me with my First Lego League project a lot!!!!thanks sincerely Hannah Graham

Thinking about this idea I thought about a step further, for example, how to turn that carbon dioxide in something stable and firm like sooth or graphite, which are forms of carbon and release oxygen as bi-product.

I have seen a documentary on Frozen CO2 Rockets being dropped/"shot" into the deep ocean where they will stay frozen under the deep pressure,hopefully. My question to Mr Broecker and other scientists working on this type of project ia a simple one, but there may not now be a simple answer. Once you have the CO2 sequestered, why not break it down into simple carbon and O2. We sure could use the O2 in the atmosphere and the carbon can be used industrially, or at least it would not be harmful. Let someone come up with an economical way to do this and there would be an overall benefit immediately, and no diaposal problems. After all, you could even sell/give the pure carbon to one of the companies that makes diamonds. Just think -- diamonds out of pollution!

I am impressed with the young man's idea about feeding food producing plants with CO2 as a way to extract it from the atmosphere and put it to use instead of hiding it somewhere that might not be able to contain it forever. This young man(Mark Goergiou) an apparently bright indvidual that may someday be a scientist I, for one am pleased to see someone so young interested in saving the planet and feeding the hungry. Kudos to you mark, keep thinking and study hard. I'm sure you will go far

I have been interested in the rise of Global Warming for A long time(going to college long ago in Environmental Science-although I graduated with a degree in a different field). Any information-or such-in the subject, may be of definite interest; it seems often difficult to obtain specifics, in the area, itself. -Steve

hi im mark i am 13 years old. i was just reading this becaus i had an idea of extracting the co2 emmisions from the air and basicly feeding it to a facility that has plants in a secure area were the co2 cannot escape. So becaus the plants need co2 to live why not feed it to them. And it has been scientificly proven that plants will produce twice as much fruit or better yet twice the size of the fruit. Wich in the end will hit two birds with one stone. thus trying to end world hunger at the same time. hope you like my idea. yours sincerly mark goergiou.

I find it hard to believe that a car produces 1.4 tons of CO2 per mile as suggested by Ken Meshke. Maybe I'm wrong but that doesn't seem to make any sense to me. Where does it all come from?

The best sink for carbon would be Diamonds, about 2 cubic kilometers per year, either one big gem, or a pile of diamond beach sand. In hot weather the diamond beach would be hot on your soles (diamond is an excellent conductor). And about the energy source to make the diamonds? Just use the same (unspecified) energy source that Broecker would use.

What nonsense! An over-technical solution if I ever heard of one. georgeof420 was right -- trees do this much better than any machine. Yes, left on their own they will eventually return the Co2 to the atmosphere -- but not if we carbonize them! Better yet, carbonize friable biological materials like leaves, and add that to soil to make it hold nutrients better, reduce run-off of fertilizers, retain moisture, make nutrients available for plants increasing crop yields (which also holds more Co2, at least temporarily). It's called BIOCHAR folks, and instead of being expensive it saves money, instead of being technological it can be grass-roots, instead of being forced on communities it will be enthusiastically adopted if the benefits (not even including the resultant carbon sequestration we are talking about) are made known. Of course you can take biomass gasses to produce fuel, in which case it does become technological -- but not dauntingly so. Alternatively those gasses can be used to make the carbonization more efficient, with nothing more than a barrel and some tubing. Biochar is the only carbon-negative process that can also be profitable, ensuring its widespread adoption. All that is needed is education.

CO2 Scrubbers? Just buy some Al Gore Carbon Offsets like he does for his footprint. The Sun spot activity is entering a less active period, which will cool everything off on several planets, including Earth, for those interested in true climate change science.

I am a chemist, like professor Broecker in late 70's. As many of the responders above I'm skeptical about the human activity being a primary influence on climate. If it is, however, the exponential increase in population is beyond control. None the less, limiting carbon dioxide emissions is a good idea from the viewpoint of conservation of resources. Storage of massive amounts of carbon dioxide under ground deserves some careful consideration in the light of the disasters at Lakes Monoun and Nyos in Cameroon when in 1984 and 1986 thousands of people and livestock were suffocated overnight by release of carbon dioxide accumulated at depth from volcanic seepage. The high compressability of carbon dioxide and the impressive solvent properties of supercritical carbon dioxide suggest that it forms polymers in compressed form. Should someone discover how to cap these polymers, they could be stored in tanks at atmospheric pressure. Perhaps for some useful purpose in the future such as slowing the advance of glaciers.

I feel that this is , and I mean no offense by this, but an almost outlandish idea - giant towers that extract CO2 from the air, liquefy it so that we may bury it into the depths of Iceland and the Baltic region. I feel as though it's just another form of trying to hide our problems, with the side benefit of potentially buying us - humans - some time. not to mention the fact that it is riddled with problems: the pollution caused but the constructions of millions of towers, the entropy issue (Dave Leet), the political attachments as to where these towers are built and where the carbon is put, the cost of repair, the danger of having so much CO2 under our feet, and so much more that; it seems more as if we are children sweeping the dirt under the rug, instead of really cleaning our room.(the plastic sheets don't seem like a bad idea. Are the recyclable???) I agree with georgeof420 that trees are all the towers we need. If maybe we could stop - realistically trim - the deforestation of the Earth... and get more people to plant trees. Maybe that would be a step in the right direction. Gardening has always been a very calming activity for me... I am quiet adamant in the belief that though the scientific leaps (maybe steps)we are taking are impotent and necessary our attitude toward our behavior is also a key roll in the future of Earth. That the "little things," like car pooling and planting some trees, are rudimentary changes that must take place before we can say "we have made progress." I hope one day people will not need incentive to do good unto the world. I hope one day we will be willing to take financial loss for the same of betterment. I Hope.

My concern is about energy security and global warming. we have oil that can last up to 50 years. We have coal that last up to 100 years. but the problem with coal and oil is global warming. Solar and wind has also some limitations.So what is the solution? because we dont have much time. Global warming will create huge problem. I think engineering is the only solution of this problem. We need something that works like I.C Engine or steam engine without pollution. that we can use in our cars and also generate electricity with it in power station. So I used my 2 nd semester engineering knowledge (Strength of material and applied mechanics). We can utilize stationary force to do work. I know you are laughing because I am telling you something that is against the law of conversion of energy. Well I am not asking for fund. I will try my best to help you if you need any technical help. visit http://www.energyefficientmechanism.blogspot.com/

Wow man.... I totally think the governments should just give tax breaks and credits to individuals and companies that plant more trees! Nature is Queen dudes...

Actually, trees become net emitters of CO2 toward the end of their lives, and eventually release all their C02 through decay or forest fires. Better management of non-tropical forests and harvesting programs may help sequester carbon to some degree, but is there enough arable or vacant land to plant the 'critical mass' of poplars and other fast-growing trees that would offset anthropogenic CO2 emissions? As for tropical rainforests, the mineral-pool soil is apparently so trashed after clearcutting and a few years of tilling that replanting the original species would be unfeasible. The question regarding power sources for scrubbers seems to have an obvious answer, given that Broecker himself suggested that deserts present us with the optimal climate for deployment. You can read about how Global Research Technologies actually plans to sequester C02 at their website. I would encourage everyone to suppress their apathy, read in depth about the topic, and think seriously about ways of applying themselves to implementing these solutions.

Deforestation emits more CO2 into the atmosphere than all the cars & trucks & SUVs combined. Save the rain forest. Plant more trees.

So how do we power these scrubbers?

Allan, Too bad your career as a research engineer and recognition fo the difficulty of climate modeling hasn't taught you not to generalize about massively complex systems based on isolated anecdotal evidence. Who cares about your father's lake? Of course there's local variation, it's called "weather". We're talking about the planet, here. The whole thing. Not just part. Forget about warming. You tell me under what circumstances the highest CO2 levels in over 400K years (and all the main change happening since the industrial revolution) is a good thing, and then we can decide if we need to ignore CO2 emissions.

How much CO2 (or other greenhouse gasses and/or pollution) will be generated by the energy source that fuels the "scrubbers?"

I am concerned calculation of number of devices needed. An average (17 mpg) American car that is run for 100,000 miles produces about 140,000 tons of CO2 (assuming pure octane whose density is 0.0702 g/ml). At 20 tons of CO2 per year, each person would be responsible for driving a whopping 14.4 miles per year. While I realize that not everyone drives, I think there’s an “orders of magnitude” scale flaw in the calculation.

I AM VERY IMPRESSED BY THE CONCERN AND THE VERY OBVIOUS TECHNICAL BACKGROUD OF THE WRITERS BUT I AM AMAZED THAT FEW HAVE BOTHERED TO OPEN ANY ELEMENTARY TEXT ON GEOLOGY OR VOLCANOLOGY. THESE TEXTS WILL SHOW THAT MAN-MADE CO2 IS A VERY SMALL PART OF THE TOTAL CO2 EMITTED FROM THE EARTH. I THINK THAT IT IS THE HEIGHT OF ARROGANCE TO BELIEVE THAT PUNY MAN CAN ALTER THE CLIMATE.

I'm a research engineer with 80 patents. The same "scientists" who gave us the Butterfly Effect to describe chaos in unstable differential equation models that can't predict weather, who can't describe the sun's internal mechanisms causing sunspots and solar activity that really control weather, with global weather models having 100 meter uniform ocean depths, have total confidence in predicting earth's surface temperature 150 years from now. My father has owned a 1/4 section and lake in northern Michigan for 57 years and the lake level has finally reached what it was 35 years ago in spite of "drought" and "increased temperature" from global "warming". To understand the battle between environmental extremists and utilitarians please read about the eventual disagreement between John Muir (conditioned by Civil War bloodshed to think fewer humans were better) and Gifford Pinchot (trained in Europe as a fortester) at http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1991/1/1991_1_86.shtml. Politics and science shouldn't be mixed.

I very much appreciated Smithsonian interview with Dr. Broecker and highlighting his approach for taking out CO2 from atmosphere and avert adverse consequences of global warming he warned almost 40 years ago. Most of the experts now support this need but concern with the economic downturn related with such massive effort. I decided to write this comment to bring to your attention our coal biotechnology products already in commercial use for not only reducing the CO2 emissions by 50% per unit of energy but also taking out CO2 from the atmosphering and creating a negative carbon foot print,This approach offers a massive opportunity to expand economies while meeting the need for incresing safer foods, water and recycling wastes including even most lethal military munitions in to fertilizer. Please note www.arctech.com and www.ihccs.org for this remarkable technology. Dr. Ray Orbach of US DOE had highligted this technology approach as the transformational technology. For more info contact me at :dwalia@arctech.com

I fully agree that we are faced with the climate of VENUS unless we find a better balance between burning carbon and letting trees, grass and flowers sequester CO2. Those lakes of methane in the tundra,if released will start heating that we cannot manage. We have ONE, ONE way to siginficantly reduce burning carbon. What we get, all we want, from oil, gas & coal is heat. Just a few thousand feet under every place on EARTH is all the heat we need to produce abundant clean cheap gigawatts. With enough electric energy we can reduce burning carbon enough to let the trees reduce CO2. A village in Italy has shown us the way - using GEO heat to generate megawatts, GEO pays the village taxes, greenhouses offer work & fresh organic produce in walking distance. Prosperity for all!! Reason for that prosperity? EARTH'S gift of free energy! Village has enjoyed GEO since 1907!!! A GEOTHERMAL megawatt plant is planned in Utah: Cost $32M,time to on line,12to18 mo, ROI 1600%, $0.04/kwh. GEO is the only near infinite source of cheap clean energy. World wide we don't need to fight a war to get our share. Any political aspirant with the guts & brains to offer this to our world would be elected. Smithsonian could be the hero that makes GEO happen. PLEASE DO IT. bob@bnbrew.com

I am an Electrical Engineer among other things and I truly believe there will be valid solutions in the future to "fix" the enviorment if we as a global community are willing to commit the resources. What we can do short term to slow down the damage being down now is a sane and sensible way to start. We all know, or should know, the way to start is by using oil right now in the most efficient way possible. If we could increase the efficiency of our cars that would be a great start and that's easy. American workers rely on the auto for transportation to and from work for the most and most cars are built to carry 4 or 5 passengers, yet 90% of them only carry one, dispite the fact there is another person or persons within a few blocks going the same way at the sme time every day.We could double the effeciency of the average American worker's car by simply having each commuter carry one passenger. This would not only double the efficiency of the car, but reduce the traffic and all cars would get better mileage. Some might carry two or three passengers and increase the effeciency that much more and reduce the crowding of the highways even more. A worker sharing his car with just one would cut his gas expenses in half and those carrying 3 would be paying 1/4 or about $1.00/gal for gas. This would also take the stress off of the refineries, lower oil consumption in this country by 4 million barrels a day, stop the tumble of the dollar etc. We don't have to wait for scientific break throughs or spend billions of dollars to start this tomorrow. Why aren't the pundits pushing something this simple to start with, along with looking to some future technologies as well. I'm already doing this and saving bucks every week. One more reason thanjust good sense; It's patriotic too. Jim Miller

Wallace Broecker recognizes that we should reduce emissions of CO2 where technically and economically feasible, but control of global warming due to CO2 level in the atmosphere requires removal of the gas and segregation to prevent reentry. His idea of removal involves a mechanical device 6 - 10 feet in diameter and about 50 feet high. May I tell you about a scheme that has been in development for the last 20 years or so, that removes and segregates CO2, makes lots of cheap methane as a by-product and hence is profitable rather than costly? The process is called AP for Anthropogenic Peat; it removes CO2 by growing biomass (sugarcane is most efficient at this time) and converts the whole cane (no field burning) by anaerobic digestion to pure CO2 (27.3%C), stable organic residue (45%C) and pure CH4 (break-even cost about $.50/million Btu without segregation costs). See our website at "http://ap.py.com/" for more, ask me for still more.

A compelling argument can be made that the weight of observable scientific evidence continues to challenge the efficacy of anthropogenic CO2 as the dominant mechanism of global surface warming. GCM predictions of enhanced tropospheric warming rates relative to those at the surface (the sine qua non of GHG theory) are not consistent with measured historical data. And in any case, the codes cannot treat directly the atomic mechanisms of phase transformations in liquid:gas and liquid:solid systems that ultimately control cloud formation and evolution. These and other shortcomings seriously limit the utility of both the computational methodologies upon which CO2 based warming explanations rely and also most of the arguments or predictions that flow from them. It is becoming increasingly likely that Richard Lindzen, Fred Singer and the late Frederick Seitz and their colleagues are correct to suggest that nature, not human beings and not incompletely defined and specified computational simulations, governs planetary climate behavior.

It would seem a desirable thing to do, but always with these sorts of interviews lingers the sense, usually emphasized by the journalist writing the story, that there is some political or economic obstruction to doing what is obviously the right thing to do (in this case, don't keep increasing the concentration of atmospheric CO2). If either the person interviewed, or interested parties like Mr Chaffin above, could describe what the energy and entropy properties are of the reactants and the products, that might help understand this problem more exactly. The interview briefly alluded to "finding a clever way to do this without using a lot of energy," but to take any of this seriously, one needs to be convinced that the First and Second Law of Thermodynamics isn't violated, else this just becomes another perpetual motion scheme, only disguised a bit. One wonders if rich industrialists and investors are being taken advantage of, via their guilt and scientific ignorance, when these ideas are presented (similar to the big ethanol scam that the US Congress has just underwritten). Or maybe I just haven't seen a viable description of how this would work, but it exists somewhere, in spite of that. Excuses that detail to that level is part of a patentable idea and therefore cannot be shared are not acceptable, since this is just part of a feasibility explanation, not a detailed process / equipment design for actually doing the CO2 capture.Any guidance in that direction would be much appreciated.

The one who warned about warming in the 1970's when I first heard about it agrees with me that there's no easy way to stop global warming because people will continue to want fossil energy. His idea that we need tens of millions of scrubbers and to then sequester the CO2 shows the real extent that we must go to in order to halt global warming. Everything I've read about sequestration underground has indicated just how costly and risky it is. You have to compress CO2 to 1500 psi or more to force it into the ground, then you have to hope it stays there. The whole process of removing CO2 from the air, compressing it and forcing through solid rock to its final destination uses a tremendous amount of energy. Oddly enough, Broecker would have to assume that this energy would come from coal - the primary culprit, or it would have to come from renewable energy that would have otherwise been able to replace electricity from coal. Even a 100% efficient scrubber added to rest of these processes would likely produce more CO2 than would be sequestered. I am convinced that solid breakthroughs in solar, wind and a few other renewable technologies are quite near, so I'd rather replace fossil energy and promote conservation through more efficient vehicles. The last comment on producing plastic from atmospheric CO2 seems more appropriate and sensible.

Hmm, tall cylinders, going into and with the wind, reaching into the sky, taking away CO2, and maybe color them green, and brown. OOoo, we can call them TREES, that has a nice ring to it. Genius!!

I am a physicst (old too), and I am also interested in atmospheric scrubbers. My background is in thin films and plasma methods. I have a rough concept for a scrubber using plasma techniques. The primary advantage (if it worked) is that there world be no waste to dispose of. The method separates oxygen from the carbon and replaces it with hydrogen to make a plastic sheet. This idea is a little "out of the box", but if this doesn't deter you, I would be glad to share the it with you. Best wishes, Jack Chaffin