Well, actually there is no coconut in this story, but I couldn’t resist…

What this story is about is putting lime in seawater and boosting its ability to absorb atmospheric C02 so that we can “reverse” the trend towards global warming. Scientists and researchers are “hopeful” that this will work and is economically feasible.

A dash of lime — a new twist that may cut CO2 levels back to pre-industrial levels
Scientists say they have found a workable way of reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere by adding lime to seawater. And they think it has the potential to dramatically reverse CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere, reports Cath O’Driscoll in SCI’s Chemistry & Industry magazine published today.

See, here is one of my greatest fears. Someone will come up with a great plan for reducing atmospheric CO2 and in the algorentian rush to “do something” about global warming, we’ll do something and dramatically reduce CO2 levels. And the reason I’m worried is because of the impact that will have on crop yields as well as the potential for more global cooling.

See, the problem is always global cooling. Global warming, imho, has never been actually proven to be bad. In fact in every historical instance of global warming, it has been a great boon to humans and even to other life on this planet.

And even though I don’t think CO2 adds much to the ability to heat things up, it may actually be a factor in cooling things down. That’s because the REAL culprit in atmospheric greenhouse effect is water vapor, and the problem with water vapor is that as the atmosphere cools, it holds less water, which reduces the greenhouse effect, which cools things down more, etc… This is a big reason why earth is geologically an ICE planet, not a tropical sweathouse. If we reduce CO2 levels then we run the risk of removing a potential buffer which slows down the positive reinforcement loop of cooling atmospheric temperatures, which could just accelerate our slide into a new ice age.

Sometimes we should just not mess around with things, you know?