Cquestrate : Opensource Climate Change Solutions

Yes, Cquestrate.

No, not a typo.  Cquestrate is the new and innovative open source approach to tackling Climate Change using an idea developed by Dr George Manos and Tim Kruger

… and a very simple-sounding idea it is too:

First, you heat limestone to a very high temperature, until it breaks down into lime and carbon dioxide.

• Then you put the lime into the sea, where it reacts with carbon dioxide dissolved in the seawater.
• The important point is that when you put lime into seawater it absorbs almost twice as much carbon dioxide as is produced by the breaking down of the limestone in the first place.

This process then apparently has the effect of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Aha – yes. Well, I have absolutely no idea about this idea – they could actually be writing anything up on the webpage and I’d believe them so am feeling somewhat useless right now as a contributor to the development of a solution to climate change… Oh, but hang on a minute, (smirk smirk) why has nobody thought of this before – “if its that easy…”

… well, the site explanation actually then continues onward by answering the very question about to drop from my smug yet woefully uneducated lips :

One of the questions I often get asked is: if this is so simple why hasn’t it been done before? The idea has been around for a number of years. It was first suggested by Haroon Kheshgi in 1995, but it was considered uneconomic as the process uses a large amount of energy. What we are interested in doing is using stranded energy to drive the process.

Aha- well, that explains it. Its all down to stranded energy.

Well, I think it sounds like a wonderful idea – a bit of open sourcey, crowdsourcey goodness… if only I knew more about stranded energy and limestone…. hm.

Thank goodness for scientists! Please forward on this post to people who know what stranded energy is!

Tags: carbon, carbon emissions, climate change, collaboration, cquestrate, crowdsource, crowdsourcing, environment, environmental, limestone, open source, opensource, participation, science, scientists, solutions, stranded energy