Carbon Capture Is a Woke Fantasy

American Thinker ^ | 12 Jan, 2023 | John M. Contino

[MtnClimber]

The idea of burying liquid carbon dioxide is insane. Yet we're being told it's the right thing to do.

Let's say you're brainstorming with some friends, trying to figure out how to cash in on the woke green wave. It would probably not occur to the less boldly imaginative among us to propose 1) capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from agricultural areas covering five Midwestern states (see map from a corporate website here), 2) dehydrating and compressing it into liquid form at various capture locations, 3) transporting it via brand new pipelines, and 4) sequestering it into its permanent rocky tomb a mile beneath the surface, safe from climate change, nuclear war, and all but the most severe cosmic catastrophes. As a bonus, liquid CO2 that survives burial has commercial industrial applications, like dry ice for food preservation or creating cloudy or foggy effects for Hollywood productions. It's also used in fire extinguishers and to carbonate soft drinks, and it is even an important cooling agent for cryogenic freezing, as was done, for example, to Ted Williams and his son John Henry.

If you're wondering where the money comes from for these enterprises, the Department of Energy has announced many tens of millions of dollars in funding for research and implementation of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) projects. Additionally, carbon credits for industry are shaping up to be a powerful incentive for generating private and public investor capital.

Private industry is currently developing new processes/technologies to capture and sequester CO2 from ethanol fermentation plants. Plans are underway for Colorado and Nebraska to pioneer this process, and to start burying CO2 from ethanol in 2024. Ethanol production is a big business, consuming more than 40% (!) of the U.S. corn crop.

[MtnClimber]

If we do a good job capturing carbon dioxide then no crops will grow. No need to ban fertilizer.

[ComputerGuy]

Woke is a fantasy.

[Nateman]

So Carbon Dioxide is pollution? How about we invent a machine that self replicates and takes that Carbon and turns it into food. As a bonus have it release the oxygen into the air. Oh wait... that is what we call ‘Plants’ isn’t it?

[MtnClimber]

We can’t have population reduction by famine if we grow more crops.

[Nateman]

What liquid Carbon Dioxide looks like.

[wetgundog]

Please explain to me the amount of energy expended to concentrate CO2 into liquid form. I’ll wait....

Global Warming is a HOAX.

[MMusson]

Converting CO2 into liquid fuel will become viable in the next few decades. But, this capture/conversion will take place next to large sources like coal fired power plants.

Develop the technology. Then, roll it out. Don’t piss away billions on pipe dreams.

[I want the USA back]

Much more insane than burying liquid water.
CO2 can be a liquid at low temperatures and high pressure. Do they propose to keep CO2 cold and in high-pressure bottles?

Energy is required to do this.

If someone were insane enough to “pump” a major percentage of CO2 out of the air and sequester it, then plant life would react accordingly, and there would be less of it.

These people are serious. I’m amazed how some people can be dead serious about a DELUSION. Not surprised. Just amazed.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

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The solubility of CO₂ in water is inversely proportional to temperature

Since CO₂ is soluble in water and the oceans cover a majority of the Earth's surface, the oceans sequester more CO₂ than any other CO₂ sink.

Because of the inverse solubility of CO₂ with temperature, the colder the oceans get, the more CO₂ they can absorb.

Conversely, when the oceans get warmer, they expel CO_2.

Atmospheric CO₂ therefore follows global temperatures, it does not cause them.

You can see the yearly global atmospheric CO₂ fluctuation as the oceans warm and cool with the seasons in the NOAA graph below.

The "settled science" that CO₂ causes "climate change" is therefore criminal sophistry.

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[MtnClimber]

These people are serious. I’m amazed how some people can be dead serious about a DELUSION. Not surprised. Just amazed.

I am amazed too. I have known a few of these people before and I could not even have a civil discussion about carbon dioxide with them.

[z3n]

These fanatics are the worst kind of evil.

You know the best way to break carbon cycle on planet earth?

Kill all life. All of it.

[JeanLM]

A much easier sequestration would be to make more plastic and bury it in landfills. A pound of polyethylene contains 85% carbon and it will stay there forever harmlessly.

Here in NJ we banned grocery bags and the greenies are crowing about the 80 million bags we saved. Of course those bags only weighed 50,000 pounds, so I say we need more plastic bags to sequester more carbon, and it won’t cost anything.

[larrytown]

Better solution is to stop with the ethanol subsidies.

[Paal Gulli]

"...Atmospheric CO2 therefore follows global temperatures, it does not cause them...."

That was the upshot of Michael Mann's "hockey stick" diagram.

If you delved into the numbers behind this chart, CO2 levels lag behind temperature (IIRC) about 500 years.

[The Great RJ]

CO2 is a TRACE gas in our atmosphere at less than 500 parts per MILLION. It is ludicrous to think that the entire climate of the planet hinges on a knife edge of a few parts per million of a single trace gas and that variations in solar output, deep ocean currents and even the wobble in the earths axis have in comparison little or no effect on earth’s climate. Employing Rube Goldberg solutions to sequester CO2 is folly. Consider the energy needed to sequester CO2 …where is that coming from?

[ViLaLuz]

It’s a money-making scam.