Well done, Greg and Ken. Sent from my iPad
On Aug 12, 2012, at 7:01 PM, "RAU greg" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Congratulations, Ken. Truth might eventually win out, but what an incredible and unnecessary waste of time, money, and ill-will in the interim. And despite Brent's $182M misstep, he's still at it, this time advocating carbonic anhydrase as the planet's (and venture capital's?) savior. Service's article here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6095/676.full As he points out, CA is a very effective catalyst for greatly accelerating CO2 reactions, but if CO2 reactions with bases (to form (bi)carbonates) is the game, one still needs to supply a mole of base per mole of CO2 (roughly 2 moles base if one wants to make carbonate). Thus, as in the Calera debacle, supplying a large quantity of cheap chemical base is still the deciding factor re cost effective CO2 mitigation, regardless of how fast you can do the reaction. Certainly there are "free" sources of industrial waste base, but these have very limited size/capacity relative to CO2 emissions. The obvious base source re capacity, cost, and proven global effectiveness are carbonate and silicate minerals via weathering reactions. CA applications here would be welcome, yet the idea of consuming base minerals rather than making them ("pavement") apparently still continues to elude the professor. Hopefully, this will be his next epiphany, with continuing generous coverage by Science. In the meantime there is at least one point on which Brent and I can agree: making concentrated CO2 from dilute sources is the last thing we should be doing, esp re CDR, as clearly demonstrated by Socolow et al. and House et al. (and nature). For me Calera was a painful reminder that well-funded hype, salesmanship, and wishful thinking can, at least for a while, override common sense and reality. While we might be able to survive/tolerate such behavior in financial markets (stay tuned), we can ill-afford such wasteful diversions when it comes to preserving planet habitability. More and better scientific pier review and objectivity is needed in allocating what resources and time we have remaining to address the CO2 problem. Regards, Greg ________________________________ From: Ken Caldeira <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> To: geoengineering <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: "[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>" <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>; John O'Donnell <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Thu, August 9, 2012 8:20:45 PM Subject: [geo] Re: Calera -- fooling schoolchildren? I am sure that some of you recall this discussion about Calera a few years ago. Brent Constantz sent some choice words my way, such as: On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 6:09 AM, Brent Constantz <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Your work work with Rau has been deemed as simply incorrect by all credible members of the scientific community... ! If anyone has attempted to mislead the public about the significance of their work with regarding CO2 capture, its you and your partner Greg Rau. ... I have not been able to find any qualified individual, and I have tried, who finds your work credible. Based on this thinly covered, transparent attempt to disguise a need to get information for a greedy hope of a royalty stream as a concern for schoolchildren, I would question your personal imtegrity, and tell you Callera wants nothing to do with you, your bogus science, or you partner Greg! In today's Science magazine, the following text appeared in a piece by Robert F. Service: Some critics argued that the company was too secretive about its process, and that something else must be going on for the chemistry to work. One outspoken critic was Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University. Caldeira argued that getting calcium and magnesium ions to bind with CO2 to precipitate out of water isn’t easy. ... Caldeira was right. It turned out Calera engineers were adding sodium hydroxide or other strong bases to their seawater to make it more alkaline, driving the pH as high as 12 or 13. Sometimes, truth does out in the end. _______________ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab @kencaldeira Our YouTube videos: Climate change and the transition from coal to low-carbon electricity: Ken Caldeira<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9LaYCbYCxo> Crop yields in a geoengineered climate: Dr. Julia Pongratz<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhxzOUQVD38> More videos<http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/Caldeira_Videos.html> On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 6:09 AM, Brent Constantz <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Mr. Caleira, In response to this and your previous angry e-mails, Calera Corporation has the following response. Since you purpose is to determine whether or not any of the processes we use infringe the Caleira and Rau patent which Calera decided not license, it seems unethical to imply you care about scoop children's education or you have some higher purpose. We did not license your patent because we and our Scientific Advisor's found your work to be illconceived and lack credibility. Our board of advisors, who include the most well respected members of the carbonate community fully vetted the issues you raise a long time ago. Your work work with Rau has been deemed as simply incorrect by all credible members of the scientific community, evidenced by the fact that you have found no organization willing to license it! If anyone has attempted to mislead the public about the significance of their work with regarding CO2 capture, its you and your partner Greg Rau. Greg has also applied undue pressure attempting to get a job at Calera, but I have not been able to find any qualified individual, and I have tried, who finds your work credible. Based on this thinly covered, transparent attempt to disguise a need to get information for a greedy hope of a royalty stream as a concern for schoolchildren, I would question your personal imtegrity, and tell you Callera wants nothing to do with you, your bogus science, or you partner Greg! Our patents published last year, and your claims that Calera has not made it processes public are as bogus as your science. Brent Constantz Sent from my iPhone with radical intent On Mar 23, 2009, at 1:29 AM, Ken Caldeira <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: It is well known that the dissolution of carbonate minerals in the ocean causes CO2 to be transferred from the atmosphere to the ocean through a process characterized by the net reaction (1) CO2 + H2O + CaCO3 --> Ca2+ + 2HCO3- A number of authors have discussed ways to accelerate these reactions to store carbon in the ocean, neutralize carbon acidity, or both (e.g. Rau, Kheshgi. Harvey, etc). The idea of diminishing atmospheric CO2 content by dissolving carbonate minerals is discussed in the IPCC Special Report on Carbon Capture and Storage which has been reviewed by many people including prominent marine chemists. Reaction (1) is a well established net reaction involving dissolution of carbonate minerals in the ocean. It is also well known that the formation of carbonate minerals from seawater, such as in the formation of coral skeletons, drives a flux of CO2 from the ocean to the atmosphere, essentially driving reaction (1) in reverse: (2) Ca2+ + 2HCO3- --> CO2 + H2O + CaCO3 Furthermore, precipitating carbonates from seawater tends to lower ocean pH and thus exacerbate the ocean acidification problem. Against this background it is surprising to see the company Calera claiming to sequester carbon dioxide by forming carbonate minerals where the cations are taken from seawater -- trying to drive the above reaction in the opposite direction to what would diminish atmospheric CO2. Calera, in an exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences describing their process (see attachment) claim that the CO2 coming into the carbonate will be fossil fuel derived. One can only surmise that the net reaction, considering both reactor vessel and oceanic parts of this reaction can be characterized as follows (3) CO2 + Ca2+ + 2HCO3- --> CaCO3 + H2O + 2CO2 That is, they would drive approximately two CO2 molecules into the atmosphere for each molecule they sequester. The result is that they would increase CO2 more than that which would have occurred by venting the power plant directly to the atmosphere. So, from the publicly available information it seems that Calera's process goes in the wrong direction and will tend to increase and not decrease atmospheric CO2 content. Furthermore, when I raised these concerns to Calera, they would not respond openly to my critique, asking me instead to sign a non disclosure agreement. I think it is obvious to every marine geochemist that taking cations from seawater and using them to precipitate carbonate minerals will end up driving CO2 from the ocean to the atmosphere. I call upon the California Academy of Sciences to withdraw the Calera exhibit until such time that Calera demonstrates (i) that its process does not remove cations from the ocean in a way that will ultimately drive a CO2 flux from the ocean to the atmosphere that exceeds the amount of fossil fuel stored in the carbonate mineral and (ii) that its process does not acidify the ocean. I believe that Calera should not represent itself as having an effective carbon sequestration technique unless it responds publicly and clearly with the chemical formulas representing their process, including quantitative information on what they intend to remove from seawater and what they intend to add to seawater. I am not sure whether Calera is ignorant or intentionally misleading, or whether they actually have a basis for their claims. If they do have a basis for their claims they should state them now. If not, the California Academy of Sciences should remove their exhibit from the museum. I believe Calera and the Academy of Sciences are now misinforming schoolchildren, and that is not a good thing to do. Regards, Ken Caldeira ___________________________________________________ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA <mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> <http://dge.stanford.edu/DGE/CIWDGE/labs/caldeiralab>http://dge.stanford.edu/DGE/CIWDGE/labs/caldeiralab +1 650 704 7212; fax: +1 650 462 5968 <Calera_Academy_Sciences.jpg> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. 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