Scientists Target East Coast U.S. Rocks for Carbon Dioxide Storage
ScienceDaily (Jan. 5, 2010) — Scientists say buried volcanic rocks along the heavily populated coasts of New York, New Jersey and New England, as well as further south, might be ideal reservoirs to lock away carbon dioxide emitted by power plants and other industrial sources. A study this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlines formations on land as well as offshore, where scientists from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory say the best potential sites may lie.
Some basalt on land is already well known and highly visible. The vertical cliffs of the Palisades, along the west bank of the Hudson River near Manhattan, are pure basalt, and the rocks, formed some 200 million years ago, extend into the hills of central New Jersey. Similar masses are found in central Connecticut. Previous research by Lamont scientists and others shows that carbon dioxide injected into basalt undergoes natural chemical reactions that will eventually turn it into a solid mineral resembling limestone. If the process were made to work on a large scale, this would help obviate the danger of leaks.
The study’s authors, led by geophysicist David S. Goldberg, used existing research to outline more possible basalt underwater, including four areas of more than 1,000 square kilometers each, off northern New Jersey, Long Island and Massachusetts. A smaller patch appears to lie more or less under the beach of New Jersey’s Sandy Hook, peninsula, opposite New York’s harbor and not far from the proposed plant in Linden. The undersea formations are inferred from seismic and gravity measurements. “We would need to drill them to see where we’re at,” said Goldberg. “But we could potentially do deep burial here. The coast makes sense. That’s where people are. That’s where power plants are needed. And by going offshore, you can reduce risks.” Goldberg and his colleagues previously identified similar formations off the U.S. Northwest.
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I get it, these areas get billons for the storage of CO2
I just can’t imagine the people living in the heavily populated area of New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York agreeing to the pipelines and the sequestration around them. They don’t even dispose of their own garbage–they ship it out to central Pennsylvania.
Alternatively, the gov’t. could inject CO2 into reservoirs. The populace would get soda water for free, and every bath would be a bubble bath.
Why bother?
If carbon dioxide can be captured at all, why pump it underground when it can be piped into greenhouses to be taken up by photosynthetic plants, simultaneously sequestering this “toxic” gas and producing yields of botanical products?
I suggest Cannabis sativa grown densely in such greenhouses, with strains selected for the production of fiber, seed, seed oil, and pulp (as opposed to tetrahydrocannabinol), providing America with an enormously valuable cash crop that has a number of key benefits including lower cost and lower environmental impact in processing compared against pulpwood, cotton, and synthetic fibers.
With enhanced CO2 availability, the yields produced by such crops would be extremely high, immediately advantageous, and a great employment generator. Real, sustained “green” jobs.
As if human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide has ever (or could possibly ever) cause “global warming” in any way whatsoever, meaning that any CO2 sequestration is totally friggin’ useless to begin with.
Wonderful. I hope whoever figured out that there won’t be any significant risk of massively fatal CO2 plumes in the far future are not the same people behind the CO2 will kill us all if left above-ground foolishness. Not in my back yard comes to mind…
The only ‘carbon capture’ that makes any sense is to use the hot damp CO2 rich gases in long rows of commercial green-houses growing a cash crop like bananas or pomegranates. Thus ‘carbon capture’ would lose no power and could even subsidize power production. The Dutch grow tomatoes this way I’m told.
Am I the only person that thinks these people are in way over their heads?
Wouldn’t these be the same types of people that are against offshore drilling….
….because they say it’s not safe?
What a collosal waste of time and money.
They get billions for CO2 storage without a shred of evidence aside from a couple of computer models that have not matched observations that says CO2 is harmful in any way.
It is a fairly nonsensical waste of money in hard economic times. I bet we could get better value by convincing that simply burning cash in a power plant would produce carbon neutral power.
I am sure they are worried about natural gas storage field leaks also.
Researchers like David S. Goldberg are monsters IMHO; willing to explore some of the most dangerous activities — drilling holes to stuff in CO2 — when we have no firm proof that CO2 levels today or in the medium-term are of any danger to anyone. I imagine his (and co-authors) research grants are dripping with “leftist” money — especially Columbia, that claims Obama as graduate (without any proof or anyone stating they knew him). But guess what, a little shimmy on the part of Mother Earth with a consequent large belch of CO2 could asphyxiate living beings and seriously damage the environment.
Until the danger of CO2 is proven beyond a doubt — and the physics is noncontroversial and cannot be falsified — a criminal indictment should be in the offing for anyone who tries to drill CO2 into Mother Earth.
Why sequester a substance that can contribute to food production increase through plant photosynthesis??
since C02 is now a pollutant, shouldnt they be storming Washington in protest of this suggestion?
Great, the real threat is a cold trend, short growing seasons, famine in the poorer countries and these guys want to bury plant food.
I beginning to understand how the last time the sun went passive and the crops failed, people began to burn witches. I have a couple scapegoats in mind. How are we going to find the wood for the fire under all this snow?
I have seen carbonate amygdules in basalts, so the theory sounds good. In practice won’t the carbonate precipitation soon clog up the CO2 injection wells?
This will of course promptly be stopped once it is “discovered” by environmentalists that the CO2 will seep into underground caverns and kill off the rare blind six-toed cave newts.
How is the work going on using CO2 for algae farms, combining both solar power and fuel burning? I’ve seen initial stuff where the algae is harvested for… Animal feed, whatever it’s good for. Some reports suggest, perhaps with genetic engineering, we can grow algae that can be processed into bio-fuel.
Hey, now there’s an idea. Use the CO2 to grow algae with sunlight, then burn the algae at a second plant. In the carbon credit schemes, the fossil fuel plant can save credits by not releasing CO2, and because the algae plant is “bio-fueled,” thus using green “renewable” energy, it can vent CO2 right into the atmosphere as it is “carbon neutral” and not use its credits at all! The utility can get paid twice for the same “carbon savings” while still releasing the CO2 it was planning to vent anyway!
Anyone here more familiar with the carbon offset and credit rackets who thinks that wouldn’t work?
I believe that the green extremists are as hostile to Carbon Sequestration as they are to Nuclear Power, and for the same reason. It undermines their arguments for making the rest of us wear the “hair shirt” of massive government control.
Studying where to put CO2 “if” it proves to be a problem is prudent. Requiring CO2 to be put there before it is proven to be a problem is folly.
This illustrates the fallacy of the old precautionary argument, “It doesn’t really matter whether the science is right because it’s beneficial to reduce our carbon footprint regardless of global warming.” If there is no problematic anthropogenic global warming, there is no justification for carbon sequestration schemes. If there is only a small amount of problematic anthropogenic global warming, carbon sequestration is still probably not cost-effective.
In actual fact, we have absolutely no idea what is cost effective to take care of a problem that we don’t know exists.
Ahh!!!!! CO2 leaking into the air…o wait it’s already there
OT but great news!
HAMweather for last 3 days:
http://mapcenter.hamweather.com/records/3day/us.html?c=maxtemp,mintemp,lowmax,highmin,snow
The great news? Joe Bastardi had it exactly right—and Anthony featured his forecast in a post!
Joe Bastardi’s outlook:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/cpc_6-10temp-new.gif?w=510&h=473
Anthony’s post on 12/30/09:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/30/major-northern-hemisphere-cold-snap-coming/
Absolute NONSENSE!
What a scandalous, ludicrous, borderline criminal WASTE of the taxpayer money.
We have reached a day where it could be argued that this feverish demonization of CO2…is indication of massive delusion / groupthink phenomenon….not seen in the intelligentsia of our species, on such a large scale basis, for more than half a century.
I think increasing CO2 must be causing mass brain damage.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Nobody mentioned earthquakes by now? Here in Northern Germany – we have no earthquakes at all while the southwest of Germany does have minor ones – there are experiments going on with air pressure storage in an old emptied mine or gas field. The problem is, when you change the pressure up and down this might lead to cave ins and thus earthquakes. There was already one such incident probably caused by this experiment. No damage occured but you know… None of the buildings here are prepared for even minor earthquakes. Good Luck!
BTW the air pressure storage is of course needed as fast temporary buffer for wind power spikes.
Plants around the world are screaming, “IDIOTS!!!!!!!!”
As stated above, is there ANY sense of caution or even “judgment” in this (well-funded!!!) study that says, “We are not sure if carbon sequestration is a good thing and worth spending any money doing?”
But, you see, people are starving to death in Africa and dying from lack of medical care in the Pacific so we must drill (very expensive) wells in North America to bury a harmless under reat pressure and temperatures underground.
Wasting additional time, money, steel, water, energy, and resources on ….nothing.