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.
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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 ...
Just wait — soon the environazi’s will compute how much CO2 is released from soda AND BEER(!) and try to reduce and or tax it.
Your “toss the G.Warming guys in the volcano” idea has one flaw.
Al Whore won’t fit.
That fat bastard could also explode, possibly destroying the volcano.
Keep Fat Al away from Yellowstone, it’s on the verge as it is!
We should be able to get at the sequestered CO2 when the ice begins to accumulate.
“Hey, since it is CO2, why don’t we use it in soda?”
Ixnay on the odasay. They’ll try to ban that next.
Just how do they plan on collecting all this assorted
CO2, transporting it to the deep ocean and finally
pumping into the undersea basalt domes.
Isn’t that going to take a lot of CO2 producing energy?
Bunch of nonsense if you ask me.
The insase thing here is that we need all the CO2 that we can get. - Anything that reduces CO2 is destructive, and should deserve the death penalty.
It is really heartbreaking to see how Popular Mechanics and Popular Science have been totaly co-opted by the Green Mafia. There are constant focus on the global warming fraud, and “green tech”, and a hostility to convential and nuclear powered methodologies.
So? Why waste the money?
At the levels currently under consideration, CO2 *is* a plant growth stimulant. Quite an important one, actually.
And Warmers *hate it* when I point this out. You should try it, you'll like it.
Only one slight problem. For each atom of carbon being locked away forever, TWO atoms of oxygen are locked away.
If you actually believe the air you breathe out is bad, wait until there is less O2 to breathe in.
You’ve got to love the rocket-propelled mail planes that are almost as fast as a telegraph! That must be why the post office isn’t making money anymore.
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