One corner of the Omani desert is blanketed by a type of rock with an unquenchable thirst for a colorless and odorless gas vital to life on Earth. That gas is CO, and when it reacts with peridotite, a rock abundant in the Earth's mantle, it's soaked up, forming a solid carbonate similar to limestone. The Omani peridotite currently absorbs an estimated 10,000 to 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, but scientists say that with a little human intervention, it could be sped up to absorb one-eighth of the 38 billion tons of CO emitted through the burning of fossil fuels around the world. A greenhouse gas, CO accumulates in the Earth's atmosphere, where it traps heat and raises the global...
↧