The European Geosciences Union reports:
As the world starts feeling the effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and consequent global temperature rise, researchers are looking for a Plan B to mitigate climate change. A group of German scientists has now come up with an environmentally friendly method that they say could do just that. The technique, dubbed carbon farming, consists in planting trees in arid regions on a large scale to capture CO2. They publish their study today in Earth System Dynamics, a journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU)…
The new Earth System Dynamics study shows that one hectare of Jatropha curcas could capture up to 25 tonnes of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year, over a 20 year period. A plantation taking up only about 3% of the Arabian Desert, for example, could absorb in a couple of decades all the CO2 produced by motor vehicles in Germany over the same period. With about one billion hectares suitable for carbon farming, the method could sequester a significant portion of the CO2 added to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
But there are more advantages. Carbon farming’s price tag ranges from 42 to 63 euros per tonne of CO2, making it competitive with other CO2-reduction techniques such as carbon capture and storage. Further, after a few years, the plants would produce bioenergy (in the form of tree trimmings) to support the power production required for the desalination and irrigation systems. [Emphasis added]
Or possibility. You are literally talking desalination hundreds or thousands of times larger than anyone has ever done in the past, That’s not ambition, that’s madness.
Their plan includes desalinization. So, you get to count the CO2 from running a desalinization plant and pumping water over 30,000 square miles of desert. Makes one question the economics and the CO2 balance.
Planiting trees in arid areas seems like such a constuctive idea, until you realize that Mother Nature has been using this trick to buffer CO2 for a large part of earth’s history.
Do you know why it is so barren? Would it perhaps be due to the fact that it is dry as all get out? Plus, do you know how much land 3% of Arabia is? That’s 30,000 square miles. 8 million acres. All of Egypt only has 7 million heactacres of arable land. So, where are you going to come up with another Nile?
Jatropha curcas has about all the attractiveness as kudzu and johnson grass. It is an invasive species. I didn’t see where they showed that the net energy from all this desert farming would come from combustion of the plants. Neither did they balance the carbon from water production, processing with biofuel production and CO2 creation from German transportation. If you were bent on planting an invasive species you could go with buddleja. At least you would get butterflies and humming birds for your efforts.
“Planting trees in arid regions,” immediately causes the BS meter to twitch. Per Wikipedia, the miracle tree of the article Jatropha curcas will grow in arid regions, but “jatropha requires five times more water per unit of energy than sugarcane and corn.” There’s also a reference to a 2009 article by Phil McKenna to the effect that jatropha is a “water hog.” So, one suspects that, to be as effective as a carbon sink as stated, a lot of water would have to be imported. So, where does the capital and energy come from to do that?
There’s a government-bureaucrat sucker born every minute ready to hand out taxpayer’s money to chase unicorns.
Planting trees for carbon capture was a big thing in Australia a few years back. Currently they are bulldozing and burning the plantations because of the global glut in woodchips.
It’ll never work. The poor little dessert animals will be listed as endangered species due to potential habitat loss. Those German scientists don’t realize the other side doesn’t want us (humans) to win. The only acceptable solution is to undo all of the scientific advancements of the 19th and 20th centuries. Explain again how theirs is the “scientific” side of the argument.
I’d buy that, but I dunno if the trees mentioned in the article will do well in the Sahara.
Also, I conscientiously object to justifying any policy with “climate change” or “carbon pollution” in the blurb.
I forgot to mention: carbon has already been captured and sequestered. It’s called coal and it’s there to be burned.
The warmists actually have a good idea, though not because of the reason they give.
Almost all plants will reduce erosion, release water and provide food and water for insects and herbivores, among other good things.
How did they have a good idea? A broken clock is right twice a day.
My story too. Lajes Field? Where the Army runs the boats, the Navy does most of the flying, and the Air Force runs the motor pool.
one escudo
Spent lots of those while stationed on the Azores.
“As the world starts feeling the effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and consequent global temperature rise,…” So the article starts with a falsehood; the world is not feeling any effects from increasing CO2 or global temperature rise.
Then we go on to the “carbon farming” concept which is simply the carbon offset nonsense from Al Gore. There is no use at all in spending even one escudo (look it up) on 100 tonnes of carbon capture.
Finally, if you do capture the carbon in trees and then burn them, you’ve got the carbon dioxide back in the atmosphere. What was the point?
So yes, carbon farming looks just as good as carbon sequester.