As all Daily Sceptic readers know, this site is dedicated to bringing you, among numerous other topics, the latest from the wonderful world of climate change cult virtue-signalling theatre and stunts. The latest development is enthusiastically covered by the BBC:
A ground-breaking project to suck carbon out of the sea has started operating on England’s south coast.
The small pilot scheme, known as SeaCURE, is funded by the UK Government as part of its search for technologies that fight climate change.
There’s broad consensus amongst climate scientists that the overwhelming priority is to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the chief cause of global warming.
But many scientists also believe that part of the solution will have to involve capturing some of the gases that have already been released.
The theory, it seems, is that it might be more efficient to recover carbon from the sea than extracting it from the air:
The project is trying to find whether removing carbon from the water might be a cost effective way of reducing the amount of the climate warming gas CO2 in the atmosphere.
SeaCURE processes the seawater to remove the carbon before pumping it back out to sea where it absorbs more CO2.
The graphic below demonstrates the theory:
Professor Tom Bell of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory has shown the BBC how it works. Strangely, it seems to involve releasing carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere first:
He explains that the process begins by treating some of the seawater to make it more acidic. This encourages the carbon that’s dissolved in the seawater to turn into a gas and be released into the atmosphere as CO2.
“This is the seawater stripper” Prof Bell says with a smile as we turn a corner.
The “stripper” is a large stainless steel tank which maximises the amount of contact between the acidic seawater and the air.
“When you open a fizzy drink it froths, that’s the CO2 coming out.” Prof Bell says. “What we’re doing by spreading the seawater on a large surface area. It’s a bit like pouring a drink on the floor and allowing the CO2 to come out of the seawater really quickly.”
The CO2 that emerges into the air is sucked away and then concentrated using charred coconut husks ready to be stored.
The low-carbon seawater then has alkali added to it – to neutralise the acid that was added – and is then pumped back out into a stream that flows into the sea.
Once back in the sea it immediately starts to absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere contributing in a very small way to reducing greenhouse gases.
If this sounds to you a little like a Toy Town scaled initiative, you might be right:
At present the amount of CO2 this pilot project is removing is tiny – at most 100 metric tonnes per year – that’s about the carbon footprint of about 100 transatlantic flights. But given the size of the world’s oceans those behind SeaCURE think it has potential.
In its submission to the UK Government SeaCURE said the technology had the potential to be massively scaled up to remove 14 billion tonnes of CO2 a year if 1% of the world’s seawater on the ocean’s surface was processed.
For that to be plausible the entire process for stripping the carbon – would have to be powered by renewable energy. Possibly by solar panels in a floating installation at sea.
“Carbon removal is necessary. If you want to reach net zero emissions and Net Zero emissions is needed to halt further warming,” says Dr Oliver Geden who’s part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and an expert in carbon capture.
As ever, one need only follow the money. There’s nothing like a taxpayer-funded project for keeping scientists busy and off the streets:
The SeaCURE project has £3 million of funding from the Government and is one of 15 pilot projects being backed in the UK as part of efforts to develop technologies that capture and store greenhouse gases.
“Removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is essential in helping us achieve Net Zero,” says Energy Minister Kerry McCarthy. “Innovative projects like SeaCURE at the University of Exeter play an important role in creating the green technologies needed to make this happen, while supporting skilled jobs and boosting growth.”
So, if the Government’s hopes are realised we can look forward to massive job-creation installations busily sucking carbon out of the sea (regardless of which country put it there) and then pouring torrents of low-carbon water back into the sea. Unfortunately, even if this ambitious scheme takes off, there’s a catch.
Guy Hooper, a Phd student at the University of Exeter has a word of warning:
“Marine organisms rely on carbon to do certain things,” he says. “So phytoplankton use carbon to photosynthesise while things like mussels also use carbon to build their shells.”
Hooper says early indications are that massively increasing the amount of low-carbon water could have some impact on the environment.
“It might be damaging but there might be ways to mitigate that – for example through pre-diluting the low-carbon water. It’s important this is included in the discussion early on.”
What he appears to be saying is that it might make things worse. Fancy that?
Keen-eyed readers will also note that the story makes no mention of the costs, financial and environmental, of powering or building these installations, and supplying the acid, alkali and water needed. Does the whole scheme just belong to the other climate change cult Far Side projects like building vast reflectors in space to block out the sunlight?
Worth reading in full.
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