CO2 release out of control says scientist

Wallace Broecker

Wallace Broecker is annoyed when he thinks his life's work could be overshadowed - just because he inadvertently coined the term "global warming".

To the 77-year-old geochemist, oceanographer and palaeoclimatologist, the fact he paired the "obvious" two words in a 1975 paper (Climate Change: Are we on the brink of a pronounced Global Warming?) is far less important than a life spent helping to understand climate change.

"I've written 480 scientific papers and ... 10 books and if the thing I'm remembered for is coining the term 'global warming', that is sort of sad, because I would have wasted my life."

After first suggesting there could be negative effects from pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 1957, the award-winning American scientist - who was in New Zealand last week to speak at a past climates symposium - has turned his attention to taking carbon out of the air and storing it.

He believes the world has no chance of getting CO2 emissions under control in time to avoid dangerous global warming.

He wants urgent research done to find ways to tuck atmospheric CO2 away until after human production of it has peaked.

For New Zealand, he says, this could mean letting the Australians take care of it. Dr Broecker is a fan of a method developed by his friend and workmate at Columbia University, Dr Klaus Lackner, who has found a way to catch carbon using special plastic fibres attached to units the size of shipping containers.

Each unit would collect the daily equivalent of the CO2 produced by 20 cars and turn it into liquid, for about the cost of a car, he says.

The capturing devices work anywhere and especially well in dry air, so they could be hidden in arid, seldom-visited parts of the world and the waste pumped to fissures nearby.

"New Zealand could put [Dr Lackner's] devices in the Australian desert, collect the equivalent amount of CO2 that you produce, pour it back out of the air and bury it in Australia," said Dr Broecker.

Capturing carbon is one thing, but storing it safely over long periods of time is another.

Dr Broecker is looking at ways to store carbon deep in underground fissures (which he is testing in Iceland) or in the darkest depths of the Pacific Ocean, where he says it could remain for 200 years without mixing with the rest of the sea.

Dr Broecker said more work was needed to satisfy the public that carbon capture was safe.

He is disappointed that he won't get to see how the process he named back in 1975 ends.

"I often say I wish I could live 50 more years or more than that, because to see what's going to happen, how this plays out is going to be extremely interesting."