Can giving the ocean an antacid help curb climate change?

Published on by in Case Studies

Can giving the ocean an antacid help curb climate change?

The ocean plays a critical role in curbing climate change. Like forests and wetlands, it naturally recycles carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a massive scale.  

Burt works for Planetary Technologies, a Canadian startup that’s attempting to harness and accelerate that potential by adding antacid powder to the ocean. 

The theory goes that by altering seawater chemistry, the ocean’s surface could absorb far more atmospheric carbon than it does naturally. 

The company is developing an approach that would turn the waste products from shuttered mines into an alkaline powder. They would deliver it into the water via existing pipes from wastewater treatment or energy plants  to avoid having to build new infrastructure. 

The technique is one of a growing number of strategies aimed at leveraging the ocean, which covers 70% of Earth’s surface, in the fight against climate change. In 2021, the National Academies of Science published a landmark report advocating further research into ocean-based carbon removal methods, in light of the growing scientific consensus that reducing emissions alone will not be enough to stave off the devastating effects of climate change. 

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2 Comments

  1. Well said Nasrul Isa Isa.

     

    I (too) remain steadfast in the view that Cleaner Production (as was introduced by the UN in the 1990s) then promoted by myself/peers from the University of SA that "selective separation (for recovery and re-use purposes)" offered the key to resolving Humanity's failing approach to managing the environment when it comes to water use.

     

    Yet unfortunately, the UN failed to pursue/endorse practicalities which favoured Nature and instead chose to sit back and simply report on its continued destruction and insufficient participation of its stakeholders.

     

    Needless to say, the Ocean governs the Water Cycle and hence regulates the weather but nothing is being done to foster this fundamental natural process in the fight against Climate Change.

     

    Waste Water – We all do it!

    Waste Water generally contains a plethora of harmful or life threatening substances. Left untreated or partially treated it is also severely detrimental to the environment.

    Yet the vast majority of Waste Water is barely treated, and some 2000 cubic kilometres annually is disposed direct to Ocean from City outfalls.

    The number of marine outfalls operating across the globe have multiplied year on year for more than a century, and their disastrous affect upon the Ocean plainly documented since the 1950s.

    Our Oceans are dying!

    Instead of living together with Nature’s recirculatory land-based water cycle we drain the land only to pollute its life-sustaining waterways, but to make things worse we deforest habitats and erode ecosystems.

    The Natural world is dying!

    To try and reverse such travesty, just three fundamental industrially robust steps – separation, filtration and disinfection - allows for the waste that inhibits return of the natural water cycle to be recovered, and so enable ‘fit for purpose’ water re-use to help realise an eco-friendly, sustainable future for all.

    Join the ‘best available technology’ push for a cleaner natural world at baleen.com 

     

     

  2. Salting the oceans is different from alkalizing the oceans, but both are futile. 
    If someone has a stomach ulcer, it might be effective to give an antacid even though there are some negative effects. 
    The sea is 2/3 of the earth, but the sea is not a flat expanse like land, the sea holds various kinds of creatures at depths in a matter of km. 
    It's true that the sea is the final place where all the dirt ends (pollutants), and nature assigned the sea for that. 
    Well... if we want the sea to function more optimally (including managing carbon)....., then from the land to the sea we have to help it.