The U.S. Forest Service’s recent proposal to store carbon dioxide beneath national forests and grasslands is a subject that demands a scrutinizing eye. This plan, although framed as a stride towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions, introduces several practical and environmental concerns.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service today announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would allow the agency to consider proposals for potential carbon capture and sequestration projects on national forests and grasslands. This proposal would harmonize the framework between the federal government’s two largest land managers by aligning with regulatory structures already established for the U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/newsroom/releases/usda-forest-service-proposes-rule-facilitate-carbon-capture-and
The core idea involves capturing carbon dioxide emissions and transporting them for underground storage in forest areas. The proposition, as stated, aims to support the Administration’s goal of cutting emissions. However, the feasibility and impact of such an endeavor warrant a closer examination.
Transporting CO2 to forests necessitates constructing extensive pipelines, a point underscored by Boston University research fellow June Sekera:
“To get the CO2 to the injection site in the midst of our national forest, they’ve got to build huge pipelines.”
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/20/1211439763/the-u-s-has-a-controversial-plan-to-store-carbon-dioxide-under-the-nations-fores
This introduces a rather ironic scenario where forest land could be compromised for the sake of environmental protection.
Safety is a critical issue often sidelined in the broader discussion. The risks associated with CO2 pipelines, exemplified by the incident in Satartia, Mississippi, cannot be overlooked. Victoria Bogdan Tejeda from the Center for Biological Diversity underscores the hazards of CO2 as an asphyxiant, which are heightened by the remote nature of forest locations.
Carbon capture and storage often doesn’t work well, says Bruce Robertson, an independent energy finance analyst. “They are not capturing at the rates they said they would capture and they don’t store at the rate they were supposed to store,” he says.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/20/1211439763/the-u-s-has-a-controversial-plan-to-store-carbon-dioxide-under-the-nations-fores
The resistance from local communities against CO2 pipelines, highlighted by the cancellation of Navigator CO2’s pipeline project, signals a broader disapproval of such initiatives. The Forest Service’s approach, which could potentially override local concerns, brings up issues of transparency and accountability in policy decisions.
In response to these multifaceted concerns, the Forest Service, through press officer Scott Owen, assures a thorough secondary screening for proposals.
He writes that any proposals must still pass through a secondary screening, adding: “The Forest Service has been ‘screening’ proposals for use of National Forest System lands for over 20 years as a means to be increasingly consistent in our processes and also be able to reject those uses that are incompatible with the management of the public’s land.”
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/20/1211439763/the-u-s-has-a-controversial-plan-to-store-carbon-dioxide-under-the-nations-fores
However, this procedural assurance does little to address the more profound questions of environmental integrity and technological viability.
The proposal to store carbon dioxide under U.S. forests is a complex and potentially dangerous issue that requires a critical examination beyond surface-level intentions. The implications of implementing such a plan, both environmentally and logistically, are significant and must be thoroughly evaluated.
The public comment period is open until January 2, 2024, it is an opportunity for critical public discourse on the drawbacks of such environmental strategies.
H/T Yooper
“Carbon storage” is based on the notion that CO2 is the thermostat for temperature, and that both marginal amounts of CO2 will have an effect, and that warming is a Bad Thing. Rather a stack of dubious presumptions, to say the least.
Carbon storage – I’ll add that to the list with nuclear fusion, flying cars, orbital elevators, WARP drive and Mars colonies by 2010.
And suddenly, Henry Kissinger is complaining about how hot it is.
… and energy too cheap to meter
Re: Nuclear Fusion.
Powering the Future
Fusion & Plasmas
https://science.osti.gov/-/media/fes/fesac/pdf/2020/202012/FESAC_Report_2020_Powering_the_Future.pdf
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/06/10/impossible-longer/
A little longer? Or forever?
Get real, warp drive is never going to happen, besides everyone knows it’s the Romulans who have it right, using a quantum singularity in their engines.
You need to keep up with the science
By Jove! I think they’ve invented coal.
The Green New Deal is still alive and well. Unfortunately it is example of Bastiat’s broken window fallacy. The world creates CO2 by the facts of daily life. The government declares this is actually a good thing because we need to spend tax money to remove it. The market has failed to do this because of pesky things like it being a money loser, so the government decides it wants to use its land for the “storage” area. The plebes are supposed to cheer the government because (a) they’re “doing something” about CO2 (and by extension so-called Climate Change) and (b) they’re creating jobs for the construction of the storage mechanism.
Obviously they won’t discuss the tradeoffs in spending that money on something better, or the destruction of the land to install the mechanism, or anything else that distracts from their claim to greatness.
According to the “Aspects & Assumptions of Whiteness & White Culture in the United States” (drawn up by the National Museum of African American History and Culture), “Must always ‘do something’ about a situation” is a hallmark of whiteness, therefore a form of oppression.
And the purpose of an expensive ALL GOVERNMENT solution is to keep from using the CO2 to pressurize oil fields to improve production.
Not pressure
Lubrication
“There’s always time for lubricant.”
Under Bidenism…and Bidenomics…store CO2 in the Bidenscape and Bidensphere….it is already full of it….but use pressure …problem solved.
Where to start?
I think that sums it up nicely.
Another stupid idea by climate change alarmists.
By the CCCC, Climate Change Crony Capitalists.
Another ecologically damaging stupid idea by climate change alarmists. So much for their claims to be doing this for the environment!
Or the fact that left in the atmosphere the CO2 would continue to improve plant growth and help feed the world.
___________________________________________________________
How long before the Climate Crusaders seriously threaten Geoengineering schemes to fix the obvious non-problem.
Once again:
1. More rain is not a problem.
2. Warmer weather is not a problem.
3. More arable land is not a problem.
4. Longer growing seasons is not a problem.
5. CO2 greening of the earth is not a problem.
6. There isn’t any Climate Crisis.
and how ’bout:
Amendment XXVIII
Congress shall make no law to regulate,
tax, license or sequester atmospheric
carbon dioxide.
The right of the people to freely emit carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere from any source,
from any place at any time in any amount
shall not be interfered with.
.
I wonder if CO2 can be used for fracking.
As far as I know, it is. I don’t know if it’s the economical choice. If it isn’t then using CO2 for fracking would be without merit.
No. It is compressible, and hydraulic fracturing works because water isn’t compressible.
CO2 is used for tertiary oil recovery, because it acts as a solvent for heavy oil.
Exactly
It’s jiffy lube for your well.
The only useful underground use for the stuff, make more lovely oil
___________________________________________
Never attribute to incompetence & stupidity,
that which is adequately explained by malice.
Well whaddaya know, the greenies really DO hate trees!
I asked ChatGPT what is the maximum predicted level of CO2 in the atmosphere if we continue to use fossil fuels at the current rate and when;( you could add in leaving a reserve for non transport uses like product manufacturing adjusting for population etc). What did she do? Well, she copped out -and said it was very complicated and gave no real answer! So what good is AI if it won’t even do some of the heavy lifting . ( At which point I would of course critique and check it’s work)
I don’t know why I think of her ,oh it ,as a woman sometimes.
https://youtu.be/pBz0BTb83H8
I think this could explain it. He could have just as well said this reply to “how do you write liberals so well”.
Could be the “Chat” part.
It’s just a pattern recognition engine for written parapraphs, programmed to tell you “its complicated” if it finds no pattern, and programmed to tell you the “consensus” if it does find a pattern.
Gee, if only we could find a way for the forest, itself to sequester carbon dioxide. Oh, wait…
That’d be good except that the activists set fire to the forests at the drop of a hat.
The question is not HOW to sequester but WHY.
Haven´t they forgotten a couple of basic things – the atmosphere is not a closed system, the seas contain at least fifty times more CO2 than the atmosphere, and according to Henry´s law there is a stable relation – at every temperature – between the pressure of CO2 in the air and in the ocean. So, in my understanding, CCS stands for Carbon Capture Sisyphos, because what is taken out from the air is replaced by emissions from the sea. With some delay – corresponding to the time it took for Sisyphos to roll the stone back up the mountain again!
Steve Case: “How long before the Climate Crusaders seriously threaten Geoengineering schemes to fix the obvious non-problem.”
We have every reason to believe that solar geo-engineering using solar radiation modification (SRM) can quickly reduce the earth’s global mean temperature by 2C in less than a decade’s time, and for pennies on the dollar compared with the costs of Net Zero.
No serious technical or logistical impediments would hinder us from using SRM to quickly return the earth’s climate to that of the Little Ice Age. At which point AGW become a moot issue.
Which is why the prospect of solar geo-engineering using SRM has the climate activist community, and those who profit from their activism, seriously spooked.
SRM is a powerful threat to the profit making opportunities and the social engineering opportunities Net Zero offers. If the climate activists have any say in the matter, solar geo-engineering using SRM will never happen.
“SRM is a powerful threat to the profit making opportunities
and the social engineering opportunities Net Zero offers”
______________________________________________
Banning fossil fuels is a powerful threat to profit
making and social engineering opportunities.
“At which point AGW becomes a moot issue.”
AGW is already a ‘moot issue’ it’s irrelevance is a matter of scientific fact.
“This introduces a rather ironic scenario where forest land could be compromised for the sake of environmental protection.”
Sorta like bird choppers and reflected solar death rays…..
… and is almost surpassed by the insanity that is The Religion of Global Warming
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/yes-unfortunately-sometimes-militaries-must-destroy-town-save/
Modern War Institute at West Point
The “journalist” you refer to is Peter Arnett, a notorious anti-Vietnam war reporter.
There’s no evidence any American soldier ever said those words to Peter Arnett. All we have is this propagandist’s word for it.
My opinion is Peter Arnett was lying about it, in his continuing efforts to undermine the war effort.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-02-09/destroying-a-quote-s-history-in-order-to-save-it
I’m sure the Soviet commander at Stalingrad said much the same thing, and probably every military commander throughout history when confronted with enemy forces in an urban area.
Peter Arnett was trying to make people think that American commanders had no regard for innocent people’s lives, with this claim about destroying a village to save it.
Peter Arnett was/is a dispicable liar. Along with all the other anti-Vietnam war leftwing reporters that covered Vietnam.
Reporters like Peter Arnett are what caused me to go to Vietnam. These anti-war reporters were claiming the U.S. was getting beaten badly by the North Vietnamees and were barely hanging on by a fingernail, and I found that so hard to believe that I had to go see for myself, so I gave up a relatively cushy job in Wildflicken, Germany and voluteered to go to Vietnam.
When I got there, I realized the leftwing, anti-war reporters had been lying all this time about the war, and I’ve never trusted them to tell the truth since that time, and they don’t, they lie all the time for political purposes to this very day.
U.S. troops were not only not losing the war, they were kicking North Vietnamese and Viet Cong ass.
Leftwing partisan reporters are a bunch of dangerous, lying bastards. Don’t believe a word they say.
Wouldn’t they have more success if they just stopped breathing?
Not to worry, the management of debt payments on the $33 T and counting nation debt will “swamp” them before the first pipeline digging begins. In another view, storing national debt in forests will not make them go away.
uses that are incompatible with the management of the public’s land
As in the Soviet Union, there is no “public land”. There is land that belongs to various government agencies, not the public. Even supposed “private property” is under the eminent domain of the government and subject to its desires, including zoning laws.
You have to have the right geology underground to sequester CO2. Depleted gasfields that kept methane trapped for millions of years are particularly good. One of the reasons that oil and gas companies get on board with greenmunists is the potential paychecks they might receive for storing gathered CO2.
The only functioning flue gas ‘carbon capture’ is SaskPowers Boundary Dam unit 4. It was justified by selling the captured CO2 for nearby tertiary oil recovery. After years of engineering tweaks, it never managed uptime over 60%, and the parasitic power loss was 35% rather than the planned 20%.
If you cannot capture ‘carbon’ there is no need to store it. More Biden fantasy.
The U.S. Forest Service’s recent proposal to store carbon dioxide beneath national forests and grasslands is a subject that demands a scrutinizing eye.
If the Executive branch is making this decision, without involvement by Congress, it’s worse than the decrees it issued to fight Covid and to shut up the medics who dissented with good reason. And the untested concept is no better than the happy prattling about Green Energy for All, which has never seen even one demonstration of a State, let alone a county or city, operating for a full year on the exclusive energy of Wind and Solar collectors.
Retire this Administration now!
This sounds like just more subsidy mining to me. Wouldn’t it be easier, cheaper, and faster, to sequester carbon in our national forests by simply planting more trees? Replacing trees in fire burned areas?
US Forest Service–more like US Forest Circus. A three ring schidt show…
It was good in its early days.
The wolverine was put on the endangered species list yesterday.
The greens will use that as they always do to stop any and all forest
management. The main reason listed was “climate change”. I’m no
forest professional but have spent a bit of time living in the woods
and have had some wolverine experience. What I’ve seen is
the wolverines like slash piles for the simple reason is a slash pile is left
and not burned it will get inhabited by things like rabbits and other such critters. They also
really like to make their nesting dens in areas of high snowfall. I would bet
if some road kill deer were to be dropped in one of those areas and there were
some slash piles nearby they might be inclined to stay and reproduce. I have
some trail cam pics and have some first hand experience during my backcountry
skiing adventures that were the basis of that knowledge. But these enviro greens
really hate actual forest management.
The ideas of carbon reduction, storage or sequestration just seem so weird considering this:
https://www.linde-gas.se/en/processes_ren/modified_controlled_atmospheres/carbonioxide_fertilization/index.html
Plants in the world suffer from a Co2 deficit. They want more. I promise.
Funny, isn’t it, that actual ‘greenhouses’ need to introduce Carbon Dioxide into the building, or the plants die.
{the optimal level is about 1,200 ppm}
as it happens, I just so happen to have a bridge for sale – you look are exactly the sort of person to buy it.
We have to destroy the Earth to protect it.
FFS, just release the CO2 in the general vicinity of the trees, they’ll happily store it. Unbelievable, Jeff!
Absolutely not. If CO2 can be safely stored in the National forests it can also be safely stored on site. There is no reason to be piping CO2 around the country. If you have a use for CO2 build your facility near the source of CO2.
Aside from the insanity of storing CO2 for any reason other than having it on hand for future use, when/if the quantity required at any particular time might be greater than the amount that can be produced within the necessary time frame, or within a reasonable cost vs benefit, your idea that CO2 could be stored near its source in quantities and for time frames that would make even the slightest difference is totally without merit or reason.
I don’t think it should be stored but if you are going to store it store it at the source, no need to pipe it into national forests.
Remind the left why they hate pipelines: they leak even before they are built.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/13/ocasio-cortez-blames-pipeline-that-hasnt-been-built-yet-for-an-oil-spill/
“thorough secondary screening of proposals”. I feel so much better.
Totally surreal how everything could be sooooo misunderstood, an utterly wrong ‘correction’ applied with end result that The Whole World is impoverished. This is suicidal madness unfolding all around us.
As regards the forest, simply feed the trees that are already there and they’ll soak up your CO₂
Not like that is going to make a single jot of difference to whatever anyone imagines ‘climate’ to be.
But the trees will alter the local weather when you feed them,
They do this because (yes CO₂ is involved but is incidental), trees are humongous water storage devices – and when they store water, they store heat energy.
Not only within themselves but within the ground they are growing in.
How they affect the local weather is that they are not only (sun)light sensitive but are temperature sensitive.
They drink rain directly, they absorb nighttime humidity, they pump it in and out of the soil.
If they get hot they release water to cool themselves and have sufficient grunt/power/size/capability to create clouds and rain.
It is No Accident that trees are the size/design/structure that they are
Embrace Gaia even if just for a few minutes – reset your thinking. Get Cause & Effect the correct way round for a change.
The real beauty of rain is that it falls directly back down onto them after it has dumped the extra/unwanted heat energy – thus the trees can use the same water again tomorrow, next week/month/season to keep cool and or through the night, keep warm.
Yes they do. Through the night they soak up atmospheric moisture and the latent heat (of evaporation) is released, This keeps the forest floor warmer than it would be as a grassland or desert.
ANYBODY on this Earth can buy a simple thermometer and go out and measure/record that happening yet Nobody Does. Why not, what are you frightened of?
Where the hell are Climate Scientists on this? Or Citizen scientists, kindergarten teachers, schools and universities for that matter.
Nowhere. That’s where, dazzled equally by their own brilliance and that of Re-radiated Energy
But no, everybody appeases the self-proclaimed haha ‘scientists’, they fawn over computers, drool over Sputniks and argue endlessly about phlogiston and dancing angels.
IOW. Turkeys vote for Christmas yet when it looks like it’s ‘coming up fast’, decide to change their minds
Sorry: Appeasers get exactly what they deserve = Christmas followed by an eternity in a Very Cold Place
As the Citizens of Ancient Rome discovered when they destroyed their trees.
If you really do want to build a pipeline into a forest, use it to take some seawater there
Feed the trees some ocean water at about 4 gallons per square metre (per year) and they will love you to bits.
Yet again, your kindergarten lied to you.
If you want to spoil them rotten and want to see them emulate a Shuttle or Saturn 5 Launch, mix some ocean-floor mud into that water.
Then start building nukes to roast Limestone to get some CO₂ back into the sky.
Tree roots need oxygen. Any small leaks of stupidly “sequestered” CO2 could kill hugs areas of forest. This is stupid-squared. The Forest Service is looking for large handouts of “green” money, that’s all.