British government opts for carbon capture 15 June 05

I believe that, when we look back at this moment, we’ll deeply regret choosing sequestration instead of nuclear power.

Here’s why: sequestration is very, very easy to cheat on, and there will be enormous incentive to cheat, because sequestration will always be a huge cost item to the firms being forced to sequester. Even in the UK, where people are very ecologically aware, the public will have to watch constantly to ensure that the carbon emitting firms don’t let their sequestration efforts lapse. Every time there is a national economic crisis or a change in government, there is risk that the polluters will be given a “temporary’ exemption…then pretty soon, those exemptions become permanent.

On the other hand, nuclear power produces nuclear waste. OK, it’s terrible stuff, but the firms producing are forced to deal with it. They have no way to cheat. They can’t “temporarily” start dumping nuclear waste into the ecosystem…it’s too deadly and too easy to trace back to them.

Sorry, this probably sounds insane to some people, but I think the very toxicity of nuclear waste ensures that it will be treated more responsibly than carbon dioxide emissions.

Obviously however, true renewables are better than either of the above.

No, my title is not a serious suggestion, but it was an idea put forward for dealing with nuclear waste. Barmy, but it received serious consideration because there never were any good alternatives.

Mark points out some objections to sequestration. Perhaps the most serious is that we can not know if it will work for long enough. We already face a serious threat from the possibility that carbon dioxide which has been naturally sequestered into the soil over the past century may be released as the palnet warms. Another problem is the cost, in energy terms. Carbon dioxide would have to be compressed, using up vast amounts of energy.

Expensive and dangerous: it has a lot in common with nuclear power.

At least the UK is thinking about solutions, unlike the American adminstration, which wants to study whether GW is happening for the next 100 years.

Here’s the latest from the March on Washington, an email I received from Sen. John McCain:

Dear Fellow Marcher,

Today the Stop Global Warming Virtual March on Washington arrives in my home state of Arizona, where global warming will make normal, seasonal droughts longer and more severe. Ranches in my state recently endured six long, dry years that devastated grazing lands. Many were forced to abandon land they’d worked for generations, and others saw long-profitable and proud businesses pushed to the brink of bankruptcy. This spring, the rains returned, but the climate change that made this drought so severe threatens us still. Read more about what is happening in my home state and the ranchers’ plight at http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/march/cascabel

Joining us on the March this week is the world’s most respected newsman, Walter Cronkite. As you can see, the March continues to grow and is supported by our country’s most visionary leaders and experts on global warming.

Joining the March is a powerful way for you to have your voice heard in the fight to stop global warming and I hope you will join me in reaching out to friends, family and colleagues to march with us. If we all work together as one voice, we can shift the debate on this issue this year.

Sen. John McCain Marcher

There was an excellent series of 5 articles in Rachels Environmental & Health News, #792-796) (www.rachel.org) about a year ago covering issues re nuclear power & proliferation, & suggested that some in the U.S. really were not so much against WMD as they claim to be (those tied to the arms industry & some fringe Armageddon Christians). It might be far-fetched in places, but an interesting read, heavier than Michael Moore’s F 9/11.

You can go to Rachel’s home page, then look up there back issues.

Space used for any waste management problem on earth would not be one of them in my way of thinking.

First, it would create more carbon dioxide emissions to send carbon into space than could ever be sequestered there. This is because so much energy is required to send anything into space let alone outside the earth’s gravitational field. The weight of the fuel used to send any payload into space is many times more than the weight of the payload being sent there.

Space is outside the biosphere but so is the deep underground (in my opinion) and why I would favor sequestration in deep oil wells and methane fields for fossil-fuel electric power plants and especially power plants using carbon-rich coal. The original oil and methane seemed to have been fairly stable for millions of years before we tapped into it and I wonder why anyone would seriously think that there would be leakage if carbon dioxide is buried hundreds of meters beneath the surface in the same places where the oil and methane fuels were extracted. Only the small borehole needs to be plugged and that is no big deal from an engineering point of view. If an original methane field was “leaky”, and if any methane molecules “leaked”, then these molecules would have an effect 23 times that of the equivalent carbon molecules leaked. Using this logic, I have to ask why carbon dioxide would necessarily be more dangerous than the original methane leakage would have been from the same methane field. Just some food for thought!

I have a great imagination and interestingly I find it difficult to imagine that a proper way to sequester carbon dioxide would not be feasible. It seems that a bit of simple research is all that is needed to know the best way to safely sequester carbon. I believe that carbon sequestering will prove itself to be very viable and useful.

The use of space is a bad idea for nuclear wastes in my opinion because if an accident occurred whereby a failed launch allowed nuclear material to re-enter the atmosphere at high speed, then these nuclear wastes could be distributed in the atmosphere in a harmful way when the heat of re-entry released them into the atmosphere. Under this scenario, these same nuclear wastes would have been probably less harmful where they sat to begin with. Also, the net carbon reduction benefits of nuclear energy would be greatly offset from the enormous energy and emissions in sending nuclear wastes into space. As I mentioned earlier, sending payloads into space is very energy and emission intensive.

In that light, using space to rid us of nuclear wastes was always a flawed idea and even more so today with respect to energy and emissions issues. In addition, space needs to be kept clear of any debris in earth orbit especially since this debris has to be tracked so it will not be a danger to satellites and especially to any manned space exploration. Small particles at high velocity in earth’s orbit can be a remote but dangerous problem for anything we place into orbit. This is true for a space telescope for astronomy research or when sending astronauts into space to conduct useful experiments in a space station.

The use of satellites to measure earth’s temperatures and the sun’s output are the best uses for space in regards to GW/CC issues in my opinion. Satellite data has unique characteristics in that we can look down on the earth in a global way not influenced by local ground (urban heat islands) or even localized ocean conditions. Satellites not only help us by studying the whole earth but also help us by studying the sun’s energy output as well which is important in assessing the earth’s total energy imbalance.

On the geo-engineering side of desperate measures is the seemingly far-fetched idea of using space mirrors to reflect away some of the earth’s heat. This idea is intriguing to me at some level although I favor land albedo increases through reflective pavement surfaces more. We can reflect energy from the ground easier and it is more cost effective than doing this in space. The increase in urban albedo can also reduce emissions through less energy used for cooling systems and that cannot be done with space mirrors.

For me, space mirrors are more of a future idea to consider only if it does indeed become more desperate. This would be true if we are in a “runaway” effect. Space mirrors, under any scenario for me, would still require an even more robust understanding of the climate and their development would be based on our confidence that they would solve an important problem in the earth’s heat imbalance which could not be done by any other means.

In that light, I also favor all reasonable requests by climate scientists for funding their research to enable us to know if a space mirror idea has any true merit. We cannot know enough about climate science not only to assess the viability of space mirrors but to eliminate any remaining uncertainty to empower policy makers.

On the upside of space mirrors, there are 2 advantages I can see. First, the weightlessness of space would allow ultra-light structures to be created with substantial reflective surface areas. Second, these mirrors could be controlled with precision from the ground and that is the main reason why I think the idea still has some merit and why I would not dismiss it prematurely to the graveyard of useless ideas. The fact that solar energy could be reflected from any spot on the globe (or even concentrated if needed) makes this idea unique among others.

The ability to precisely control space mirrors from the ground is why the idea still intrigues me. No other albedo-type idea with any corrective potential has this unique feature of near-immediate control to locate mirrors to any geographical location and/or to have a quick adjustment in the solar orientation of large reflective surfaces.

Again, a better understanding of climate than we currently possess would enable this control feature of space mirrors to have more merit and why I think an improvement in climate science is an absolute prerequisite before this idea could be ever be further developed. I mentioned this idea only because it relates to your “space topic” and it seemed relevant enough to mention here in my response back to you.

The multi-thronged approach mentioned by Peter Winters to me is the correct way of thinking with regard to insuring we are successful in addressing climate issues. In that light, I believe an optimistic attitude toward many types of solutions is more helpful and if any ideas still have problems, then we should consider their positive potential and think more of how an idea can be improved rather than be rejected.

I see a danger in rejecting ideas prematurely without further research or actual experiments to prove them unworthy first. Even then, our innate creativity has the potential to raise any “bad idea” back from the grave to reconsider it as an option. With respect to our climate, we should never allow ourselves the option of failing to act with reason and courage in considering useful new ideas.

A spirit of ingenuity I believe requires us to focus on the ideas we think will truly work or how a flawed idea can be improved rather than discouraging a promising idea or debating which idea is the worst one not to employ. This is actually my main point in my response back to your comments. I share it for all those who have decided to focus on solutions.

In that light, our greatest challenge is not the climate but our own selves and how we can improve in ways to not only develop innovative ideas that solve problems, but to take action and to encourage others to do the same. Deeds are more important than words in this regard unless our words inspire or enable others. In this case, our words are definitely worth mentioning. I may not always succeed at this, but that is always my intention on this blog.

Best regards to all,

Dan

According to an entry by David Archer (U.Chicago) on RealClimate.org, 1/4 of CO2 in the atmosphere might stay there up to 100,000 years. In that case, the only logical solution is to reduce putting CO2 in the atmosphere in the first place. Can the carbon capture people guarantee that CO2 will stay put 100,000 years? I guess they won’t be around to chastize, if they are wrong!

Lynn,

If memory serves me right. The CO2 level is about 379 PPM. Again from memory Charles Keeling started mesuring CO2 in the late 50.s I think 58. and at that time CO2 was around 315 – 320 PPM. Pre industrial levels were in the late 200’s. So 25% of this hanging around is not a bad thing. What we have to do is stop CO2 hitting the 400 PPM mark. At current rates of increase that is in about 11 years. If that happens we are in trouble.

One thing to remember is that CO2 only represents about 15 – 20% of all green house gasses (GHG). Many of the other GHG bad boys are much worse. for example Methane is 21 times more effective at trapping heat then CO2 and represent about 10% of all GHG’s. Much of this gas is produced from Landfill sites and cattle farming. Good recycling policies could make a massive difference. Second question how many cows do you need. I am thinking about a film called “Suppersize me”.

You then have bad boys like N2O which is 300 times stronger then CO2. Again agricultural soil management is the culprit for that one.

Please dont get me started on HFC’s PFC’s and SF6. some of these can have a global warming potential of 20,000 plus times that of CO2.

CO2 is a bad boy but he has allways been around quite naturally. Be very worried if we only have 25% of him around in a few thousand years. That would be a sure fire sighn that runnaway global warming had occured and life was no longer around.

Cheers Ian.

CH4 is indeed more powerful than CO2, and there are plenty of places to find CH4 (peat, tundra), but its residence time in the atm is much shorter than CO2.

Best,

D

Ian, a good, straight-on comment.

I would like to put a thought out and seek replies.

Having watched US national environmental groups fumble the climate change issue for more than thirty years and now, their efforts culminating in a next defeat of McCaim-Lieberman (admittedly not a sure fire cure for climate change) and by a greater defeat than in 1993, I can only conclude time has run out and our best team has had a scoreless season (career).

It has reached the point where adaptation strategies area all we can provide our children from here on out.Don’t overlook the many trillions of dollars of federal fiscal burden we have off-loaded to them. That was the R&D fudning legacy we should have left behind. We spent it on Viagra.

Wind and solar, efficiency and hydrogen were the strategies we launched in the 70’s. Respectively, they recently eclipsed .0002 percent of the grid’s power; still waiting for lazy homeowners to park the SUV and screw in the compact flourescent bulbs; or, will never get off the ground because the laws of physics prevail.

How about some radical ideas on preparing our children for a lifestyle and economy in which water availability in the Midwest grain belt and California’s Central Valley can no longer provide irrigation and municipal demand? Which end-use will they choose? How to begin to build some fall-back options that are more practical and real than drip irrigation on a 5000 acre wheat field or water-saving shower heads? Anybody got any ideas about taking a real, hard look at their frightening future? Please? We/they don’t have much time to act.

John McC

Dano,

The point I was trying to make, was regard to Lynn’s comment about 25% of CO2 hanging arround in the atm for 1,000 years. I did stress that I dont think excessive amount of this bad boy is a good thing. I live in fear of us hitting the 400PPM mark.

I also take on board that CH4 has a shorter stay in the atm (was tempted to say half life). However, we do have to take a ballenced view on all green house gasses and what there effects are and how we can use that knowlege.

I think what I was trying to say, is: That while we should be attempting to limmit CO2 output. We should also be pushing for effective resycling policies to take some of the burden from solid landfill sites. Because it would make a positive difference.

Cheers Ian.

John,

If you want to read a point of view that is thinking about sea defences, irragation and canceling third world debt. There is a chap who is very unpopular on these boards. He is called Bjorn Lomborg. He is a political scientist (not a real one LOL).

My view is, he tends to take data sets (out of context) and blend them for his own purposes. So it is very easy (for many members of this site) to pull much of what he says appart.

However, and I hate to say it here, I really like some of the things he has to say.

Make your own mind up, go do a google on his name.

Yours, preparing to be shot down in flames, Ian.

Ah-ha. Got it, Ian.

Best,

D

Each individual, esp in industrial nations, causes a certain amount of CO2 to be emitted. That contributes to damage now, in the near future, and most of it up to about 100 years, but because 25% of our personal emissions could be in the atmosphere up to 100,000 years – if damage is still being done by excess CO2 at that time (assuming there is any life around), our personal damage may continue over all those 100,000 years (from present to then).

What that means for me is that what I had thought was a small amount of damage per pound of CO2 I emit (thinking all CO2 lasted only up to 100 years in the atm), may be much greater damage, and all the more reason to reduce the emissions I am personally responsible for (in my energy, resource, & produce consumption).

In other words, there is more reason to reduce, because of the potentially much greater harm (albeit spread our over 100,000) years. I guess because I don’t have children I feel a bit more connected to all people, even those who might be living (& struggling) 100,000 years from now.

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