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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This is clearly potty!
Nature is already mineralising CO2 on a vast scale!
See Tom V Segalstad’s excellent paper on the subject:
http://www.slideshare.net/stevenfoley/gw-tom-segalstad
ChrisP (00:36:37) :
“If it can be proved that we absolutaly must capture carbon. Why not convert it to Methanol instead?…”
I’ve got a better idea. Convert it to ethanol. And then we can drink it!
Perhaps the best way to deal with excess co2 in the atmosphere is to go to the coldest spot on earth and use the already cold temps to help a refrigeration system that could scrub co2. Then incase it in ice to keep it from sublimating during summer. I’m kidding of course… I think we will all be driving hydrogen cars long before we have a serious problem from a trace gas like co2.
@ur momisugly Anticlimactic (21:43:54)
Re your comment: “Certainly this is the only rational way I know to remove carbon from the atmosphere as it could actually be beneficial.”
No. There is NO “rational” way of removing carbon from the atmosphere. The whole premise is entirely IRrational. There are no benefits to doing this (unless you believe preventing an insignificant amount of warming is “beneficial”).
What is it with these gurkbrains that they can only come up with useless ideas (sic)? There must be something in their mindset (sic) that prevents them from realising that if we all get richer, they also get richer. Maybe it’s a form of psychopathy (see Dr. Robert Hare).
Has anyone bothered to work out how much carbon that everybody could sequester in a year, compared with the 700,000,000,000 tonnes of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere each year? And how much will it cost per tonne?
Won’t it be fun to pull up these old posts a few years from now to show the lunacy of the left, when they are pushing crazy schemes to try and WARM the very cold planet?
Sequestration of CO2 in rocks! Why didn’t Mother Nature think of that? Or did she?
We’ve GOT to do something soon: what with warm air transferring heat to the oceans killing the coral reefs- all the sponges will die and then they won’t be able to soak up water anymore so then the oceans will rise and we’ll all be drowned in our beds! 😉
OT. Looking at the sea-ice monitor there seems to be a lot more ice in the Denmark Strait at the moment than in recent years. When was the last time there was an ice connection between Greenland and Iceland so that those cuddly polar bears could invade?
Keith Minto
Off topic, I remember talking to some medical students who brewed their own hooch and decided to use charcoal to filter out the impurities – it also filtered out the alcohol!!
—-
Reply: Well, sure. Have you ever heard the word “inTOXICated”?
Several people have mentioned my points, but I’ll re-emphasise them.
Basalts (and related extrusive rocks) are generally very low porosity and extremely low permeability unless highly fractured. Nobody is going to stuff a lot of anything into your average basalt. As to chemical reactions, those don’t exacly happen overnight, either. These fools might want to hire somebody who has actually worked gas fields in extrusive rocks.
Apply the logic in this video to the way the scientist were incentivized to produce the science they did.
Glenn Beck Show – December 18, 2009 – Pt 1 of 7
I’m just wondering, how much CO2 would be put into the atmospher from all the research, drilling, the making and hauling of steel pipe, and the sequestration of the CO2.
Saw this point made elsewhere:
“PS . I’m a skeptic myself. I can`t believe CO2 is a significant cause for GW. Also, I hate when people label CO2 as “pollution”. In that case so is water – sorry I meant di-hydrogen monoxide.) ”
I wonder if the EPA has seriously considered H2O as a toxic substance it can regulate. I don’t have the statistics handy, but I’m sure drowning in H2O causes more deaths in the US every year than drowning in CO2.
Sounds like they’ll need to do some ‘research’ eh?
Funding applications, funding applications, funding applications.
What’s the cost of planting 100,000 TREES?
Carbon sequestering is already happening–trees are growing 27% faster now with the higher CO2 content of the atmosphere; as the CO2 level increases, that growth rate will simply increase since plants do their best between 1,000 and 2,000 ppm (it has to be at least 150 ppm or plants stop uptake–that’s right; they die). Currently the CO2 content of the atmosphere is about 388 ppm and I’ve read where we could burn all our fossil fuels and it would’nt rise above ~600 ppm, meaning the plants will never be perfectly happy.
Responding to Mike C’s comment “These fools might want to hire somebody who has actually worked gas fields in extrusive rocks.”: You’re absolutely right, but do you really expect any of these bozos to talk to anybody with experience or logic? That’s the beauty of what they’re doing. Unaccountability + deep pockets + insanity = total waste of money.
Luke (19:11:13) :
Ahh!!!!! CO2 leaking into the air…o wait it’s already there
As is radon, peacefully percolating upward from all the granite underlying the NY/NJ area. I’m patiently awaiting the Environmental Impact Statement, just so I can ask how much additional radon will be released into the air around NYC — then I’ll make popcorn while I watch the greenies’ hair catch fire…
We need to sequester all the CO2 from this guy. The ice sculpture has a pipe to a F350.
They could save themselves a lot of time and trouble, not to mention environmental risk, as well as actually produce power or steam heat by simply taking the $multi-millions they would have spent on this CCS insanity and burning it, possibly even in a
plasma arc furnace. Yes, burning money can be Green.
Watch out for East Coast Earthquakes!
We know that pumping water into the ground can trigger earthquakes. Will CO2 have the same effect? Who will assume the liability of carbon dioxide induced earthquakes?
If the government promises business they are protected, I wouldn’t believe them. Look what happened to the TelComs that worked with the Bush Administration after 9/11. A new party in Washington brought out the knives and political arm twisting.
Any company that pumps massive amounts of CO2 into the ground is crazy.
I never understood people’s thinking. They are eco-idiots of the truest form. “People are ruining the environment based. So, to save the environment, we are going to ruin the environment.”
The one lesson I learned in life is people are idiots. Every single human being is an idiot, even me. The trick is to be less of an idiot than the rest. To be less of an idiot than the herd, you just have to spend some time thinking rationally instead of emotionally. When you listen to your heart, you are listening to an idiot. So you have to stop and think. Unfortunately, thinking is something that is trying to be suppressed. In college, I had a history professor ask “why do you think this civilization did this?” and similar questions. The students hated him. All their life, they were force fed. They were told by the radio what music was good. They were told what was in style by the TV. They were lectured to in school. And so on. To now actually think … blasphemy! And so now we have many people without an original opinion. All their ideas stem from what they were told to believe. And that way of thinking has carried over to science. So sad.
As I understand it, CO2 is VERY toxic if you concentrate it and it is heavier than air. So here is an idea by environuts to take emmissions that pose no real threat in their present form, concentrate and fill caverns with a deadly atmosphere of poison and then if there any sort of crack or earth shift or the Earth Burps, a huge cloud will escape and if it’s in a natural low area, perhaps kill any animals or people who happen to be there. The call this environmental protection???
I believe similar things have in Yellowstone, where some buffalo have been found dead from Sulfar poisoning when they were huddling around geysers for heat – which they do – and a massive eruption upped the toxicity.
These guys, these Champions of the Earth, they want to set this up on the chessboard??? Under New Jersey? It would be dead buffalos, and it won’t be cheap when the lawsuits start…
Whoops, I should have edited, before posting.
Correction #1: I believe similar things have happened in Yellowstone.
Correction #2: It won’t be dead buffalos.
Sorry, got excited there!
Why not put some of this “excess” CO2 to good use. Now that cold winters are a thing of the past then it’s plainly absurd to waste valuable resources by fitting new houses with heating. Thanks to the science department of the BBC the answer is simple. Coke bottles filled with CO2, glued to roofs, will give us all the heating we want!
Problem sorted.
As for pumping the evil gas into Moma Gaias intestines, well that’s just Plane Stupid.
It’s bad enough that the temperature just under our feet is millions of degrees without tipping it into the quad zillions!
crosspatch (18:42:59)
Its a great idea. It will decrease the temperature so that winters will be even colder. Those millions are well spent