I've done some research into ways of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere but I'm still not sure if the idea will be suitable for my science task.
I found out that in 2007, Virgin launched a competition with a prize of $25 million (!!!!) for the person who can come up with the best way of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (there are catches though, like it has to be tested over a 10 year period before the majority of the prize can be claimed etc.). The competition closed in January this year and the judges received over 900 entries- that's a lot of ideas I can test- but I think they must still be adjudicating them because I can't find out what the winning and other best solutions were. However the website did say that the judges thought that some of the more promising solutions involved machines which use chemical reactions to remove gases. I don't really have a clue what those machines would involve though so I don't think I can base my science project around one. (For anyone that's interested the website is http://www.virgin.com/subsites/virginearth)
On wikipedia I found out some ways of removing methane. Although no processes have been invented with this specific purpose, a number a processes already exist which involve the removal or destruction of the gas. These include combustion- in which methane is destroyed as it passes through eg fire-, chemical decomposition- where some sort of radicals react with methane and it's destroyed, I don't want to research this topic because I think it would both confuse and bore me to tears- and biological decomposition- in which the methane is broken down by bacteria in soil. I think the last option sounds the most promising, both for the environment and for my SRP considering that having more fires (which release greenhouse gases) to get rid of another greenhouse gas seems ridiculous and I don't think I can bring myself to do my SRP on something to do with radicals. But I'll need to do more research into this before I make a decision on doing it for science.
There are two things that have astonished my so far relating to my SRP. They are:
1. the incredibly large amount of research that there is to do for anything and the increasing number of ideas that branch out from that first idea the more research you do which all require huge amounts of research themselves.
2. the number of things I don't know about the world. I'm not saying that I thought I knew everything, far from it, but I thought I had a far better understanding of things than I now realise I do. It's a very humbling experience.
Back to my research. I said in my last blog that getting rid of carbon dioxide wasn't as much of a problem as removing other gases because all we needed to do was stop logging and replant the forests which we ignorantly destroyed. I'm coming to realise it's not quite so simple as I originally anticipated. Don't get me wrong, I knew it wasn't going to be as easy as snapping your fingers; for starters, where do we plant all these trees? So much of the land that was originally forested is now urban settlement or farm land etc.. Also, Earth's population is increasing so more land will have to be cleared to make room for new homes, suburbs, even cities. But that last point is moving more into a humanitarian aspect which I want to avoid for my SRP. Anyway, but I still thought that the carbon dioxide issue was relatively easy to deal with. During my research however I found that many groups are brainstorming ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere-emphasising the point that there's more to it than planting trees. One process that might hold the answer is something called "ocean fertilisation". Never heard of it? Me neither. Apparently phytoplankton, found in oceans, is a major absorber of CO2. At the end of its 60 day life span, phytoplankton sinks in the ocean, taking its absorbed CO2 with it. Some environmentalists believe that increasing the amount of phytoplankton in our oceans is one of the best ways of removing CO2. The way to increase the plankton is to add iron- which is needed for its growth- to the oceans. But it's not as wonderful as it first appears. Research is not conclusive that the CO2 is permanately stored in the deceased phytoplankton/water (at this stage I'm not 100% sure which). Also the process of increasing phytoplankton through iron will be very expensive, and some argue that this money could be better used in other areas of research. Some groups fear that the plankton, once it has increased and spread, will not be able to be controlled, causing other problems in terms of water pollution and ecosystems. Different research shows that to use the phytoplankton to remove only 30% of our CO2, we would need enough to cover an area greater then that of the Southern Ocean.
So, I don't know if ocean fertilisation is a sensible option, but it sounds promising enough and could very well be the basis of my SRP.