Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

DOE Pumps $126.6 Million Into Carbon Sequestration

Posted by samzenpus on from the out-of-sight-out-of-mind dept.

RickRussellTX writes "The DOE awarded $126.6 million in grants today to projects that will pump 1 million tons of CO2 into underground caverns at sites in California and Ohio. Environmental groups call carbon sequestration "a scam", claiming that it is too expensive and uncertain to be competitive with non-coal alternatives like wind and solar. I just hope nobody drops a Mentos down the wrong pipe."

43 of 489 comments (clear)

  1. So... by stubear · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ..."claiming that it is too expensive and uncertain to be competitive with non-coal alternatives like wind and solar."

    Why can't we do both? Damn environmentalists meddling again. Never wanting to compromise or find some benefits in alternatives.

    1. Re:So... by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why can't we do both?
      The point is, how much more carbon could they have kept in the ground by using the same money to subsidize a carbon-neutral energy source.
    2. Re:So... by kaos07 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Why can't we do both?

      Why should we? Sequestration has only been proven effect in labs, and the coal industry accepts that it won't be completely up and running by 2030. Wind and solar have been proven to work now. Entire cities and even states in some countries are being run on renewable technologies. It's proven, it works, it's emission free. Carbon sequestration doesn't get rid of the fact that we're un-sustainably mining the earth, creating vast amounts of CO2 and then *hoping* that when we bury it underground there won't be any negative consequences.

      "Never wanting to compromise or find some benefits in alternatives."

      This is less a compromise and more the coal and mining industry refusing to accept their imminent demise, and instead of looking to the REAL future like some companies (BP?) they'd rather try and flog of unproven and, even in theory, ridiculous ideas to the public.

    3. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Greenpeace wants alternatives, not technology that might arrive in 10+ years, only to prolong the existing energy production system. Huh? They've been kicking and screaming for decades to shut down our current power generation systems to replace them with unworkable, economically infeasible systems, when France has been using a safe, zero-carbon power generation system for decades as well. They're the ones living the pipe dream, not the rest of us.

    4. Re:So... by Wrath0fb0b · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wind and solar have been proven to work now. Sorry, it's not that I don't wish that were true but it's just not. Look up the annual energy consumption of the US (105 exajoules (29000 TWh) -- according to Wikipedia) and try to come up with any reasonable scenario in which that much energy can be produced by wind and solar. I've tried to run the numbers even in the most favorable cases and they just aren't there without a huge boost in the efficiency and economy of those alternative methods.

      Don't get me wrong, I think we are on the same team here but I refuse to believe, in the face of hard evidence, that wind + solar + geothermal + hydrodynamic + tidal energy will be sufficient to meet domestic US demand for the foreseeable future. Even the most aggressive energy efficiency plans won't kick in in earnest for a decade (cars turn over roughly 10 years, home appliances every 25, homes every 50 and the more you impose, the more costs go up and the slower the turnover happens).

      This is less a compromise and more the coal and mining industry refusing to accept their imminent demise News of their impending demise is highly overrated. The US has enough coal to last us 50 years at current growth rates and China likely does too. With oil capacity down and natural gas reserves dwindling, Americans will either have to consume much less energy (not likely) or tap into coal.
    5. Re:So... by kaos07 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There's an inconsistency in your post. You're basing your figures for renewables on current energy usage rates and current technologies, but you're saying that if we use coal we have to reduce energy consumption. We have to reduce consumption regardless. Sooner or later we're going to be on all renewables. Why not invest in it, cut consumption so we can do it sooner, rather then completely mining everything out of the ground and destroying a fair chunk of the environment?

    6. Re:So... by rkcallaghan · · Score: 5, Insightful
      R2.0 wrote:

      Where on earth are you getting this data? Please provide at least some reference to any accumulation of people that is self sufficient on solar and wind. How about from Slashdot, still on the main page as of my writing this post?

      ~Rebecca
    7. Re:So... by DrEldarion · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's safe because modern nuclear reactors are basically idiotproof. Even the worst nuclear accident in US history on an old design reactor had no real environmental consequences. (Chernobyl was a different story, but it wasn't a good design to begin with and the operators handled the situation just about as poorly as they could.) Read up on current reactors before you call nuclear power unsafe.

      As far as the carbon angle, no power is completely carbon-free, but nuclear does quite a good job (the carbon emissions are from the uranium mining). Keep in mind that those same up-front energy costs also go into producing solar panels and wind turbines.

    8. Re:So... by falconwolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Coal + sequestration is still *significantly* cheaper than solar and will be for the next 20 years at least.

      That's because coal is subsidized and external costs are passed on the everyone, whether they use coal or not. If coal plants had to make it on their own and pay for their Externalities electricity costs would be a lot higher. Heck, even the Nuclear Power Industry uses coal's external costs as a selling point.

      And dont mention Hydro.
      The greenies hate that because it destroys habitats. :)

      Some don't like hydro because frequently dams do not live up to their promise or the costs out weight the benefits [pdf]. "World Commission on Dams Report vindicates unjustifiability of large dams".

      Falcon
      --
      Should there be a Law?
    9. Re:So... by evanbd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So, have you looked at how much radioactive waste comes from burning coal? Hint: it's not zero.

    10. Re:So... by rs79 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      " If the alternatives were cheap, they would be in place now."

      (looks aruond the house) Um, they are.

      It used to cost me $11,000/yr to run this place. I spent $5K on stuff and now my operaqting cost is zero.

      No, you don't get to keep your electric dryer. Changes must be made. You will make them sooner or later, I just happen to be done now.

      Pumping co2 into the ground is the dumbest idea since Bush entering politics.

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
    11. Re:So... by dangitman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Damn environmentalists?

      Sounds more like you're describing industry and government. They are only interested in milking fossil fuels for all their worth - and then getting government contracts to "clean up" their output. If they listened to environmentalists, emissions could be cut for a fraction of the cost (or for a profit) - but that's not what the men who run powerful industries care about. It's all about the gravy train of massive infrastructure projects (which often cause more problems than they solve).
      --
      ... and then they built the supercollider.
    12. Re:So... by Raptoer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      *sigh* I'm tired of people not being informed... but such is life. Nuclear waste should not last a million years. It can be reused, again and again and again, until it's half life comes down to be about 10 years. The problem? doing that produces plutonium, which is bad because of "terrorism!!!". Nuclear power is not an engineering problem anymore, nor is it an environmental problem, nor a storage problem, it all comes down to politics, and "Not in My Back Yard" policies.

    13. Re:So... by Gibbs-Duhem · · Score: 5, Informative

      If we run off of U235 plants, we'll run out of cheap uranium poste haste. The only way we know of to extend our nuclear fuel supply is to reprocess the U238 transmuted to plutonium (or thorium to U233) into additional fuel. However, this is readily achievable.

      Conveniently, this sort of breeder reactor also has the ready potential to result in much more *complete* burning of nuclear fuel, resulting in much further reacted, and generally much shorter half-life products. The half life of breeder reactor waste can be as low as 100 years, and as the 95% of the enriched uranium that is U238 becomes viable fuel instead of being discarded as plutonium, the amount of waste per unit power drops by many orders of magnitude

      Right now, India is the only country I am aware of that does extensive breeding (they're not in the Non-proliferation treaty, and don't have natively mined uranium, so they transmute thorium into fissile material) although France does some as well. The US doesn't do it because of proliferation concerns (which makes no sense to me, but whatever). However, since switching to a full nuclear power system requires going to breeder reactors anyway, it will also result in massively less waste (probably way less than coal power, and better contained), and shorter-lived waste.

    14. Re:So... by cheater512 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People want to have their cake and eat it as well.

      They will do anything possible to be environmentally friendly as long as they dont have to change their habits, spend money or essentially do anything at all.

    15. Re:So... by evanbd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because, while I like a variety of forms of renewable energy and think they should be supported far more than they are, I realize that it will take a while before they can provide a substantial fraction of our energy needs. The same is not true of fossil fuels, and is true to a much lesser degree of nuclear plants. I didn't say to ignore alternative options; I was simply pointing out that coal is worse than nuclear in a wide variety of ways. The parent was comparing nuclear and coal, and I added a counterpoint to his argument. I did not feel a particular need write a treatise intricately comparing the pros and cons of all plausible energy sources.

      Not everyone who fails to trumpet the virtues of renewable sources in every post is a troll, or even dislikes renewables.

    16. Re:So... by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Building, transporting, and maintaining solar/wind/hydro/etc. isn't exactly carbon neutral either.

    17. Re:So... by Jesus_666 · · Score: 4, Informative

      You do know that plutonium can be used as a nuclear fuel? If it couldn't it would be useless for nuclear weapons.

      Breeder reactors, reprocessing facilities and smart management can be used to dramatically reduce the amount of nuclear waste you have to dispose of - the figures I usually hear are somewhere between 95 and 98%. Also, nuclear plants don't constantly release radioactive particles like coal plants do. And they generate a lot of power. And the more modern designs are very safe; even Chernobyl required a risky test in an old reactor design conducted by a night shift crew that was unsufficiently trained.

      Green power doesn't quite deliver as of yet. Photovoltaics still has a rather low efficiency and creates toxic waste during production of the panels. Hydro doesn't scale well, apart from dramatically changing the river you're working with. Geothermal only works in certain places. Wind also only works in certain places, doesn't generate that much power and is suspected to disturb bird populations and people living downwind.


      The big question is: What do we do now? We can't go nuclear because that would mean we generate a few tons of nuclear waste per year that we have to bury for a few decades, apart from theoretically enabling teh nukes. We can't go coal because apart from CO2 emissions coal generates some nuclear waste as well. We can't go solar because solar doesn't generate enough power for most places and is toxic. We can't go wind and water either because they can't keep up with demand. We can't scale back our energy consumption either because that would be just as unacceptable as nuclear waste to most people.

      At some point we do need to make an unpopular choice because there aren't any popular ones. I think that nuclear is one of the better choices we can make.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    18. Re:So... by Ex-MislTech · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The SEGs system is online now.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEGS

      In 2.5 square miles they produce 350 Mega-watts of power
      and do it with reflective troughs and heating high temperature
      oil to drive a steam turbine.

      They store hot oil and get some production even after sundown,
      and then switch to natural gas for a few hours til sunrise.

      If the uninhabited sections of the Mojave Desert
      were used for this system, it would power all of North America.

      The Mojave is over 22,000 sq. miles, if 10,000 of it was used
      for a SEGs type setup you would get 4,000 times the current
      power production ie. 1.41 Tera-Watts rough estimate.

      In 2004 it was estimated by scientists that total world
      energy usage was 15 Tera-Watts for all types of energy.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption

      The proposed SEGs expansion would produce almost 10% of that.

      We have our silver bullet, it will just be a monster to build.

      North Africa could use the Sahara and power all of Africa
      and Europe.

      The best photovoltaic cells are 20% effective, The best Thermals
      have hit 41% per wikipedia, and 60% being theoretically possible.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#High-temperature_collectors

      Here in the US we could also use a large part of the 120,000 sq. mi.
      Sonora Desert.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonora_desert

      Just my 2 cents...

      --
      google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
    19. Re:So... by Rei · · Score: 4, Interesting

      CO2 doesn't contaminate groundwater.
      Nuclear waste doesn't allow for huge amounts of enhanced oil recovery or coalbed methane recovery.

      The capital costs are very high, but if used for a purpose, CO2 injection can pay for itself. CO2 injection in the US alone has the potential to recover ~100-400B barrels (restoring old, "used up" fields like the East Texas Field, plus injection into all of the large fields we're currently tapping and the ones we haven't started tapping yet). That's 10-40 trillion dollars at $100/barrel -- a couple times the size of the US GDP. There's not as much money in coalbed methane recovery, but it's still substantial.

      --
      No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
    20. Re:So... by polar+red · · Score: 4, Insightful

      um... good insulation is 10 times as cheap than wasting energy trying to keep your house cool or warm.

      --
      Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
    21. Re:So... by DrEldarion · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The transmission of that power would be a huge, huge problem and immensely wasteful. You can't have a power system that's that centralized for such a huge land area.

    22. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      The half life of breeder reactor waste can be as low as 100 years

      Not quite, but you were on the right track. Basically in spent nuclear fuel you have three component groups. Leftover uranium, fission fragments and transuranics (heavy nuclei like plutonium formed when uranium absorbs neutrons ).

      In a breeder reactor you constantly recycle the uranium and the actinides, so that the only waste product is fission fragments and activated reactor components. It is a lucky coincidence that virtually all the fission fragments that cannot be easily destroyed through recycling have either very short halflives ( less than 30 years ) or VERY long ones ( hundreds and thousands of years ).

      The short lived ones decay to bellow uranium ore levels of radioactivity within about 300 years, while the long lived ones decay so slowly that they are less radioactive than the uranium from which they were made.

      In spent fuel from traditional reactors you also have to worry about the actinides, and these cause trouble because they have half lives that are somewhere in between. This makes them radioactive enough to be much more toxic than uranium ore, but still long lived enough that they would have to be stored for hundreds of thousands of years. Breeder reactors split these into fission fragments that have characteristics very similar to the ones mentioned above, and therefore the waste decays to uranium levels within a few hundred years.

      Also, in general it is worth noticing that if something has a halflife of X years then half of it will still be left after that time ( that is the definition of the radioactive halflife ). This is why it takes up to 300 years for the Cesium and Strontium components of fission fragments to decay bellow uranium radioactivity even tho their respective half lives are just a few decades.
    23. Re:So... by somersault · · Score: 3, Funny

      smart management Quit channeling false hope with your crazy lies and pipe dreams - you know as well as I that management are never going to be smart.
      --
      which is totally what she said
    24. Re:So... by goldspider · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sell me a "carbon-neutral" energy source, and I'll sell you some coastal property in Montana.

      --
      "Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
  2. Better solution exists by Raul654 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Carbon sequestration is like burying a ticking bomb in your backyard. A much better solution is carbon mineral sequestration - turning the carbon into rocks of some kind. That way, unlike underground sequestration (which has the potential to leak straight back into the atmosphere), the carbon stays where it is put.

    --


    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
    1. Re:Better solution exists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      If only we could engineer a self-replicating machine that uses carbon from the air and turns it into a pretty dense and perhaps even useful solid material.

      If I made such a machine I might call it 'The Real Easy Extraction' machine

    2. Re:Better solution exists by corsec67 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      One issue is that it is very easy to covert trees and other plants back into gasses.

      And then as you plant more of them, and get a forest that looks like a tree farm, fire becomes a larger risk.

      And then your carbon sequestration devices are threatening surrounding communities.

      A huge issue across the US is overpopulation of forests because we have been preventing forest fires for so long, so there is definitely no shortage of trees in many areas.

      Other than that small detail, yeah, plants are one way to easily store carbon.

      --
      If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
    3. Re:Better solution exists by kylehase · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Trees are great but I heard that a lot of the world's oxygen comes from aquatic plants so I did a quick fact check and found this:

      It is estimated that between 70% and 80% of the oxygen in the atmosphere is produced by marine plants. source

      Which means that a lot of CO2 is consumed by these plants right? I'm now wondering, if these marine plants only have access to dissolved CO2 in the water would it help to diffuse CO2 into the water? Wouldn't this be a good alternative being that there are so many "Easy Extraction" machines in the seas? These are also not susceptible to forest fires AFAIK.

      --
      You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
  3. Safety? by jmv · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually, my main concern is "what if it escapes?". Considering that CO2 is heavier than Oxygen, I wouldn't like to be anywhere near (i.e. within tens of km if not more) a site that stores thousands of tons of CO2.

    --
    Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
    1. Re:Safety? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      This brought up Lake Nyos in my mind... What if all that CO2 escapes, indeed.

    2. Re:Safety? by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ... my main concern is "what if it escapes?". Considering that CO2 is heavier than Oxygen, I wouldn't like to be anywhere near (i.e. within tens of km if not more) a site that stores thousands of tons of CO2.

      CO2 has sometimes been pumped down oil wells to provide pressure to lift out more oil after the hole goes "dry" due to loss of natural gas pressure while there's still oil available.

      On at least one occasion such a well has leaked, creating a large bubble of CO2 on the ground that displaced the air and caused human fatalities. (Not oil workers, either, but sleeping neighbors.)

      --
      Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  4. Bamboo by bigattichouse · · Score: 3, Insightful

    1. Grow Bamboo 2. Drop down old salt mine or other large hole. 3. ??? 4. Profit!

    --
    meh
    1. Re:Bamboo by techno-vampire · · Score: 3, Funny
      3.Wait until becomes Petroleum.


      I think you misspelled the word "Coal."

      --
      Good, inexpensive web hosting
  5. Greenpeace... *ahem* by Swift+Kick · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I like how 'environmental groups' is a link to a single source: Greenpeace.

    As we all know, they're the kind of people that we can have a good intelligent discussion with, right? Of course, anyone that doesn't fall in line with their philosophy is some sort of heretic, even if they happen to be one of their own founders that disagrees with a long-standing platform of the organization.

    I'd have a lot more respect for them if they also condemned Al Gore and his pimping of useless carbon credits that happen to fatten his own pockets...

    --
    "We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
  6. Re:That's the main problem with environmental grou by kaos07 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "many of them are just as immune to rational argument"

    Your statement hinges on the fact that coal industry has indeed given any rational arguments to support the burying of CO2 (A very literal way of 'burying your head in the sand', don't you think?). Let's step back and look at the problem. The main issue we have the moment is global warming being caused by an excess of greenhouses gases, predominantly CO2 in the atmosphere. We need solutions. Renewable energy is a solution. Cutting back on energy usage is a solution. And yes, even sequestration is a solution. However, what are the best and most effective solutions to take? Cutting back our usage can be done now and it can have significant effects in the area of reducing CO2 output. Renewables are already a proven technology and lack only significant funding to make them more common. That said, in many countries and states funding is significant and renewable energy targets are set to be met. Now let's look at sequestration. Is it proven? Only in laboratories. Which if you consider the scale and possible ramifications of the process is a fairly useless sticking point. Is it safe? Well you decide for yourself. Pumping millions of tonnes into underground caverns? Versus building windmills, hydro plants and solar farms. Does it solve our problems? In the short term it prevents CO2 from immediately going into the atmosphere but burying it can't continue indefinitely, and it does nothing to reduce our reliance on coal - a finite source.

    The idea virtually is a scam, it's the coal industry asking for grants and subsidies all across the world to support a dying business instead of looking the facts in the face and realising that renewables are the way of the future. No amount of exaggeration (Moonbeams?) on your part will change that.

  7. Re:What Could Possibly Go Wrong? by silvermorph · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hey neat, we're making our own Balrog.

  8. Stupid by tsotha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wonder if Greenpeace realizes the choice isn't between coal plants with sequestered carbon and windmills. In reality, barring some fortuitous breakthrough in solar power, as oil gets more expensive the choice will be between coal plants with this technology and coal plants without it. I believe Greenpeace has completely overestimated the average person's willingness to make lifestyle sacrifices for the sake of atmospheric carbon reductions.

    I wish organizations like this would try to be part of the solution instead of just trying to limit our options. You can't accuse the coal companies of proposing a technology that isn't economically feasible on the one hand and then propose wholesale conversion to technologies that are even less economically feasible.

    We wouldn't even have this problem if the very same people hadn't killed the nuclear industry through scaremongering and excessive litigation.

  9. Re:Why not worry about water shooting out of wells by jmv · · Score: 5, Informative

    that's why all the plans involve putting it down somewhere.

    If it was stored in gas form at atmospheric pressure, it wouldn't be a problem (it would just be silly). The problem is that if it's stored in highly compressed or solid form, then if something goes wrong and it goes back to gas, it *will* go up and escape, potentially killing anyone in the area.

    --
    Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
  10. Re:WTF? by Boycott+BMG · · Score: 5, Informative

    On a less sarcastic note if you have figured out that plants need CO2 to live, then there is probably hope that once you start looking at the so-called science of manmade global warming, you'll discover that it's not science at all.

    To put the project in perspective Kiluea pumps out around 700,000 tons a year, and Pinatubo put out more CO2 in '91 than the entire output of all mankinds exisistence. As it turns out nature responds by (suprise suprise) increasing plantlife. So we are going to offset Kiluea for 1.5 ( to be generous) years by pumping it underground.

    I'm no scientist, but I do know BS when I smell it. Concerning volcanoes in particular, http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html

    Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities.
    Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1991). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 27 billion tonnes per year (30 billion tons) [ ( Marland, et al., 2006) - The reference gives the amount of released carbon (C), rather than CO2, through 2003.]. Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)! (Gerlach et. al., 2002)
    also, concerning Mt. Pinatubo itself, http://pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/wolfe/

    Gerlach and others estimate that, in addition to the measured 17 Mt of SO2, the eruption of approximately 5 km3 of magma was accompanied by release of at least 491 to 921 Mt of H2O, 3 to 16 Mt of Cl, and 42 to 234 Mt of CO2.
    So Mt. Pinatubo let off 42 to 234 Mt of CO2, which is more than 100 times less than what man released in 2006.
  11. Wood by Toonol · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Doesn't nature provide carbon sequestration in the form of Wood? Wouldn't cutting down a forest and building stuff out of the wood, meanwhile letting the forest regrow, effectively remove carbon out of the system?

  12. Re:Once again some basic math. by lusiphur69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Chinese are exempt from Kyoto... So, too, is the US, as it refuses to sign. Meanwhile, free trade agreements with every tinpot dicator and banana republic are signed without a second thought - see: Colombia. Your argument comes down to my neighbour won't do anything about the growing pile of garbage on their lawn, hence it's ok if I continue to pile garbage on my lawn. Plus, moving the garbage off my lawn will cost me money and let's face it, that's the real reason nothing is being done. There's no math here - only a refusal to deal with the real issue while shuffling blame on someone else. Other people doing nothing does not make an excuse for us to do nothing. Kyoto is obviously imperfect, but a refusal to do anything is not a plan - unless you call a suicide pact a plan.

    Please see above, and while you are at it, also add carbon emissions for the developing third world ... what happens when Africa decides to get air conditioning? This is precisely why renewable energy needs to be heavily subsidized and deployed, combined with reducing consumption. We need to improve and cheapen the technologies we can use to make 'green' power. What happens when you bury CO2 in the ground? Do you think it magically disappears from the equation? No, it simply becomes someone else's problem - likely someone who wakes up dead when a seal fails and CO2 displaces all the air near the leak site. Of course demand is going to go up, as I pointed out. I notice you abandoned your earlier argument of the 'biosphere' generating most atmospheric CO2 - that's progress, at least.

    We have to be able to take CO2 out of the air, and put it somewhere We're not taking it out of the air, we're taking it out of coal plants, plants will will increasingly use because of the sequestration. It would go into the air, because we keep burning coal - however, we could just reduce our dependency on coal, through reduced consumption, energy-efficient technologies and renewable power sources, and end up with a net plus that does not burden future generations with nightmare 'CO2 escape' scenarios. Yes, these things cost money, which is why storing gas in a hole sounds like a good idea to suits at the DoE - it's not cheap, but it's cheaper.

    Sequestration is no panecea, no cure-all - it is at best an impefect solution to an intractable problem - there are no magic bullets. Using it to justify increasingly relying on coal is idiocy at it's finest.
  13. This was a plot form the Beverly Hillbillies!!! by jzarling · · Score: 3, Funny

    I knew this sounded familiar - its the plot of a Beverly Hillbillies episode from September 1970.

    http://www.tv.com/the-beverly-hillbillies/the-pollution-solution/episode/72982/summary.html
    Jed: This fellow's gonna drill a tunnel through the San Bernardino Mountains, put in a great big fan, and draw all the smog out of Los Angeles.
    Drysdale: Why, that's a preposterous idea.
    Jed: Yeah. We like it too. (edit)

    Good episode

    --
    It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.