The Grand Portage Reservation is at the northeastern tip of Minnesota. The Air Quality Program has many ongoing projects in order to maintain healthy indoor and outdoor air. These projects include monitoring for regional haze and particulate matter, indoor air quality, invasive plant removal, public outreach, environmental education, alternative energy, and climate change.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Climate Change - Some Good News, Some Bad News

I saw a couple of news items on climate change today.

First, the good news - scientists have found a type of rock that can soak up carbon dioxide.
From the link:

When carbon dioxide comes in contact with the rock, peridotite, the gas is converted into solid minerals such as calcite.

Geologist Peter Kelemen and geochemist Juerg Matter said the naturally occurring process can be supercharged 1 million times to grow underground minerals that can permanently store 2 billion or more of the 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted by human activity every year.

Their study will appear in the November 11 edition of the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.

Peridotite is the most common rock found in the Earth's mantle, or the layer directly below the crust. It also appears on the surface, particularly in Oman, which is conveniently close to a region that produces substantial amounts of carbon dioxide in the production of fossil fuels.


Now for the bad news - the warming we are now experiencing is the sharpest increase in the last 5000 years , so we had better hope they can scale up that carbon sequestering rock in a hurry.


Oops! forgot to close the blockquote - the last part in bold is from me, not the link.

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