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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Carbon Capture Could Cause Quakes |
| 2012-06-21 |
| Capturing carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions and pumping it deep underground may not be as useful a tool for dealing with rising greenhouse-gas levels as advocates suggest, according to a new analysis. You mean they finally tumbled to the fact it's an expensive waste of time? And money? The reason: Rising pressure from the enormous amounts of CO2, which would have to be stored Which I think everybody would agree is a waste of money... Champ could always talk about job saved in carbon sequestration... Moreover, while some underground formations are well-suited for sequestration, they could represent far less storage capacity globally than required if the approach is to be a significant tool for holding down atmospheric concentrations, according to a geophysicist at Stanford University, and the lead author of the analysis, which appears in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. If the goal is to sequester 1 billion tons a year of CO2 globally by 2050, and utilities were to aim only at the most-suitable formations, some 3,500 such sites would have to be uncovered and at spots convenient enough to be economical, Zoback and Stanford colleague Steven Gorelick found in their analysis. Some 85 sites a year would have to come on line between now and 2050 to meet that goal. Yet by some estimates, 3.5 billion tons a year would need to be sequestered to reach emissions goals countries have been discussing internationally to curb global warming. It might be possible to find large-scale formations that could serve an entire region, the researchers say. One such formation lies beneath the southern border of Indiana and Illinois. But the formation borders on a fault zone known for quakes that have reached magnitude 7. Maybe they're thinking of the New Madrid Fault which rang bells in Boston and changed the course of the Mississippi River. If 100 million tons of CO2 were injected into the formation each year through 2050, the sequestered carbon would place a large amount of pressure on the fault zone. The 100 million ton figure is a small fraction of the amount power plants in the region emit today, the researchers estimate. span style=background-color:yellow;>More studies are needed. Hey! That means more grant money is needed, come to think of it! |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #7 #6 LOL. On a separate note, it would be more funny iff I'd never had any childhood dreams or visions of Land/Islands-sinking EQ Bombs being linked to Pro-US-vs-Anti-US OWG-NWO. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2012-06-21 22:55 |
| #6 How would YOU like to be sequestered for a million years or more, hmmmmmm??? Free the carbonate ions now! |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2012-06-21 20:42 |
| #5 CO2 can be helpful at getting additional oil out of some formations - but it costs more to do than the oil is worth in most cases. Nature sequesters most CO2 by combining it with calcium - how many tons of limestone and marble are there in the world? |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2012-06-21 19:46 |
| #4 so if I get this straight, fracking is really really bad, but injecting CO2 might result in fracking.... |
| Posted by: manversgwtw 2012-06-21 18:41 |
| #3 ...except for providing a revenue stream for |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2012-06-21 16:06 |
| #2 Turn the co2 into something useful instead of putting it in a landfill so to speak. Waste streams are resource streams that have not yet been utilized. Sequestering CO2 is really stupid. And expensive. For nothing. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2012-06-21 15:58 |
| #1 The law of unintended consequences always bites planners in the ass. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2012-06-21 15:25 |