Media Coverage of the CO2 Antarctic Pumpdown Concept

Media Coverage of the CO2 Antarctic Pumpdown Concept


The Alaska Dispatch Newspaper is an on-line publication that publishes news and features about Alaska.  They ran a news story on October 25, 2014, written by Ned Rozell, an excellent science writer based at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

Here's an excerpt:  

Geoengineering ideas

Beget's idea is an example of geoengineering -- using manmade solutions to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the 30-mile shell of gases around Earth. Accelerating levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere is a frequent topic at the conference. Al Gore and climate scientist James Hansen have spoken with urgency on the subject in lecture halls packed with more people than live in most Alaska towns.

With geoengineering, humans attempt to modify the effects of planet-warming molecules in the atmosphere. The ideas, most still in the think-tank stage, range from painting roofs white to reflect sunlight to seeding the atmosphere with volcanic-emission-like particles known to cause global cooling. Another way to tackle the problem is to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Some have suggested dumping iron filings in the ocean to stimulate the growth of CO2-consuming plankton.

As he pondered these notions, Beget's northern bias came through.

"There really hasn't been any suggestion of using the cryosphere (the frozen parts of the planet) to store CO2," he said.

Never thawed

He thought the great plateau of East Antarctica, home of the South Pole. There sits an ice sheet as large as the Lower 48. At its thickest, the ice is 15,000 feet (nearly 3 miles) above the ocean. Upon that ice in 1983, Russians at the Vostok Research Station recorded a temperature of minus 128.6 Fahrenheit. Ice cores show no evidence of temperatures close to the thawing mark.

"There's no melt in the record, which goes back 200,000 years," Beget said. "It's a natural place for this concept."