Carbon Underground

This article discusses carbon sequestration. Carbon sequestration, as it is called, is quickly becoming a cornerstone of the Bush administration’s approach to dealing with the issues surrounding global climate change and the influx of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Geologists know of a natural mechanism for getting rid of excess carbon from the atmosphere. CO₂ and water form carbonic acid, which then react with certain minerals, such as magnesium-rich serpentine, to create quartz and the kinds of rocks called carbonates. Of course, these carbonates formed through the weathering of precursor minerals over the course of millions of years. Surely, someone will come up with a way to make something useful out of all that carbonate, if not bricks or building blocks, then fertilizer or fireproofing. After all, our treating an industrial byproduct—CO₂—as worthless waste is why carbon sequestration has become a research topic in the first place.