Climate change as a threat to Biodiversity:
Technology as a Solution
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Climate change over the past 30 years has
produced numerous shifts in the distributions and abundances of species and
has been implicated in one species-level extinction. Using projections of
species distributions for future climate scenarios, data shows extinction risks
for sample regions that cover some 20% of the Earth's terrestrial surface.
Exploring three approaches in which the estimated probability of extinction
shows a power law relationship with geographical range size, Its been predicted,
on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that 1537% of
species in our sample of regions will be committed to extinction. When the
average of the three methods and two dispersal scenarios is taken, minimal
climate warming scenarios produce lower projections of species committed to
extinction (18%) than mid-range (24%) and maximum change (35%) scenarios.
These
estimates show the importance of rapid implementation of technologies to
decrease greenhouse gas emissions and strategies for carbon sequestration. Carbon
dioxide (CO2) capture and sequestration (CCS) is a set of technologies that can
greatly reduce CO2 emissions from new and existing coal- and gas-fired
power plants and large industrial sources. CCS is a three-step process that
includes:
- Capture of CO2 from power plants or industrial processes
- Transport of the captured and compressed CO2 (usually in pipelines).
- Underground injection and geologic sequestration (also referred to as storage) of the CO2 into deep underground rock formations. These formations are often a mile or more beneath the surface and consist of porous rock that holds the CO2. Overlying these formations are impermeable, non-porous layers of rock that trap the CO2 and prevent it from migrating upward.
The figure below illustrates the general CCS process
and shows a typical depth at which CO2 would be injected.
Watch the following videos to learn more about how CCS works:
http://prod-mmedia.netl.doe.gov/Video/carbon_sequestration_animation.wmv
http://prod-mmedia.netl.doe.gov/Video/carbon_sequestration_sept.wmv
Posted by David Ferguson
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