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Speeding up earth's natural climate control |
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2007-11-09, 14:58:40 Carbon dioxide emissions are fueling global warming, and as a side-effect is making the oceans more acidic—but now researchers have devised a way to tackle both these problems simultaneously.
A chemical process, similar to the weathering of rocks, could combine acid from the oceans with CO2 from the air to create carbonate salts, which the ocean can absorb.
These salts could even be beneficial to corals, helping them grow the calcium carbonate skeletons that form coral reefs.
The team, led by Daniel Schrag and Michael Aziz of Harvard University, report their results in the Nov. 7 issue of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
"Essentially, our technology dramatically accelerates a cleaning process that Nature herself uses for greenhouse gas accumulation," says a member of research team. Here's a good news article about the findings, from Environmental Science & Technology.
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