Slashdot Mirror
Fracked Shale Could Sequester Carbon Dioxide
MTorrice writes "The same wells that energy companies drill to extract natural gas from shale formations could become repositories to store large quantities of carbon dioxide. A new computer model suggests that wells in the Marcellus shale, a 600-sq-mile formation in the northeastern U.S. that is a hotbed for gas extraction, could store half the CO2 emitted by the country's power plants from now until 2030."
Will it help slow down our oil consumption? and deforestation? and air/water pollution? No? There is your answer.
There's something ironic about extracting oil, burning it, and then putting the resultant CO2 back in it's place. Unfortunately, if this is only in the computer model stage it will probably be 2030 before it even has a chance of getting implemented.
That is, unless we come up with some catchy slogans to rally behind, I suggest: "Make the world a soda, carbonate our shale!"
If history is any indication they'll go bananas:
(B)uild
(a)bsoletely
(n)othing
(a)nywhere
(n)ear
(a)anything
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"Hey, if we screw the environment, we can store a little of the pollution we cause for a while!"
Yup, real dilemma there...
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
Let's store the next 30 years worth of excess carbon dioxide in huge underground chambers
so that instead of gradual climate change that the environment can adjust to and compensate
for we instead have a massive catastrophic climate change when one of those chambers
springs a leak.
What could possibly go wrong?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
plus how much energy (that comes mostly from fossil fuels?) will it take to pump the carbon dioxide back into the shale? and how much energy did it take to get the natural gas out in the first place? and how much carbon dioxide did that produce?
I remember reading that a majority of the energy used in the USA is for concrete production. Switching to locally sourced geopolymers will reduce the amount of power we need and drop us from the top per-capita energy consumer to one of the most "green" nations in the world.
It is definitely better than messing around with mercury-filled bulbs and pumping CO2 into the ground.
So the way environmentalists will go with this is to say no.
Sure, all you have to do is collect it, transport it and store it. And I'm SURE companies will be *lining up* to take on the extra expense. Easy peasy.
What is with all this fracking schist?
Hire me...
any scheme oil companies come up with to try this is likely to pollute just as badly.
At least they'll be drinking Perrier.
(Perrier that tastes of brimstone...)
No sig today...
Yeah, do we transport the CO2 in Hefty trash bags that we put over the smoke stacks of the power plants, or do we run exhaust pipes from all of the coal plants to the fracking fields?
Heh, yeah. More like 95,000 sq miles.
I've wondered about the smaller nuclear reactors, i.e. the ones that can fit on a truck or train and can be assembled in an array to power a town or two. So far, various nations use them all the time, and issues are little to none.
Comparing the failing nuclear power plants to what we have today is like saying how a 51 Bel-Aire fails modern crash tests
According the the WIKIPEDIA LINK IN THE ARTICLE the shale covers approximately 104,000 square miles which seems much more realistic. Come on editors. If you are going to link the source, you know actually check the source!
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Except there is no proof that any of what you just said is true. sure there are youtube videos, but when i start trusting youtube videos instead of doing my own research based on the facts presented by unbiased scientists, well that makes me as dumb as most of my fellow americans
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The oil doesn't come out of chambers. It's a lo more like a sponge. Also this is a real old idea not sure why it's making /.
It all starts at 0
How so?
This plan will never happen. Carbon capture would require capture and transportation which would be expensive enough to seriously hinder the use of fossil fuel based power plants.
Because pollution is something that never ever existed anywhere and was entirely made up by Liberals, rather than being produced by corporations?
If you bother to read TFA you will see what a petrochemical industry researcher says about this computer model: "the model does not consider several important factors, including the buoyancy of the gases, the heterogeneity of these kinds of formations, and the presence of water and other fluids, all of which will affect how much CO2 will be absorbed by fractured shale".
But you are confident that one grossly simplified computer model, without any field data to test it, is the answer?
Tell me, AC. Are you similarly convinced of the accuracy of the very thoroughly researched and comprehensively supported global climate models? Do you denounce those who doubt these models with the same profanity?
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
This article is tagged fracking. I do not think it means what you think it means. You know, this being slashdot and all.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
As a few others already pointed out, there is to be no clamor. The problem of pump and dump does not change because of this, and the potential for more extreme problems grow.
Let me give an example to clarify. Landfills were seen as a great savior. Bury the trash, especially in colder climates and build ski resorts on top of the fills. Michigan did this. The first year was cool, a new village sprouted up around the fill and ski fans flocked in. Then the seepage contaminated the water supply of not just the small village, but water supplies for hundreds of thousands of suburbanites and it all closed down. Nobody wanted to ski in turd smelling snow, let alone live near it or drink the water from the areas around it.
The better solution would have been to extend and grow recycling operations, limit massive dumping by large companies to paid officials to look the other way, and help society be more aware of their impact. You know, kind of like we started to do in the early 70s and forgot about due to massive add campaigns and cheap toys.
What will pumping CO2 into the ground get us? Temporary reprieve from increasing CO2 levels (with thinning green areas to process that back in to Oxygen)? What happens if the well leaks? Massive deaths from O2 starvation?
Now if they could remove the O2 and put that back in the air and dump the remaining Carbon down the tubes, well in a few million years we'd have lots of diamonds. They won't or can't, so there is no use in investing lots of time and effort into this type of project.
Society needs to stop accepting bandaid fixes to problems that people are creating in order to make massive profits from society. The people making profits should be re-investing that into making society at least remain stable instead of constantly shitting in the wells.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Co2 in water forms a mild acid. It could be rather dramatic in its effects on water quality and also if limestone is present or several other kinds of rock the reaction might be rather violent over time. Try growing your house plants on carbonated water and you will rapidly see the problem. Maybe we could pump enough Coke syrup down with the CO2 so that the Earth could spew an interesting beverage. Let's rank the notion of down pumping CO2 as absurd.
Let's not bury our problems. Instead, let's bury some tree saplings and have them sort this carbon dioxide problem out.
Plant more trees!
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Any time I hear about underground CO2 sequestration, I think about the Lake Nyos Incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos Pumping mass amounts of CO2 underground would be a disaster waiting to happen.
The wiki article linked says "The Marcellus covers several times more area,[138] stretching 600 miles (970 km)", which is to say the linear measurement is 600 miles. The summary is wrong. I think it's the first incorrect summary I've seen here in at least a half hour.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Climate_Depot
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wattsupwiththat.com
both are highly known as clime change deniers they are not reputable as you claim.
most real research is paywalled and/or sells books to fund their research above whatever grants they get. it is how academia works these are feel good stories for republicans to seed disinformation, as it takes all blame away from them.
even if the global warming is a result of the sun fusing higher density particles and not burning of fuels while deforestation there is still merit in finding ways to slow global warming. it's not 'shit we better burn all the coal we can before it all ignights and screws humanity'
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
There are no cases to show that fracking has polluted ground water. Only flawed EPA testing that caused pollution. If the gas/oil and other petrochemicals (under thousands of pound of pressure) could not get up thru the MILE of rock above, how would the water used in fracking get up to pollute?
"Hey, if we screw the environment, we can store a little of the pollution we cause for a while!"
A while!?!? this is "from now until 2030"!!! (well, half of it).
Or we could store a percent of all CO2 emitted by the country's power plants until 2363!!!
I have no idea why they used those figures. How about, "it could store as much CO2 as the country's power plants produce in 3 years".
Sure, it's something, if it is even possible/feasible, but it's obviously not going to solve any issues, even in the near term.
The problem is we are un-sequestering it in the first place.
Get off your high horse man..... You're on the internet because of the electricity produced at a power plant. You're on electronics because of rare metal mining and ploycarbonate and silcon manufacturing
Now if they could remove the O2 and put that back in the air and dump the remaining Carbon down the tubes, well in a few million years we'd have lots of diamonds. They won't or can't, so there is no use in investing lots of time and effort into this type of project.
Won't or can't? Seriously? Get off my /.!!
There was a time when this was a community of nerds, geeks, and such, and I wouldn't need to point out that the reason we convert C (e.g. coal) into CO2 is because we want to use the energy released in the process. The idea of carbon sequestration is that we can have our cake and eat it too -- we burn the fuel, use most of the energy, and then use a fraction of the energy to stuff the CO2 someplace safe where it won't cause trouble.You have to put all that energy back into it to separate the C from the O2, so there's no cake left -- it's better to just not burn it in the first place.
It isn't enough to sequestrate the CO2. Part of the sequestration will include O2 needed for life. It would be much better to plant billions of trees which free up the O2 for humans and animals. Please, do it naturally, as man made attempts are often very short sighted.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"I remember reading that a majority of the energy used in the USA is for concrete production"
Respectfully, I think you are misremembering. There is no way more energy is spent making concrete than for running cars.
"could store half the CO2 emitted by the country's power plants from now until 2030." -- Yes, well, but that can't actually be done... Additionally, 2030 isn't very far away. If I'm going to sell my future humans down the river I would prefer them not to be alive right now -- Or more importantly: I would like to be dead long before they realize we rigged their short lot on the temporal lottery.
Here, let me demonstrate how bullshit the claim is:
Sunlight at Earth's surface could provide ALL of the energy needed by mankind for the foreseeable future.
See? It 'could'. However, CAN we overcome the greed barrier and actually do so? Not fucking likely. Could, Should and Would, CAN go fuck themselves. Let me know when these mother frackers commit a 'Will'......
Not at all. There are many other ways to sequester carbon so this particular method isn't very valuable. Next, what's the value of a place to store carbon if nobody's capturing it? Nobody's actually doing carbon sequestration anywhere in the world yet, as far as I'm aware.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Speaking purely out of ignorance, since plants consume CO2 and release O2 you'd think people would be researching ways to genetically engineer plants or algae or something that could live in an artificial environment and act as a filter through which CO2 could be continually pumped until it reaches a "safe" threshold and then released into the atmosphere. Think of an aquarium, where the water is continually cycled through a filter, except when the water gets clean it would automatically empty and be refilled with new dirty water. I think the idea of just "sticking the shit somewhere" is a bit beneath us, excuse the pun.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
A while!?!? this is "from now until 2030"
Keep in mind that this is essentially pumping a gas into undeground caverns and making an educated guess that it won't leak back out. Sweeping it under the rug, if you will. Note that the power plants that sequester in this way will have to be built where their emissions can be transported to such sites.
True the proposal expects the CO2 to adsorb to the rock, but how durable a bond that will be long-term, considering this shale has already been cracked to aid in the escape of gas, in that environment down there and in the face of any changes in the environment (like say a geologic event causes the temperature to increase) -- well that doesn't give me the warm fizzies. I'm a bit more enamoured of the sequestration strategies that actually involve bonding CO2 into a solid.through chemical reactions e.g. in concrete manufacture or bonding it to low-impact-cultivated biomass that can either be then buried or sunk to the ocean floor.
Someone had to do it.
And in other news..
"The same seas that we evaporate and drive boats across could become repositories to store large quantities of plutonium. A new computer model suggests that holes in the Atlantic Ocean, a 106400000 sq-kilometres formation right next to the U.S. that is a hotbed for water, could store all the radio active waste emitted by the country's power plants from now until 2080."
0_o
Hivemind harvest in progress..
To leave a few surprising presents for future generations
some with long term effect, the radiating thingies and the ones with immideate effect - odorless, colorless gas taking your breath away.
You don't get it:
You don't really need to slow down oil consumption, if the CO2 thus produced is buried instead of polluting the air.
Because environmentalists had no opinion one way or another about oil before climate change became an issue, right?
Dark Reflection
Were that true, they'd be perfectly happy to watch humanity kill itself, since they are so good at doing it in very inventive ways. The anti-population nutters can get a bit extreme, but run of the mill environmentalists are placing a lot of hope, not hate, towards their fellow man by trying to encourage them to help address the problem.
Someone had to do it.
NPR and ProPublica have done a few pieces regarding this topic that I think you should check out before writing off the phenomena completely.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
So far, there is no proof to demonstrates that CO2 has any negative effects on the atmosphere or the ecosystem.
Try this little experiment then: Seal yourself in an airtight room and breath. Record results.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Separating the O2 from the C is easy, but it takes energy -- that's why plants need sunlight to do it. If we had a source of clean energy with which to perform the separation, we'd be better off just using that source directly and never generating the CO2 in the first place.
It kind of puts the environmentalists in a bit of a clamor. They wont know which way to go with this
Not really. Sweeping environmental problems under the rug not only doesn't address the core issues but ignores that things have a way of slipping out from under the rug when no one's paying attention anymore.
Additionally, carbon sequestration is expensive and generates no sellable product. It's like dealing with mine tailings. As soon as a company no longer has to watch it to take care of accidental spills and leaks, they won't, leaving the government to pick up the bag.
Worse, one of the advantages of natural gas is that it's easy to transport and can be burned far from the source. How easy is it to capture carbon dioxide and then ship it all the way back to the fields to be sequestered? How much energy does that transportation take and how much does pumping it back into the ground take?
This is a loser of an idea. The only merit it has is as a fig leaf to justify more fracking, which only makes the problem worse.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Re: all the comments about infeasibility or time required to make this a reality... It's already being done. An exhausted oil bed in Weyburn Saskatchewan is being used to sequester CO2 from a power plant in the US - Montana I believe. The issue there now is that CO2 is heavier than air, so when it comes out of the fracked rock formation it tends to hug the ground in low-lying areas. A farmer local to the project has already claimed that the gas is leaking and killed several of his lifestock. Google around, I'm sure you'll find information on it. It's a project that's been on the go since around 2000.
planet texture maps and more
It's not easy, it's very expensive and time consuming. This is why I was rather generic in my response. It's kind of like the ole CO2 scrubbers. They made a mess, reduced efficiency, costs a whole lot of money, and required lots of maintenance.
In a technical sense you are correct that we "can" separate. In a business sense, you "can't".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Now if they could remove the O2 and put that back in the air and dump the remaining Carbon down the tubes, well in a few million years we'd have lots of diamonds.
And once you've finished burying the carbon we could immediately start mining it to burn (combine with oxygen to release energy) in existing coal (aka carbon) burning power plants!
They won't or can't, so there is no use in investing lots of time and effort into this type of project.
As long as we get energy by burning naturally sequestered carbon based fossil fuels in solid, liquid, and gaseous forms and producing gaseous CO2 we will be fighting an increasingly inefficient uphill battle.
Account -> Discussions -> Disable Sigs
Those buzz words trying to grab all the people's attention...
Mind if I bring some tanks of Algae and a sunlamp with me?
With out CO2, we would all be dead... starting with the plants.
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
Will anything else remotely practical do any of the above? No? There is your answer.
plus how much energy (that comes mostly from fossil fuels?) will it take to pump the carbon dioxide back into the shale? and how much energy did it take to get the natural gas out in the first place? and how much carbon dioxide did that produce?
Does it matter?
The alternative is no sequestration. Pick your poison.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I listened to the NPR piece by Diane Rehm and it is SOOOO horribly biased. She only asks the one not very official spokesperson for fracking loaded questions and then cuts him off and lets the director of GasLand (and sequel) pretty much give a sales pitch on his movie. I'm not saying there aren't environmental consequences from fracking, but when the director of the documentary is saying the EPA, USGS, and other government studies showing the fracking isn't to blame can't be believed, then who DO you believe?
http://www.iogcc.state.ok.us/Websites/iogcc/Images/2009StateRegulatoryStatementsonHydraulic%20Fracturing.pdf
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3489
Now I'm not saying oil and gas extraction can't pollute the water supply. It can and frequently does. But even if there is contamination around fracking sites, it isn't due to the fracking itself, but poor environmental controls in the supporting operation. The key here is not to fight fracking, but to fight to keep all the processes associated with well drilling within the rules of existing environmental regulations.
Blaming fracking for well contamination is equivalent to blaming GM because your gas tank leaks. (Obligatory Slashdot car analogy)
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
First off, the fracturing helps the absorption of the CO2, the higher the fracture of the rock the more surface area there is for chemical weathering ( CO2 uptake). /depth. Same goes for major faulting.
Secondly, the shales are located on geologically stable areas of the craton, so unless a hotspot from the mantle just happened to be burning its way through for the last few hundred million years it's highly unlikely that heat will increase above the geothermal gradient average for the location
Thirdly, biomass is more susceptible to fires and other disasters. over the years you would have a significantly higher chance of biomass re-sublimation back to CO2.
Ha! carbonated well water... I wonder how it would taste with a petroleum suspension?
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
I was not wrong, you are trying to nitpick.
If we dump CO2 underground, that CO2 does not sit in the atmosphere. Obviously it does not remove CO2 from the Universe, but our "air" and atmosphere is temporarily showing improvement.
If O2 levels drop to 20.5% human productivity goes down. This is a natural phenomenon. We heal slower, require more rest, and can not exert as much energy. At .5% it would be a measurable impact on human health and energy. Of course if we continue to slide downward mammals start to die at roughly 16%. Yes, that is a ways off, but the sloping curve has never gone upward in the last 40 years. (save nitpicking further about a single location in somewhere in the world that did show an increase on one day at one time).
If a well leaks it would depend on your proximity to the well blowing out and the size of the well and resultant leak. Fair that CO2 poisoning would occur in addition to Oxygen deprivation, the end result is the same for victims of either. Both would occur.
Your 5th point matches my closing paragraph does it not?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The *cost* of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is way, way too high to do this. Even with cool tech, you've got to build the power plant right next to the sequestration site -- which means getting the fuel to the site -- which means building right of way, pipelines or rail, etc. Transmission lines too. Then you take the performance hit in the generation to run the sequestration equipment.
It's cheaper to build big wind in the breadbasket, lesser wind offshore, solar on roofs and in the southwest, bits of biomass and geothermal where it works, and use transmission to move it around. What about no sun or wind? Well, it's windy or sunny someplace nearly all the time in tUSA, but yes we'd have to use our ~21GW of pumped hydro storage differently, maybe build more, maybe use electric vehicles (EVs) for storage, maybe upgrade our infrastructure to change when we demand electricity [run electric hot water heater, air source heat pumps extra when flush with renewable generation so that we use them less when we'd be short]. All of that is way cheaper than CCS, and as a bonus it won't leak the carbon later, it doesn't require creating mini earthquakes, chopping off the tops of mines, figuring out what to do with the ash, the SOx, the NOx, the Hg, and other pollutants, the nuclear waste, how to deal with water shortage or water temperature problems, and on and on and on.
Look, I've been on slashdot 15 years or so. I know the community believes in nuclear power. The answer to CCS is the same as nuclear: it's too expensive. You can argue breeder or reprocessing or any number of other things, but the age of cheap gas has killed any nuclear renaissance, and the age of plentiful cheap wind in the breadbasket, plentiful expensive wind on the coasts [where electricity is expensive anyway], and plummeting PV costs means that nuclear and coal are dead for economic reasons, it's just a matter of time.
(footnotes) I didn't bother to provide links, but you might check out "2012 Wind Technologies Market Report," the economics behind the closures of Vermont Yankee and Kewaunee, "Analysis of Drought Impacts on Electricity Production in the Western and Texas Interconnections of the United States," the recent output reductions at Pilgrim and Millstone nuclear plants due to the Cape Cod Bay and Long Island Sound water too hot for cooling, how Xcel Colorado electric utility is procuring 450 of MWs of wind and 170 MW of solar because it's cheaper than gas, coal, or nuclear, and on and on and on. We built loads of coal in the 50s and 60s, nuclear in the 70s and 80s, combined cycle natural gas units in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and now those will operate until retire, while being replaced with wind, solar, some new gas, and energy efficiency. Know why? It's the cheapest way to do things. CCS (and nuclear) aren't, not by a long shot. There's no reason to think that they will be, either.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Will it help slow down . . . deforestation?
Quite the opposite, but not for the reasons you're thinking. I suspect we'll find that decreasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will tend to retard plant growth in general.
This. The location of the devices burning the natural gas and the location of the fracked shale deposits mean that you will either have to build a pipeline from North Dakota to New Jersey or run pressurized rail cars the same distance. Either one is very, very expensive. It is not even cost effective to transport natural gas to the end users via pipeline in many places - the stuff is still flared. Now you want to pipe the waste product back to the middle of nowhere?
Righto.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
First off, do we have a proven or at least technically sound way to actually capture all the CO2 released from Coal plants? Next up is mobile sources like cars?
If a car emits 5 tons of CO2 annually, that means every day ~25-30 pounds of CO2 needs to be collected, pressurized and stored on vehicle. That's going to add up quick and it's not really something the average person can store up even to a weeks worth of I wouldn't think.
'At least' with nuclear the waste can be stored on site (but obviously we don't all have DeLorean's with Flux Capacitors either!)
The energy for pumping can be made green if it's electric. And even if at first all power comes from coal plants, unless we spend 100% more energy to store 50% of our emissions, it's a net gain isn't it? (or whatever the actual equation would be...don't take that as gospel)
That's a lot of 'IF's though...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Well considering we already use man-made caverns to store compressed gas and it doesn't leak out... And considering the areas where fracking is occurring have also been areas where coal and gas have been previously extracted and thus is the location of a lot of existing coal and gas power plants so transportation should be relatively short.
Usually fracking is done very deep within the earth. So your worries about temperature increases are highly unlikely as well as not likely to increase the pressure in the formation very significantly. For reference the earth pressure at ~4000' depth (which is where a lot of the Marcellus shale is located) is well over 5000 psi. As far as the best solid sink of CO2, that would be limestone... http://www.columbia.edu/~vjd1/carbon.htm
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Are you sure you're not confusing CO2 poisoning with CO poisoning? http://chemistry.about.com/od/medicalhealth/a/Carbon-Dioxide-Poisoning.htm
The latter is HIGHLY unlikely.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Mind if I bring some tanks of Algae and a sunlamp with me?
With out CO2, we would all be dead... starting with the plants.
Only if the amount of algae is less than what would be required for homeostasis. After all, we're trying to simulate what would happen with an overabundance of CO2.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
O2 concentration in the air is something like 28%
CO2 concentration is something like 400ppm, that is 0.4% if I made no errorr with the many zeros.
So converting CO2 back to O2 and Cx is not really that important.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Well-fuckin'-said, man!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It won't bring back the dodo, solve the honey bee population drop, or put the genie back in the bottle either.
One problem at a time. We don't need a world dictator to crush everyone under his boot-heel so that ideologues can have their Gaia.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Come now, if I said only "won't" then someone would have preached about how it's not cost prohibitive. If I said only "can't" then technically I would be wrong. I did not think it important to write a dissertation on the merits of both arguments
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
We've come close to solving the REAL pollution issue with oil. The sulfur and CO emissions from vehicles are amazingly low. That, since you were apparently born yesterday, was what environmentalists focused on before big, bag climate change. The second big problem, of course, is the rare oil spill. This doesn't fix that, but until it is no longer human nature to cut corners or make mistakes we're never going to stop having problems like that.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I think cocks like you need to stop quashing debate and try holding your ideas up to your own lofty ideals.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I could have told you that putting a ski resort on top of a landfill was stupid. For one, the purpose of a landfill is for the trash to actually break down; this is an exothermic process that is going to give off heat-- not something you want happening on your ski slope. How about not cherry-picking worst-case scenarios and really talking about solutions?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Dejavu!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
There's something ironic about extracting oil, burning it, and then putting the resultant CO2 back in it's place.
That must be the most roundabout way possible to use that fusion reactor that's just 8 minutes away.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This statement is deeper than it seems. Assume for the sake of argument solutions will appear that do not involve massive command-amd-control takeover of the economy (we've dodged several bullets already like the BTU tax from the 1990s.)
Under the admittedly cynical theory certain leaders are more interested in command-and-control for good ol' political reasons like kickbacks, general power, or even wistful longing for the long-failed Workers of the World Unite! socialost rhetoric-as-rationale, what could we predict as reaction?
Furthermore, as I've been saying for years, such a sution is ludicrous, akin to people in 1900 making judgements about 100-300 years in the future and shit what can we do now now NOW?!?!?.
And tech is advancing even faster. Delta between now and 2113 is far greater than between now and 1913.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Does it hurt to be so wrong?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
At least they didn't link to Wikipedia.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I would prefer separating the C from the O2 rather than simply putting it away somewhere. And can it seriously put enough CO2 away to make a difference? I doubt it very much.
Gasland is crap
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Not really. Nobody's going to pay money to put carbon money back into the ground after breaking it out of there. The energy companies sure ain't gonna do it, and if the government tries, assholes will piss themselves in fury that money is being spent to "sequester" something that they don't think is a problem in the first place.
The use of the hole after the fact is the least of the problems with fracking. Just look at some of the major news stories about fracking from the past few weeks.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If the CO2 gets into the ground water (which is where your pumping it), it will turn the water acidic. Do you really want acidic water running through our limestone deposits?
So far, there is no proof to demonstrates that CO2 has any negative effects on the atmosphere or the ecosystem.
None? If you have convinced yourself of that, then there is nothing that can be said to disprove it.
The infrared absorption profile of CO2 is well-known. So is the reaction of CO2 and water. If you still persist in believing that global warming and ocean acidification aren't real, then you have probably invested yourself heavily in that belief in spite of the evidence surrounding you. No amount of proof will satisfy a zealot.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Except given that fracking is polluting ground water and wells, any scheme oil companies come up with to try this is likely to pollute just as badly.
Trusting the oil companies is generally a bad idea.
Trusting government is generally a worse idea. Remind me again, was it Exxon or BP that was setting off above-ground nuclear explosions, a while back? Heck, mushroom clouds from the Nevada desert tests were such a common sight in Las Vegas that one of the casinos (the Stardust) had a sign partly inspired by them.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
Concrete releases heat and CO2 when it cures, it's the largest non-FF source. Just ploughing charcoal into farmland will sequester it for at least a 1000yrs and it improves the soil to boot! If scaled up properly it wouldn't sequester all our emission but it would make a good start. You can get the charcoal (and more energy that it takes to to make it) from burning raw sewerage.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The bulk of the CO2 emissions coming from the concrete industry are due to the fact that when concrete sets it undergoes an exothermic chemical reaction that emits large quantities of CO2.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If the CO2 gets into the ground water (which is where your pumping it), it will turn the water acidic. Do you really want acidic water running through our limestone deposits?
No, that's not where you're pumping it. Generall speaking the ground water is shallower than 500ft. Five Hundred. The depths that they're frac'ing are generally greater than 5000. Five THOUSAND.
help society be more aware of their impact
Smelly snowballs and yellow snow were not enough, huh?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Portland cement absorbs CO2 when it is being produced. It's a closed cycle.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You make it sound like it was my idea..
How about not cherry-picking worst-case scenarios and really talking about solutions?
I hinted various solutions through my post. How about you read it and stop cherry picking what you want to bitch about?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
No. That CO2 was absorbed when the cement was produced.
The majority of CO2 produced in 'crete production is the heat used to make the cement and drive the endothermic reaction opposite the one you describe.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Environmentalists will always find a way to hate on humans, no matter how many of their "problems" you solve. Nothing short of mass human suicide will ever appease them. They'll just find some new corporate boogeyman to bitch about.
Corporations will always find a way to hate on humans, no matter how many of their "problems" you solve. Nothing short of mass human suicide will ever appease them. They'll just find some new environmental boogeyman to bitch about.
Pointless, no?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No wonder you are posting AC. *sigh* What is presented is not a solution you dolt! It does not address or touch the problem.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
No it won't, because it's still an environmental nightmare. Carbon has to be converte3d to a stable form for any viable, long term form of sequestration. How much you wanna bet that this is a study that is funded by the fracking industry.
Salut,
Jacques
As far as storing CO2 from mobile sources, the best proposal i've seen for this comes from the idea of sequestering CO2 in the arctic where, during the coldest points of the year, the air temperature is close to the temperature needed to produce CO2 snow. Which could then be dumped into an insulated pit, refrigerated, and buried. Antarctica also provides a large source of nearby power in the form of downhill winds near the coast which can develop to hurricane force, probably allowing wind turbines to power the entire operation. The proposal I read purported to be able to freeze out 1B tons of CO2 per year.
Here's the piece I read.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/24/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic/
First off, do we have a proven or at least technically sound way to actually capture all the CO2 released from Coal plants?
A very, very large bag. Ziploc would be the way to go...you know that you didn't lose any CO2 because you can hear and feel the bag close with their patented SmartZip seal!
NO DOWNSIDES, I SAID!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
how would the water used in fracking get up to pollute?
It doesn't go up. It goes down. The water pollution is caused by gunk leaking from waste water surface ponds. Solution: better seals on surface ponds, more inspections of the ponds, and bigger fines for violations.
Also
How much energy (as in fossil fuel) does it take to transport
and the most important question:
How much more will this all cost.
IMO, I don't see clean coal ever happening. It is too expensive - it would be cheaper to convert the coal plant to natural gas, which produces half the CO2, or oil which produces about 2/3. Or buy a 4th gen nuke plant from Russia* that produces zero.
*because we killed research on them here citing problems that only exist in second generation reactors and Russia didn't, and now have three up and running, one about to go critical, and another designed and going into production at Beloyarsk - keep in mind these are research reactors to find and fix problems and they have had issues (not ready for production yet, but close).
Portland cement absorbs CO2 when it is being produced. It's a closed cycle.
It is also baked in a kiln heated to thousands of degrees, that is usually fired with either gas or coal. Cement production is a huge net generator of CO2.
Oooh I have a better idea! Let's use coal instead of charcoal! They're chemically very similar and the former is much cheaper to obtain in bulk. Or no wait, I'm on a roll here. Let's stick with the coal, but instead of ploughing it into farmland, let's put it into big landfills and fill abandoned mines with it; that way we can sequester so much more!
Perfect! Where do I vote?
bonding it to low-impact-cultivated biomass that can either be then buried or sunk to the ocean floor.
Actually, since it's a hydrocarbon again I'd probably convert it into a fuel and burn it. Preferably capturing the CO2 yet again and using it as a regenerating system. It could be useful in peaking power systems.
Personally, my preference is to switch to carbon-neutral electricity generation systems, leaving coal usage for stuff it's particularly suited for such as steel production. My mix of electricity would be ~40% nuclear(baseload), 20% solar(increased power usage during day), 20% wind(easily doable at this percentage), and 20% other to include hydro, biomass plants and such. Note that these are single digit accuracy numbers - there's a lot of room for variances.
Get most vehicles to being electric, and you can drop CO2 emissions even more. We don't necessarily need to be completely carbon neutral - steel, concrete and such, but removing electricity and vehicles would take something like 2/3rds of the CO2 production out.
I don't read AC A human right
That is clever move from the fracking industry: now if you are a fracking opponent, you are against ecology. I guess it will be impossible to debate about the reliability and profitability of the process.
But you are confident that one grossly simplified computer model, without any field data to test it, is the answer?
Wait a second. Are we talking about petro scientists or climate scientists?
The energy to pump the CO2 into the ground isn't wasted. The force of pushing it down a well displaces residual oil and gas and allows more petroleum to be extracted from each well. Once liquid fluids have done the fracturing the CO2 can perform some degree of enhanced oil recovery.
It could potentially reduce the carbon footprint of so called dirty American and Canadian petroleum, reduce consumption of toxic fracking fluids etc. We already push natural gas, steam, nitrogen and all sorts of stuff into the ground to help get petroleum out
Sequestration is a big load of crap to attract government funding.
If all those research bucks are spent planting trees we'll all be better off.
Go well
The cost and complexity of building such a massive operation in the Antarctic isn't worth the effort for a hundred(ish) degrees difference in starting temperature. And what happens if you have a power outage or other such mechanical problem? The 'stored' CO2 you're refrigerating is going right back to gas form and poof you've lost all your progress. You'd get better bang for your buck by building the wind turbines here and reducing our CO2 emissions at the source.
We need to find a way to store CO2 in a format that doesn't require active input to keep it sequestered.
This is one such method. Storing in underground 'vaults' is another though I'd suspect it's far from certain that it would stay there for 1000s of years.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Have you ever read about oil field geology? Try looking up "caprock", or "nonpermeable formation". Then you won't be so ignorant.
.
Bring whatever the hell you like, if you can make a self-sustaining bio-dome capable of supporting a human for more than a year then you have solved an engineering problem that has stumped the best minds on the planet for well over half a century.
Pollution is best defined as a "resource out of place", the carbon cycle has been the "thermostat" in Earth's changing climate for at least the last half billion years. We are short circuiting that cycle in a significant way by excavating the carbon resource and concentrating it in the atmosphere where it does not belong and has been shown beyond all reasonable doubt to have a detrimental effect on civilization. The algae will be just fine with or without our civilization, it's we who need then, not the other way around.
As a species we are pushing the biosphere further and further away from it's natural equilibrium, at some point it will be far enough away that it can no longer support our civilizations, push it further and it will no longer support large land mammals (including us). Science is definitely the best tool we have for these problems, but you're going to need a lot more than a lamp and a bucket of allege to create artificial life support systems capable of replacing the natural ones we evolved within.
If you think that this is all in the far flung future, realise that the worst drought on record in the fertile crescent (2007-2009) has been identified as href="https://www.google.com.au/?gws_rd=cr#q=syrian+drought+war">a major contributing factor that led to the civil war in Styria. The rural areas ran out of water and migrated to the cities (10% of the population was internally displaced). Food prices skyrocketed (across the middle east, not just Syria). The WL diplomatic cables basically showed that US diplomats saw the trouble coming when people started abandoning their farms, one even pinpointed the city where the war started as being as being the most likely "flashpoint for internal conflict".
Never forget that civilization is much more fragile than the biosphere from which it arose, it can be eradicated with three days of hunger or one day of thirst.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Of course it matters. What if the sequestration process produces more CO2 than it sequesters?
You're just following the mindless, "We HAVE to do SOMETHING, NOW!" dogma. And that's a bigger risk to our lives than climate change.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
. The key here is not to fight fracking, but to fight to keep all the processes associated with well drilling within the rules of existing environmental regulations.
Fine. Except fracking has been specifically excluded from the current EPA regulations regarding drilling and contaminated groundwater (thanks, Cheney!).
-
It's serious business when you say every number 2 times. Two TIMES.
CAES caves do leak, just not at a rate that jeopordizes the economics of it. Problem with a leak in a manmade CO2 reservior is events akin to Lake Nyos. Whether that's likely to happen depends on the eventual pressure of these structures, however, after the adsorbtion.
Someone had to do it.
Potentially, many wells drilled for fracking could also be used as CO2 disposal wells. But you'd need to work the fracked well over (i.e., remove the hydrocarbon production and shut-in equipment) and minimally cement the fracking perforations while re-perfing into a reservoir rock formation ; a lot of the time you'd need to drill out of the bottom of your post-fracking well. Which ain't going to be cheap. Well, certainly it isn't going to be free.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
First pump loads of CO2 into the aquifer,, then add your favorite flavor... FREE SODA!....
Latest news: Norway stops it's sequestration program because it's costing too much and benefits aren't clear.
Seems that you where spot on on that mate.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
"pollution" existed before man. Animals have always pooped. Poop was the original pollution (that and water kept cities small(er) in the olden days.
polluting for profit didn't exist until after corporations. Before corporations, people were unable to produce significant levels of individual pollution. After corporations, large corporations could more efficiently make things that had large amounts of runoff and by-products. Dyes have been used for thousands of years, but only after corporations did the pollution become so concentrated as to trigger cancer clusters.
Learn to love Alaska
True, but blaming the curing process is factually false. Condemn it for what it does wrong, not because you think it does wrong, condemn it with lies.
Learn to love Alaska
Quite the opposite, but not for the reasons you're thinking. I suspect we'll find that decreasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will tend to retard plant growth in general.
This just in: Manufacturer of CO2 generator says less CO2 is bad for plants. News at 11!