We are always hearing about climate change and how we need to find some way to stop it or at least slow it down. Look at how the world emits carbon dioxide. Everyone is looking for a solution to this problem. Some people believe that they have already found an answer. Some geologists believe that storing carbon dioxide deep into the ocean might solve our problem. “One of the most promising places to sequester carbon is in the oceans (Preuss).” I do not believe that this will help. I have been studying this topic for a while. Based on the information that I have gathered, I think that we need to try to find a different solution to climate change. Maybe there is a way to stop using fossil fuels. That way we can just focus on getting rid of all that CO2 instead of always worrying about how to regulate our usage. I am interested in this topic because I am passionate about the preserving the environment that we live in. Climate change is a very hot topic for me. Climate change is a problem because we did not keep our treatment of the Earth in check. I think that putting carbon dioxide into the oceans is just as careless. The way this research question affects me is that it is under a topic that I have been studying for a long time. And it makes me think about the life and the environment of the ocean. If it makes the ocean a hostile environment for marine life, then that goes against what I am trying do. I have been following the discussion of the process of carbon dioxide dumping in the ocean. I am currently a geology major at the University of South Carolina. I also know a professor who is researching the affects that CO2 dumping will have on the ocean’s ecosystem. I am currently studying topics and research questions like this. I have some experience and knowledge on carbon dioxide ocean dumping.

The official name for this process is Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS). This “solution” to global warming has not yet been put into action. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is “… Supporting research and development, pilot tests, and demonstration programs” (USEPA, “Carbon Dioxide Capture and Sequestration”). The idea is to compress carbon dioxide into a liquid and deposit it at a depth lower than 3000m. The plan is for the pressure of the ocean at that depth to keep the carbon dioxide in liquid form in a lake at the bottom of the ocean. It could also be deposited at a depth of 500m-3000m and then the carbon dioxide will just dissolve into the ocean. Too much carbon dioxide will have a negative effect on the ocean and marine life. The writers of the article “Carbon Dioxide and Our Ocean Legacy” say, “When carbon dioxide is absorbed by the oceans it reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid. Ocean acidification, as the phenomenon is called, over time will create major negative impacts on corals and other marine life, with anticipated adverse consequences for fishing, tourism, and related economies.” This shows us that there is proof that all the carbon dioxide that we would be dumping into the oceans would be very harmful to marine life.

 Honestly, I do not really have a plan or idea to replace CCS. But I do not think that this plan is a solution. I really believe that we have to come up with a better solution than carbon dioxide dumping. It is harmful to the ocean life and environment. The same thing applies to wildlife on the land. I do not think that it is okay to make the ocean harmful to marine life and the soil and atmosphere harmful to animals for our benefit. We do not even know the long-term effects of CO2 dumping except Ocean acidification. We do not know if the carbon dioxide will stay deep in the ocean or if it will eventually rise back into the atmosphere. And it would also probably cost a pretty penny for the whole world to join in if we did decide to start storing carbon dioxide in the deep sea.

The ocean can really suffer from the deep-sea storage of carbon dioxide. All the CO2 being absorbed into the ocean now is lowering the pH of seawater. “Decreased pH is one of the principal environmental impacts threatening marine organisms ( Adams and Caldeira).” As a result of declining pH levels, the availability of the resources needed for certain organisms to produce calcium carbonate for shells and skeletons is decreased. Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) conducted experiments on how injecting carbon dioxide into the deep sea affected the marine life. They looked at single-celled organisms called foraminifera. They injected carbon dioxide into mud on the sea floor and a few later put in a fluorescent dye that lights up live cells and not dead ones. The foraminiferal species that made their test (protective coverings) out of protein and sand were still alive. Those that made their tests out of calcium carbonate did not survive. The carbon dioxide made the water too acidic. Certain foraminiferal species did not have carbonates available for calcifying. “As the carbonate ion concentration decreases, the buffering capacity of the ocean and its ability to absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere is diminished (Feely, Sabine, Takahashi, Wanninkhof).” This is along same lines as the experiment performed by WHOI and MBARI.  In Kate Madin’s article, “Should We Inject Carbon Dioxide into the Deep Ocean”, Joan Bernhard says, “It is not doomsday for some species, but for others it may be. If we’re serious about pumping CO2 to seafloor, we need to think about it. The seafloor is one of the biggest habitats on the planet.” That is a lot of marine that could potentially be impacted by CCS. If the carbon dioxide were to seep into the soil or the atmosphere, it would cause a lot of problems for the animals on land also.

Even if we could get around altering the ocean life and environment, we do not know how long this could last. The “Greenpeace Briefing” article says, “The supporters of ocean dumping assume that CO2 dumped in the sea would not make its way back to the atmosphere for thousands of years. The complexity of ocean systems mean that models and experiments will never be able to confirm that dumped CO2 will not be re-released much more rapidly.” We cannot tell if the carbon dioxide will stay at the bottom of the ocean or not. We do not know how the ocean will react to all this CO2 in the future. Researchers believe that, “… sea-floor storage around the United States alone could store thousands of years’ worth of U.S. carbon dioxide production” (Bullis, “Storage of Carbon Dioxide Under the Ocean). But I guess they do not realize that this process would also harm thousands of organisms in the ocean. And if all that CO2 is somehow released within those years, then the people of that generation would be at a loss. Out of all the articles and journals I have read, no one can tell me that there is a way for CCS to definitely last as long as people want it to. Gary Shaffer even says in his article, “…it is not clear how effective different types of sequestration and associated leakage are in the long term, and what their consequences might be.” I do not think that we can come up with this whole answer to our climate change problem and not have even an actual estimate of how long this plan might last. There is a chance it will not last at all. And if that is the case, then we should have a Plan B right? We cannot just go into this half-cocked.

I also think that we should have an estimate of how much this whole operation would cost. It does not have to be the cost for the whole world. I think that each country needs to have its own cost to correlate with the amount of CO2 it is emitting. Trump had some prices in mind for his wall at the Mexican border. Even though he was not consistent with those prices at all, he was still actually thinking about some kind of number, or maybe not. “New power plants and industrial facilities can be designed to incorporate CCUS from their inception, or the technology can be retrofitted to existing sources of CO2 emissions. Overall, the cost of each project can vary considerably (Carbon Capture Use and Storage).” It is hard to imagine this as a solution when I do not know everything that is actually going on with these projects. Even if I do not know how much it costs, I can guess that this process would cost a whole lot. If there ever is a prediction of the cost, I am sure that it will be according to each country. And a lot of countries will most likely not be able to afford the processes of carbon dioxide capture and storage. So how do we help those countries out? How do we help them if the price is too much for us?

I can see how some people would agree with carbon dioxide storage in the deep-sea. Geologic storage of carbon dioxide is becoming important in managing carbon. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believes that CO2 could be held for millions of years with retention rates of over 99% over 1000 years. And that sounds really great. There is a great possibility of the carbon being stored for a long time. But it is not 100%. IF that l% does leak, then there would be evaporation of 63% of the stored carbon dioxide within the next 100 years. The Global CSS Institute says, “Fish would only be affected if the CO2 entered groundwater, lakes, or rivers from deep in the earth. Likewise, animals would only be affected if CO2 were leaking into the atmosphere or the soil.” But I actually have proof that it could mess with the marine life. When the WHOI did their experiment, it showed that the carbon dioxide did actually kill some members of a single-celled organism species that makes it shells form calcium carbonate. And the quote also goes to say that animals on land would only be affected if carbon dioxide seeped into the atmosphere again or the soil. Well that is a pretty big “if”. There is a chance that the CO2 this stored could be released. Some people think that, “… Because carbon dioxide is soluble in water, there are natural exchanges of CO2 between the atmosphere and waters at the ocean surface,” (GreenFacts) this means that we can pump more carbon dioxide into the ocean. Nature already has this balance going. We do not need to screw it up. 

Deep-sea storage of carbon dioxide sounds good in theory. But maybe it is not as great as some scientists think. I think that there are great flaws in this plan. There is a great chance that it will stay stored for a very long time. Even if they are able to store the CO2 for a while, there is no telling if or when the carbon dioxide will be released. But if there is even the tiniest leak, a lot of that stored CO2 is evaporated back into the atmosphere. And then we are back to square one. The people of that generation will have to figure out a way to solve that problem, because it does not look like we have a contingency plan at all. All this carbon dioxide will also cause ocean acidification. This means that certain organisms do not have the chemical building blocks form their shells and skeletons which are made out of calcium carbonate. Which and how many organisms will die from ocean acidification in a thousand years if CCS lasts a long time? We definitely need to know how much all the processes of CCS will cost. It will most likely take many resources to carry out this plan. It is already hard enough for third world countries to catch. This will completely set them back. I think that there is another solution to this problem. We probably have not found it yet, but it is out there. Maybe this plan does have some potential. Scientist just have to run more tests, simulations, and projects to figure out how everything will play out. We need to know how go about running this process. And we will need to know what to do if it fails. This plan has potential but needs a little help.
