Eric Worrall writes: Carbon Capture and Storage, the most terrifying technology in the green arsenal of deadly stupidity, has once again reared its ugliness on The Conversation.
![CCS_DP[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/ccs_dp1.jpg?quality=83)
According to Howard J. Herzog, Senior Research Engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
“Pumping CO2 underground can help fight climate change. Why is it stuck in second gear?
To deploy CCS on the scale required is a monumental task. We need to store billions of tons of CO2 annually. However, this is the level of effort needed to address climate change. Similar efforts will be needed with other climate mitigation technologies, such as renewables, nuclear and efficiency. There is no silver bullet; we need them all.
As of now, however, CCS is used very little, nowhere near the scale required to make a meaningful dent in emissions. Why? The reasons have less to do with technology maturity and more to do with government policies and the commercial incentives they create.”
Herzog makes no mention of potential risks of concentrating large quantities of CO2. Why do I think CCS is so terrifying? The reason I am frightened of CCS is, the world has already experienced what happens if a large quantity of CO2 is abruptly released.
In Africa, in 1986, an abrupt release of an estimated 100,000 – 300,000 tons of CO2 killed 2,500 people up to 25km (15.5 miles) from the source of the release.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos#1986_disaster
Concentrating large quantities CO2 in one place is dangerous. A similar release to the Lake Nyos disaster, near a major city, however unlikely, however elaborate the safety precautions, could potentially kill millions of people. The CCS concept involves the concentration of billions of tons of CO2 per annum in thousands of locations near major industrial centres. Can anyone imagine nobody will ever make just one mistake, with an operation on that scale? Just one release of a minute fraction of this concentrated CO2 could be as devastating, in terms of loss of life, as the detonation of a small nuclear bomb.
I suggest there is a very good reason CCS is “stuck in the slow lane”. The reason, in my opinion, is that it is total lunacy.
Not having a paycheck from MIT so my thoughts would not be worth a “dime,” but would it not be more beneficial to our planet to plant more trees ? ( a normal 25 year cycle would get your money back )
I love the idea of storing CO2 as wood. I particularly like Douglas fir. Straight grain, super strong, long sections. If push came to shove, you could always burn it, even 200 years into the future.
George, great idea. Stockpile the wood in the empty salt mines or abandoned solar power yards. Billions of tons of wood would store very safely and make really nice furniture!
Unfortunately, wood is not a CCS methodology – it is only a CCC (Carbon Capture Capacitor). Like any capacitor, wood only holds the carbon dioxide for a short while, before releasing it back into the environment (via rotting or burning). So wood does nothing for reducing carbon dioxide, over the long term.
Indeed, wood is now a major atmospheric carbon pollutant. Drax (a 4 gw power plant in the UK) has been turned into a wood-burning stove. So they have just signed a deal to cut down every single tree in America, to feed this wood-burning behemoth.
Say good-bye to your trees, folks.
Drax power plant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_power_station
Or is this the real Drax?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drax_the_Destroyer
Ralph
Paul: And if you stored the wood over a long enough period our great x 10^100 grand-children could make use of it as coal! [grin]
“great idea. Stockpile the wood in the empty salt mines or abandoned solar power yards.”
Why waste it, turn it into lumber and build a big (well insulated) homes in the country for your family visit.
I wonder what other side effects might pop up? It would be ironic if all of the pressure underground, forced more gas and oil into the local wells (or into aquifers!!)
Yikes, 10 seconds on Google and: “Carbon Dioxide Enhanced Oil Recovery”
“As the United States grapples with the twin challenges of reducing dependence on foreign energy sources and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, the topic of carbon dioxide (CO2) enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has received increased attention. In order to help inform the discussion, the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory has published this “primer” on the topic. Hopefully, this brief introduction to the physics of CO2 EOR, the fundamental engineering aspects of its application, and the economic basis on which it is implemented, will help all parties understand the role it can play in helping us meet both of the challenges mentioned above.”
Are we being played? Taxpayer funded CSS to help extract evil oil?
ralfellis, sure wood can be a CCS. I see examples of wood that has been storing carbon for over a hundred years everyday. All I have to do is look at just about every part of my house. And I know of ones where the wood has been storing carbon for many hundreds of years.
With minimal effort or cost, stored wood can hold most of its carbon for many many generations. And if it is ever needed (for construction, heating or whatever) it will be easily recovered.
Even just leaving it as trees, with the proper species selection, can store the carbon for hundreds of years. Although since young trees bind up carbon at a faster rate, using trees for CCS would be best with fast growing trees that are then harvested for storage while new trees are planted.
The best carbon sequestration I know of, apart from furniture, is to chip the wood and use it to cover flowerbeds. It stops weeds, and has the added benefit that it drives ecoloons even more crazy than ever!
re: Jer0me March 13, 2015 at 5:15 am
Only if you live where there are no subterranean termites.
Are we being played? Taxpayer funded CSS to help extract evil oil?
======
yes.
Nicely put together, simple, short, and incorporates numerous inconvenient facts and references.
There is already Billions of tons of CO2 that is sequestered in the Billions of tons of wood that has been sequestered in the infrastructure, factories, buildings, homes, furniture, etc. ….. during the past 200+ years.
Wouldn’t recommend burning fir.Try planting birch or beech or hornbeam instead.
Would our greening biosphere be part of the sequestration? Has it helped to reduce the co2 airborne fraction observed?
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2013-03-31-ScreenShot20130331at4.19.41PM.png
Jerome;
The best carbon sequestration I know of would be to send everyone in the governments of the world on a one way trip to the sun.
ralfellis says: March 13, 2015 at 4:09 am
A tree may be fairly temporary but a forrest can last long time.
Anyways, I vote for cedar. An old, large cedar is a beautiful tree and make great shingles.
Balsa. Fast growing and useful. Especially in my model airplanes.
The worlds croplands would have a major boost if we grow lots of biomass and turned it into charcoal AKA “biochar”. This would store co2 lots longer then wood with clear long term bonuses to agriculture. This is worth doing irregardless of the legitimacy of co2 as a major climate driver. I live in the high desert where things are marginal for growing from a few angles and this one variable has a huge impact.
But why would anyone subscribe to a system based on a fear that is only suppored by a theory not yet validated by empirical data?????
Good question.
My best answer is that we live in an often surprising and improbable world.
Indeed, Alx, indeed. We deserve it though, the entire lot.
johnmarshall
Thanks. My suggestion: –
I will buy in – if there is money into my pocket – MIMP.
Subsidies in the UK guarantee much MIMP for investors/insiders.
Elsewhere, there are other fiddles that might guarantee profits for punters.
Auto
Because global warming proponents are nuts.
And if we buried it for 100,000+ years, we could then dig it up and use it later !
CCS is from the same people fighting the storage of LPG in abandoned salt mines in the Finger Lakes region of New York. The hypocrisy never ends..
There are so many loopy ideas and claims of future catastrophes coming from so many angles that one group (“We never said X, they said X. Stop misrepresenting what we’re saying, evil people!”) can always distance themselves from the lunacy of any of the others while progressing towards the same overall goal,
funding from the taxpayer’s pocketsaving the plant.It’s like a combination of whack-a-mole and a find-the-pea word game run by rent-seeking Henny Penny.
“saving the plant.”
Which one, there’s lots of them around?
Plus, it will require fracking on a grand scale to make room for the material…..Oh, the exploding heads.
Wouldn’t Iron Fertilisation be easier, quicker, cheaper & less potentially dangerous? I guess we aren’t allowed to mention geo-engineering though.
Sorry to Wikipedia you all, but it says: ‘Current estimates of the amount of iron required to restore all the lost plankton and sequester 3 gigatons/year of CO2 range widely, from approximately 2 hundred thousand tons/year to over 4 million tons/year. The latter scenario involves 16 supertanker loads of iron and a projected cost of approximately €20 billion ($27 billion).’
Research seems to be slow to none. Greens again.
No wild cat idea is worth a dam whem natural processes dictate that the methods are not needed.
From my point of view there is nothing so stupid as to bury gigatonnes of oxygen for centuries, permanently removing that oxygen from the atmosphere, stupid on steroids, Of course not to mention the gigatonnes of carbohydrates that plants would no longer make with that CO2 that we use to feed the 6 billion or so people on this planet and feeds all the other animal lifeforms in one way or another. Keeping CO2 away from the plants that turn it into Oxygen and food seems like a criminal act to me, literally a crime against humanity.
For those who haven’t yet taken my point, there are 6 billion people on the planet that we are only able to feed because CO2 has fortuitously risen to 400PPM if we were to return to preindustrial CO2 levels of 270PPM, food production productivity would probably fall 50% precipitating probably the greatest famine ever experienced. Most badly affected would be the poor. So to me the oh-so-moral save the world warmists want to kill about 3 billion poor, mostly black people. Yup moral superiority alright, or is that moral stupidity.
What is scary about all of this is, we are at the end of the present Interglacial and the chances that we might fall swiftly into another Ice Age is a very grave danger and these lunatics want to make the planet COLDER.
Just so they don’t have to turn on air conditioners in Arizona and Southern California!
We are definitely on the knife’s edge and the warm cycles grow weaker. The sun controls our temperatures overall and if the sun ceases having many sun spots during the solar cycles, we get much colder.
The CO2 level that they ‘want to return to’ of the Little Ice Age was not very much higher than the level at which c3 plants start to die out. This would initiate the food shortages that Malthus, Holdren and Ehrlich were scaring people with.
This would initiate the food shortages that Malthus, Holdren and Ehrlich
were scaring people withwould like.There fixed it for you.
” the chances that we might fall swiftly into another Ice Age is a very grave danger”.
I agree 100%.
This is the true disaster scenario.
Pretty hard to raise a crop on an ice sheet.
In fact, one good cold snap in the middle of the growing season in any the worlds grain belts would almost surely starve hundreds of millions.
Just check out the stats on how much food is on hand at any given time on a worldwide basis.
The last “Year Without a Summer” occurred during a time when far fewer people were so entirely dependent on others for their food.
Imagine what will transpire if and when it is realized there is not enough food on the earth to sustain current populations. What will people do? What will governments do?
I suppose the real question is, what will they NOT do, in such a circumstance?
Riots, hoarding, wars, mass migrations on an unprecedented scale…
You are very correct sir…we are on the knifes edge.
Unlike the warmistas, I hope the disaster I can imagine never does come to pass.
But it sure looks like the sun is going into an inactive phase, and that the current interglacial is very long in the tooth.
Limestone, chalk, shale, coal, oil, gas – these are natural CCS.
Human CCS is indeed dangerous lunacy. It comes from the western mindset derived from Norse mythology in which humans have contempt for gods and believe their destiny is to overthrow the gods in Jotunheim. Both the belief in CAGW and the idea that humans can achieve CCS in a god-like manner derive from this Norse derived psychotic delusion of grandeur.
Just a copy of the Greek mythology…which gave us the great word hubris. And for more fun, read Plato’s Symposion, with Thucydides’ story of how humans invaded Heaven, and what that resultet in…
We don’t do that kind of thing in Norway any more, of course. We just eat our assorted funghi and go berserk. And as a diversion, we pump co2 into the bottom of the sea in order to get more of that thick black juice, it is “not good for drinking at all” (last words of Thorolf), but the crazy foreigners seem to like it.
ConTrari,
Not sure which diversion you’re remarking on, but the carbon (dioxide) storage trial at the Sleipner field in the Norwegian North Sea doesn’t even use the CO2 to enhance oil recovery, the CO2 is pumped into a saline acquifer in the overburden (about half way down from the seabed to where the oil is) so instead of helping get any ‘black juice’ it’s just making a big underground pool of salty soda water for my children’s children’s children. It’s also not the full-monty CCS since the carbon dioxide is ‘only’ being separated from produced natural gas and isn’t having to be captured downstream of a combustion process (to capture CO2 from flue gases, the experts* admit will add apporximately 15-20% to the energy demand of what ever process is saddled with CCS).
The only reason they do it is as a tax dodge; because since Australia found it’s brains and ditched the carbon (dioxide) tax, Norway reclaims it’s dubious honour of imposing the highest hot-air tax.
There is also a trial Carbon (dioxide) capture facility at Mongstad near Bergen, but that isn’t even in second gear, on account of the outrageous cost, but also because the amine used to scavenge the carbon dioxide is carcinogenic which adds extra risk to what is after-all a political rock-show.
No doubt Stavanger Aftenblad and the twats at Belony have whittered on about this at length over the last decade?
*what is an ‘expert’? An ‘ex’ is a has been, a ‘spurt’ is a drip under pressure.
ConTrari
I didn’t mean to be down on Norway – it’s one of my favourite countries. But ancient mythologies are reflected in modern mind sets. You’re probably right about Greek mythology having similar hubris – and also at least as influential.
Better CCS idea: oyster farming!
The application of common sense is forbidden – sacrilige.
The solution is to tell people that carbon dioxide is valuable. Then it will be stolen!
Brilliant!
Like the guy who leaves a fridge outside his house for a week with a sign ‘free fridge’. He then changes it to a sign saying ‘fridge $50’, and it’s gone in less than an hour!
Yes, perceived value is often more important than actual value.
I asked a friend of mine, who lived in Manhattan, NYC, if he had trouble getting rid of his garbage during a Garbage Truck driver’s strike and he said ….. “NO, … I just wrap it up in a neat package and lay it on the seat of my car with the passenger window down …. and when I exit the Deli with my morning cup of coffee my garbage is gone”.
Absolutely brilliant, in one sentance you have come up with the grand unifiled solution to almost any problem.
CO2’s already valuable!I recall my years working for the “world’s largest manufacturer of carbon dioxide” decades ago. It was so profitable that the company would get purchased by bigger outfits as a cash cow.
Sadly, it may take a disaster on the scale of lake Nyos for people to finally see the greens for the dangerous idiots that they are.
Thanks to the Green blob, 3.5 Billion people are living in abject poverty, suffering malnutrition and dying untimely because of restricted access to modern technology and a lack of cheap energy. Isn’t this enough for people to see the Greens for the dangerous idiots they are?
Kevin Lohse March 13, 2015 at 4:09 am says: “[Can’t people] see the Greens for the dangerous idiots they are?”
Are they dangerous idiots? Or are they dangerous eugenicists?
Like His Royal Virus, Prince Phillip — http://chemtrailsplanet.net/2014/02/24/prince-philip-and-english-monarchy-behind-global-depopulation-agenda/
Kevin,
Have you seen ‘Hotel Rwanda’ (realeased in 2004)?
There is a scene where Colonel Oliver (played by Nick Nolte) explains in blunt and politically incorrect terms to Paul Rusesabagina (played by Don Cheadle) why the west isn’t going to intervene to stop an imminent Hutu assault.
Oliver’s observations explain why 3.5 billion people living in abject poverty, suffering malnutrition and dying isn’t enough for ‘people’ to see the greens for the dangerous idiots they are. And also explains why the green blob don’t care.
Maybe when the parasites in the UN are dependant on developing countries to pay the expenses for the annual hot air fest instead of relying on the sale of season tickets to ride the guilt train in developed countries for their tax free slush fund, then there might be more than just two faced sympathy statements to help those 3.5 billion people get reliable, affordable energy.
There’s more to it than “access to modern technology and a lack of cheap energy.” You have to look at who is running the so called “government” in a lot of those countries.
It would be nice to think that new evidence would suddenly cause the Green’s to smack their heads and admit error, but that isn’t going to happen. Any evidence can be explained in multiple ways.
If there were a lake Nyos type disaster, we can be absolutely certain that the Green’s would find a way to attack some “evil corporation” for taking insufficient safety precautions. The villain would be the profit motive, not Green stupidity.
I am afraid Eric has brought up this Lake Nyos canard before. Sorry, Eric, but I respectfully disagree with your conclusions about Lake Nyos and its applicability to CCS . Lake Nyos was volcanic CO2 that had nothing to do with CCS. Any sequestration facility has multiple layers of risk analysis, modeling, and geophysics before the first ounce of CO2 is put in there. LN was hidden and no precautions could be taken. If you put any trust in the ability of engineers and technology to mitigate risks, then you may see my point. Think of natural gas as an analogy.
Sorry oeman50, while I do for the most part trust engineers and technology to mitigate risks, sh1t does happen. Do Chernobyl and Bhopal ring a bell? Since there is no proof CO2 does anything to affect the climate, then why go to the expense and risk to sequester it?
I don’t think there was a suggestion that the CO2 had been put into the lake by humans wanting to remove it from the air.
I took the point to be that CO2 in very high concentration is dangerous.
I believe Lake Nyos could happen again and nobody’s too sure what to do about it. That’s surprising for a species that can control the weather (but only the weather averaged over at least 30 years).
The Lake Nos release is not a canard. It shows that a massive release of CO2 can kill. Simple as that. And a massive release of CO2 from a CCS facility would kill also if people were in the vicinity. So you are really claiming that Lake Nyos and CCS are different because engineering works and technology are never flawed and the management of CCS facilities will be immune to human error. Nevertheless, even if CCS technology was “bulletproof”, it would still be an idiotic idea. And not just your ordinary garden-variety idiotic but monumentally idiotic.
Most Greens do not have any idea how much CO2 this really is… in order to sequester all of the CO2 the US produces every year you will be sequestering close to 100 million train cars of LIQUID CO2 every year. Oeman50, If you think this can be done 100% safely, then surely you should welcome having it sequestered in your neighborhood. Right now the Greens are vociferously complaining about the relatively puny amounts of liquids being pumped into the ground for frackking. Of course, the Greens dont care that multi 1000s of birds get fried or chopped by commercial solar installations and windmills, but if even one gets coated in oil… they want to throw someone in jail, so logic is something they seriously lack.
We should add Fukushima to the ‘engineered’ solutions that failed due to Mother nature being the b1tch she is.
The anti-nuclear power crowd use this as an example for NOT using nuclear for a cheaper and less CO2 intensive power source yet, conversely, think pumping billions of tons PER YEAR of CO2 into the ground is ok and that Mum will not come in to smack them around the ears again because it is an ‘engineered’ solution.
Do I mean that an accident involving CO2 is impossible? Of course not. My point is we accept risk on a daily basis without even thinking about it. Referring to my analogy, a “massive release” of natural gas will asphyxiate just like CO2 even without the harm of an explosion. And building Fukashima was a calculated risk, which, BTW, did not actually kill anyone when the accident occurred. (OK, massive damage stipulated.) I am just trying to say the risk by itself should not disqualify CCS if we judge it like we do other, more familiar but just as risky, technologies.
Now, are the benefits we get from CCS worth whatever risks we assume? That is a separate discussion.
As any half way decent geologist will tell you, pumping something out of the ground is several orders of magnitude easier than pumping something into it, unless you are pumping into a void like an old coal mine.
If you are stupid enough to believe fracking causes earthquakes, then wait until you try pumping large amounts of CO2 underground. Because you are going to need to use such incredibly high pressures to open up spaces between individual sedimentary grains or, if you are incredibly stupid, along geological contacts, then you are going to create stresses which can only be relieved by rocks fracturing, thereby creating both leaks and major tremors.
A recent case in point is shown here in Spain:
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CD8QFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fphys.org%2Fnews%2F2013-10-quakes-rattle-spain-offshore-gas.html&ei=lroCVfX_GeXm7gbNtYCQBQ&usg=AFQjCNHxvyC0XniwjRtDNSbO58Ltq9BtuA
Many geologic formations have naturally high porosity and permeability and can readily take up huge quantities of injected fluids. That is the primary method for disposing of water co-produced with gas & oil. If you have a water well, you are taking advantage of a near-surface example (i.e., aquifer).
That being said, CCS is the kind of idea dreamed up by those who spend other people’s money (OPM).
OPM’s like a drug, no?
It is perhaps a Malthusian-inspired idea for population control:
http://desip.igc.org/malthus/principles.html
Indeed. I’d imagine the potential for mass death on a global scale is considered a benefit by many Greenies, not a hazard.
Eric, what is wrong with your brain?
Nothing published at the (one sided) “Conversation” is of any value.
The big bad engineer says “carbon capture and storage is an economic dead end”. That is that. There is no come back. Warmuloinian bitches are incapable of life cycle analysis. Their word is worthless.
Face reality – no person on this sorry planet who claims adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will reduce the atmosphere’s radiative ability to cool the surface can possibly be better at radiative physics than I am.
Yes, I may be an arrogant foul mouthed bastard. That is still no barrier to me being right. No barrier at all….. 😉
Eric, this is the age of the Internet. It is no longer enough that you scrambled to the”right side”. This is no longer about”sides”. You have to be right personally. Remember, the Internet record is permanent. Think….
“Warming, but less than we thought”
Or –
Warming due to radiative gas increases is a physical impossibility.”
Wrong or right. Black or white. There is no middle ground. Time to choose…
Just assuming a huge amount of CO2 was stored in a depleted oil or gas reservoir.
What happens when the oil/gas is naturally replenished from chemical reactions within the earth and this combines with the stored CO2.
Way above my pay grade.
Better to pump the CO2 into a manufacturing plant and produce pure hydrocarbons. Greens should love it since it’s “renewalbe” and is ” recyclable” and would actually produce something other than their usual misery, death and habitat/animal destruction.
you mean to turn it into instant mashed potato ?
Where are you going to find the energy? It takes large amounts of concentrated heat to make entropy run backwards.
Nuclear.
Got billions of years of fule if folks spend time working on thorium reactors instead of the bird-chop-o-matics littering the world.
The boys and girls at Los Alamos have written detail papers about using even uranium to produce synfuels. The issue is simply cost. It’s cheaper to generate power with methane at the moment. Regardless, it’s lots cheaper to use nuclear than anything the Greens dream up.
Converting CO2 into hydrocarbons would require incredible amounts mor energy.
More energy than you would get back by burning those hydrocarbons!!
That’s an immutable that cannot be overcome no matter how hard we might try.
A shame the Germans in WWII didn’t know the immutable regarding synfuels. Since “Google” and “internet search” may also be immutable, you might try these:
under it’s a really, really old idea)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0301421577900568
and, for you race car fans:
http://www.autoblog.com/2013/01/31/audi-to-produce-e-gas-synthetic-fuel-wind-solar-co2/
and, under MIT for Green CO2 capture into synfuels
https://canes.mit.edu/publications/alternative-gasoline-synthetic-fuels-nuclear-hydrogen-and-captured-co2
and, well, there’s thousands of science articles on same. If gasoline sells for over $4/ gallon, synfuels is viable even it it’s an immutable that cannot be overcome no matter how hard. Oh, even the Daily Kos has articles on saving the planet by recycling CO2 using nuclear. Happy immutable hunting!
On, and btw, nuclear is, for sure, cheaper than any Green power conceived outside of their perpetual motion power systems. Even the windmills Audi is supposedly planning using to convert CO2 to hydros.
Cedarhill,
Why would you waste the energy you get from fission to make more hydrocarbons from CO2 except as a mobile fuel supply? You’re better off just using the electricity and heat directly than fighting entropy. And extracting oil or even converting natural gas or coal into oil is far more cost effective than using nuclear to reverse the combustion reaction.
Ten years ago, when I swallowed all this CO2-causes-global-warming crap I experimented with a mineral called serpentine, pulverised, in a pressure vessel. Figured that an engineering solution to the impending disaster was the way forward. If I hadn’t failed I’d probably have joined the ranks of grant-whores whose integrity comes a poor second to their income.
CCS is not stuck in second gear, it is stuck in “dead on arrival”. It is doa because it is even less practical than large scale wind or tidal energy, is actually dangerous, and is immensely expensive. Add to that the sad truth that CCS will do nothing to improve the climate and it is obvious CCs is a green folly too far.
We can only hope it is “dead on arrival”. The horrible economics of this idea almost certainly make CCS an instance of an attempted perpetual motion machine of the 2nd kind. Once all the true energy inputs required for storage are added up, they probably exceed the value of the fossil fuel energy produced.
We’re back to “sure we’re losing money on every widget sold, but we’ll make it up on volume”.
Cedarhill — Better to pump the CO2 into a manufacturing plant and produce pure hydrocarbons.
Agreed — Of course that requires the addition of energy which would have to be non fossil and practical IE: Nuclear
How about running this project on wind or solar power and using new nukes to run our actual real needs?
Its just a matter of how expensive you want our energy to be.
Oh, and getting the greens to allow solar and wind plant construction. (They already block solar & at some point will switch to pretending to care about birds.)
Not to mention that the parasitic load for the carbon capture equipment can approach 30% of the power plant capacity. Nothing is free.
We need to store billions of tons of CO2 annually.
That is the lunacy. I utterly reject the premise.
That is the lunacy.
=======
thus the appeal. politicians find it irresistible.
Politics is the art of the possible; not the art of the sensible.
Indeed. Thanks for pointing this out again, Anthony.
I have been saying this for years and years, ever since CCS was first mentioned, and never once have I had any rational response from these Greeny lunatics (or the Greeny loon BBC). They just sit there with their fingers in their ears shouting: “La, la, la, I cannot hear you……”
That was ok, when the Green loons were merely dreadlocked hippies sitting around a campfire singing Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. But now they are in the media indoctrinating our children, and in government spending our money.
It’s not certain that the modern hippies are qualified or motivated to do anything else, though. This is why we must push ahead with marijuana legalization – to prevent them from destroying western economies in order to save the world!
I’m pretty certain they already know a lot about cannabis growing, processing, distribution and utilization and can be easily motivated to work in this new emerging, highly profitable industry. That is, ‘motivated’ at least until quality assurance time arrives – I think product testing is usually around mid-late afternoon every day, and it’s ALWAYS 4:20 somewhere in the world.
Heh, heh, the bumper sticker I want reads, “Imagine there’s no Lennon, it’s easy if you try.”
His son says he was becoming disillusioned with Leftism before his death. He was migrating back towards the POV of the original “Revolution”. He was disposed of Just In Time.
Ralfellis ; Best comment / analysis I have read today. You are absolutly right !
I’m not sure why the ‘greens’ are so dead against ‘fracking’ and so dead for CCS. It appears to my admittedly simple mind to be essentially the same thing, pumping a substance that has no natural reason to be there into an unstable spot under the earth. CCS is arguably worse given that nothing is displaced in the storage location as fracking ‘displaces’ (or replaces) the oil with water. Aren’t we essentially creating hundreds of ticking time bombs?
Simple answer. Greens are for anything that damages civilization and against anything that enhances civilization.
Not sure I buy the “It’s too dangerous argument”, since that argument could also be applied against nuclear energy. It also masks the underlying stupidity of CO2 sequestration; namely the religious zeal around the misplaced condemnation of CO2. If eco-politics required a new Satan, they found it in CO2.
Nuclear energy has enormous potential for benefit. On the other hand CO2 sequestration has no value, It is the equivalent of the small child trying to make a new ocean by taking bucketfuls of the ocean up the beach to his cottage.
The risks of nuclear energy are real, but zealous eco-politics and it’s attendant doomsday fears makes those risks difficult to asses rationally and proportionally. Heck, we have enough nuclear bombs that though one mistake could lead to nuclear war and wipe out civilization as we know it, we deal with it and no one seems to care including eco-ideologues. Who knows, maybe a post nuclear war world would be an ideal state for them, burning wood for energy and living in huts.
Regardless it is irrelevant. If it needs to the earth will handle the additional CO2 by adding more greenery or through some other mechanism. The earth as a whole seems to be good with the whole evolution concept; it will continue to evolve.
“Not sure I buy the ‘It’s too dangerous argument’, since that argument could also be applied against nuclear energy.”
Yeah, aside from, oh, actual data, you’re right.
true, but as pointed out many times here, this is FAR more about politics than science. In politics, as the Green Machine knows only too well, perception IS reality, data or no.
“I suggest there is a very good reason CCS is “stuck in the slow lane”. The reason, in my opinion, is that it is total lunacy.”
That’s certainly true, but the writer only gives one argument against it: the possibility of accidents.
I can think of quite a few far more significant arguments against it. For a start, the problem it’s supposed to solve at astronomical cost almost certainly doesn’t exist.
Chris
Worse, it deprives trees and other plants like crops we eat, essential food. I bet any place that sucks in CO2 will be a desert with zero plant growth!
Despite all the sense in your sentences (and in the arguments you didn’t include), the alarmists will zoom in with laser-like precision to ONE word in your comment: “almost”. ANY risk or uncertainty whatsoever is enough to justify spending trillions of OPM.
Yet, of course, the absolutely massive uncertainties in their own nebulous pet theories and “solutions” are dismissed with a wave of the hand (or hand-waving).
Plant crops! All that extra CO2 will make them grow faster and take it out of the atmosphere too.
If we give that extra food to starving people, they will store that Carbon in their bodies for up to 100 years!
Come on, it’s not as crazy an idea as burying underground!
The VERY BEST place to store CO2 is in the atmosphere and in plants.
That is WHERE IT BELONGS !!
Its called “THE CARBON CYCLE” 🙂
Anthony
I work with people who are involved or have been involved in this type of thing; and it is genuinely and truly a great waste of time. They model this, they model that, they write endless papers and reports analysing their models. A number of groups (companies) have been set up in the UK to do just that – in truth they’re all government funded one way or another. It is a complete waste of time and money – and yes we’ve been involved with some of them; if people are happy to waste their taxes then why not make sure you get some of it back! If it was up to me though I’d tell them to **** off!
One point I’d disagree with though…
The reason I am frightened of CCS is, the world has already experienced what happens if a large quantity of CO2 is abruptly released. In Africa, in 1986, an abrupt release of an estimated 100,000 – 300,000 tons of CO2 killed 2,500 people up to 25km (15.5 miles) from the source of the release.
This is true of just about every type of underground reservoir (natural or otherwise). You can even get huge amounts of noxious gases from migrating groundwater (eg. moving upward from high to low pressure). So I don’t think there is any peculiar wish and the technology has been applied in the oil industry with good effect – not too sure how much CO2 has been used as once dissolved in water it is longer inert so it’s use may be limited.
“…peculiar wish…” should be “…peculiar risk…”
I noticed that Herzog’s disclosure statement:
means that he’s in the pay of ‘big oil’. So will his support of CCS be as demonised as Willie Soon’s work is?
Harry, please report back to the Heretic Penalty Box for a timeout and another injection of corrective thinking. It appears the last dose didn’t quite take.