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Carbon Sequestration
An Anonymous Coward writes "Yesterday the Boston Globe printed an article about 'carbon sequestration' techniques - an example of which involves injecting carbon dioxide into the ocean as an answer to greenhouse warming. The Bush administration is supporting this as the preferred alternative to emission controls."
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Bush wants to dump something that has been PROVEN to work in favor of a theory? Besides, industrial pollution is the SOURCE of the problem, so why not just fix that? Its like fixing a security hole by tking all valuable files off the server, instead of just patching the hole.
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... let's fuck with the oceans! Considering our already limited ability to modelize long term weather in the current know conditions, it's 20/20 clear that we also should mess with the main thermal and CO2 regulator of the planet. Great idea. Just great.
Exxon's profits are soooo important (for GWB, at least).
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Oil baro^H^H^H Democratically electe^H^H^H Dubya advocates dumping tons of toxins into the oceans over more responsible action (Kyoto protocol) to "reduce greenhouse gas emissions"? Isn't that like building a bigger toilet to cure an over-eating problem? Or declaring a war on drug...oh, never mind.
Carbon Dioxide dissolved in water makes Carbonic Acid
ACID!
Bush wants to turn our beautiful oceans into a sterile, corrosive acid bath.
Pure insanity!
I've been farting into the couch for years. I have yet to get caught.
On the other hand it will be good for that giant red wine spill in Antartica.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Now if only we can get the beer companies to dump thier excess hops in too... I can't believe it, my ultimate dream is so close to coming true!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
CO2 isn't a toxin but where are you going to get it? It's Carbon MONoxide that's the problem. That and Cow farts. What next? Fizzy lifting drinks ala Willy Wonka?
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
The Ultimate Watercooler?
\m/
And once again, Michael shows his biases by posting this (suprise!!!)
...a growing number of scientists, environmental organizations and energy officials fear that the Bush administration has become prematurely enamored of this geo-engineering...
Michael, do you even bother to read the article with any objectivity?
From the article:
The administration has not suggested pumping CO2 into the ocean.  Some people only fear that they will.  Big frickin' difference!
So for me, it still begs the question.  What global warming?
...didn't have the time to read the article but anyways....
Every greenhouse grower is aware of the fact that carbon dioxied can be used as fertilizer in some cases.
If carbon dioxide is solved in the sea this will probably act as fertilizer for carbon fixing algees (the ones that produce all the oxygen for us).
This will probably mean more algees in the oceans.
Problem is that if we get to much algees near the coastline (where all the emitted carbon dioxide is) we might get problems like anaerobic conditions on the sea ground (created by dead algee degrading on the the sea ground)
this will result in:
* dead fishes
* corals, bye bye.
* a lot of trouble
(same thing happends if we flush out to much phosphates and other nutrients from industries, agriculture and cities.)
I nice (bad) example of this is the baltic sea witch has low waterexchange to the rest of the world sea. Surrounded by Russia, the baltic countries, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden (YES! we went to the playoffs) and Finland.
Result:
Dead sea ground,
I don't know what to think....
.... and who is right?
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This is a good idea, but it needs more development -- studies need to be done on the possible side-effects of storing CO2 in water.
People are reacting prematurely paranoid about this. The best one in the article was a criticism of the plan to reforest with genetic modifications so trees can take up more CO2: "What if there's a fire in these reforested areas?" Gee, brilliant comment. Back in the Jurassic period, when more of the world was covered with forest than ever before, there didn't seem to be much of a problem from a few local forest areas burning.
Natural forest fires are often a good thing -- they often occur in regions with many old, dry, dead trees, which are blocking out light and preventing new trees from sprouting up.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Lets all just get along and start the biggest freakin ever pot greenhouse on the planet and load that place up with this stuff.
My last phyical science teacher(hes got a Dr in fromt of his name, I don't) mentioned that back in the good old days they said we'd raise the tempature by like 10 degrees by 2020 or something like that. the kicker is that there current estimate of tempature rise is something like one tenth what it was at first
And there are other scientests that think that the whole thing is one long cycle and we just haven't been watching long enough to see one complete period.
So until we know if Global Warming is happening I say we relax
In a speech last June, Bush said carbon sequestration ''offers great promise to significantly reduce'' carbon-dioxide emissions. And the US Department of Energy increased its sequestration-research budget by 80 percent last year to $32.1 million, with a request for $54 million in the next fiscal year.
That certainly looks like the Bush administration has suggesting pumping in CO2, neh? But then, I actually read the article...
Umm... This is how the earth cycles carbon around and regulates the level of carbon dioxide in the air.
oceans are enormous, % ionization of H2CO3 is very small (aka: weak acid), oceans are a big buffer solution... the effect would be negligible!
a little knowledge goes a long way...
--qk
"Carbon sequestration" does not only mean pumping CO2 into the ocean.  In general, it means taking the CO2 out of industrial exhaust and putting it somewhere before it goes into the atmosphere.  The fact that people are freaking out about it going into the ocean is because of a poorly written article that makes assumptions NOT because the Bush administration says they support it.  So, while you may have read the article, it may be questionable that you actually comprehended it.
So now when I'm out in the surf and I accidently breathe in some seawater, I won't just get all wheezy and hacking, I'll also feel like I just blew mountain dew out my nose? argh, that's going to suck.
"injecting carbon dioxide into the ocean as an answer to greenhouse warming"
I think it is a safe guess that this idea did not come from a fish.
One way to get elected is to go around to all the rich people and tell them that, if you are elected, you will do anything they want. Such a candidate will get a lot of money to run a campaign; if he can avoid showing the average person the truth, and if the other candidates aren't extremely attractive, it is possible that he will win.
This method works even for someone who doesn't have the mental capacity to understand the issues. Selling the government to the highest bidder only requires the intelligence necessary to know that one number is bigger than another.
New Projects to Explore "Breakthrough" Ideas for Capturing, Storing Carbon Gases: http://www.fe.doe.gov/techline/tl_sequestration_ba a2002.shtml
DOE Carbon Sequestration Reference Shelf: http://www.netl.doe.gov/coalpower/sequestration/re fshelf.html
Statement of Robert S. Kripowicz, Acting Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy, U.S. Department of Energy to the Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, and Climate Change, Committee on Environment and Public Works, U.S. Senate, January 29, 2002: http://www.fe.doe.gov/events/testimony/02_krip_sen environ.shtml
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY Office of Science Financial Assistance Program Notice 02-11: Ocean Carbon Sequestration Research Program: http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/other/20 01-4/122101b.pdf (page 2)
And yes, there's more. If the Bush Administration isn't supporting oceanic carbon sequestration, then there's a lot of money that the Bush Administration is wasting by studying how to do it.
A growing forest removes some CO2 from the atmosphere. A mature forest is carbon neutral (over human timescales, anyway). How long before we run out of room to plant new forests?
CO2 would kill fish. They need oxygen.
Just guess, what is carbonized water ;)
:)
Go learn some chemisrty
and biology...
The purpose of the Kyoto protocol, I believe, was to bring the U.S. economy down closer to the level of the European countries. They just might try anything to close the economic gap and Kyoto could have been one of those measures(how many signees have actually ratified the protocol....exactly!)
In the 1970's there was fear of global cooling which leads me to believe that this global warming phase is just a phase in a warming/cooling cycle. Yes, humans might contribute to the warming cycle we're in but not much.
duuuhhhhhh.... i am gunna put stuff into the ocean its fun. i like carbon dioxide... that means FISH LIKE IT!!!! here little fishies, here boy.
I'm going to leave my car running 24/7 just in case I need it. Thanks GW!!!
Sitting at the bottom of Lake Superior are 1000s of logs that sank while being shipped to market. They have almost no deterioration due to the cold and lack of O2 at the bottom of the lake. Because they are from original old growth forests, they have an incredibly fine grain that is quite valuable. There are companies hauling them up right now and selling them to musical instrument makers and folks like Bill Gates for office panneling.
So why not just grow forests? Chop them down every 100-200 years and dump the logs into the Arctic Ocean or the Black Sea: places that are way cold and have little O2. Instant carbon sequestration.
FreeSpeech.org
I may not know much about storing CO2, but I do think that messing with the ecosystem is a bad idea. Let's look at what pumping CO2 into the oceans will do:
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein
The Earth actually tends to do it with plankton, fish bones, and shells...creating calcium carbonate on ocean floors. Sometimes buried for a long time, such as the white cliffs of Dover were, elsewhere carried into the Earth for a while in tectonic action. If Gold is correct, a fair amount of it then trickles back up as oil.
A faster way to safely sequester carbon is, as someone else mentioned, to fertilize the ocean. Encourage plankton growth and they'll take huge amounts of carbon to the ocean floor. "Give me a ship full of iron and I'll give you an Ice Age".
You'll have to find an atmospheric science web page to get the numbers, as any mention of water vapor is quite hard to find on anti-technology web pages (that's an ironic use of technology).
Fifteen thousand years ago the Sahara was a lush forest. It's been bone-dry for most if not all of recorded history. The current droughts, whatever their cause, are just a wiggle on top of what's undeniably a mostly natural trend.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
This method works even for someone who doesn't have the mental capacity to understand the issues.
Judging by the outcome of the '92 and '96 elections, I'd say it's even more effective to assume that your voters don't have the mental capacity to understand the issues. Just tell them that the "opposing candidate" wants to kill old and poor people and chances are, the majority of people will believe you without even thinking about it.
And if that doesn't work (ala 2000), then obviously the system must be broken!
Growth of any living organism is ultimately limited by the growth requirement in shortest supply. Algal growth in the ocean is typically limited by the availability of soluble iron, nitrogen, phosphorus, or silicon, wheras carbon dioxide is readily available. Also, pumping up the CO2 level in seawater will a) increase the acidity of the water, b) decrease the partial pressure of oxygen. All of these factors can adversely affect the balance of the ecosystems in a variety of ways.
P.S. They've tried (expensive) fertilization of the ocean in the hopes that all that fixed carbon would end up in the sea floor eventually - but there was no evidence that it did end up there.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
"More responsible", in this case, is like limiting your speed to 90 MPH on icy streets in a school zone instead of 100 MPH. The hilarity of the Kyoto protocol is that it would only require (some) nations to cut back their greenhouse-gas emissions 10% from the levels of 1990. Never mind that stabilizing the atmospheric levels of CO2 needs something close to a 70-80% reduction. The Kyoto accords are thus exposed as a political mountain superimposed over an ecological molehill.
Ironically, the USA could probably get that 10% in short order and without a lot of hassle. Simply replacing the SUV as a commuter vehicle with something similar to this Volkswagen supercar would cut total vehicular emissions by roughly half, or total emissions by about a quarter. Another large chunk could be slashed off consumption by over-riding state laws on overall truck length and allowing truckers to put aero gear (boat tails and such) on their rigs and trailers; streamlining can cut drag (and power requirements) by more than 75% over what it takes to drag a square-cornered box through the air.
We could take other large pieces out of fuel consumption (and emissions) using technology such as co-generation; wherever heat is required, burn fuel in an engine instead of a furnace and use the engine's heat emissions for the original purpose, while diverting the engine's power output to some other purpose and replacing the fuel that would have gone to that. As an example, if you need 100 KWH of heat (I'm using KWH throughout here; if you want to convert to BTU, consult an engineering book) you could burn 103 KWH worth of gas in a 97% efficient furnace. Or you could burn gas in a co-generator; if it yielded 30% out the crankshaft and 3% heat losses, you'd burn 149.3 KWH of gas to get your 100 KWH of heat, and also yield 44.8 KWH of work out the crankshaft. If you turned a generator, your 44.8 KWH output for the extra 46.3 KWH of input is 97% efficiency compared to a typical 30% at the average steam-cycle powerplant or 60% at the best combined-cycle gas turbine powerplants. The electric load could be supplied with between 1/3 and 2/3 the fuel, at least while heat was required.
To the dyed-in-the-wool cynics and curmudgeons, the insistence of our "America First" regime that more oil is still The Way To Go, and the technophobia of the opposition, are screamingly funny. Neither one of them has even half a clue, and neither one is ever going to get where they claim to want to go unless they're dragged, kicking and screaming, against the special interests who keep them in office.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I read a neat little paper on the idea of dropping huge slugs of dry ice into the ocean, where they'd sink like torpedoes and embed themselves deep into ocean-floor sediments. Supposedly they'd eventually turn into clathrates and then chemically combine with the silt to form a stable mineral... but that's not something I'd want to bet on without 20 years of experimental data.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
If I had an industrial plant on Mars, I'd gear it up to make and dump SF6 and CF4 with any capacity I wasn't otherwise using. That's one way to melt and unlock all that ice!
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I suppose it's naive of me to think that the left hand and the right hand ought to communicate once in a while...
Why don't any of these articles mention the black water problem in Florida? Current explanation seems to be a "plant plankton bloom" or "algae bloom", and it has resulted in the death of many bottom-dwellers, including sponges, corals, and starfish. It also resulted in an almost complete lack of fish in the area, which is bad economically as well as ecologically.
So far, we don't know what caused this bloom - suggestions range from industrial waste to disturbances of the sea floor.
<rant>
How can anyone seriously propose tampering with the balance of the ocean without even mentioning the possible dangers? Until we have a good idea what causes blooms like this, and whether introduction of huge amounts of CO2 into the ocean would increase the risk, we have no business considering it as an option.
Oh, that's right, I forgot. As long as the short-term savings favor corporations, we must *never* think about long-term external costs!
</rant>
DOE has had this linked for more than a year. http://enews.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/sea- carb-bish.html
Off of this site: http://www.fe.doe.gov/coal_power/sequestration/seq uestration_ocean.shtml
Producing and piping liquid CO2 seems like it might have some third law problems, and while
fish can swim in liquid CO2, they can't breath.
Solid CO2 at the South Pole might work if the needed extra cooling could be powered by wind
or nukes (allowed by the Antartic Treaty). One
could practice for the martian poles there. I wonder what kind of klister is best for skiing on dry ice.
Since I'm a geek and not a c\o\n\f\i\d\e\n\c\e\ m\a\n\ politician, do you have any suggestions for getting the facts out there in a form that is easily digestible by the public and tends to make them discount the wackos (preferably the ones on both sides)?
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
>Growth of any living organism is ultimately limited by the growth requirement in shortest supply.
in most cases this is true.
but:
By increasing the partial pressure of co2, the photorespiration can be lowered and thereby increasing the photosynthesis efficiency.
This will produce more biomass -> more algee.
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