|
|
|
|
Carbon Sequestration
Tue Aug 05, 2003
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; 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, our 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
|
|
