Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 01/11/2010 1:05:11 PM PST by smokingfrog
With cap and trade legislation looming, carbon emissions seem on a track to becoming currency. But the problem lingers: Where to safely stash the vast amounts of carbon dioxide still pouring forth from coal-fired power plants? A new analysis suggests basalt formations off the east coast of the United States could store billions of tons of the greenhouse gas—and then transform it into rock.
< snip>
The Ultimate Repository Basalt, it turns out, is capable of performing what seems like sheer alchemy: It can transform normally buoyant CO2 dissolved in water into something decidedly non-buoyant—solid rock. Essentially, a series of chemical reactions combines carbon dioxide with calcium in the basalt to form calcium carbonate, or limestone.
Dennis Kent, a professor of geological sciences at Rutgers University, and one of three co-authors of the study, says that transformation from gas to solid could make basalt formations "the ultimate repository" for excess carbon.
Although the report notes that some basalt formations on land might suffice as storage sites, the deeper formations under sea beds could be particularly attractive when it comes to preventing CO2 from escaping, according to study co-author David Goldberg, a geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.
Hundreds or even thousands of feet of sediment can lie atop undersea basalt formations. In addition to a thick cap of solid basalt that would lie above any suitable deeper injection site, those thick blankets of sediment could serve as an additional impermeable cap during the years the CO2 was becoming mineral. (Research has yet to fully detail just how long it would take for a volume of CO2 to transform into rock.)
The new study points to an array of expansive east coast basalt formations, including four undersea of more than 380 square miles each ...
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
I love Popular Mechanics. I’m still waiting for the nuclear powered transport blimps I read about circa 1977.
BFLR
Colossal waste of time and money.
CO2 does NOT need to be “stored” or “sequestered”.
Complete and total nonsense.
With the earth about to enter a 30 or more year ice age (scientific forcast du jour) I question the wisdom of all this. Perhaps we should let nature run its course, surely this is cyclical and no matter how much “damage” we have done we were unable to stop ourselves from freezing.
Of course this is likely all our fault too.
I see this as quite viable, given about 350,000 years. Let’s rock! Ooops, no pun intended.
I think my flying car was back-ordered for few more decades.
That is all.
They should compress the CO2 in huge tanks. When the pressure reaches 3000 PSI they should release it up Al Gore’s a** until he expands to five times his normal size, then pops.
...and it rains diamonds from all the carbon.
Hey, since it is CO2, why don’t we use it in soda?
This is a great idea but unfortunately, it would allow capitalism to continue to thrive, prosper and lift millions of people out of poverty.
This is simply unacceptable.
Please try again.
—your friends at the environmental movement
/sarc
Here is an idea. We take all the scientists and politicians that support global warming. Throw them into an active volcano. They are then trapped in basalt for a million years and we don’t have to worry about global warming.
This reminds me of those “B” disaster movies where the evil government or corporation pumps a bunch of stuff into the earth resulting in earthquakes, plate shifts etc., that a small ragtag but courageous crew (including some disenfranchised expert)must fix.
You can’t even make this stuff up anymore.
Oh yeah. Let’s turn plant food into rock, because the Earth doesn’t have enough rock!
Man, I was walking to work this morning, choking on all the CO2.
Just kidding! CO2 is an essential part of earth’s atmosphere. It is exhaled by humans/animals, then absorbed by plants/trees to grow.
I think I learned that in 3rd grade. Or was it 2nd grade?
But I’m still willing to pay $trillions to Al Whore and Omoslem the Dirty Jihadi so they can hand all our money to UN racketeers. /s
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.