How Oman’s rocks could help save the planetVeins of white carbonate minerals run through slabs of da
How Oman’s rocks could help save the planetVeins of white carbonate minerals run through slabs of dark rock like fat marbling a steak. Carbonate surrounds pebbles and cobbles, turning ordinary gravel into natural mosaics.The carbon-capturing formations here, consisting largely of a rock called peridotite, are in a slice of oceanic crust and the mantle layer below it that was thrust up on land by tectonic forces nearly 100 million years ago. Peridotite normally is miles below the earth’s surface. When the rocks are exposed to air or water as they are here, Dr. Kelemen said, they are like a giant battery with a lot of chemical potential. “They’re really, really far from equilibrium with the atmosphere and surface water,” he said.The rocks are so extensive, Dr. Kelemen said, that if it was somehow possible to fully use them they could store hundreds of years of CO2 emissions.Read more here via: NYTHenry Fountain, a New York Times reporter covering climate science, went to Oman to learn more about the science. Vincent Fournier, a photographer, captured the landscape. -- source link
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