It's a mineral few people have heard of-but it might just be what the doctors of science ordered to combat climate change. This mineral that absorbs carbon dioxide like a sponge is called olivine.

This rock's previous claim to fame rests on two facts: it's the most common mineral found in the Earth and it holds most of the Earth's water deep underground in the mantle.

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Now, olivine is being successfully tested as a "sequester" for CO2 in the atmosphere.

Olivine, which carries the scientific designation (Mg+2, Fe+2)2SiO4, is a greenish rock that surprisingly sucks-up carbon dioxide from the air and "sequesters" or absorbs it. Scientists say just one ton of olivine can remove two-thirds of a ton of CO2.

A retired Dutch geochemist named Olaf Schuiling has spent decades advocating that governments use olivine to combat climate change by covering as many surfaces as possible with the mineral.

He claims doing so will remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to slow down the worsening of climate change.

"Let the earth help us to save the earth," Schuiling said.

After years of trying, Schuiling got the Dutch government to sign on to his idea. Today, one can see the green colored mineral scattered on walkways and gardens in some Dutch cities.

The Dutch government's Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research is  also looking into the idea of spreading olivine on the seafloor.

The efforts in The Netherlands are part of a global search for cheap processes to sequester CO2 by mineral reactions. This process is called "enhanced weathering".

Scientists noted that using olivine is an attractive option since this mineral is widely available and reacts easily with CO2 from the atmosphere. When olivine is crushed, it weathers completely within a few years as it absorbs CO2.

Research has shown that the CO2 produced by burning one liter of oil can be absorbed by less than one liter of olivine. The reaction is exothermic but slow, however. Its end-products are mostly magnesium carbonate and silicon dioxide.

Schuiling's critics, on the other hand, claim using olivine would take at least 20 years before the process began making a difference.

Depending on its structures at different pressures, olivine is also known as wadsleyite or ringwoodite. Ringwoodite, a form of silicate perovskite, is the mineral that holds most of the world's water inside its structure.