Portrait Olaf Schuiling
Emeritus Professor Olaf Schuiling studied at Utrecht University and obtained his PhD in 1961 under Professor Nieuwenkamp. In 1972, he was appointed Professor of Geochemistry and Experimental Petrology at our university. He held that position until his retirement in 1997. He passed away on December 19, 2021.
It is actually impossible to briefly describe his contributions to the growth and development of the Faculty—now Department—of Earth Sciences during that time. The 1980s, in particular, were years of great growth, during which geochemistry on the one hand and geophysics on the other developed into strong departments alongside ‘mainstream’ geology. This also led to specialized educational programs, which were subsequently integrated into the common Earth Sciences degree program around the beginning of the current century.
Many former colleagues and students will remember Professor Schuiling as that true classic professor, who knew how to devise a scientific solution for virtually every societal chemical or physical problem with an earth science character. He remained active at the institute until a very late age. It was also then that the Olaf Schuiling Fund was established, on the initiative of one of his first students, Henk Vrins, through which current students can apply for contributions towards lab or fieldwork.
Professor Schuiling, together with Boudewijn ’t Hart, was instrumental in the founding of the Georeizen Foundation, a foundation that, in collaboration with various staff members from Earth Sciences and Physical Geography, makes the earth sciences accessible to the general public through larger and smaller trips. In 2016, he still accompanied a Georeizen excursion through Turkey as one of the tour guides, and there too he focused on what had occupied him greatly in recent years: the use of olivine as one of the solutions to climate change. As a student, he was a board member and later also an honorary member of the Utrecht Geological Society (now the Utrecht Earth Sciences Society).
Olaf Schuiling on his research
"Since the end of the last century, I have mainly focused on climate change. If we look at how much CO2 is ejected by volcanoes each year (approx. 400 million tons per year) and multiply that by the number of years the Earth has existed, the result is an absurdly large number.
If all of that had remained in the atmosphere, life would not be possible. But there is life, so that means there is a process that has captured virtually all of that CO2 and stored it safely. It sounds very prosaic, because that process is the weathering of rocks. In this process, a rock reacts with water and CO2 and turns it into a bicarbonate solution. This travels with the rivers to the sea, where corals, shellfish, and plankton use that solution to create their calcium skeletons. When those organisms die, their calcium skeletons go to the seabed, where they turn into limestone. Almost all the CO2 emitted by the volcanoes is locked up in all those limestones.
I want use that natural process to avert the looming climate change. I do find it strange that I am the only one who came up with this proposal (and a number of followers in the meantime). The government still wants to extract CO2 from coal-fired power plants, clean that CO2 in an expensive way, and then inject it underground under high pressure. That all costs expensive energy.
They should, of course, have first asked themselves whether it is important to capture our “own” CO2 – no, of course not; the atmosphere is the same everywhere, so for the climate, you simply have to capture CO2 in the cheapest place. That works best in the wet tropics or on beaches with strong surf, which grinds the olivine grains apart, causing them to weather quickly. Olivine is the most abundant mineral on Earth. That is the reason my most recent book is titled Olivine, the Philosopher's Stone."