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Carbon Sequestration
09/10/2002
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is The Weather Notebook's weekly segment on Global
Climate
Change.
One interesting way to get greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere is to store them in
the
soil. Correspondent Curt Nickisch tells us about carbon sequestration:
In a windy field on the prairie, South Dakota State University soil chemist Jim Doolittle
is
surveying test plots of switchgrass.
DOOLITTLE: Most often when you're looking at a field, you're seeing the above ground
portion
of a plant. But what you can envision when we pull a plant up here you can imagine
about the
same amount of root material growing below the soil. And that's what we're studying:
how much
carbon is being added to the soil by that below ground root mass.
Switchgrass and plants in general use the sun's energy to take carbon dioxide from
the air and
build it into complex organic compounds ˆ that's how the plant grows. This movement
of carbon
from the air into the ground is the opposite of what happens when fossil fuels are
burned.
Combustion of gasoline, for instance, puts carbon dioxide into the air. CO2 is the most
prevalent gas responsible for global warming.
Professor Doolittle says carbon sequestration in farmland isn't a fix for global
warming...
DOOLITTLE: We are talking about a small amount of carbon. But if we can have that
small
amount constantly flowing back into the soil, are hopes are that we can effect the
atmospheric
concentration of CO2 for reducing the greenhouse effect.
Scientists like Jim Doolittle hope that carbon sequestration can buy some time, until
alternative energy sources and technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
can be
developed.
Curt Nickish reports from Sioux Falls, SD. The Weather Notebook's series on Global
Climate
Change is supported by The New England Science Center Collaborative, and the Roy
A. Hunt Foundation.
Today's Links
More Info
http://www.fe.doe.gov/coal_power/sequestration/index.shtml
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