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."

Comments

Lemme get this straight

[littlerubberfeet]

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.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Midnight Thunder]

Unfortunately dealing with the results of the problem, rather than the cause, tends to be the American political way these days. A couple of examples: spending more money on jailing its citizens, than on the education system, which would help reduce crime. And imposing price increases on Canadian wood, simply because the US wood industry has problems - I thought NAFTA was abou free-trade?

This isn't meant to be a troll, but a description of the current situation. Until a change of approach is taken, the US is going to be taking short term decsions and letting future generations to clean-up the resulting mess.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[dolphin558]

NAFTA is about free trade but not at the expense of our domestic companies. The point of NAFTA is to improve our well-being. NAFTA or no NAFTA our industries should not suffer and measures should be taken to combat sluggish performances.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[Ian-K]

Errrm,

If your industries *are* sluggish performers, they *should* suffer the consequences. But nooooo, *American* companies should no-matter-what end up above the rest of the world.

US moderators: Feel free to mod me down as troll :-) I know it hurts to hear such things.

Re:Lemme get this straight

[dolphin558]

But nooooo, *American* companies should no-matter-what end up above the rest of the world It is rational to assume that America wants its companies to suceed. America is a nation-state folks, we have a right to want the best for our people. Would those interests sometimes contradict another nations interest? Yea.

Good idea, needs more development

[dh003i]

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.

You missed the real joke in there

[Spamalamadingdong]

(Damn web browser's crashed twice, and the computer once, while trying to write this. Something doesn't want the facts to get out... or maybe it's just Billy boy's crappy excuse for an operating system.)

"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.