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."

Comments

Re:interesting

[zzottt]

Will it help slow down our oil consumption? and deforestation? and air/water pollution? No? There is your answer.

Sounds like a great plan.

[Wycliffe]

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.

Right

[TheSpoom]

What could possibly go wrong?

Re:interesting

[s.petry]

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.

Re:interesting

[danbert8]

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)