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Will carbondioxide storage underground work?

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Tue, 2011-01-11 13:21

#1

Brian White

Will carbondioxide storage underground work?

The canadian government spends many millions of dollars studying this carbon sequestering and storage.

Basically the technology can be summed up like this "you pump carbon dioxide underground and hope it stays there"

(Actually it just gives the money to the oil companies as a thinly disguised subsidy)

Some people have direct issues with carbon storage technology.

The link is probably early evidence that it does not always stay where they put it.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2011/01/11/sk-carbon-complaint-1101.html

I think similar results may eventually occur with fracking in the future.

What do you think?

Tue, 2011-01-11 17:30

#2

milo204

makes sense to me, if you put carbon in the sky it is deadly. so it's probably the same result if you put it in the ground. The idea that pumping our planet full of toxins is a good idea is seriously flawed. if you can pollute the air, you can pollute the earth.

Tue, 2011-01-11 18:22

#3

A_J

milo204 wrote:

makes sense to me, if you put carbon in the sky it is deadly. so it's probably the same result if you put it in the ground. The idea that pumping our planet full of toxins is a good idea is seriously flawed. if you can pollute the air, you can pollute the earth.

Your logic is flawed. The atmosphere and the earth are different things - what is harmful to one is not necessarily harmful to the other. Carbon dioxide is not inherently a problem (after all, plants need it), it poses a problem for the climate because it traps the heat provided by the sun - something it won't do under ground. Now, pumping carbon dioxide into the ground may have other adverse environmental effects, but I would wager that they have nothing to do with its properties as a greenhouse gas.

Tue, 2011-01-11 18:51

#4

Brian White

OOOO KKKK so you didn't notice in the link that it bubbled up out of the ground and killed animals? Right here in Canada.

WELL DONE TO YOU. You get 5 stars for observation.

A_J wrote:

Your logic is flawed. The atmosphere and the earth are different things - what is harmful to one is not necessarily harmful to the other. Carbon dioxide is not inherently a problem (after all, plants need it), it poses a problem for the climate because it traps the heat provided by the sun - something it won't do under ground. Now, pumping carbon dioxide into the ground may have other adverse environmental effects, but I would wager that they have nothing to do with its properties as a greenhouse gas.

Tue, 2011-01-11 19:58

#5

Life, the unive...

A_J wrote:

milo204 wrote:

makes sense to me, if you put carbon in the sky it is deadly. so it's probably the same result if you put it in the ground. The idea that pumping our planet full of toxins is a good idea is seriously flawed. if you can pollute the air, you can pollute the earth.

Your logic is flawed. The atmosphere and the earth are different things - what is harmful to one is not necessarily harmful to the other. Carbon dioxide is not inherently a problem (after all, plants need it), it poses a problem for the climate because it traps the heat provided by the sun - something it won't do under ground. Now, pumping carbon dioxide into the ground may have other adverse environmental effects, but I would wager that they have nothing to do with its properties as a greenhouse gas.

No one is suggesting it would cause climate issues in the ground. No one. What the concerns being raised are about - and have been raised since this scheme was first discussed years and years ago is that the earth is a living organism. Like any other organism we can't predict what will happen when we bombard them with a bunch of stuff. Over indulgence in anything is not a good thing. Basically what we are seeing seems to be is big earth farts caused by too much gas.

Wed, 2011-01-12 00:54

#6

Brian White

There are several places where "earth farts" kill people. Sounds like we will soon be able to add Canada to the list.

And remember that these companies chose their sites very carefully. This is the best that they can do!

There are other serious issues. Pumping CO2 underground and fracking will cause the earth to have "anal leakage". My brother lives in a granite area and he had to put a special membrane under his house so that radon leaking from the ground would not give him lung cancer.

Now imagine that ground all fracked up. Imagine the burst of radon you will get. And that will seep to the surface in one intense wave over a few years or decades instead of a few thousand years. And under the earth, there is a lot of H2O moving really slowly through the cracks. So with all that CO2 you end up with carbonic acid (under intense pressure and pretty hot too) and pushing the water up at relatively hundreds of times faster than it was moving before.

That is a recipe for pretty interesting chemestry. A lot of nasty stuff is going to bubble up to the surface and the water it bubbles up through is unlikely to be pottable. But just try stopping it! The cork will need to be a few kilometers wide.

Carbon capture and sequestering is the type of science fiction that they could never sell in a sifi book.

But our government uses it to channel hundreds of millions of our tax dollars to oil companies.

Wed, 2011-01-12 12:38

#7

Brian White

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/01/12/PromiseOfPumpingCO2/ Tyee article today on the issue.

"They also discovered the carcasses of dead ducks, a rabbit and a goat by the pit".

And much of what is said in the tyee article (by research scientists) just confirms what I wrote.

When I lived in the Netherlands, they were getting earth tremmors (fairly big ones) because they were extracting natural gas from the ground.

So if you put gas INTO the ground, you will get tremmors or quakes too. The guys who work for oil companys are aware of these risks too but when it is "other people's money" financing the project and "other people's lives" at risk when it goes wrong, people have a habit of discounting the negatives.

Wed, 2011-01-12 17:47

#8

milo204

Aj, i think pumping extremely large volumes of anything into the earth or the atmosphere is a pretty bad idea. And in this case, i think we should worry about the effect pumping it into the earth will have on the atmosphere as well since it looks like it's finding it's way to the surface anyways, thereby entering the atmosphere, no?

Wed, 2011-01-12 19:06

#9

Brian White

Lets look at the thing a tiny bit harder. 17 million tonnes are down there.

Picture one tonne at atmospheric pressure. It is a cube 8 meters high.

But thats wrong, because it is heavier than air so it will not be a cube. (and even on a still day it will mix with the air). So lets see, 8% CO2 in the air is death after 10 minutes or so.

So lets drop it to 4 meters and bring it down to 10%. Which increases the volume 10 times.

So now you have 37 meter square block of death that is 4 meters high from 1 tonne of the stuff. And once you pass out and fall over, it only needs to be a foot high to kill you. Thats what got the rabbits and ducks. Don't go camping in that area!

Don't do any foundation work there, Stay away from streams and low points because that is where it collects. watch out for spring thaws because it might collect underneath for 6 months and then burst up in one big gush.

Anyway, feel free to check out the numbers in case I underestimated.

There are 17 million tonnes down there. Imagine if it starts coming up in one particular area. You will have an invisible CO2 fountain and a no go area maybe 5 or 6 miles wide. Still cold air for a few days and it might concentrate and you will get something like world war 1 rolling poison gas effects.

Wed, 2011-01-12 19:15

Pogo

Pogo's picture

I think AJ is getting flack that he/she doesn't deserve. Nothing he said is wrong or supportive of the claim that there is no bad effects.