Government Begins Work on CO2 Storage Project at Teapot Dome

Tampa Bay Online; AP News ^ | Jan 28, 2004 | Sarah Cooke, Associated Press Writer

[Z-28]

Did I read it says that a comparable amount of liquid CO2 to that produced since the volcanos mostly quieted down on Earth could be pumped underground in a realatively short time ... was it 15 years?

[Redcloak]

One would think that the "Establishment Clause" of the 1st Amendment would prohibit such a project.

[Centurion2000]

Some environmentalists worry about gas bubbling through cracks in the Earth or leaking into aquifers that supply drinking water.

What idiots .. in 50 years someone would probably pay for natural seltzer.

[djf]

I doubt if we tried, we could, in a single year, pump as much CO2 as is produced by volcanoes in a single year. That means we can never catch up, and are foolish to try. CO2 is absorbed naturally by plant life on the land, but I think the biggest absorbers is the diatomic plant and animal life in the oceans. I once read that a far better aproach would be to dump Iron into the mid oceans. Iron is the central atom in chlorophyll and hemoglobin, and the mid oceans are somewhat deficient. Dumping it there would promote a huge burst of plankton, which could absorb millions of tons of CO2.

[RightWhale]

"(Carbon dioxide) is the primary global greenhouse gas and it's growing rapidly," said Dag Nummedal

He refers to the funding for CO2 projects. It's the primary global greenhouse gas funding center.

[TheBattman]

During the last four or five years the international consensus is that the most rational, economic and environmentally benign way of getting CO2 out of the atmosphere is to store it underground.

Yep, going with international consensus has really done us a lot of good lately, hasn't it?

Ummm...CO2 is a natural substance. When allowed to do their job, plants, trees, and other vegitation helps to cycle this stuff. From what I remember, the oceans themselves play a major roll in the CO2 cycle.

I just don't see how the process of liquifying the stuff and pumping it 300 miles and into old oil wells is considered an "efficient" way of disposing of this "greenhouse" gas.

[Jaysun]

Carbon dioxide is NOT the primary greenhouse gas. Water vapor is, and the global warmers hate to admit it because it draws attention to the stupidity of their theories.
What we have are some scientists who have to come up with results showing global warming or they will lose their jobs/grants and so they dutifully produce computer models which produce the results that they were designed to produce.

Bingo my friend. Water Vapor accounts for 95% of the "greenhouse gasses". The Global Warming Scare is the biggest scam in the history of mankind.

[Z-28]

This is too easy to be a viable solution... isn't it?

[theplogger]

A reply to the talk that Water Vapor renders CO2 irrelevant, 4 things:

1. Water vapor may be a greenhouse gas, but it is not seeing an anthropogenic (human caused) rise like CO2 is. We are seeing human caused global warming. It is being caused by CO2, regardless of CO2's makeup of the total greenhouse gasses.

2. Water Vapor being a major constituent of greenhouse gasses actually compounds CO2's effect. A small rise in temperature from CO2 will raise evaporation rates and the air's ability to hold water vapor. This increased amount of water vapor will in turn raise temperatures a bit more, resulting in.. more water vapor. Thus the effect of CO2 is much greater than the heating effect of CO2 alone.

3. It is most likely that the 5% is by weight, and well, water is heavy.

4. The amount of something speaks nothing to the effect of something. By mass, seawater is only something like 3% salt. But damn, it tastes salty. If you say CO2 doesn’t matter because it only makes up 5% of the total greenhouse gasses, then I encourage you to drink all the seawater you want, its only 3% salt after all.

Hope this made sense, it was somewhat off the cuff.

[theplogger]

Plants and CO2:

It is true that plants sequester CO2 (including aquatic life, with simple sea plankton and algae being a major carbon sink). Because of the increased levels of CO2 we are actuall seeing a slight increase in growth rates in individual trees and plants. Problem is though, we're cutting down most of the trees. So there's fewer of them to fix the carbon out of the air (bare dirt and farmland provide almost no carbon sequestration).

Making the problem worse is we are losing a lot of forest to slash and burn in the tropics, releasing all the carbon they've stored up.

You are right. Plants do absorb CO2, and they will continue to do so, and the rates of sequestration for an individual plant will increase and adjust to higher CO2 levels. And, if pressed I believe any scientist will even tell you that we will reach a balance at some point to where CO2 output will be equal to CO2 sequestration (so that levels will steady and no longer increase). But such a balance will still leave us with higher atmospheric levels of CO2 than we have currently. This will still result in a warmer planet.

We're not talking about the end of the world here. But we are talking about the *changing* of the world. Specifically we are talking about the warming of the planet, a warming that we can measure even today, a warming that is already causing species that can to migrate to higher latittudes, a warming that we already know is mostly human caused.

This is a warming that may result in some benefits, such as longer growing periods in some areas. But also a warming that will mean desertificatoin of some places and mass flooding of others as sea levels rise.

No, the world wont end. But massive climate change on a global scale is no small matter either.

Understanding that plants absorb CO2 is a small (but important) piece of a much larger and mildly more complex picture.

[Jaysun]

1. Water vapor may be a greenhouse gas, but it is not seeing an anthropogenic (human caused) rise like CO2 is. We are seeing human caused global warming. It is being caused by CO2, regardless of CO2's makeup of the total greenhouse gasses.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I take issue with this first point, which if incorrect, renders the others irrelevant. In talking with several people from NASA (I live in Huntsville, AL) and other organizations, it's my understanding that human caused warming via CO2 is still merely a theory - and not a very sound one at that. The globe warms and cools and always has.

That may be a very simplistic view, but the "consensus" that is often used to give the human caused global warming theory merit is itself without merit. Science isn't a democracy wherein the idea getting the most votes becomes fact.