Title: Can we solve the climate problem with rock and soil?
Abstract:
Weathering of rock creates soils at Earth’s surface as minerals originally forged at depth are exposed to water and air in the presence of living organisms. But weathering also has been proposed as a simple and efficient way to mitigate global warming because it removes the greenhouse gas, CO2, from the atmosphere. Such ‘enhanced rock weathering’ includes mining, grinding, and dispersing rock on farmland soil where it interacts with water and atmospheric CO2. This proposal has attracted millions of dollars of research money worldwide and has many attributes compared to other proposals to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere. But the rates of enhanced rock weathering are difficult to measure, making validation of the CO2 drawdown costly and time-intensive. This talk will review enhanced rock weathering as a strategy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and how it might be used in croplands and backyards.
