Guest “picking a fight with both sides” by David Middleton
JUL 15, 2019
EPA Drilling Regulations Remain Underrated Obstacle to Solving Global WarmingWilliam Murray
Manager, EnergyMeeting the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming will be impossible unless the United States leads the way.
[…]
What remains is CCS technology, which the oil and gas industry has used to enhance the recovery of oil for the past nearly 50 years. Each year, this technology already traps more than 60 million tons of carbon dioxide permanently underground, preventing it from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global temperature increases. Congress has incentivized industrial companies to invest in this kind of CCS technology through tax breaks, but companies still are running into problems. Of paramount concern is the Environmental Protection Agency’s oversight of the well-drilling that is the necessary prerequisite for storing CO2 underground.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has oversight authority over the Safe Drinking Water Act’s rules that protect the country’s 151,000 public water systems. In general, this oversight works pretty well, permitting thousands of industrial wells to be drilled every year with virtually no damage to underground sources of drinking water.
In 2010, the EPA created a new class of drilling category especially for geologic storage of CO2 on the presumption that there would be demand for the technology. Instead of streamlining the practice, however, the EPA created overly prescriptive rules, onerous reporting requirements, and unintended liability issues — all of which have led to costly lag times in project development. In nearly a decade since the EPA initiated these Class VI permits, fewer than 10 have been licensed, even though tax breaks were supposed to lower the investment risk for companies.
In 2011, Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland applied for an EPA well permit to place 1 million tons of carbon dioxide into an underground saline aquifer. But the newness of the permit-type, combined with disagreements over long-term liability issues, meant the project took roughly six years to finalize. The Illinois project remains the only major attempt to sequester carbon deep underground; two other efforts in Montana and Kansas were derailed due to permit issues.
[…]
In the decade-plus since passage of the fracking exemption, U.S. oil and gas production has exploded well beyond what was originally thought possible — from 5 million barrels a day to almost 13 million barrels a day — while the country could become a net exporter of crude oil and oil products by 2020. Meanwhile, the boost in natural gas production has displaced coal use for electricity, causing U.S. emissions to fall more than 10 percent from their peak in 2005.
Under the right circumstances, a similar change can occur in carbon capture and storage.
[…]
R Street
Irony can be so ironic… EPA regulations designed to facilitate carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) are actually inhibiting CCS projects.
R Street?
R Street is basically a RINO think tank; former South Carolina Representative Bob Inglis is on their Board of Directors.
R Street is partly good…
R Street is a free-market think tank with a pragmatic approach to public policy challenges. We draw inspiration from such thinkers as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Ronald H. Coase, James M. Buchanan and Arthur C. Pigou.
We favor consumer choice; low, flat taxes; regulation that is transparent and applied equitably and systems that rely on price signals rather than central planning. Thus, it is fair to say we are on the political right.
Partly bad…
At the same time, we recognize that public goods, natural monopolies and externalities are real concerns that governments must address.
So much for being inspired by Milton Friedman.
Partly sort of realistic…
We also understand that life in a democratic society sometimes means reaching a compromise that doesn’t necessarily represent a first, best solution.
We offer research and analysis that advance the goals of a more market-oriented society and an effective, efficient government, with the full realization that progress on the ground tends to be made one inch at a time. In other words, we look for free-market victories on the margin.
R Street
R Street’s energy “expert,” William Murray is the former editor of RealClearPolitics‘ energy page, “has a bachelor’s degree in American and British literature from Whitman College and master’s degrees in journalism and security studies from Columbia and Georgetown University, respectively.”
Firstly, you have to filter out all of the alarmist nonsense. “Solving global warming” is not an urgent matter. It’s not even something that can be “solved.” Mr. Murray is not a scientist, certainly not a geologist… Nor is he an energy industry professional. Like most of the R Street RINO’s, he appears to totally buy into the “climate crisis” horst schist. But he does have a point about CCS.
Secondly, for any of this to make sense, you have to accept the real probability that each doubling of atmospheric CO2 increases the bulk temperature of the atmosphere by anywhere from 0.5 to 1.5 °C and that a rapid rise of atmospheric CO2 beyond 1,000 ppmv could yield some unpredictable changes in marine geochemistry. Clearly a doubling of the assumed pre-industrial CO2 concentration of 280 ppmv, will not lead to a climate crisis, catastrophe or emergency… But, could a tripling or quadrupling of that 280 ppmv pose a potential problem in a couple of hundred years? Maybe.
If you accept these parameters of what may become somewhat of a problem over the next few hundred years, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is a logical part of the solution… Particularly since it can be implemented slowly.
It’s a fossil fueled world!
It’s a fossil fueled world and that’s not going to significantly change over the next 50 years, not even if little Greta stomps her feet and holds her breath until she’s blue in the face.
You can actually get there from here: Drill, baby, drill!
This paper from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) website is an excellent summary of CCS and CCSU, once you get past the standard recitation of IPCC horst schist.
Carbon Capture and Sequestration
Michael Sheppard[…]
Geological Sequestration of Carbon Dioxide
In all cases where fossil fuels are the source of energy, CO2 is inevitably produced; if we are to prevent this CO2reaching the atmosphere, CCS will be absolutely essential. CCS lends itself most readily to applications in which power is produced centrally (as in the case of coal-powered electricity stations). CO2 can be stripped from power-station emissions by a number of means, and these captured emissions can be compressed, transported, and stored.[…]
The volumes of CO2 that need to be dealt with, however, are large. Emissions of CO2 currently run at over 30 billion tons a year, and sequestering just a tenth of this would entail pumping about 75 million barrels of supercritical CO2per day into geological formations. At the level of an individual power plant, sequestering CO2 from a 500-MW coal-fired power station would require pumping around 75,000 B/D1 of supercritical CO2 into a suitable formation.
The expertise and the technologies needed to sequester such volumes already exist to a large degree within the oil and gas industry. Several demonstrations of CO2 sequestration already are underway, including the In Salah saline formation project in Algeria (Riddiford et al. 2004) and the Sleipner project in the Norwegian North Sea.
[…]
Society of Petroleum Engineers
EOR: The win-win aspect
Enhanced Oil Recovery Using CO2
Society of Petroleum Engineers
CO2 is already pumped into oil reservoirs for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), although most of the CO2 currently used for EOR comes from natural sources, and existing EOR practices are not implemented with a view to storing CO2. However, it would be possible to modify CO2 EOR to emphasize CO2 storage while at the same time improving oil recovery. Although CO2 EOR would not provide accommodation for more than a very small fraction of the volume of CO2 currently emitted, it does provide a laboratory for technologies required for routine sequestration that is driven by the commercial incentive to improve recovery of the oil from older reservoirs. Moreover, in a world where CO2 is much more readily and cheaply available, there will be an incentive to use CO2 earlier in the oil-recovery stage to better exploit dwindling resources.
Currently, about 300,000 bbl/d of US oil production is due to CO2 enhanced oil recovery (EOR). As recently as EIA’s 2014 Annual Energy Outlook, this was projected to significantly increase due to high oil prices.
The US Department of Rick Perry, I mean Energy, estimates that CO2 EOR could recover about 85 billion barrels of oil from existing U.S. oil fields:
How can we know it will work safely?
This is what CO2 EOR has safely done since 1972:
SACROC
Discovered in 1948, the SACROC unit is one of the largest and oldest oil fields in the United States using carbon dioxide flooding technology. The field is comprised of approximately 50,000 acres located in the Permian Basin in Scurry County, Texas. Kinder Morgan owns an approximate 97 percent working interest in SACROC and has expanded the development of the carbon dioxide project initiated by previous owners and increased production over the last several years.In 2016, SACROC produced approximately 29,300 barrels of oil per day, and NGL production averaged approximately 20,900 barrels per day. Kinder Morgan continues to effectively develop this mature field through innovative use of seismic data, lateral drilling and advanced conformance techniques.
Kinder Morgan
Since 1972, over 175 million metric tons of CO2 have been injected into the SACROC reservoir; there has never been any evidence of leakage.
SACROC was discovered in 1948. When the injection began, total recovery was less than 20% of the original oil in place (OOIP). The CO2 EOR has led to nearly a 50% recovery of the OOIP and the field is still going strong.
Are there hazards?
There are always drilling hazards and these are very similar to those of drilling oil & gas wells and operating wastewater injection wells.
CO2 injection wells can experience well control incidents (kicks, blowouts, etc.), in much the same manner as oil & gas wells do. These are rare, relative to the numbers of wells drilled and the industry goes to great lengths to prevent and/or mitigate well control incidents, but no human industry is perfect.
Depleted oil & gas fields are the ideal repositories because there is little or no risk of induced seismicity and the fact that there was oil and/or gas trapped there means that there is a competent geologic seal. The main risk here is that the old wells weren’t properly plugged and abandoned (P&A’ed). There would have to be close monitoring for leakage in the vicinity of the old wells. Improperly P&A’ed wells might have to be drilled out and properly P&A’ed.
Saline aquifers have the advantage of having few, if any, old wellbores. They also have the disadvantage of being at virgin pressure. The main risk here is induced seismicity. Detailed geotechnical analyses would have to be conducted prior to drilling injection wells and the area would have to be carefully monitored for seismicity during injection.
CO2 injection operations have been safely conducted for decades. The safety record is on par with that of drilling and producing oil & gas wells, excellent, but not perfect.
If oil companies are doing this anyway, why should it be subsidized?
Oil companies are doing this where it makes economic sense under current economic conditions and about 80% of the CO2 comes from natural reservoirs, where it is sufficiently concentrated for economic extraction. Taking CO2 out of natural reservoirs for EOR operations does not address the problem, to the extent there is one.
CO2 EOR operations are expensive and rarely justified with oil prices below $85/bbl.
Implementing a CO2 EOR project is a capital-intensive undertaking. It involves drilling or reworking wells to serve as both injectors and producers, installing a CO2 recycle plant and corrosion resistant field production infrastructure, and laying CO2 gathering and transportation pipelines. Generally, however, the single largest project cost is the purchase of CO2. As such, operators strive to optimize and reduce the cost of its purchase and injection wherever possible.
Higher oil prices in recent years have significantly improve the economics of CO2 EOR. However, oil field costs have also increased sharply, reducing the economic margin essential for justifying this oil recovery option to operators who still see it as bearing significant risk. Both capital and operating costs for an EOR project can vary over arange, and the value of CO2 behaves as a commodity, priced at pressure, pipeline quality, and accessibility, so it is important for an operator to understand how these factors might change. Total CO2 costs (both purchase price and recycle costs) can amount to 25 to 50 percent of the cost per barrel of oil produced. In addition to the high up-front capital costs of a CO2 supply/injection/recycling scheme, the initial CO2 injection volume must be purchased well in advance of the onset of incremental production. Hence, the return on investment for CO2 EOR tends to be low, with a gradual, long-term payout.
Given the significant front-end investment in wells, recycle equipment, and CO2, the time delay in achieving an incremental oil production response, and the potential risk of unexpected geologic heterogeneity significantly reducing the expected response, CO2 EOR is still considered to be a risky investment by many operators, particularly in areas and reservoirs where it has not been implemented previously. Oil reservoirs with higher capital cost requirements and less favorable ratios of CO2-injected-to-incremental-oil produced will not achieve an economically justifiable return on investment without advanced, high-efficiency CO2 EOR technology and/or fiscal/tax incentives for storing CO2.
US DOE
If the government wants oil companies to spend more of their money on CO2 EOR operations than would be supported by current economics, they need to provide an incentive. So… they devised a tax credit to encourage oil companies to spend more of their money on CO2 EOR operations.
Subsidizing something that works makes a helluva lot more sense than subsidizing green schist that doesn’t work. The Section 45Q tax credit was established in 2008, it was enhanced in 2018 in an unusually bipartisan fashion.
A bipartisan group of Senators, spearheaded by Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), John Barrasso (R-WY), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), led the effort to enhance the 45Q credit. Their bill, S. 1535, the Furthering carbon capture, Utilization, Technology, Underground storage, and Reduced Emissions Act (FUTURE Act), was included in Senate Finance Committee Chairperson Orrin Hatch’s (R-UT) larger tax extenders bill, S. 2256, before finally gaining inclusion in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018.
The Nickel Report
Time is actually on our side
The good thing is that we have decades, if not centuries, to address this potential problem and improve the technology. Just sequestering 10% of fossil fuel CO2 emissions would require an injection rate almost equal to the current global crude oil production rate. However, as natural gas advanced combined cycle and, hopefully, nuclear power plants replace retiring coal-fired plants, the volume of CO2 requiring sequestration will rapidly shrink. And there are promising technological advances that could drastically and economically reduce CO2 emissions from natural gas-fired power plants.
Experimental Texas power plant aims to make electricity cheaper, cleaner
Erin Douglas March 1, 2019
LA PORTE — Just off of Highway 225 past the refineries and coal stacks that line the freeway, one small plant is proving that generators can make electricity without emissions. Nothing that turns into acid rain. Nothing that makes it hard to breathe. Nothing that contributes to climate change.
Distinguished from the other industrial sites only by a green leaf on its sign, the demonstration plant has been testing operations for just under a year to prove a power technology that, instead of emitting carbon dioxide, heats it to drive the turbines that make electricity. All but 3 percent of the carbon dioxide is recycled to produce more electricity; the rest can be captured and stored,ready for pipelines to customers in the oil and gas and other industrial industries.
[…]
NET Power, backed by a North Carolina investment firm 8 Rivers Capital and other investors, such as the Houston oil company Occidental Petroleum, uses a technology called the Allam power cycle, which heats up carbon dioxide in a combustion chamber to an extremely high temperature — a point known as supercritical carbon dioxide, at which the CO2 gas becomes like a liquid. The process uses the heat and mass of supercritical carbon dioxide to turn the turbines. The carbon dioxide, still very hot, then cools and is recycled through the plant.
The excess carbon dioxide generated by the process could be captured at the correct pressure and quality to be easily transported via pipeline. Normally, in air combustion, sequestration of carbon dioxide is difficult because it is expensive to separate the carbon from the air, and then bring it to the correct pipeline pressure. The Allam power cycle removes the need for this separation.
This is potentially a big deal for Texas, where carbon dioxide that can be transported via pipeline is in demand from its energy and chemical industries. Oil and gas companies can pump carbon dioxide into aging oil wells to increase production, a process known as enhanced oil recovery. It can also be used to make cement.
The $140 million demonstration plant, on West Fairmont Parkway in La Porte, will have the capacity to produce 25 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 5,000 Texas homes on a hot summer day. Construction on the plant began in March of 2016; it began testing operations in May.
[…]
NET Power estimates that commercial versions of the plant, which would have a generating capacity of about 300 megawatts, could produce power for $20 per megawatt hour, assuming the federal tax credits that provide incentives for storing carbon dioxide stay in place. That prices also assumes the company can sell their pipeline-ready carbon dioxide for $15 per ton, as well as the nitrogen and argon they produce.NET Power estimates a combined natural gas cycle produces power at about $44 per megawatt hour, assuming a price of about $2.96 per thousand cubic feet of natural gas. NET Power estimates that 450 of its power plants could replace all the new fossil fuel power plants needed from now until 2040 in the U.S.
[…]
Houston Chronicle
This is a rarity, a well-written article from the Houston Chronicle.
How is this different from solar & wind tax credits?
In principle, it isn’t different. In practice, it is subsidizing low-carbon emissions energy production that actually works. While, as a philosophical libertarian, I wish government would not intervene at all, I know that they will and the best we can do is to nudge that intervention in the right direction. Call it a Milton Friedman-Voltaire hybrid philosophy.
Is this a solution in search of a problem?
Maybe. But it’s fairly clear that the U.S. government will eventually impose stricter carbon emissions regulations on fossil fuel consumption. President Trump can only hold the line until January 21, 2025, if we’re lucky. And there are few among Republican Party leadership who would hold the line as well as he has. Apart from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Democrats are 100% on the climate “crisis” bandwagon because they see it as the fast track to socialism, if not outright Marxism.
The political reality is that tighter carbon regulations and/or taxes are very likely in the not to distant future. CCS and CCSU are the least economically harmful path forward.
A note on comments
I fully realize that this post will be disagreed with by both sides of the climate debate. One side will say I am being a denier for minimizing the severity of the “climate crisis” and the other will literally deny the possibility of a problem in the comfortably distant future. I won’t engage in debate either way in the comments section of this post. My responses will be limited to the geological and economic feasibility of carbon capture, sequestration and utilization.
Another Note on comments
Any comments made by people who clearly didn’t read the post, in its entirety, will be ignored by me. How will I know you haven’t read the entire post? It’s usually fairly easy. But, just to be sure… Start you comment with the phrase, Delta House, and that way, I’ll know you read the post.
References
National Energy Technology Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy. “Carbon Dioxide Enhanced Oil Recovery: Untapped Domestic Energy Supply and Long Term Carbon Storage Solution”. 2010.
Porse, Sean, Sarah Wade, & Susan Hovorka. (2014). “Can We Treat CO2 Well Blowouts like Routine Plumbing Problems? A Study of the Incidence, Impact, and Perception of Loss of Well Control”. Energy Procedia. 63. 7149-7161. 10.1016/j.egypro.2014.11.751.
Sheppard, M. C., R. H. Socolow (2007). “Sustaining fossil fuel use in a carbon constrained world by rapid commercialization of carbon capture and sequestration”. AIChE J 53:3022–3028
Yeah…that’s it…humans should somehow to try to regulate, control and limit an atmospheric gas that IS ESSENTIAL TO ALL LIFE.
And, of course, if the concentrations dip too low, we will all know in advance before the 150ppm level is reached, and just dial up the carbo-stat to correct it overnight.
I mean: what could go wrong????
Another comment without reading the post.
Another fantasy sink of public funds by and to the green blob. You can capture and sequester all the atmospheric CO2 you want. But it won’t make a dent in how much CO2 resides in the atmosphere – because, as has now been proven by real scientists, nature will just replace it.
http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/paperinfo?journalid=298&doi=10.11648/j.ijaos.20190301.13
http://www.esjournal.org/article/161/10.11648.j.earth.20190803.13
https://youtu.be/b1cGqL9y548
That *proves* nothing. A simple mass balance calculation proves beyond any doubt that humans are responsible for anywhere from half of to two times the rise over the past 150 years. Uncertainty about the natural carbon cycle just alters the variables, not the equation.
That’s not a big deal. It’s not a current climate “crisis”. It’s not an imminent climate “crisis”. It might be a future problem.
So…c’mon…show us this “simple mass balance” and all the factors that go into it.
Maybe you can publish it in the “Journal of Irreproducible Results”.
How the EFF have we strayed so far from the scientific method that we allow people to make airy and unsupported assertions—and then not only pass them off as “experimental results”, but “proof”???
The mass balance equation simplifies to:
Anthropogenic Source + Natural Sources – Natural Sinks = Net Change
We have a pretty good handle on how much CO2 emissions from fossil fuels because we know how much we burn and the chemical equations are rather simple.
While there are a lot of unknowns about the natural carbon cycle, we have a very solid record of how it has varied over the past 2,000 years. The DE08 and DSS ice cores from Law Dome in Antarctica have CO2 resolutions of 20 and 60 years respectively. DE08 would clearly resolve a shift comparable to to past 50 years and DSS would at least detect it. This constrains the pre-industrial variability over the past 2,000 years.
Based on the natural variability constraints over the past 2,000 years, there’s just not enough natural variability to take us off the hook for at least half of the rise. Even plant stomata chronologies, which demonstrate more natural variability than ice cores, demonstrate an anomalous rise over the past 100 years.
While it’s very far removed from the “climate crisis” alarmism, it is real.
That is so stupid.
Some time ago I spent ages trying to work out the logic behind the mass balance claim. IIRC one can ‘prove’ that the CO2 increase is caused by anything unknown.
JF
While CO2 injection into oil wells is useful from the point of view of increased oil recovery, “sequestration” of CO2 is a lose-lose situation.
As the article mentions, sequestered CO2 must be “supercritical”. The critical point of carbon dioxide is about 88 F and 1070 psia, meaning that CO2 cannot be liquefied at temperatures above 88 F. Carbon dioxide buried in the ground can be subject to heating from below, and a liquid just below the critical point can expand explosively if heated above the critical point. Above the critical pressure and temperature, this expansion risk is minimized.
However, in the average power plant, CO2 is generated at relatively low pressure from the exhaust from a gas turbine or coal-fired boiler. In order to sequester CO2, it must then be separated from the rest of the flue gas (mostly nitrogen and water vapor), then compressed up to 1100 psia or higher. Depending on the fuel used for the power plant, the energy consumed by CO2 compression can be 25 to 30% of the net power produced. This means that for a given net power output, a power plant using CCS will consume 33 to 43% more fossil fuel than a power plant where the CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere. If CCS were generalized over the entire world, the fossil fuel supply would be depleted much faster than if the CO2 were emitted to the atmosphere.
Joel O’Bryan’s post above estimated the CO2 increase rate as 1.89 ppm in 2017 and 2.85 ppm in 2018. Averaging the two would put the CO2 increase rate at about 2.37 ppm per year.
From sea-level atmospheric pressure and the radius of the earth, the total mass of the atmosphere can be estimated as 5.2(10^18) kg. Assuming an average molecular mass of 29, this would be about 1.8(10^17)kgmol. The amount of CO2 required to increase the concentration by 1 ppm would be 1.8(10^11) kgmol * 44 kg/kmol = 7.9(10^12) kg = 7.9 Gt.
If man-made emissions of CO2 are 36.7 Gt/year (per Joel O’Bryan’s post), if all the emitted CO2 remained in the atmosphere, the concentration would rise by 36.7 / 7.9 = 4.6 ppm/yr. If the actual concentration is rising at the rate of 2.37 ppm/yr, about 49% of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions are removed from the atmosphere by natural processes (photosynthesis, dissolution in oceans, transformation to carbonates by shellfish, etc.).
Many experiments have shown that plant growth rates increase when the CO2 concentration in the air increases, which is why greenhouse owners inject CO2 into the air to speed up plant growth rates. If the photosynthetic rate (and CO2 removal rate) is linearly proportional to CO2 concentration, and half of man-made emissions are removed at the current concentration of roughly 400 ppm, the CO2 removal rate should catch up to the emission rate at about double the current concentration, and reach an equilibrium at about 800 ppm CO2, with crop yields and food production at about double the current values, as well as rapid growth of forests.
Depending on whose value of “sensitivity” is credible, the climate may be 1 degree C warmer, but why should we fear such a situation with double the current food production, and the possibility of getting food from northern areas with short growing seasons if crops grow fast enough to be harvested before the first frost?
We shouldn’t “fear” such a situation now… but we should acknowledge a potential problem 100 years or so in the future, and explore technological methods for economically obviating that potential problem… As I thoroughly explained in the post… which about 90% of commentators appear to have not read.
“…S. 1535, the Furthering carbon capture, Utilization, Technology, Underground storage, and Reduced Emissions Act (FUTURE Act), was included in Senate Finance Committee Chairperson Orrin Hatch’s (R-UT) larger tax extenders bill, S. 2256, before finally gaining inclusion in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018.”
Whereas the Future Advanced Recovery Technology (FART) Act just didn’t pass the smell test, and was waived aside quickly…
Will these acronyms never end?
Acronyms never end.
I guess not, but thank you, Mr. Middleton, for always defining yours in advance. It’s very helpful.
I forget to define them all of the time, particularly oil industry acronyms and slang.
You are way better than most.
That *proves* nothing. A simple mass balance calculation proves beyond any doubt that humans are responsible for anywhere from half of to two times the rise over the past 150 years. Uncertainty about the natural carbon cycle just alters the variables, not the equation.
************
Oh yeah? Where’s that Proof?
And please point us to the experiment that can falsify it.
You know….the scientific method and all that.
Dare you.
Setting aside the near certainty that you didn’t read the post…
The DE08 and DSS ice cores from Law Dome in Antarctica are the highest resolution ice cores yet analyzed. The two graphs I just posted totally shoot down the notion of a climate “crisis”… but they also pin at least half of the post-1850 CO2 rise on fossil fuel combustion.
No, they don’t.
Tom HALLA, July 30 the,. says it all.
By all means use it to recover more oil, but why bury a perfectly good and useful gas.
As for what may happen if it reaches 1000 ppm well try it out.
If market gardeners use CO2 to grow bigger, and hopefully better crops, then what happens at 1000 ppm in these greenhouses ?
MJE VK5ELL
CCS is a mad fantasy.
Another comment without reading the post.
That is not a PROOF of anything.
It is an OBSERVATION, and not even an EXPERIMENT.
Report back when you can set up an experiment that can be falsified.
Observations are the closest thing to “proof” in science.
Hello David ,
Delta House .
I know that this is off topic but I respect your knowledge and would like you to reply if that is not to much to ask.
How hard is it and at what cost can fugitive methane emissions from oil and gas operations be captured and used .
I understand that offshore platforms have a problem flaring because of the danger aspect .
In your opinion can significant amounts of methane ( natural gas ) be economically utilized or are fugitive
emissions inevitable in oil and gas extraction .
I am asking this because our government here in New Zealand is trying to be the first in the world to tax methane emissions from farmed livestock .
When I look at the worldwide methane emissions energy and farmed live stock are about equal but the energy emissions are mostly fugitive produced during extraction of oil gas and coal.
With a very small reduction in methane emissions the levels would stabilize and slowly drop.
The livestock emissions are cyclic and after a few years the same molecules are recounted .
Thank you David
Graham
I think that atmospheric concentrations of methane are too low to matter. Gas production is not the cause of the recent rise – the 13C signature proves this. I think oil & gas companies are doing everything to control leakage justified by $2.50/mcf gas prices.
Here’s your Delta pledge pin…
I’m interested in the chemistry involved when a coccolithophore fixes calcium carbonate from seawater. I’m thinking of the big blooms of e.g. Emeliania huxleyi which can be seen from orbit.
What precisely is going on?
TIA
JF
In the EPA’s discussion on the technical feasibility of carbon capture and storage (CCS), the storage segment relies on existing data from several small scale projects and from the Permian basin injection for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Part of this information boasts the injection of 93 million metric tons of CO2 from 1972 to 2005 in the Permian basin, which equates to approximately 3.1 million short tons injected per year. It is also stated that 38 million metric tons of CO2 were re-emitted from the same project, meaning that only 1.8 million short tons per year of the injected CO2 was sequestered. This translates to 60% retention as compared to the 100% retention assumed by the EPA in establishing the 40% partial CCS requirement.
Yep. What’s been injected so far, is insignificant compared to the total emissions.
Delta House…
I did forget to put it in my previous post.
Here’s your Delta pledge pin…
I read the whole post. CCS is virtue signaling from our side.
Carbon dioxide is only detrimental in alarmists’ imaginations, so CCS is a waste of money other than for furthering the false climate narrative by promoting an expensive reactionary boondoogle.
CO2 increases have always followed temperature changes, so human emissions don’t matter anyhow.
If CO2 reaches a doubled or higher level it will have happened primarily from natural warming, not emissions, as it always did in the ancient past.
Everyone’s use of ECS etc is inverted, as it correctly is ppm/degree, since CO2 is a response to T.
Atmospheric CO2 is controlled by changes in ocean sea surface temperature and sea level pressure, via Henry’s Law of Solubility of Gases, where the influence from human emissions cannot even be discerned.
CCS is wastefully appeasing and aiding and abetting a wrong climate theory – please give it up. CO2 is so diffuse in the atmosphere no amount of installations will make a significant difference, so why bother?
It may very well be nothing but “virtue signaling from our side.” There clearly is no climate crisis now and the potential problems in the future probably won’t be catastrophic and won’t materialize until long after we are all dead.
The following is only true for the natural changes as resolved by Antarctic ice cores, during a period when the geologic controls weren’t changing.
The oceans can hold more CO2 in solution at lower temperatures. As the oceans cool, atmospheic CO2 goes into solution. The partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 drops as it tries to come back into equilibrium with the dissolved CO2 in the oceans. This is what is observed in Antarctic ice cores.
This is almost entirely wrong…
Over geologic time, atmospheric CO2 is controlled by the rates of volcanic activity (primarily oceanic crust production) and rock weathering.
The Long-Term Carbon Cycle
The decline in atmospheric CO2 over the past 150 million years is due to a decline in the rate of oceanic crust production…
Over the past 150 years, we have been removing carbon from geologic sequestration in fossil fuels and putting it into the atmosphere as CO2. This is cumulative. Even though our annual contribution is tiny, unlike non-volcanic natural sources, it expands the total pool of carbon in the active cycle.
The warmth of the Medieval Warm Period was comparable to the warm-up from the Little Ice Age, yet the MWP warming barely affected atmospheric CO2.
If the rise in atmospheric CO2 over the past 150 years was entirely driven by warming of the oceans, it would have happened during the Medieval Warm Period too. The DE08 and DSS ice cores from Law Dome in Antarctica are the highest resolution ice cores yet analyzed. The two graphs I just posted totally shoot down the notion of a climate “crisis”… but they also pin at least half of the post-1850 CO2 rise on fossil fuel combustion, because the Law Dome ice cores,unlike most Antarctic ice cores can clearly resolve short-term CO2 shifts.
This is half wrong…
CO2 is both a response to warming and a relatively week greenhouse gas.
If “everyone’s use of ECS etc is inverted,” why are Roy Spencer and John Christy attempting to fine tune it?
This has nothing to do with Henry’s Law…
Henry’s Law: “at constant temperature, the concentration of the gas that is dissolved in a given liquid is proportional to the partial pressure of the gas above the fluid”…
Warming and cooling of the liquid upsets the equilibrium. It doesn’t increase the total volume of CO2 in the active cycle. If we weren’t emitting CO2 from fossil fuel emissions, the oceans would have been a net source since the mid 1600’s – per Henry’s Law.
However, since at least 1960, we have been adding more CO2 to the atmosphere than the oceans have been emitting. This has caused the oceans to become a net sink over the past 50-60 years, irrespective of the warming – also per Henry’s Law.
Henry’s Law…
https://byjus.com/henrys-law-formula/
Very impressive David, and fast. If what I said is right it wouldn’t matter who disagreed, or why.
If human emissions dominate natural ocean outgassing as you suggest there would so little correlation between SST and CO2 changes that I wouldn’t have noticed nor made mention of the obvious overwhelmingly dominance SST change has on CO2.
The description of Henry’s Law is for a constant temperature. Henry’s Law in action means the changes in pressure are related to changes in temperature, via the ideal gas law, which changes the solubility of the gas, here CO2. The fact is the evidence shows CO2 changes follow and mimic ocean temperature changes just about perfectly reversibly, a predictable outcome of Henry’s Law, with no indication of human emissions.
It’s presumptuous of us to assume CO2 is as well resolved pre-1800’s, and to ignore the obvious message in the pre-1800 Law Dome-Moberg comparison, that temperature change precedes CO2 change.
I mostly just cut & pasted from previous comments of mine.
It correlates quite well on a seasonal basis… But not over the past 2,000 years.
As I explained in my comment, if the volume of gas added to the system is more than the gas being emitted due to warming, the oceans become a net sink as defined by Henry’s Law.
The DE08 core that goes back to about 1800, has a 20-yr resolution. The DSS core that goes back about 2,000 years has a 30-yr resolution. At either resolution, a CO2 signal comparable to Mauna Loa would be well-resolved.
Of course, the pre-1800 temperature proceeded CO2 changes… We weren’t emitting very much. Atmospheric CO2 was rising faster than emissions before about 1960. The ocenas were a net source up until then. Temperature dominated the rise in atmospheric CO2 back then. It was so dominant that it literally halted the rise for a brief period.
MacFarling-Meure, C., D. Etheridge, C. Trudinger, P. Steele, R. Langenfelds, T. van Ommen, A. Smith, and J. Elkins (2006), Law Dome CO2, CH4 and N2O ice core records extended to 2000 years BP, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L14810, doi:10.1029/2006GL026152.
Well-resolved? 20-30 year resolution for CO2 misses the well-captured action from monthly data. Splicing Law Dome and Mauna Loa data requires a reduction in resolution from 736 data points to 2 or 3 points for all of the Mauna Loa data. No one can infer mechanisms from data that sparse.
William Henry’s original 1803 paper described the temperature dependence of absorbed carbonic acid gas as originally discovered by another great Royal Society member, Henry Cavendish. Henry confirmed the temperature relationship in discovering the partial pressure aspect.
We can gloss over partial and whole atmospheric pressure and concentrate on the known temperature dependence for dissolved CO2 in water. Here we see CO2 solubility in water changes significantly by more than 2X in the normal 0-30C ocean temperature range.
This mechanism defines how atmospheric CO2 is controlled by sea surface temperature.
Mauna Loa correlates very well with HadSST3, above .995 significance over 60 years.
This all shows we should understand mechanisms from recent high-resolution data, not from sparse smoothed data from the ancient past. Clearly the science isn’t settled.
Mauna Loa correlates very well with HadSST3 – missing link here:
“det” = detrended
Because both CO2 and temperature are rising.
It doesn’t correlate nearly well before CO2 started to significantly rise after 1950.
If this was a simple matter of temperature-driven solubility changes, it would have happened in the Medieval Warm Period a comparable CO2 rise would be present in the Law Dome ice core. It isn’t. Although, the Law Dome ice core did resolve a minor temperature-driven solubility change in the mid 20th Century.
“It doesn’t correlate nearly well before CO2 started to significantly rise after 1950.”
We do not have reliable measurements of CO2 prior to 1958.
Delta House Delta House (I forgot it on another Comment, so if I repeat it now, do I get a pass?)
You answer the question yourself. Or, the copied press release answers the question:
Short answer, they’re (both ECS and TCs) important for political reasons only. So it doesn’t really negate Bob Weber’s contention that:
I may like Bob Weber’s comment because he tends to agree with me, that’s always good. 🙂 I’m not entirely sure I follow your logic, that at least 1/3 of the atmospheric CO₂ increase must be due to anthropogenic emissions. You stated mass balance, but then as proof or justification, you relied heavily on Law Dome temperature reconstructions, and I’m just… I would feel better about the Law Dome data if it were calibrated against something, another proxy perhaps. It doesn’t really calibrate with our temperature record because the temperature record is too short, too incomplete (large areas of the Earth’s surface have no data), and too manipulated. Doesn’t it take some amount of time for the air within a blanket of snow to convert to an air bubble trapped in ice? So that the Law Dome data essentially ends before the temperature record even begins. Maybe I’m just not up with it and multiple papers exist showing Law Dome corresponds well with some other proxy, but I just haven’t seen it. Have you? And there are atmospheric CO₂ measurements that significantly disagree with the “settled science” CO₂ levels. So I don’t take that as a slam dunk, either. My point being, I’m not really convinced the current rate of atmospheric CO₂ increase is in any way unique.
So let me restate my policy prescription: Nothing is happening that hasn’t already happened in the past, neither levels of temperature and atmospheric CO₂ nor rate of change of same. And even if I’m wrong, what’s happening is slow-moving, we will be much better off if we save our money now, so we have some money left to respond if or when something actually happens!
Here’s your Delta pledge pin…
It’s a radiation balance calculation. Bob’s view was exactly bass-ackwards. A few years ago Dr’s Spenser and Braswell published a very convincing paper indicating a transient climate response (TCR) of 0.5 C per doubling. But, his methodology was picked apart, like Lindzen & Choi’s 0.6 C per doubling. If they can nail down a low TCR that can’t be picked apart, it’s game over… Or at least the beginning of the end. Geologically I can’t find any support for an equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) higher than 1.5 C. Putting AGW into a definitively non-catastrophic box is more than just politics. Schist like the Green Deal Deal, literally are existential threats to liberty and prosperity.
The Law Dome CO2 data are very well calibrated to instrumental data as is the Moberg climate reconstruction.
It takes about 85 meters of overburden. At Law Dome the snow accumulation rate is so high that it only takes 30 years to accumulate 85 meters of snow and ice. The CO2 resolution is equal to two times the bubble sealing period, about 10 years in the DE08 core. It’s about 15 years in the deeper DSS core. This is more or less equivalent to the Nyquist frequency.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/07/02/resolution-and-hockey-sticks-part-deux-carbon-dioxide/
Law Dome corresponds very well with instrumental data and with plant stomata chronologies. The stomata data are noisier and higher resolution than the ice core data. They show higher and more variable pre-industrial CO2 levels but they clearly show the recent rise to be anomalous over the past 2,000 years or so.
Finsinger and F. Wagner-Cremer (2009) compared to composite Antarctic ice core. The youngest segment of the composite ice core is from Law Dome. Older is toward the left.
Kouwneberg et al, 2005 compared to composite Antarctic ice core. Top x-axis is in years BP (1950). Older is toward the left. The white curve is a 3-point smoothing average. Stomata data generally have to be smoothed due to the noise level.
https://geocraft.com/WVFossils/stomata.html
The best we can do is to say that 400 ppmv is not as anomalous as the so-called consensus claim. It’s even possible that similar short term CO2 spikes occurred during the Boelling-Alerod glacial interstadial and in the Early Holocene. But, CO2 rise to 800 to 1,000 ppmv would truly be anomalou, unprecedented since the Paleogene and the effects, particularly to marine geochemistry would be unpredictable.
Basically, all of the bad things they say are happening now, are the worst case scenarios a couple of hundred years from now.
The Finsinger/Wagner-Cremer plot is disingenuous, as the purple Law Dome curve is obviously the smoothed mean pre-1800’s, whereas the latter period hockey-sticks upwards following the peak, not the mean. This is comparing today’s peaks with yesteryear’s mean – apples to oranges.
Bob’s view was exactly bass-ackwards.
You would be right only if Spencer/Braswell truly managed to reverse causality, but they didn’t, and they and you are wrong, as the CO2 produced via sea surface temperature changes follow T by 9-10 months, and there’s no getting around that by anyone.
ECS and TCR are backwards in practice and their true scientifically useful ratios are in units of ppm/C, not C/ppm as everyone is doing now.
True ECS is nonsense, since the only time CO2 remains constant is when there is no SST change, which never happens, so there is no equilibrium.
True TCR is the transient response of CO2 to SST, in ppm/C or ppmv/C, and is basically already established by the CO2 solubility in water curve.
One wonders how long it will be before the bigshots realize they have it bass-ackwards.
Law Dome isn’t heavily smoothed. And your comment about Finsinger isn’t even wrong.
The magenta curve is the composite ice core that I overlaid on the image for this post. The black curve under it is the ice core curve in the original image…
This is the caption from the paper:
Finsinger, W. and F. Wagner-Cremer. “Stomatal-based inference models for reconstruction of atmospheric CO2 concentration: a method assessment using a calibration and validation approach”. The Holocene 19,5 (2009) pp. 757–764
The CO2 changes due to temperature occur anywhere from nearly synchronous to lags of several hundred years. It depends on the scale and duration of the temperature change, its geographic distribution and oceanic circulation. The system is always trying to reach equilibrium; but it never actually achieves it because so many factors are always changing.
The solubility argument would work if not for the fact that we are moving carbon from the long-term carbon cycle into the active climate cycle. We’re increasing the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere faster than the oceans outgas it due to warming.
ECS is nonsense because it takes place over 100’s of years and is only slightly larger than TCR.
TCR is all that really matters; because it’s the one we notice.
The “bigshots” have a lot of the science “bass-ackwards”. They have the magnitude wrong, but not the direction. They underestimate the CO2 sensitivity to temperature and overestimate the temperature sensitivity to CO2… But it does work both ways.
Net Zero Natural Gas Plant — The Game Changer
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/07/31/net-zero-natural-gas-plant-the-game-changer/
“An actual game changing technology is being demonstrated as we speak by Net Power. The Allam cycle involves burning gas with oxygen instead of air to generate electricity without emitting any CO2 or NOx. It also produces pipeline-ready CO2 and even water. At a cost below any other energy source.”
Even if the Allam cycle plant itself does what it is intended to do, the question still remains, where do you put all the CO2 that can’t be used for industrial purposes if underground sequestration methods don’t work out?
I mentioned this in the post… If it works as advertised, it is a “game changer.”
Look at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/07/31/net-zero-natural-gas-plant-the-game-changer/#4d6c81ee1de2
I cited this in the post… A very promising technology.
+42×1042
We remove the CO2 from combusted fossil fuel exhaust and transform that CO2 into good paying full time jobs and money. https://youtu.be/RQRQ7S92_lo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eBV73NR9nw
Something to make the green blob freak out??
https://www.thegwpf.com/this-new-gas-revolution-that-could-make-renewable-energy-obsolete/
From time to time over the years I have had brief email exchanges with Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit about Law Dome data. I am Australian. Several key researchers of Law Dome were also Aust. The raw data is stored in Hobart and I am in Melbourne, unable to travel from health problems. The data gatekeepers in Hobart went out of their way to make it impossible for me to see the raw data.
In the early days Steve was blocked from seeing all of the Law Dome data. The suspicion was that some of the isotope data told a story that IPCC etc did not wish the public to see.
Is there anyone here who is familiar with Law Dome.science. able to comment on whether there is still potentially valuable data not available to all who might wish to view it? Geoff S
The main issue Steve McIntyre had was with the oxygen isotope data from Law Dome. Unlike then CO2 data, the d18O data have not been easily accessible. He has some good posts on this at Cliamte Audit.
Milton Friedman rocks!!! Well… rocked when he was alive.
Keeps rocking as long as he’s remembered.
Let me try again. (see 31 July)
When a coccolythophore precipitates chalk, presumably by using dissolved Ca and bicarbonate, what is the precise equation. And as it is a biological process, does it favour the light carbon isotope?
JF
I don’t think it has an isotope preference because changes in d13C are recorded in their fossils.
CO2(g) ⇔ CO2(aq)
CO2(aq) + H2O ⇔ HCO3–(aq) + H+(aq)
HCO3–(aq) ⇔ CO32–(aq) + H+(aq)
Ca2+(aq) + 2 HCO3–(aq) ⇔ CaCO3 + CO2(aq) + H2O
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/oceansicerocks/oceanchemistry.html
Yeah- but what happens when there is an earthquake, and it gets shaken up?