Guest Post by Ira Glickstein
The December 2010 issue of the Atlantic shows an amazing turn-around by some of the Global Warming warmists! Yes, they are still tuned in to the CAGW crowd predicting imminent climate change disaster, but … BUT, some have reversed themselves on their previous ‘ol devil coal! Turns out we need coal to generate Watts of electricity for our electric cars and, they say, we can do it in a way that is environmentally correct.
The cover story, by respected author James Fallows, is titled Why the Future of Clean Energy is Dirty Coal. {Click the link to read it free online.}
Recall that, only last year, a leading alarmist, NASA’s James Hansen, one of the key science advisors on Al Gore’s The Inconvenient Truth movie, wrote:
“..coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet. … The dirtiest trick that governments play on their citizens is the pretense that they are working on ‘clean coal’… The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.”
Fallows writes:
“To environmentalists, ‘clean coal’ is an insulting oxymoron. But for now, the only way to meet the world’s energy needs, and to arrest climate change before it produces irreversible cataclysm, is to use coal—dirty, sooty, toxic coal— …”
Amazingly, while atmospheric CO2 is still the bogeyman of what alarmists say is an imminent Global Warming disaster, coal, which is nearly all carbon and generates CO2 when burned as intended, is part of the solution! Fallows writes:
Before James Watt invented the steam engine in the late 1700s—that is, before human societies had much incentive to burn coal and later oil in large quantities—the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was around 280 parts per million, or ppm … By 1900, as Europe and North America were industrializing, it had reached about 300 ppm.
Now the carbon-dioxide concentration is at or above 390 ppm, which is probably the highest level in many millions of years. “We know that the last time CO2 was sustained at this level, much of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets were not there,” Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State, told me. Because of the 37 billion annual tons of carbon-dioxide emissions, the atmospheric carbon-dioxide level continues to go up by about two ppm a year. For perspective: by the time today’s sixth-graders finish high school, the world carbon-dioxide level will probably have passed 400 ppm, and by the time most of them are starting families, it will have entered the 420s. …
Michael Mann told me. “What we have with rising CO2 levels in general is a dramatically increasing probability of serious and deleterious change in our climate.” He went down the list: more frequent, severe, and sustained heat waves, like those that affected Russia and the United States this summer; more frequent and destructive hurricanes and floods; more frequent droughts, like the “thousand-year drought” that has devastated Australian agriculture; and altered patterns of the El Niño phenomenon, which will change rainfall patterns in the Americas. …
You should recognize Michael Mann as the creator of the deceptive “hockey stick curve” at the center of many of the Climategate emails. (See this and this and this and this.) Note also the standard line that, whatever happens to the weather: hotter, colder, dryer, wetter, stormy, calm, sunny, cloudy, … whatever, it is all due to high CO2 levels (even if they don’t plow your streets after a blizzard :^)
So, what is the solution? Fallows writes:
Isn’t “clean energy” the answer? Of course—because everything is the answer. The people I spoke with and reports I read differed in emphasis, sometimes significantly. Some urged greater stress on efficiency and conservation; some, a faster move toward nuclear power or natural gas; some, an all-out push for solar power and other renewable sources …
Note the mention of nuclear, also a bogeyman of the green crowd until a few years ago. In this regard much of the world is ahead of us. When I bicycled in France a few years ago, you could see nuclear power plant cooling towers in much of the countryside (except near Paris – I guess that is where the professional environmentalists live) and France generates most of its electricity using nuclear energy. It will take the US quite a while to catch up, but it is good to see a mainstream liberal literary magazine starting to lead the way. The above paragraph also mentions natural gas, a fossil fuel, ahead of “solar power and other renewable sources” stuck in at the end. It seems they finally realize that we need energy and, at least for the next decades, it will continue to be coal, burned in a cleaner way, plus nuclear and natural gas.
Fallows continues:
“Emotionally, we would all like to think that wind, solar, and conservation will solve the problem for us,” David Mohler of Duke Energy told me. “Nothing will change, our comfort and convenience will be the same, and we can avoid that nasty coal. Unfortunately, the math doesn’t work that way.”…
Coal will be with us because it is abundant: any projected “peak coal” stage would come many decades after the world reaches “peak oil.” It will be with us because of where it’s located: the top four coal-reserve countries are the United States, Russia, China, and India, which together have about 40 percent of the world’s population and more than 60 percent of its coal. …
“I know this is a theological issue for some people,” Julio Friedmann of Lawrence Livermore said. “Solar and wind power are going to be important, but it is really hard to get them beyond 10 percent of total power supply.” …
What would progress on coal entail? The proposals are variations on two approaches: ways to capture carbon dioxide before it can escape into the air and ways to reduce the carbon dioxide that coal produces when burned. In “post-combustion” systems, the coal is burned normally, but then chemical or physical processes separate carbon dioxide from the plume of hot flue gas that comes out of the smokestack. Once “captured” as a relatively pure stream of carbon dioxide, this part of the exhaust is pressurized into liquid form and then sold or stored. …
“Pre-combustion” systems are fundamentally more efficient. In them, the coal is treated chemically to produce a flammable gas with lower carbon content than untreated coal. This means less carbon dioxide going up the smokestack to be separated and stored.
Either way, pre- or post-, the final step in dealing with carbon is “sequestration”—doing something with the carbon dioxide that has been isolated at such cost and effort, so it doesn’t just escape into the air. … All larger-scale, longer-term proposals for storing carbon involve injecting it deep underground, into porous rock that will trap it indefinitely. In the right geological circumstances, the captured carbon dioxide can even be used for “enhanced oil recovery,” forcing oil out of the porous rock into which it is introduced and up into wells.
According to Fallows, China is in the lead on this clean coal technology, with help from American and other western corporations. While it is good that at least some of the Global Warming alarmists are warming up to coal as a necessary part of the solution, it would be better IMHO, if they were also more realistic about the actual dangers of climate change and the likelihood (again IMHO) that most of the warming of the past century is due to natural cycles not under human control and that we are likely already in a multi-decade period of stable temperatures, and perhaps a bit of cooling.
Yes, I think we need to do something about the unprecedented steady rise in CO2 levels, but we have to do it is a way that will not destroy our economies or force us to drastically reduce our lifestyles. One thing I agree with James Hansen about is that an across-the-board carbon tax, assessed equally against all sequestered fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) and collected at the mine, well, or port, is the best solution, far more suitable to the task than the “cap and trade” political scam, and more likely to work.
Rather than have governments pick winners (and mess up as they did with corn ethanol subsidies that raised food prices and reduced gas mileage without doing much to control CO2 emissions) I prefer to tax carbon progressively a bit more each year and let industry and other users decide for themselves how to adapt to the higher prices. Nothing stimulates action and invention like saving your own money. Nothing wastes money like government taking money from “Mr. A” and giving it to “Mr. B” for the “good of society”.
I’m working on a future posting that will propose use of gassified coal along with enhanced CO2 farming as a clean coal implementation that may make sense in a decade or so. I hope to post it next week.
***************************
Another story in the same issue of the Atlantic is about famed physicist Freeman Dyson and The Danger of Cosmic Genius.{Click the link to read it free online.}
They write:
In the range of his genius, Freeman Dyson is heir to Einstein—a visionary who has reshaped thinking in fields from math to astrophysics to medicine, and who has conceived nuclear-propelled spaceships designed to transport human colonists to distant planets. And yet on the matter of global warming he is, as an outspoken skeptic, dead wrong: wrong on the facts, wrong on the science. How could someone as smart as Dyson be so dumb about the environment?
Does it occur to them that the CAGW warmists and alarmists may be the ones who are wrong?
The key to understanding the Freeman Dyson article is the following statement:
The article is nothing other than a statement of religious dispute. Similar to the types of arguments in medieval times regarding the nature of the trinity or the Christ or what hell is really like.
Once you grasp that fundamental characteristic of the author’s intent, which is really nothing more than a prayer meeting testimonial, you can see why he argues with no scientific facts what so ever. He dances all around the question regarding the evidence for AGW (he presents no evidence).
Let me rephrase his key question to clarify this.
Instead of the author’s how could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson be so dumb? , how about how could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson be so dumb?
The article is not about science, it is a religious pamphlet.
Quick question if anybody can answer it?
Why do the post-combustion gases have to be separated and only the CO2 stored? Isn’t it possibly to simply pump the whole exhaust into depleted oil and gas wells, thus saving the cost of this part of the process?
In my previous post it reads:
Instead of the author’s how could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson be so dumb? , how about how could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson be so dumb?
This should read:
Instead of the author’s; how could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson be so dumb(about AGW)? , how about how could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson be so dumb(about the trinity)?
The entire AGW scam is an attempt by the natural gas industry to destroy the coal industry. The CRU was founded by Shell and BP to provide a “scientific” case for closing the British coal industry to sell more North Sea gas.
“Yes, I think we need to do something about the unprecedented steady rise in CO2 levels”
Why? For most of Earth’s history CO2 levels were far higher. The warming due to the extra CO2 is probably almost unmeasurable, but a small amount of warming is welcome. A warmer world is vastly more preferable to a colder one.
The extra CO2 has probably caused an additional greening of the world, something you would have thought environmentalists would have welcomed. The world has never produced more food per head of population than it does now, and very likely the extra CO2 has made this possible.
Overall, I suspect that the additional CO2 has been of vast benefit to mankind.
I love Mann’s comment about the Australian drought. I believe the drought is now officially over. But if you looked at the rainfall data from the Australian BOM when the drought was in full force, it showed something very surprising: for the last few decades the rainfall for the continent as a whole had steadily been increasing. And in the regions where rainfall had been falling, the levels were simply returning to the averages of the first half of the 20th century.
But then, why should Mann need to look at real-world data? He has the technology to manufacture his own data….
Chris
jim karlock:
At December 30, 2010 at 10:47 pm you quote “Ira” and ask:
“ “As I understand the process, once it is initiated, it involves injecting air and water into the coal seam. (C3{coal} + H2O{water} + O2{from air} → Coalgas which is 2H{hydrogen} + 3CO{carbon monoxide}) Ira]”
isn’t energy input required to split the water molecule?”
Yes, it is, and Ira Glickstein does not understand coal gasification and why underground gasification is impractical. Indeed, he confuses gasification and water-gas shift.
The following briefly explains coal gasification both in gasifiers and in coal seams..
Coal is mostly carbon (C) and burns by combining with oxygen (O) to form carbon dioxide (CO2) in a two-stage process.
Stage 1.
The first combines oxygen and carbon to form carbon monoxide (CO)
2.C + O2 –> 2.CO
This first reaction is endothermic (i.e. it consumes heat) which is why it is difficult to start a fire.
Stage 2
The second combines oxygen and carbon monoxide to form carbon dioxide (CO2).
2.CO2 + O2 –> 2.C O2
This second reaction is exothermic (i.e. it emits heat). Stage 2 emits much more heat that Stage 1 consumes, so their net effect is an emission of heat. And this net emission of heat is why a fire can spread when started.
Gasification consists of providing the coal with oxygen which is only just sufficient
(a) to complete Stage 1; i.e. sufficient oxygen to convert all the carbon to carbon monoxide
and
(b) to conduct enough of Stage 2 to enable Stage 1; i.e. sufficient oxygen to convert sufficient carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide to provide the heat needed for the formation of carbon monoxide.
The result is a gas which is rich in carbon monoxide with some carbon dioxide. Burning this gas provides the same output of heat as would have been obtained from burning the coal which was gasified.
Gasification is conducted in chemical reactors called gasifiers. Some gasifiers react the coal with pure oxygen, but most gasifiers use air as the oxygen supply so they provide a gas which is mostly nitrogen (because air is mostly nitrogen). A gasified kilo of coal provides the same amount of heat when the resulting gas is burned whether the gasification uses pure oxygen or air, but this heat is in a larger volume of gas obtained when using air because it contains the large addition of nitrogen which is not present in the gas obtained by gasifying with pure oxygen.
Controlled gasification is not easy. The oxygen and coal must be mixed such that a gasifying surface of a piece of coal receives just sufficient oxygen to complete Stage 1 and then to conduct the correct degree of Stage 2. Too much Stage 1 and the process stops, and too much Stage 2 and the resulting gas provides little heat when burned. Also, the produced gas must be removed from the gasifying surface at a rate which permits the two stages to occur at the required rates.
This control is achieved in gasifiers but is extremely difficult when conducted in-situ in an underground coal seam.
Underground gasification consists of pumping air down a shaft drilled into the coal seam, using that air to enable the partial combustion of the coal, and using another shaft to extract the resulting product gas.
Controlled gasification is extremely difficult when conducting underground gasification. An excess of oxygen needs to be provided to ensure Stage 2 is sustained (otherwise the gasification stops) and this produces a gas that provides little heat when burned (i.e. the gas has low calorific value). Also, the interaction of the oxygen supply and the coal surface varies as the coal seam is gasified so the calorific value of the gas varies.
Thus, underground coal gasification provides a product gas with low and variable calorific value. Such a gas has little use.
Also, the removal of the coal seam causes the ground above the seam to subside. Coal mining engineers take great efforts to control this subsidence otherwise surface structures are damaged. But no such control is possible when gasifying the coal seam. And the subsidence cracks the ground above the coal seam that is being converted to the carbon monoxide. Leakage of carbon monoxide from the surface of the ground is a probable hazard in most places: carbon monoxide is a cumulative toxin.
So, underground coal gasification is not a desirable activity in habited locations.
The Soviet Union conducted large studies of underground coal gasification in Siberia during the 1920s and 1930s. Several other studies have since been conducted, notably a study in Spain was conducted by the EU who were encouraged to conduct it by the then UK government that wanted to pretend its closure of the UK’s coal industry had not ‘lost’ the UK’s indigenous coal.
All studies of underground coal gasification have confirmed that it is not viable for the reasons stated above. However, governments repeatedly get suckered into funding studies of it because it is an ‘easy sell’ to those who do not understand its problems. Governments are easily fooled into funding such silly studies; e.g. they also keep being suckered into funding studies of ‘hot rocks’.
Richard
[Thanks Richard for your excellent explanation of coal gassification and why you think it “is extremely difficult when conducted in-situ in an underground coal seam”. Perhaps, with modern computer-controlled robots, the necessary control may be achievable and the subsidence issue may not be as great in very deep deposits and those underwater or in uninhabited areas. As you point out, coal gassification could be conducted above ground. Ira]
Claude Harvey says:
December 30, 2010 at 10:48 pm
“Do not be deceived, folks. Sequestering CO2 is just another way to get the cost up there in the stratosphere.”
Thats right, its a trap.
And regarding Carbon Capture; Isnt it strange that these greens can be positive to such an idea?
-Building enourmous ugly and expensive plants
-Risking compression of a gas and injection down into the ground.
And for such a small final effect?
Surely this is feelings and emotions at work, not logic.
Cost estimates for Mongstad is now up at 20-25 billion norwegian kroners;
http://translate.google.no/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=no&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=no&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrk.no%2Fnyheter%2Fnorge%2F1.7106146
I have never understood why anyone should assume there could possibly be any danger in burning coal. Coal is fossilised vegetation. That vegetation grew under conditions that were evidently ideal. ALL of the carbon now underground must at one time have been in CO2 in the atmosphere. So how can putting it back there possibly create a problem? It will take centuries to burn all of it so there is no danger of any sudden increases that vegetation can’t keep up with. As Smokey is fond of pointing out “The only effect that can be definitively connected with the increase in CO2 is rising agricultural production.” Who’s to say that once there is sufficent ‘free carbon’ the forests will not return to the Sahara?
[Brian, carbon (coal, oil, gas) now underground was sequestered over eons, much of it during times prior to human habitation and habitability. The point is that we are removing eons worth and burning it in centuries. That is what is unprecedented. You water your lawn a little bit each week. What harm could come from dumping a million weeks worth of water on your home? Plenty! Ira]
Ooops!
A silly typo. Of course I intended
Stage 2
The second combines oxygen and carbon monoxide to form carbon dioxide (CO2).
2.CO + O2 –> 2.C O2
Sorry, Richard
The coal fired power stations kept us warm in Britain’s recent frigid snap, it kept our lights on, a drive down the eastbound M62 is an awesome tribute to King Coal, the massive power stations were working overtime recently and we were all thankful for them.
Our 3000 odd windmills/turbines provided at best 1.9% of our energy needs, what a load of chocolate teapots they are (in fact chocolate teapots are more worthwhile). Whilst clean coal is b*ll*cks (more chocolate engineering technology), running excess CO2 over massive purposefully built horticultural acreage sounds good but….. nature does that anyway.
In Britain, we should be building Coal powered generating stations, it will be thousands of years into the future before man exhausts the world’s coal resources and by that time we’ll have found alternatives, thorium, fusion even!
Why not, China thinks it’s good policy!
CO2 is plant food, CO2 is not the problem, alarmists loonies like Mann are the problem…..
– //”Now the carbon-dioxide concentration is at or above 390 ppm, which is probably the highest level in many millions of years. “We know that the last time CO2 was sustained at this level, much of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets were not there,” Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State, told me.”//
“Sustained??”
As I said, a loonytune whack-job, he doesn’t know watt he’s on about and he’s supposed to be one of the head honcho’s – God help us.
Two comments:
1. Underground gasification trials are being optimistically undertaken in Queensland.
2. The term “clean coal” in this context amuses me as some three or four decades ago, this term was used to describe the product after removing mineral matter from coal before combustion or other processes to have no ash in the final process.
> Yes, I think we need to do something about the
> unprecedented steady rise in CO2 levels,
Huh? Firstly, it’s not unprecedented. Secondly, why do we need to “do something” about it? CO2 is a harmless natural plant fertilizing gas with negligible effect on climate – which is in fact controlled by natural cycles of the sun and oceans.
> but we have to do it is a way that will not…
> force us to drastically reduce our lifestyles.
If you believe CO2 is a deadly threat then surely you wouldn’t mind drastically changing your lifestyle?
A very confused article that gives far too much ground to scare-mongering alarmists and climate profiteers. You’ve bolded Mann’s statements as if to ridicule them, but later you seem to accept what he says fully and agree we need to “act on CO2”. Sorry, it’s time to stop complementing the emperor on his new clothes and instead shout from the snow-covered rooftops that he’s naked.
Why not just recycle CO2 if it, as some believe, it is such a disaster. Let’s build a nuke energy plant next to a “clean” coal energy plant. The coal plant’s captured CO2 is fed into a third plant manufacturing synfuel, powered by the nuke plant. The dirty coal produces the carbon while the nuke plant generates the electricity to produce both the hydrogen and power the synfuel plant. There are a lot of added bonuses for this. With proper scheduling there will always be constant supply of electricity – when the coal plant is down for maintenance/refitting/etc the nuke plant simple switches into the grid. If more electricity is needed on the grid, both are switched to the grid. Too little demand for the coal plant energy – just switch to making synfuel. There is no need to replace the infrastructure since the facility will manufacture gasoline, diesel, LP gas or whatever hydrocarbon you wish, even stuff for hydrogen fuel cells. Don’t have enough carbon? Make dry ice with power from the nuke plant. Any hydrocarbon used in place of coal works as well – “biomass”, corn, soybeans, garbage, plastics, even might look at those sqiggly bulbs. Want to get rid of the coal(carbon fuel) plant altogether – easy, just shut it off after building a replacement nuke facility or expanding the existing one. Oh, and foreign oil goes away. Oh, and balance of trade is eliminated – we’ll just ship our excess gasoline, etc., to the third world – they need it since with reliable, cheap energy to have a chance at any type of prosperity. Oh, and we’ll save the planet from the greenies as well. Oh, and no need to separate stuff into “carbon plant”, “nuke plant” or “other” bins at your curb. After all, the planet is saved through recycling!
The point of all this is: IF we are going to spend billions and billions and billions on such foolishness, at least spend it on something that will not kill all of Rachel Carson’s birds, for goodness sakes. Call the program “Using Wasteful Spending Intelligently”. Actually, imho, the greenies would likely buy into this – after all, they would be able to even burn their hockey sticks.
People have no idea how much Natural Gas is now extractable from the deep shale deposits. We have essentially unlimited amounts. We won’t be burning more coal and trying to sequester CO2 – I mean it – the quantity of shale gas that we can tap “fracing” the shale is just mind boggling. It is an energy revolution – and I don’t use the term revolution carelessly or lightly.
Apparently Carbon Monoxide poisoning is also known as Coal Gas poisoning
“Mental weakness, dullness, confusion, loss of memory, weakness, and even temporary paralysis of the extremities, bronchitis, broncho-pneumonia, lobar pneumonia. Occasionally symptoms develop which are referable to lesions in the brain and cord.”
So, essentially, hippies, disregarding the lesser energy content altogether, prefer to turn good old C into deathly deadly CO before it is burnt upon request and releases the evil agent of plant food known as CO2.
Sounds about as intelligent as creating and enforcing a tax that government become so dependent upon that they base a large part of their economy on just that income which, however, creates a problem further down the road when the object of said tax is sold in less and less quantities whereupon the government has to increase the taxation of the object or create a new tax to support the foundation and existence of the government’s organizations and policy that has become primarily dependent upon the first said tax. Such lunacy has already seen the light of day in European countries, two examples are nicotine tax and carbon tax specifically for oil (for furnaces). The latter being the point in fact. During the 90’s gov got people to change oil furnace to “cleaner, gooder, friendlier, greener” furnaces for heating your house by, 1, raising taxes, and later by, 2, subsidies. Result, lesser oil being sold lesser taxes coming in at the same time subsidies going out with even lesser taxes coming in. Of course people had opted for dual functioning furnaces, or equal heating, of which one function was, simply put, electrical heating, thus people started to use way more electricity. What did gov do but be “forced” to raise the tariffs and enforce new taxes upon the now “over used” electricity. This “over use” of electricity also paved the way for getting rid of them pesky evil light bulbs which gave us instead the clean nice mercury gas filled light bulbs that add extra cost to gov in waste management (by which gov raised waste management fees.)
Apparently, according to an article in American Thinker, the britts got the worst scenario though they got heating units that on the one hand don’t work when it is too cold and on the other hand creates corroding acids as a waste product to reuse CO2 instead of just having CO2 as a waste product.
Are the hippies suffering from pre-coal gas poisoning perhaps? :p
Why no nuclear power is a mystery. It would seem if you worship at the feet of the God of global warming caused by CO2, then nuclear power would be your savior. ’cause it sure isn’t wind and solar power that you should be worshiping.
Maybe you need some science with that weed.
More like it’s where all the politicians and nuclear lobbyist live and work!
They don’t want to be too near such a “clean” and eco-friendly source of energy in case …. , well no, nothing could possible do wrong, could it, it’s GREEN now.
It’s the dirty, filty, toxic CO2 we need to be afraid of.
If the nuclear industry is not behind this “dirty coal” bullshit they must be kicking themselves for not thinking of it first.
[My happy encounters with safe, clean nuclear power are recounted in a few postings, including photos of me kayaking near a Florida nuke and walking near a plant in France where the gendarmes chased us away. Great fun! Ira]
NO NO NO and NO! The best solution is to acknowledge CO2 isn’t evil, man-made global warming is an environmental scam, realize that cheap energy leads to prosperity and that expensive energy leads to hardship, and to spend these billions upon billions of dollars on real problems like malaria instead of padding the wallets and egos of greedy and politically motivated charlatans.
[Wade, as we all know, even a stopped clock is exactly right twice a day :^) Hansen in 2008 shouts his standard CAGW alarmism, but, on chart #23, some light shone through when he actually wrote, regarding the Carbon Tax, “Limited Government Role – Keep hands off money!” I value Hansen’s wise remarks like diamonds, and for the same reason, their scarcity. Ira
Ira’s blog entry started well, but went drastically wrong at the paragraph that started “I think we need to do something about the unprecedented steady rise in CO2 levels.” If only he, like many others, could just get past the flawed, delusional notions that CO2 is a pollutant and that it needs to be removed from the atmosphere. Whatever is causing global warming, it is not carbon dioxide.
Paul80:
At December 31, 2010 at 3:21 am you say:
“Underground gasification trials are being optimistically undertaken in Queensland.”
Yes, and I confidently predict there will be more such “trials” in the future. As I said in my post above at December 31, 2010 at 2:31 am :
“All studies of underground coal gasification have confirmed that it is not viable for the reasons stated above. However, governments repeatedly get suckered into funding studies of it because it is an ‘easy sell’ to those who do not understand its problems. Governments are easily fooled into funding such silly studies; e.g. they also keep being suckered into funding studies of ‘hot rocks’.”
Richard
Ralph-
You are truly an idiot on the MidAmerican Energy quote above, I will take Berkshire Hathway and Warren Buffeet’s business acumen (he owns MidAmerican) over your misguided Koch Brother’s addled head any day.
“How could someone as smart as Dyson be so dumb about the environment?”
======================================================
The real question is why are CO2 levels so dangerously low.
Obviously, left to it’s own, the planet can’t release enough CO2 to keep up.
“Does it occur to them that the CAGW warmists and alarmists may be the ones who are wrong? ”
(and even dumber!!!)
I don’t understand the willingness of folks for a flat carbon tax, supposedly for keeping the price of oil high, thus deterring use. Oil prices are already high! Usage is down already. Besides, even a few cents a litre adds up to a whacking great amount that is simply absorbed into general government spending. Little, if any funds actually find their way into developing “green” technologies. If you look beyond the shell game, governments use tax money to pay off their credit cards, then borrow what they use to spend on things. Like operating on a constantly maxed out line of credit. Any funds going to developing “sustainable” energy comes mainly from the private sector, and a carbon tax merely handcuffs the private sector. BC has had a carbon tax on fuel for a few years now, and it hasn’t done anything other than make everything more expensive. Hasn’t changed usage at all. (I’ll try and find some data to back that up. Might take a while as it isn’t something government has been exactly candid about)
Re: the captured carbon dioxide can even be used for “enhanced oil recovery,” forcing oil out of the porous rock into which it is introduced and up into wells.
Question: if you were advising a cartel of global oil companies who wanted to get the public to fund a multi-trillion dollar investment in carbon capture and storage technology, what strategy would you propose?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_oil_recovery
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbon-capture-and-storage