From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Why are UK taxpayers forced to pay for this pointless nonsense, when the rest of the world does not give a toss?
A ground-breaking project to suck carbon out of the sea has started operating on England’s south coast.
The small pilot scheme, known as SeaCURE, is funded by the UK government as part of its search for technologies that fight climate change.
There’s broad consensus amongst climate scientists that the overwhelming priority is to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the chief cause of global warming.
But many scientists also believe that part of the solution will have to involve capturing some of the gases that have already been released.
The project is trying to find whether removing carbon from the water might be a cost effective way of reducing the amount of the climate warming gas CO2 in the atmosphere.
SeaCURE processes the seawater to remove the carbon before pumping it back out to sea where it absorbs more CO2.
Read the full story here.
The report says the project will cost £3 million and will capture a miniscule 100 tonnes of CO2 a year. It also needs a lot of energy to pump the water and gases around. The process also involves adding first acids to help release the CO2, and then alkali to counteract the acid!
The £3 million is of course just to prove whether the process works or not- an ongoing annual operation would cost many times more.
As the UK emits about 800 million tonnes of CO2, including imported ones, 100 tonnes is neither here or there. Nor is there any prospect that such a project could be scaled up to cope with the billions of tonnes emitted worldwide.
This is one of fifteen similar projects, all of which will be paid for out of our taxes.
No doubt the scientists playing around with our taxes will enjoy themselves immensely, but surely there is a better use of this money?
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I’ve always found it best to look for a solution after I’ve found a problem, not the other way round. As yet there is no problem with the climate. I would like it a bit warmer in winter but otherwise it’s fine.
It looks as if there is a market for any lunatic scheme to suck carbon dioxide out of the environment, regardless of the cost or effectiveness. With a bit of thought, I might be able to get into this scam too. All I need for my proposal is a lot of scientific terms which the politicians can’t understand and I’m off running. My Swiss bank account is currently empty but I’m sure that I can fill it nicely.
Yes, and funded by the ‘government’ who don’t have any money of their own, it’s tax payers money. Do we get a choice?
Lighten up, Francis, and get that sarcasm meter repaired.
I am afraid that you are labouring under a misapprehension, my dear Mr. Tolland. These schemes exist to enrich politically-correct cronies and in a broader sense to advance the cause of collapsing Western civilisation.
You have a regrettable history of wrongthink and under no circumstances could you be considered for any such globalist grant.
When we say ‘Diversity is our Strength’, again, lest you be confused, this does not include you. There are already far too many white males. You may, however, have recourse, if you are attracted to young boys, or practise the religion of Peace.
The earth is already operating a natural process for sequestrating CO2 from air or water. It’s called “limestone formation”. It’s operating worldwide, and it’s free. No public money is used at all. I suspect that whatever schemes can be dreamed up by climate zealots, they would all be miniscule relative to what’s already happening at no cost at all.
Swiss bank accounts are soooooo yesterdays. You need some NGOs slowpoke.
Failure is the hallmark of these loony schemes…
Hydrogen buses forced off roads for 9 monthsAberdeen’s world-first hydrogen double-decker buses have been out of service since July 2024 due to a lack of fuel.
…
Both of the city’s hydrogen stations are currently offline, leaving the multi-million pound investment unable to operate.
…
Each double-decker is worth approximately £500,000, representing a significant public investment.
https://www.gbnews.com/lifestyle/cars/hydrogen-buses-off-road-fuel-aberdeen
25 useless buses.
Plus 45 useless councilors.
Cost not worth!
A quick search by the Ducks shows the highest cost for a normal bus in the UK is about £40,000 with many other models quite a bit cheaper.
At that top rate you could buy 12.5 buses for the price of 1 hydrogen bus.
Somebody in Aberdeen Council has a lot of questions to answer.
I think that’s wrong, David. A new diesel, double-decker UK bus costs around £400K, still 20% cheaper than the Aberdeen paid for there fleet.
When I saw this on the Beeb yesterday I really thought I had mistaken the date and it was still 1st. April.
No doubt though that there is a chemical supplier somewhere who will make some money by providing both acid and alkali.
Aren’t you forgetting net zero?
UK chemicals industry ‘heading for extinction’ warns Jim Ratcliffehttps://bmmagazine.co.uk/news/uk-chemicals-industry-heading-for-extinction-warns-jim-ratcliffe/
Correct. Chinese companies will profit as is the rule. They will use coal, oil, and gas to produce the necessary
pollutantsreagents. They will then be transported to Anglostan by ships burning heavy oil. (Then offloaded and transported to thefutiliyfacility by electric vehicles). For every tonne of CO2 thus extracted, two or three tonnes of CO2 will be produced.Remind anyone of Gulliver’s Travels? At the Grand Academy of Balnibarbi, Gulliver witnesses various absurd experiments underway, the defining factors of all being their constant need for funding while achieving nothing useful:- He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor’s gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me “to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers.” I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.
An excellent observation!
I suppose that it must be encouraging that a practice lampooned already nearly 300 years ago (1726), has not yet destroyed the UK.
Alas, absurd wasteful spending is but a minor weapon in the globalist arsenal.
SBS a government funded Australian TV station just aired this as part of the ‘news’.
Its consistent with their narrative of fear with the climate, suggesting that such useless things may be of use later when we approach the final cliff, although this is a subtext.
If they really want to increase the amount of CO2 absorbed by phytoplankton, all they need do is fertilise some of the iron depleted Pacific and the algae will bloom causing more sequestration of carbon and boom in sea life.
Please stop suggesting ways for the climate mob to solve their imaginary problems.
I flagged this up yesterday, good to see it here today. As the planet is mostly sea water, I look forward to the projected date of the complete removal of carbon from the sea.
Yeah, I also flagged this up a couple of days ago
Good to see the story being highlighted
It seems that the project was one outcome of a workshop reported here. Nothing in a properly reviewed journal. Yes, I don’t think it should have been funded.
The killer is the cost of acid and alkali. If just alkali was available on the required scale, it could have been used to absorb the CO2 directly, not even requiring gas storage.
The killer is net zero.
Good point, Nick. In fact, if you just leave the alkali exposed to the atmosphere, it will absorb the CO2 without all the other hardware. And putting the solution in a shallow container with a large surface area would enhance the uptake per unit volume of alkali.
To the five individuals (So Far) who clicked (+) for Nick’s post: For the love of God please read all the way to the end of his post, he thinks that except for cost, removing CO2 from sea water is OK! In other words, please stop buying into his bullshit.
If this thing is successful and done on a large scale, how long before we are warned about “Ocean Caustification”?
A relative of mine asked Grok:
In minimum number of words, describe SeaCure, current CO2 removal per year, maximum reasonable CO2 removal per year, energy required to remove that amount, also required number of nuclear power stations, and global temperature reduction.
Grok:
SeaCURE: Elelectrochemical seawater CO2 extraction, stores carbon.
Current CO2 removal: 100 tonnes/year (pilot).
Max reasonable CO2 removal: 14 billion tonnes/year (2 deg C target, 1% ocean processed).
Energy required: ~1.5 kWH/kg CO2, 21,000 TWh/year for max.
Nuclear power stations: ~2,100 (1GW each, max removal).
Temperature reduction: ~0.5-1 deg C by 2100 (if scaled).
—–
2,100 1GW nuclear power stations??? Britain’s 3.2GW Hinkley Point C, currently under construction, is the world’s most expensive power station, and they want the equivalent of 700 of them to do nothing except capture and store carbon?????
This insanity simply has to end.
Of course it will end, once the objective is fully met. Just a few more years of importing third world barbarians should finish the job.
What’s a few trillion-Watt hours between friends?
The tricky part sic, will be capturing the co2 gases that have already been released by petrol cars etc and leaving the co2 gases nature put there for fish to breathe.
A job For Greta! If she can SEE co2, then she must be able to tell the difference.
Just look at all the projects British taxpayers are funding!!!
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/direct-air-capture-and-greenhouse-gas-removal-innovation-programme-selected-projects/direct-air-capture-and-greenhouse-gas-removal-innovation-programme-phase-1-projects
And next year someone will suggest that we build giant condensers to remove water (moisture) from the air to prevent floods and snowstorms.
By the way, isn’t that underwater carbon (CO2) the first step in creating all the under-sea plants that become the basis for all under-sea life?
The Fish. The Fish.
Wouldn’t it be funny in a not so far distant future that climate, which humans can’t control, is cooling down and we need more CO2?
Except that the effect of CO2 is at most minor. Adding CO2 won’t forestall the next glaciation.
We constantly hope sense will return to government projects but the state funded pointless programs, just keep coming and getting ever more bizarre.
£3million to suck out 100 tonnes of CO2?
it does not get much more ridiculous than that.
Putting this into human perspective. Each active adult emits about 1Kg of CO2/day just from breathing.
This project, will draw out the equivalent of about what 300 people breathing produce/year.
The current increase in people coming to live in the U.K. is around 1million/year.
If we reduced that 1million by just 300 we would achieve the same CO2 reduction without spending £3million.
Madness utter madness.
Eliminating the migration and deporting the illegal migrants would save billions. But saving money is not the objective of course.
Some might just say: Where is the Royal Navy?
I suppose they discourage the rum and forego the lash, leaving more time for the second tradition.
Over 19,000 new underwater volcanoes have been discovered across the ocean floor by scientists.
According to the study, only 20 percent of the seafloor has been mapped by ships.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, three-quarters of all of Earth’s volcanic activity happens in deep water.
https://www.newsweek.com/thousands-underwater-volcanoes-scientists-1796761
The carbon sequestrational equivalent of painting the Forth bridge.
The Forth bridge ought to be dismantled. It merely encourages people to exit their 15-minute cities.
Hadrian’s wall should be rebuilt and Scottish independence granted. Jobs for the English and freedom for the Scots, Picts etc, all in one go
No freedom for the Scots as long as the SNP runs that tragic country.
The Scots keep voting them in
Wow, an extremely crazy idea. Looks like you can come up with any crazy idea “to save the planet” and you’ll get funded.
What is even worse is that at the next general election both opposition parties will offer manifestos that either drastically curtail such projects or dispose of them entirely. So that’s pay now and pay later. The ridiculousness is not not only in the instigation but also the certainty of abandonment.
pay now and pay later.
PFI or PPP – same thing
From the article: “There’s broad consensus amongst climate scientists that the overwhelming priority is to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the chief cause of global warming.”
Not one scientist among that “broad consensus” can prove that CO2 is having any effect on the Earth’s weather or climate, and they certainly can’t prove that CO2 is the chief cause of global warming.
This “scientific consensus” is worthless. Meaningless. An unsubstantiated assertion is all it is.
Taxpayer money should not be spent on unsubstantiated assertions.
There is no evidence CO2 is anything other than a benign, gas, essential for life on Earth. There is no evidence showing that CO2 needs to be reduced or regulated.
It’s 3 million quid, who gives a damn when net-zero is costing us tens of billions already?
Imagine the eco-warrior’s worst nightmare. This project works, is scalable and affordable, and we can all carry on burning as much coal and oil as we like. No need for wind, solar or any of their other quasi-religious mumbo jumbo, just an extra penny on each KWh, and we can all carry on as normal.
Whatever your view on AGW, it’d be worth it, just to wind up the greens.
Silly Eric, it would never have been funded had there been any prospect of it being effective!
The learnings might be.
At first I thought you had written ‘lemmings’.
All of their ideas are plucked out of the wind (geddit!). This is the Church of the Poisoned Mind.
“Some of Ed Miliband’s green plans could heap costs by £35 billion, campaigners “warn.
But this is no rational argument…
“Trying to deliver carbon capture and storage (CCS) and new nuclear power plants would make decarbonising the UK’s energy supply slower and more expensive, climate charity Possible said.”
Unsurprisingly…
“Their report found that maximising more renewable energy sources, particularly onshore and offshore wind and solar power, would be the cheapest and lowest-carbon pathway to reaching net zero.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1999457/ed-milibands-green-plans-could
A modern day climate Martin Luther is required. Pin real science – uncertainties and all – on the doors of the climate church
Donald J. Trump
REnt-seekers, Richard Salsman calls them: https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/rent-selling-countries-are-more-corrupt-and-less-wealthy/.
Pity Australia didn’t get rated on these metrics.
There’s broad consensus amongst climate scientists that the overwhelming priority is to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the chief cause of global warming.
Either provide some evidence for that mindless mantra, or stop publishing it.
I’m pretty sure there’s a strong evidential basis for that statement, the real question should be whether the “broad consensus amongst climate scientists” is based on a strong evidential basis, or are they all just toeing the line to further their careers?
There’s broad consensus among climate FRAUDSTERS !
The purpose of government is to take money from those who work, and give it to those who vote for the party in power.
All else is window dressing and camouflage.
Plenty of scope for a UK DOGE to save £billions of wasted taxpayers cash and reduce out taxes.
Cult behavior.
O/T The way the political wind is blowing
Top Labour advisers are putting pressure on Sir Keir Starmer to ditch the party’s ban on new North Sea oil and gas drilling.
A handful of senior officials are understood to be quietly urging the PM to consider watering down or scrapping the manifesto pledge altogether to see off the growing threat from Reform UK.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14627023/Senior-Labour-advisers-urge-Keir-Starmer-ditch-partys-ban-North-Sea-oil-gas-drilling-light-growing-Reform-threat.html
How long has Miliband got?