Talk:Carbon sequestration/Archive 4

Discussing the new section "use in US climate politics"
A student editor recently added this bit here in a new section on "use in US climate politics". I feel that it might well be good, interesting content (and very impressive for a new Wikipedia editor and student) but that it nevertheless doesn't really fit here in a high-level overview article. Instead it once again gives this article an unnecessary US focus (no other country examples are included). Wouldn't it be better to move this to a relevant sub-article such as Climate change in the United States or Climate change policy of the United States? Either move the entire piece or condense it and only move the details? Or start a new section on "Examples in country policies" where this could be a short entry? EMsmile (talk) 04:24, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Industrial use section cleanup
This section seems outdated, but I am not expert enough in industrial carbon use to bring it up to current expertise. Meanwhile: "Carbon Upcycling UCLA is another company that uses CO2 in concrete. Their concrete product is called CO2NCRETE™, a concrete that hardens faster and is more eco-friendly than traditional concrete.[122]" Carbon Upcycling Technologies is a Canadian company with no UCLA ties, while the UCLA team is now called CarbonBuilt. Will go ahead and update the companies/links unless there are objections? Liminary (talk) 04:34, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Tsmalley8.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 16:46, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 7 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): SturrFry. Peer reviewers: Ddougl11.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:38, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Climate Change Course - Edits to Reflect IPCC AR6
Hi all, I am part of a course at Brown University led by Prof. Baylor Fox-Kemper aiming to update various pages to reflect new findings published in the IPCC AR6 WG1, WG2, and WG3 Reports. *

I will keep you updated on my edits for this page.

Current goals include: add a reference to IPCC AR6; update information to be up to date with AR6; emphasize the role of climate change in destroying peatlands/wetlands and/or their role in fighting climate change; and offer comments and suggestions for future edits. MarinersApartmentLandlord (talk) 23:19, 18 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Description of edits: I updated a citation in the Summary to reflect the change in IPCC leadership; the new citation is consistent with the original sentence. I add a clarifying/unifying sentence to the top of the “Biological Processes” section that explains the significance of the subsequent sub-sections. This sentence ties the sub-sections together and offers an introduction to the implications of the more detailed information that follows. This helps to clarify content as well as directs the reader to the IPCC AR6 Report.
 * MarinersApartmentLandlord (talk) 00:17, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Better structure?
I am not sure it really works to organise this into biological, physical and chemical processes. E.g. in each of these categories there is a sub-heading on oceans which is not ideal. Should we perhaps structure it along the lines of natural processes, enhancing natural processes and geoengineering processes? Or processes on land versus processes in the ocean? Also, I think we need to provide more guidance as to what has potential and what doesn't. E.g. it needs to be made clearer that ocean fertilization and iron fertilization are no longer regarded as promising techniques (if I read the literature right). EMsmile (talk) 13:54, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I've now changed the structure a bit so that the ocean geo-engineering approaches are all in one section: "Geoeningeering techniques in ocean". I think this makes it easier for the readers as the distinction into biological, physical and chemical process is less clear for lay persons, and overlap as well. EMsmile (talk) 14:14, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Removed paragraph from Biosequestration section
I removed the following paragraph. It was entirely unsourced and talking about the creation of the Arctic climate and lfossil fuels in this article doesn't make sense to me.
 * Carbon sequestration through biological processes affects the global carbon cycle. Examples include major climatic fluctuations, such as the Azolla event, which created the current Arctic climate. Such processes created fossil fuels, as well as clathrate and limestone. By manipulating such processes, geoengineers seek to enhance sequestration. Clayoquot (talk &#124; contribs) 03:33, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

American or British English?
Is this article more American or British English (see WP:ENGVAR)? I looked at the first non stub version (here) but couldn't see a preference there. Current usage might be more American (e.g. organization, fertilization) but I'm not sure? EMsmile (talk) 11:36, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Useful publication for the oceans section
I came across a useful (open access) publication which we could use to improve the oceans section: "Carbon Removal Using Coastal Blue Carbon Ecosystems Is Uncertain and Unreliable, With Questionable Climatic Cost-Effectiveness". I plan to work on this in a few weeks time but if someone else has time earlier please go ahead. EMsmile (talk) 11:42, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Section on mineralization and deep sea sediments
I've recently moved a textblock, see this change. I've moved it from Direct deep-sea carbon dioxide injection, formerly called ocean storage of carbon dioxide on advice by Gabby Kitch: "Mineralization and deep sea sediments" section is an active area of research, which would be coupled with direct ocean capture of CO2. The mineralization section is related to basalt storage do you could collate them together and/or subset as needed." It's quite possible that the text block will need condensing and updating. I'll try to do that later. EMsmile (talk) 13:26, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Is this image useful here?
I've just taken out the image to the right from the article on energy crop as I felt it was too complicated for that article. Would it fit for this article? Check also if any of the content about carbon neutrality at energy crop, biomass (energy) or bioenergy fits here and should be partially moved, copied or linked? EMsmile (talk) 09:08, 25 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks for this
 * This diagram is specific to a perennial tall grass, Miscanthus which produces high yields. The diagram is found in the WP article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscanthus_%C3%97_giganteus
 * The diagram indicates that carbon sequestration is only occurring when the SOC is on the low to mid range and this switches to net emissions of carbon in the mid to high range of SOC. The conclusion is that carbon depleted soils will sequester carbon while fertile carbon rich soils will not sequester. If this is the message, then the diagram is useful for the article. That is "carbon-depleted soils will sequester more than fertile carbon rich soils if perennial grasses are grown on them."
 * But the existing caption (repeated from the Miscanthus article) provides a rather confusing message which needs to be corrected: "Basically, the higher the yield, the more land is usable as a GHG mitigation tool (including relatively carbon rich land)" ie this is not for carbon rich land as far as I can see. ASRASR (talk) 11:37, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I don't understand it all but leave it up to you to decide if or how you want to include this image in the article or not. Thanks again for working on this article. EMsmile (talk)

Is this useful for the geological sequestration section?
I've cut out the below content from carbon sink and wonder if any of it is useful for this article, or if it's already all here. It seems a bit outdated and poorly sourced anyway. Or should it rather be merged into carbon capture and storage as it's really all about storage?

Geological sequestration
The method of geo-sequestration or geological storage involves injecting carbon dioxide directly into underground geological formations. Declining oil fields, saline aquifers, and unmineable coal seams have been suggested as storage sites. Caverns and old mines that are commonly used to store natural gas are not considered, because of a lack of storage safety.

has been injected into declining oil fields for more than 40 years, to increase oil recovery. This option is attractive because the storage costs are offset by the sale of additional oil that is recovered. Typically, 10–15% additional recovery of the original oil in place is possible. Further benefits are the existing infrastructure and the geophysical and geological information about the oil field that is available from the oil exploration. Another benefit of injecting into oil fields is that  is soluble in oil. Dissolving in oil lowers the viscosity of the oil and reduces its interfacial tension which increases the oils mobility. All oil fields have a geological barrier preventing upward migration of oil. As most oil and gas has been in place for millions to tens of millions of years, depleted oil and gas reservoirs can contain carbon dioxide for millennia. Identified possible problems are the many 'leak' opportunities provided by old oil wells, the need for high injection pressures and acidification which can damage the geological barrier. Other disadvantages of old oil fields are their limited geographic distribution and depths, which require high injection pressures for sequestration. Below a depth of about 1000 m, carbon dioxide is injected as a supercritical fluid, a material with the density of a liquid, but the viscosity and diffusivity of a gas. Unmineable coal seams can be used to store, because absorbs to the coal surface, ensuring safe long-term storage. In the process it releases methane that was previously adsorbed to the coal surface and that may be recovered. Again the sale of the methane can be used to offset the cost of the storage. Release or burning of methane would of course at least partially offset the obtained sequestration result – except when the gas is allowed to escape into the atmosphere in significant quantities: methane has a 80-fold higher global warming potential than (during the first twenty years).

Saline aquifers contain highly mineralized brines and have so far been considered of no benefit to humans except in a few cases where they have been used for the storage of chemical waste. Their advantages include a large potential storage volume and relatively common occurrence reducing the distance over which has to be transported. The major disadvantage of saline aquifers is that relatively little is known about them compared to oil fields. Another disadvantage of saline aquifers is that as the salinity of the water increases, less can be dissolved into aqueous solution. To keep the cost of storage acceptable the geophysical exploration may be limited, resulting in larger uncertainty about the structure of a given aquifer. Unlike storage in oil fields or coal beds, no side product will offset the storage cost. Leakage of back into the atmosphere may be a problem in saline-aquifer storage. However, current research shows that several trapping mechanisms immobilize the underground, reducing the risk of leakage. EMsmile (talk) 11:53, 3 February 2023 (UTC) EMsmile (talk) 11:53, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Please add better info about terminology
The first section is called "description" which is a strange section heading. Can we please split that up into one on Terminology (or "definition") and the other part might be about "Types" or "Components"? I feel we need a section on terminology as it's all a bit of a mess. Compare with the definitions section at climate change mitigation which I think is useful. Here in this article we have a hatnote and the hatnote text could be explained in a definitions section: "This article is about storing carbon for a long time so that it is not in the atmosphere. For removing carbon dioxide from point sources before it enters the atmosphere, see Carbon capture and storage. For removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, see Carbon dioxide removal.". Also it would be helpful to have a sentence to explain how carbon sequestration differs from the concept of carbon sink. Also, can we please have a better first sentence? Currently it's "Carbon sequestration is the process of storing carbon in a carbon pool". I find it very strange that it talks about carbon pool which then redirects to carbon cycle. EMsmile (talk) 12:52, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Also compare with how carbon sequestration is framed in the main climate change article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Carbon_sequestration. It says there "Natural carbon sinks can be enhanced to sequester significantly larger amounts of CO2 beyond naturally occurring levels.". Interesting the adjective "natural", does that mean we also have artificial carbon sinks? I guess that's those wooden buildings maybe? EMsmile (talk) 13:00, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I've had a go at it myself now. Please check if I am on the right track. If there are even more definitions of the term around, let's add them. So far I have added two. EMsmile (talk) 14:31, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Can we have a better first sentence? And more questions.
The first sentence currently says "Carbon sequestration is the process of storing carbon in a carbon pool" which is taken from the Glossary of the IPCC AR 6 WG I report. I am all for using IPCC reports but in this case I am finding this unsuitable for a first sentence of a Wikipedia article. Can we improve it? It is unclear what is meant. The word "carbon pool" redirects to carbon cycle in Wikipedia. But in the IPCC glossary, a carbon pool is explained as "Pool, carbon and nitrogen: A reservoir  in the Earth system where elements, such as carbon and nitrogen, reside in various chemical forms for a period of time. See also Reservoir, Sequestration, Sequestration potential, Sink, Source and Uptake." - Overall, I am finding this entire article avery unclear. It overlaps a lot with the "storage" component of the article carbon capture and storage. The short description of the article says Capture and long-term storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide. EMsmile (talk) 10:58, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, interestingly, this article only exists in 10 other languages in Wikipedia (it does not exist in German and French). As the German Wikipedia is normally very advanced on all the climate change topics it does make me wonder. Maybe it overlaps too much with related topics, e.g. carbon sink. EMsmile (talk) 10:58, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I've done a bit of work on the first sentence and on the terminology section now. Needs further eyes and brain power. EMsmile (talk) 14:32, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Removed content about reducing emissions
I've removed this content as it was deviating from the main topic (emissions are the subject of the article greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Also it was unsourced; some of it unsourced since 2010. EMsmile (talk) 12:16, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Reducing emissions
Increasing yields and efficiency generally reduces emissions as well, since more food results from the same or less effort. Techniques include more accurate use of fertilizers, less soil disturbance, better irrigation, and crop strains bred for locally beneficial traits and increased yields.

Replacing more energy intensive farming operations can also reduce emissions. Reduced or no-till farming requires less machine use and burns correspondingly less fuel per acre. However, no-till usually increases use of weed-control chemicals and the residue now left on the soil surface is more likely to release its to the atmosphere as it decays, reducing the net carbon reduction.

In practice, most farming operations that incorporate post-harvest crop residues, wastes and byproducts back into the soil provide a carbon storage benefit. This is particularly the case for practices such as field burning of stubble – rather than releasing almost all of the stored to the atmosphere, tillage incorporates the biomass back into the soil. EMsmile (talk) 12:16, 7 February 2023 (UTC)