So you are correct about the idea of weathering being the process which removes atmospheric carbon, and the goal would essentially be to utilize the same chemical weathering process that occurs naturally over the course of tens of millions of years and condense that down to more human timescales. It is pretty simple really except for the part that requires processing mountain range sized amounts of material
Well, I had a look around for more information and ran into this paper, which includes a section entitled "Impact of biota on weathering," which offers a number of examples of biological systems that can improve weathering rates, some of which are very interesting to me. I think there's a lot of promise in a biology-driven approach to this effort.
While yes, this natural process certainly increases rates of weathering, we are still talking about something closer to the millions of years scale even with human intervention. We would need an industrialized system to likely even make a dent in our emissions in a human lifetime without massively disturbing already (and increasingly) fragile ecosystems. We can artificially create a much more conducive environment for this weathering to occur. Ideally we will be allowing the planet to heal while we extract our carbon from the atmosphere instead of stressing it’s already heavily impacted and most important ecosystems with a taxing chemical process
If human civilization is to continue in the long term, it will be absolutely necessary to harness the power of biology in ways that make use of biological systems (from single cells all the way up to ecosystems) to sustainably modify our environment and produce food and other goods. Reworking ecosystems to flourish even as they accelerate the weathering process (far beyond what existing biological systems can achieve) is going to be needed, just as we need to move from a mode of agriculture that works at odds with natural ecosystems to one that adjusts them to supply human needs. And such work is especially necessary in the realm of materials--if we don't learn to make what we need from the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen the atmosphere supplies essentially for free (plus a dash of some other elements like phosphorus and sulfur, and trace quantities of metals) the way biology does, we will surely wreck the planet by way of overconsumption even if we do manage to mitigate climate change.
So you are correct about the idea of weathering being the process which removes atmospheric carbon, and the goal would essentially be to utilize the same chemical weathering process that occurs naturally over the course of tens of millions of years and condense that down to more human timescales. It is pretty simple really except for the part that requires processing mountain range sized amounts of material
Well, I had a look around for more information and ran into this paper, which includes a section entitled "Impact of biota on weathering," which offers a number of examples of biological systems that can improve weathering rates, some of which are very interesting to me. I think there's a lot of promise in a biology-driven approach to this effort.
While yes, this natural process certainly increases rates of weathering, we are still talking about something closer to the millions of years scale even with human intervention. We would need an industrialized system to likely even make a dent in our emissions in a human lifetime without massively disturbing already (and increasingly) fragile ecosystems. We can artificially create a much more conducive environment for this weathering to occur. Ideally we will be allowing the planet to heal while we extract our carbon from the atmosphere instead of stressing it’s already heavily impacted and most important ecosystems with a taxing chemical process
If human civilization is to continue in the long term, it will be absolutely necessary to harness the power of biology in ways that make use of biological systems (from single cells all the way up to ecosystems) to sustainably modify our environment and produce food and other goods. Reworking ecosystems to flourish even as they accelerate the weathering process (far beyond what existing biological systems can achieve) is going to be needed, just as we need to move from a mode of agriculture that works at odds with natural ecosystems to one that adjusts them to supply human needs. And such work is especially necessary in the realm of materials--if we don't learn to make what we need from the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen the atmosphere supplies essentially for free (plus a dash of some other elements like phosphorus and sulfur, and trace quantities of metals) the way biology does, we will surely wreck the planet by way of overconsumption even if we do manage to mitigate climate change.