Global warming 'cure' found by scientists

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
Last Updated: 5:01pm GMT 07/11/2007

Full version with graphics : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/07/eawarming107.xml

A "technical fix" that could stop global warming by taking billions of tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and save the coral reefs from being destroyed by acidification has been developed by scientists.

The process could be used on an industrial scale to remove excess carbon dioxide caused by the burning of fossil fuels from the atmosphere in "a matter of decades rather than millennia," according to researchers from Harvard and Penn State universities.

The process relies on speeding up a process that happens naturally, whereby carbon dioxide dissolved in sea water breaks down volcanic rock and soils to make alkaline carbonic salts.

The water flows into the ocean and increases its alkalinity. Sea water containing more alkali can absorb more carbon, so more carbon from the atmosphere is "locked up" and becomes harmless bottom sediments, according to the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Researchers estimate that it would take a cube of volcanic rock 10 kilometres across to return the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere to pre-industrial levels.

[ Read More Here / Leia Mais Aqui]

[Original Article / Artigo original]