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Storing Liquid CO2 in the Oceans?
Roland Piquepaille writes "One of the ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to capture carbon dioxide at its source, when it is emitted from power plants for example, and to store it in other places, such as depleted oil and gas reservoirs or even the ocean after liquefaction. But, according to Youxue Zhang, a professor at the University of Michigan, there are pitfalls in this last plan. If the carbon dioxide is not injected deep enough, it can come back to the surface and return to the atmosphere, which is obviously not the desired goal. But, even worse, the liquid-to-gas conversion could happen too suddenly, which could cause a potentially dangerous eruption. So Zhang has developed a model which shows that liquid CO2 would have to be injected to a depth of between 800 and 3,000 meters to keep it from escaping from the ocean."
Perhaps not an issue for geeks, but it is for RealPeople(tm).
Poison the ocean...
Good plan guys. Keep up the good work!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Coral is extremely sensitive to heat. Global warming can cause Coral dieback which could make it harder to encourage further coral growth.
But certainly, converting CO2 to solid carbon is the only future proof way of dealing with the problem.
Of course, to do this you need to put the energy back in...
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Oh, and while we're at it: Please vote a president that will submit the Kyoto Protocol for ratification. Ferkrissakes even China signed it!
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
Because having a (relatively) small amount of C02 venting into the atmosphere over time is much worse than having a huge gas bubble erupt and kill a thousand people and then go into the atmosphere anyway.
Plant life makes a great carbon sink. That's how all that carbon ended up in fossil fuels in the first place.
Anyone know how much energy it would require to collect the CO2 and pump it a mile underwater?
I'm not exactly sure, but this is what I think:
When you breathe in air (O2 with some other minute elements), you exhale CO2, right? You took a certain amount of air and turned it into energy, which then gave off CO2 (or something like that). That CO2 is then recycled by plants back into O2.
Now what if we took that CO2 and launched it into space? The plants have nothing to recycle. That CO2 that would be turned back into air has now left the planet for good, and isn't coming back. By doing this, you turn O2 into a limited resource, since it can't be recycled since it is just launched off into space. Eventually you'll just run out of O2 and all HELL will break loose.
-Eric Smith
Since when did we ever stop to consider the long-term effects of our actions? It appears like the human motto has always been, "Out of sight, out of mind" when it comes to waste that needs to be disposed. For example, each week, I put all my trash in a bag and place it on the curb. Then, there's no more trash. Who's to tell me that trash I just disposed of will take thousands or tens of thousands of years to decompose? What trash? I don't see any trash.
...
We pay people to distance us from the filth we generate. It gives us peace of mind to be rid of our rubbish. And so we continue to find ways of not eliminating pollution, but rather just finding methods of distancing ourselves from it. The garbage man takes my trash. The nuclear power plant stores its waste in a concrete bunker. While we're at it, let's just suck all the CO2 we pumped into the air we breathe and pump it down 3000 feet into the ocean. Or, if that's too expensive, let's just package it and release it in Mongolia. I mean, I don't live there, so as far as I can tell, I won't have to worry about it anymore.
Ever stop to wonder for a second how our world might change if EVERYBODY was required to have their own landfill in their own backyard?
Ah, yes. The earth heats up, we all die out, and then it cools down again.
With great power comes great fan noise.