William H Calvin

The Great CO2 Cleanup William H Calvin

Most of our climate problems could be repaired by cleaning up the excess CO2 in the air and so cooling things off. However, because of abrupt climate flips, the cleanup must be big, quick, and secure. Doubling all forests might satisfy the first two but it would be quite insecure-currently even rain forests are burning and rotting, releasing additional CO2. However, our escape route is not yet closed off. We can still do the equivalent of plowing under a cover crop, using perhaps one percent of the ocean surface for the next twenty years. A sustained bloom of algae is fertilized by pumping up seawater from the depths-whereupon another wind-driven pump flushes the surface water back into even deeper depths before its new biomass becomes CO2 again. When the sunken biomass does decompose, its CO2 is smeared out over 6,000 years. Such a slow return of excess CO2 can be countered by forestry practices. Putting current and past emissions back into secure storage would lower the global overheating, relieve deluge and drought, reverse ocean acidification, reverse half of sea level rise as the oceans cool, and reduce the chance of abrupt climate shifts. The plankton plantations could then be kept in readiness for cooling the planet in a methane emergency.