Global Warming Targeted

One Harvard researcher is devising a plan to take on two of the greatest threats to the Earth’s future—acid rain and global warming.

Kurt Z. House, a research assistant in earth and planetary sciences, proposed a process known as electrochemical weathering, which increases the alkalinity—or basic pH level—of the Earth’s oceans to reduce the damage caused by acid rain and decrease carbon levels in the atmosphere.

The natural ability of oceans to remove carbon from the air has suffered due to pollution-induced acid rain.

House hopes to increase the waters’ alkaline levels in order to accelerate this natural process that represents half of the Earth’s ability to remove carbon.

Increasing the ocean’s alkaline levels will also protect animals whose bodies require calcium, like shellfish, he said.

House, who said he came up with the idea while jogging along the Charles River, plans to accelerate the electrochemical weathering process by removing hydrochloric acid from the oceans.

“Various people have thought about finding soluble minerals to add to the ocean to increase alkalinity, but there are not a lot of minerals like that,” he said. “You can just do the opposite. Instead of adding a base, remove acid.”

However, even if the researchers’ proposals were to be implemented, it would only rid the atmosphere of about one-seventh of its carbon, according to the researchers.

“This cannot solve the whole problem. It’s not like we can go out and start buying Hummers,” said study co-author and materials science professor Michael J. Aziz.

Rather, House suggests a comprehensive plan that involves utilizing electrochemical weathering, increasing energy conservation, improving renewable energy, using bio-diesel fuel in automobiles, and injecting carbon into geological formations.

According to House, venture capitalists and other researchers have expressed interest in the project, but public funding may be hard to come by because of the government’s hesitancy to engineer the environment.

Significant concerns remain over the cost of implementing such a large project.

“There is a question of scale, if what we’re trying to do is protect a bay then it is likely feasible, but as you start moving up to the Barrier Reef and ocean, the amounts of mass handling is enormous,” said Ken Caldeira, a global ecology researcher at Stanford.