Global warming fight going underground?

CNN ^ | 02.19.03

[Coleus]

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Researchers at a government-funded science organization are investigating the possibility of burying up to 1 million metric tons (1.1 million tons) of carbon dioxide to help solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon dioxide is among the gasses emitted by burning fossil fuels that are blamed for global warming.

[jpl]

More watermelon blather as America braces for another week of snow and Arctic temperatures.

[null and void]

Cooling has caused considerable loss of life (starvation, civil unrest, etc.) in recorded history.

One episode in the 1200's triggered global problems, from the disappearance of the entire Anasazi culture in the American southwest, fall of Chinese dynasties, triggering the european dark ages.

A second episode wiped out the James town colonists.

The "year without summer", early 1800' starved people world wide.

I say again:

[537 Votes]

Over the long term, volcanoes emit about 5 x 10^11 kg of CO2 to the air annually. This amount is approximately 3% of that emitted by anthropogenic activity.

I suspect you meant that the other way around, that anthropogenic activity is 3% of that emitted by volcanoes. Further, the quote from Fred Singer (above) indicates that the number is more like .3%.

[tubebender]

if they bury all that CO2 under some springs, then they could produce enough carbonated fizzy water to put the French water bottlers out of business.

Could you ping me when you start selling stock in that company.

DownUnder would be better served if they spent that money to plant forests to soak up the CO2 which they are doing. They just ordered a couple of million Redwood Seedlings from a nursery here in Humboldt County. With their climate they say in 35 years a Redwood seedling would equal a 100 year old tree here.

[Jonah Hex]

I'm still working on a name for the company, but I'm open to suggestions for something snappy.

How 'bout "Koala Cola"?

[JasonC]

Um, CO2 doesn't explode. In fact, reacting with O2 is what exploding generally is, with CO2 one of the byproducts. If you pour CO2 over an open flame, it will go out, starved of the O2 it needs to feed the reaction. CO2 is also heavier than air (which is mostly N2, some O2), so it tends to sink (though in open air, also to diffuse to equalize concentrations of it in different places).

CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere, to begin with. Less than 1% of the atmosphere is CO2. The amounts involved are incapable of causing the scaremonger climate predictions. This is something the modelers themselves are forced to acknowledge, and sends them searching for unknown "amplifiers" in the climatic system, which they have no reason to suppose exist. They simply try to justify past predictions whose scale has been shown to be off by an order of magnitude.

Yes, vegetation traps carbon. It takes an increase in overall biomass to do so. Forest grows such additional biomass on its own, to limits set mostly by available sunlight on the one hand, and available soil nutrients on the other (especially "fixed", rather than gaseous, nitrogen). When trees die and fall down and decompose, they are converted back. Fungi and insects eat them, become food for other animals, which exhale CO2, etc.

If it every become truly necessary to sequester carbon for long periods, it would be simple enough to do. You'd just purposefully fertilize mid ocean algae beds in temporary "algae blooms", which after a brief cycle die and sink to deep ocean floors. Trapping carbon there. This could be down well away from prime fishing grounds to avoid disruption of their ecosytems, and the locations varied from time to time. No one will ever run out of ocean floor, or algae. Some algae varieties can be fertilized with milled iron filings (dissolved iron makes their oxygen transfer process more efficient) - "rust" is hardly scarce.

Not that there is any need to do such things at present. The entire scaremonger industry around the subject is a boondoogle from begining to end.

[Fredgoblu]

Won't there be a big risk of an explosion of CO2

Ummmm...you might want to check your Chem 1 book next time. You will (probably) be surprised to know that it can be found in certain models of fire extinguishers.

[Coleus]

Good Link, thanks.

[RandyRep]

Right. I knew that.

But late at night, I used the word "explode" to mean a pressure-generated burst (through some sort of path to the surface) into the atmosphere rather than a chemical reaction burst.

The way the original report was written, it sounded like they were going to pump caves and underground vaults with CO2. A later post said that was quite common.

[Walnut]

I wish they would send some of that global warming where We are. I'm freezing!!!!

[GATOR NAVY]

I think this explains what you're talking about. Interesting info on the CO2 eruption from a lake in Africa that killed over 800 people.

[GATOR NAVY]

Correction-1700 killed, over 800 hospitalized.

[sasquatch]

...and here's the experiment, Moss Landing Marine lab...

IronEx II, 1995

Sequential additions of solubilized iron to a patch of water in the Equatorial Pacific produced an enormous
phytoplankton bloom. Grazing pressure by zooplankton was also monitored. Interestingly, zooplankton did not perform
typical vertical migration behavior. Instead they remained with the patch/bloom to feed both day and night. The results
unequivocally demonstrate that iron availability limits productivity in some areas of the worlds oceans.

[Reeses]

Maybe a CO2 injection from a coal powered power plant into that 40 year old coal mine fire in Centraila Pennsylvania might put it out. They wouldn't even need to scrub the exhaust, just pump it in via the waste heat.