Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; The Lake Nyos disaster demonstrated an uncontrolled urban release of concentrated CO2 has the potential to kill millions of people. But this risk doesn’t seem to bother companies chasing funding.
At least 475 carbon-capture lobbyists attending Cop28
Exclusive: Figures reveal growing push by fossil fuel sector for technologies that scientists say will not stop global heating
Nina Lakhani in Dubai @ninalakhaniFri 8 Dec 2023 23.33 AEDT
Cop28 organisers granted attendance to at least 475 lobbyists working on carbon capture and storage (CCS), unproven technologies that climate scientists say will not curtail global heating, the Guardian can reveal.
The figure was calculated by the Centre for Environmental Law (Ciel) and shared exclusively with the Guardian, and is the first attempt to monitor the growing influence of the CCS subset of the fossil fuel industry within the UN climate talks.
CCS, or CCUS (which includes “utilisation”) is being pushed hard at the summit by fossil fuel and other high-pollution industries, as well as by the biggest greenhouse gas emitting countries. CCS backers say the technologies will enable polluters to trap carbon dioxide emissions and bury them under the ground or the seabed, or use the CO2 in the production of fuels or fertilisers.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/08/at-least-475-carbon-capture-lobbyists-attending-cop28
The Lake Nyos disaster has shown us what an uncontrolled release of concentrated CO2 can do to the surrounding area.
Lake Nyos disaster, Cameroon, 1986: the medical effects of large scale emission of carbon dioxide?
P. J. Baxter, M. Kapila, and D. Mfonfu
Abstract
Carbon dioxide was blamed for the deaths of around 1700 people in Cameroon, west Africa, in 1986 when a massive release of gas occurred from Lake Nyos, a volcanic crater lake. The clinical findings in 845 survivors seen at or admitted to hospital were compatible with exposure to an asphyxiant gas. Rescuers noted cutaneous erythema and bullae on an unknown proportion of corpses and 161 (19%) survivors treated in hospital; though these lesions were initially believed to be burns from acidic gases, further investigation suggested that they were associated with coma states caused by exposure to carbon dioxide in air. The disaster at Lake Nyos and a similar event at Lake Monoun, Cameroon, two years previously provide new information on the possible medical effects of large scale emissions of carbon dioxide, though the presence of other toxic factors in these gas releases cannot be excluded.
Read more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1836556/
The reason only 1700 people were killed is Lake Nyos is sparsely inhabited – probably because every few centuries the lake belches CO2 and other volcanic gasses, and kills everyone living nearby. Some of the people who died were over 10 miles from the lake at the time of death.
Imagine a similar CO2 belch from a carbon capture containment facility near a major city. CO2 is heavier than air, so it hugs the ground. The released CO2 would spread across the land, creating an unbreathable layer of gas across a vast area, suffocating everyone unlucky enough to be caught in the affected region. People in tall buildings or on hills might survive, or anyone smart enough to realise what was happening in time to flee the gas cloud, but anyone caught at street level would have very little chance of escape.
A serious city scale carbon capture plan would have to capture CO2 on a similar scale to the lake Nyos disaster every few weeks.
Industry safety reassurances are unconvincing in my opinion, because there would be immense pressure on capture sites. Operating a demonstration plant is very different from attempting to operate a full scale system. In my opinion a full scale capture system would suffer inevitable backups and endemic near capacity storage in holding centres, as capture sites reached their geological limit and the difficulties handling such an immense volume of CO2 disrupted the chain of distribution. In my opinion, it would only be a matter of time until a terrorist attack or accident at one of these holding centres leads to an immense loss of life.
Well, it is safer than hydrogen.
Probably so since hydrogen is flammable, but presumably proper engineering controls will be used to mitigate risks in either case.
Hydrogen is lighter than air so disperses quickly and I suspect is unlikely to ignite after a very short period of time after escaping.
The Hindenburg was spectacular and deadly but video of it doesn’t show ignition spreading much beyond the immediate area of the airship.
Yes. Hydrogen goes up. As did most of the flames.
I have also read, but cannot confirm, that the majority of Hindenburg fatalities was due to people jumping out and hitting the ground. Waiting until they were closer the ground might have helped (not that I would want that choice).
Hydrogen has very wide flammability limits – 5% to 75%. The maximum explosion power occurs when the hydrogen becomes well mixed with air and the hydrogen/oxygen balance is close to ideal. Such explosions are very rapid and powerful. When a release of concentrated H2 occurs and an ignition source is present a conflagration (not an explosion) occurs as soon as the hydrogen concentration in the area of the ignition source reaches about 75% which essentially consumes the available oxygen so the process is slowed as the hydrogen continues to mix with oxygen. This is what occurred with the Hindenburg.
Worst case for any flammable gas leak is a relatively slow build up of gas in a confined area which allows for a large volume of well mixed gas/air when the concentration reaches the lower flammability limit at an ignition source. This is the typical scenario when you see a house blown to bits due to a gas leak.
Yes. Some decades ago a house next to my primary school blew up due to a gas leak.
The house was not habitated for several days prior to the event, allowing the gas/air ratio to reach a critical point.
Here’s one to consider.
Let’s say that a power plant dumps CO2 into the ground using a large capture system and a large compressor to force the gas into the deep rock strata. If that pipe were damaged or ruptures then the compressed gas from underground will leak out. What would stop all the gas that has been pumped into the ground over the months/years from coming back out?
Nothing.
Of course, the first response will be…. there would be a shut off valve just before it goes into the ground…. Then imagine the burst on the ground side of that valve.
Anyone want to live near to a gas storage tank that can’t be shut off?
I’m not an advocate for wasting energy capturing CO2 that otherwise could help feed us. However, it’s my understanding that the intention would be to dissolve the CO2 into brine that has a massive capacity to accept it, rather than to simply compress it and force it into voids in the rock strata. Once dissolved it would only outgas from being heated, much like producing carbonated soft drinks.
It’s an incandescently stupid idea, but I suspect not so dangerous as being portrayed here.
I wonder how many ‘green’ hurdles you would have to jump through to pump salt water into the ground….. The potential for contamination of the native aquifers would be immense.
And why aren’t the same rules applicable for this CO2 dumping function as are currently applied to fracking, (eg UK, earthquake limits, etc).
And yes, I also see this as a waste of energy. Let the plants thrive.
They wouldn’t be injecting brine, it would be in sites where the brine already exists. Just injecting the CO2 into pre-existing brine.
I’ll leave it to David Middleton to comment on that although he’s probably not paying attention. I am just going from memory on some of his earlier articles.
“Well, it is safer than hydrogen.”
No Tom, not to humans or animals.
CO2 is a heavier than air asphyxiant gas, so as in the Lake Nyos example it will spread for miles killing all air-breathing creatures.
Hydrogen is lighter than air and, therefore, disperses quickly upward; if it ignites, the heat blast is also mainly upward. ( Hindenburg ) Only things/creatures in close proximity to the detonation point will be affected.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse3.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.41qV12KgaYJ9MgeghDwJhwHaF7%26pid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=eb1dbdad80015859e586dd4b916181bd8850fa9fa8decd927a1e8d7c32dbafa8&ipo=images
Hydrogen is explosive over an appallingly wide range of air mixtures, leaks readily, and embrittles most metals.
One would need rather large quantities of CO2 to be an aphyxiant.
“One would need rather large quantities of CO2 to be an aphyxiant.”
As you would find in a CCS facility.
***
“CO2 does create an immediate threat to life at a concentration of only
15% in air” from …
https://www.hse.gov.uk/carboncapture/assets/docs/major-hazard-potential-carbon-dioxide.pdf
Which is 150,000 ppm – a long way from current atmospheric levels!
But in a CCS facility, it’s 100% = 1,000,000 ppm
Hazards are often situationally dependent. It’s probably safe to say that if Lake Nyos had burped hydrogen it would have been uneventful.
I work with hydrogen and CO2 but I’m more fearful of fire and explosions than asphyxiation in my lab settings. There are many Chinese working nearby and they tend to exhibit lax safety standards.
Below is an example of a hydrogen explosion in a lab resulting from stupidity.
https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/web/2016/04/Spark-pressure-gauge-caused-University.html
The oceans, which hold 70 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere, are at equilibrium with the atmosphere and will just replace the CO2 taken out of the atmosphere. The Grand Solar Minimum should start cooling the oceans in a few years and that will allow the oceans to suck up more CO2.
I’ve heard that figure before I wonder if that takes into account the total mass of all carbon species.
The important factor, IMO, is the rate at which the CO2 is taken up by the oceans. The total ocean capacity is more than enough to swallow all human emissions without indigestion.
It is a few years now since anyone mentioned Kevin Trenberth’s “missing heat”. That is, the heat that he and whatsisface in the UK privately agreed was the missing heat rendering the models totally unfit for purpose.
Trenberth later put forward the hypothesis that the missing heat was somehow finding its way into the deep ocean.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that the missing carbon dioxide might also find its way to the same place.
Michael, agree.
Mother Nature’s oceans are all the carbon capture we will ever need.
Current thinking is sinks increase proportionally with ATM CO2 increases and its oceanic residence and adjustment times are a fraction of what was believed a decade ago. Harde explained it in 2018.
When I send Harde to academics they don’t attack Harde’s equations, they simply report how his peer review had been flawed and withdrawn (Political corruption from the Left). Academia thinks Harde shouldn’t have been published. Cancel Culture on steroids.
It seems like Trenberth more often pushed a narrative than worked to generate truthful data.
Henry’s Law does NOT apply when there is a reaction between the gas and the liquid, as is the case with CO₂ and water. The gas becomes ‘Carbonic Acid’
Chatelier’s Principle (the 2nd Law also Entropy) do apply
Chatelier states that an alkaline thing (the ocean) will NEVER spontaneously release an acidic thing (CO₂ in water) and thus make itself more alkaline – any more than a cloud of CO₂ and a puddle of water will never, of their own volition, return to being a tankful of gasoline.
Don’t tell anyone but that would be a perfect way of ‘disappearing’ VAST AMOUNTS of CO₂
Simply run your CO₂ pipeline into the ocean and pump the stuff into it.
Because the ocean is sitting in a basin of basic/metal-based rocks, its has near infinite ‘alkalinity’ and will soak up any amount of CO₂
Just off the shore of Martha’s Vineyard ought to do it, but don’t place the outlet too deep as we don’t want to do much compression.
Peta, don’t forget the corals.
But the truly stunning number is the amount of carbon that has been sequestered from the atmosphere and turned into carbonaceous rocks. 100,000,000 billion tons, that’s one quadrillion tons of carbon, have been turned into stone by marine species that learned to make armour-plating for themselves by combining calcium and carbon into calcium carbonate.
– Dr. Patrick Moore – one of the Founders of Greenpeace
Isn’t the situation in the ocean quite complex? Am I right in thinking that Carbon Dioxide doesn’t fully dissociate in water and there’s a dynamic equilibrium between carbonate + hydroxyl ions and carbon dioxide + water? Then there’s bicarbonate, sodium, chloride, potassium, calcium ions in the mix.
Yes, it’s complex and technically carbon dioxide doesn’t dissociate at all. It reacts with water though.
Here are some notes on sea water that lists the most relevant ionic species. https://aslopubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.4319/lo.1967.12.1.0176
It still works on a short enough time scale, but yes there are competing equilibria. It’s the old kinetic vs. thermodynamic control situation.
Solar minimum you muppet, not ‘grand’ get the basics right!
I’ve also wondered why not pump the CO2 into the deep, cold ocean where the colder what would be able to absorb more CO2 – without having to compress it or cool it dramatically. However I knew that piping to the ocean isn’t free, and pumping deep below would also have to fight the water pressures at depth. The plan to inject the CO2 into brine seems perfect for adapting to ocean repositories because it would naturally sink.
However, CCS is only good for feeding at the idiot politicians’ climate alarmist feeding trough – 420ppm is too close to the 180ppm where photosynthesis stops and too far away from the 1500ppm that plants find ideal.
Anyone who genuinely cares about the environment should know that and should be saying “damn the rising sea levels – the plants are more important.”
The fact that the alarmists aren’t doing that, and freaking out about anything fossil fuel related, shows they are a anti-oil company cult born out of all the anti-oil rhetoric that came out from governments starting in the 70s, blaming oil companies for the failings of their foreign and energy policies. It’s basically an out of control bigotry.
Who isn’t trying to stick their snout into the CoP28 trough? I mean, even the prostitutes flock there. Funnily enough, that sort of thing goes right under the radar. But it’s always there.
The whole thing is a pretty exclusive [and expensive] jolly.
Is “flock” the correct spelling?
That depend on what you want to say
They are all prostitutes.
It’s just that the ‘working girls‘ are at least 100% honest about what they do and why they do it
Yes, but you gotta admit that it is green…really green around Lake Nyos.
Apparently, many people survived. It sounds like hydrogen sulfide and perhaps sulfur dioxide were also contributing factors, but of course all the blame is on carbon dioxide.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gas-cloud-kills-cameroon-villagers
Hydrogen Sulphide is unlikely to come from a volcano, it is far too reactive. It also (slightly) dissolves in water.
Sulphur Dioxide is incredibly water-soluble so would never have emerged from the lake.
Many survived because ‘all’ that happens with CO₂ ‘poisoning’ is Hypoxia
What happens there is that the gas, without your realising, sends you initially into a very light-headed or ‘drunken’ state and then you fall asleep.
It doesn’t hurt and you are totally unaware of it happening.
The ‘falling asleep’ is your protection mechanism in that you go into a ‘low Oxygen requirement‘ state.
Hence if you were on the edge of the cloud of gas and it either passed quickly or didn’t reach sufficient concentration, you would have just gently slumbered throughout the whole episode.
and patently, survived.
Have been around volcanoes, geysers, hot springs? H2S and SO2 react to form elemental sulfur. They are all in equilibrium.
That theory doesn’t hold up if a cloud of methane emanates from the seat in front of you during a plane, train or bus trip.
The law of unintended consequences – when will these idiots learn that they can’t play God
What could be a take aim and carefully shoot yourself in both feet.
Carbon Capture and Storage and Sun Dimming are tried in parallel to see which works
“Where there is a trough, there will be pigs” – Used in a William Happer talk, can’t remember who he was quoting
How many people have been killed by nuclear reactor failures?
1,700 killed by CO2 in a single, geographically isolated Earth burp yet the Loony Toon mob claim nuclear is a threat to mankind.
How do these people manage to survive day to day when they can’t conduct a simple sanity test on their thought processes?
To be fair, they do also claim that CO2 is a threat to mankind.
Totally agree about Loony Toon description though.
But by the shonky hypothesis of global atmospheric heat generation, not by suffocation.
And referring to me earlier post, if any of these bozo’s thought about it for more than a nanosecond they just might consider the levels at which atmospheric CO2 must reach to become a threat to mankind:-
150ppm begins to kill all meaningful life, and multiple tens of thousands of pmm kills mammalian life.
At the moment earth exists around 250ppm from absolute, complete certainty of planetary desertification were atmospheric CO2 to fall to 150ppm. That’s not conjecture, climate models or MSM hysterics, that’s a 100% racing certainty.
What happens between 410ppm and multiple tens of thousands of CO2 ppm is largely conjecture, until we reach the outer boundaries of course, which is never going to happen.
Personally, even were the current hysterical claims of global catastrophe remotely plausible, I’m happy to take my chances that they are far less catastrophic than the 100% certainty the planet will just shrivel up and die below 150ppm.
Yep, it kinda reminds me of how I view my array of blood tests results –
out of range highs or lows readings appear in red figures, acceptable results in black.
It would take a mighty shift in conditions for Earth’s CO2 reading to return a red number for out-of-range high, but not much at all for it to return a red number for out-of-range LOW.
Watched a documentary about Lake Kivu and the methane it holds. The other gas is the amount of CO2 in the lake.
Africa is extracting the methane for electricity but any misstep could allow the CO2 to escape.
The Rift Valley maybe allowing methane to seep up into the lakes dotted along it.
Given that the entire fake global warming enterprise seems to have, as its ultimate goal, the depopulation of Earth, I suspect the proponents see the possible mass kill off that might accompany a CO2 leak as more of a feature than a flaw. We should not avoid the fact that the CAGW religion is linked very closely to the belief by radical environmentalists that humans are a plague on Earth to be rapidly reduced through policies promoted by unelected bureaucrats who simultaneously insulate themselves and other elites from those same policies.
But the idiot clowns are going to take themselves ‘down with the ship’
Almost everything they propose puts huge extra pressure on the Biosphere, esp NetZero
The Biosphere is already ‘Bleeding To Death’ and we all say that around here almost daily when we allude to CO₂ being ‘plant food’
Some might alter that slightly to say that CO₂ is the Life-Blood of the biosphere and hence, the ever rising levels in the atmosphere are = Planet Earth bleeding to death.
We are doing that by destroying the things that absorb CO₂ for 12 months of the year (perennial plants) and replacing them with things that only absorb for 2 months or 3 months at most = annual plants like wheat, corn, rice, soya, cabbages, beans, potatoes etc etc etc)
Even the remaining perennial plants are put under immense pressure because modern farming, city building, land drainage and tree-chopping are systematically removing water from all the land masses we occupy.
We know that because High Pressure cyclonic weather systems now descend and remain stuck over all the main continents now. They arrive earlier and earlier in the year and stay for longer and longer.
It does not rain under cyclonic systems so the remaining perennials are thus in near-permanent drought and cannot grow anywhere near as fast as they would otherwise do
(We artificially ‘irrigate’ the annuals so they’re OK)
Yes many of the things people do to “help” the environment are ill considered and ultimately cause more harm. More importantly if we remove the foundations of modern society, over eight billion people will be scrambling about trying to feed and warm themselves and their families with whatever nature offers leading to perpetual conflict and death over rapidly dwindling resources. The natural environment would be devastated and human civilization would collapse completely when every twig is fuel for a fire and every scrap of protein is sustenance for the starving.
Modern energy systems have allowed us to escape from the long touted dangers of resources limits with a growing population. There are no real limits now with human technology and social systems. We feed far more people more effectively while using less and less land and water. We lower our footprint on natural lands as we urbanize, and we have effectively solved the long touted fear of the “population explosion” as people naturally limit their family size when their standards of living improve. Human population is expect to stop growing and begin shrinking mid century and most developed populations are already on the downward slide.
What plants soak up co2 in January in the north????
Please stop posting your wild-ass crap unless you provide some links to prove what you’re saying, especially about the high pressure cyclone systems. You might FEEL like something has changed but that’s just your feelings not science.
And your diatribes against modern farming are getting tiresome – you can’t feed the world without it, in fact because modern farming is so efficient, previous farm land, previous forestry land can be returned to the wild without impacting yields, as is happening right now. If the world abandoned modern technologies then the whole planet would get mowed down to farm it with 1800s tech.
Amendment 28
Section 1
Congress shall make no law to regulate,
tax, sequester or license atmospheric
carbon dioxide.
The right of the people to freely emit
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from
any source, from any place at any time
in any amount shall not be interfered with.
Section 2
All activity commercial or private within
the United States and all territory subject
to the jurisdiction thereof for the purposes
of altering climate is prohibited.
The Congress and the several States shall
have concurrent power to enforce this article
by appropriate legislation.
______________________________________
Or something like that
The problem for CCS lobbyists is that it doesn’t work.
The amine process reliably used to scrub CO2 from natural gas streams in over 10 US facilities performs very poorly in a flue gas environment.
The only operating CCS anywhere is SaskPower’s Boundary Dam unit 4. It was originally justified by selling the captured CO2 to an adjacent heavy oil field for tertiary oil recovery. After years of engineering tweaks, its uptime has never been better than 60%, and its parasitic load is 35% rather than the planned 20%. SaskPow cancelled it plan to add CC to unit 3 after the unit 4 disaster.
As a result, every single subsidized EU CCS announced project was scrapped.
And both of the proposed DOE subsidized US CCS plants (Indiana coal and Louisiana lignite) were also scrapped.
Yes.
Humans also can, and have, extracted gold from seawater. There is a vast amount of gold and wealth available to the person who can make it economic.
Chemical thermodynamics means that such a person will never exist.
Probably.
Meantime, let’s leave the trees to get on with their business.
Yes, it’s just a matter of money, time and effort, all of which are related to the difficulty of the task.
Scientists will say things like that, gold and uranium from sea water, free renewable energy, electricity too cheap to meter, ccs… engineers just shaking their heads, face palms too.
Rud, Dakota Gas, Beulah, ND, subsidiary of Basin Electric, may still be marketing carbon captured CO2, from their lignite fueled synthetic fuel plant, for enhanced oil recovery from the Midale Formation in western Saskatchewan. They did for many years; I personally helped with the early business development back in the 80’s.
I was involved in a plant that used an amine to capture CO2 from steam methane reforming.
I had not heard of it, so looked it up. Still in operation. Got a nice process map. They remove the byproduct CO2 from the synthetic methane stream near the end of the overall process after the synthetic methane is cooled, using the standard amine process just like for non-synthetic natural gas CO2 removal. Well known to work reliably in a non hot flue gas environment.
They also use the other lignite gasifier byproducts to, for example, make ammonium sulfate fertilizer.
Rud, thanks. Anhydrous ammonia and sulfur were also part of my business and marketing portfolio before they upgraded to ammonium sulfate. They have recently been negotiating with a Mitsubishi partner for producing hydrogen at the plant utilizing natural gas from the nearby Bakken shale oilfield.
CO2 is heavier than air, so it hugs the ground. The released CO2 would spread across the land, creating an unbreathable layer of gas across a vast area, suffocating everyone unlucky enough to be caught in the affected region.
That seems to be a valid analysis but others maintain that gas laws show that all gas molecules move about erratically and are eventually spread throughout the atmosphere as a result of air movements and turbulence. If, in fact, that is true, the heavier than air molecules bouncing in all directions are still under the influence of gravity. The movement of an individual molecule of CO2 upward would be somewhat less than its random movement down. A movement horizontally would also include a movement toward the earth unless gravity is somehow exempted in this case. Even if air turbulence carried CO2 or other heavy gases further up into the atmosphere, eventually those molecules would drift down toward the earth despite their random movements because of gravity.
The CO2 would eventually disperse and mix with atmospheric gases, becoming a non dangerous concentration. However, this would not be immediate and how many would die before it happened?
Yep. Lake Nyos’ CO2 belch dissipated quickly enough that there were survivors in the affected area. But there were also a large number of casualties. 5-10 minutes without breathable air is enough time to cause catastrophic loss of life.
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics works against your hypothesis.
Oh please! You know as well as I do CO2 is a well mixed gas. /s
Regions of high pressure tend to diffuse to regions of lower pressure, Elise Knittle, an Earth and planetary sciences professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, previously told USA TODAY. atmospheric pressure on Earth “is generated by moving gas molecules subject to the Earth’s gravity,” Knittle said.
Gravity draws the molecules down to the Earth, increasing pressure near the surface and decreasing it at higher elevations. This air pressure gradient is a clue that Earth’s atmosphere is maintained by gravity as opposed to pressurization in a container.
Often times the biggest news is what isn’t in the news. Everyone knows that solar panels are toxic, but that issue was not a topic at COP 28. The emphasis was all on phasing out fossil fuels. Coal makes solar panels more affordable and phasing out fossil fuels would have a hidden benefit if solar panel manufacturing could be eliminated on our inevitable transition to nuclear. Climate warriors may unknowingly be promoting carbon tetrachloride waste in their haste to eliminate CO2 “waste” (plant food).
Source 1
http://www.epa.gov › chemicals-under-tsca › epa-finds EPA Finds Carbon Tetrachloride Poses an Unreasonable Risk to …
Dec 27, 2022 · EPA identified risks for adverse human health effects, including cancer and chronic liver toxicity from long-term inhalation and dermal exposure to the chemical and liver toxicity.
Source 2
Yes, carbon tetrachloride can be a byproduct of solar panel manufacturing. During the production of polysilicon, which is a key material used in solar panels, a highly toxic compound known as silicon tetrachloride is produced12. When silicon tetrachloride is exposed to humid air, it can transform into hydrogen chloride3. The process of refining raw quartz into polysilicon leads to the creation of three to four tons of silicon tetrachloride waste for every ton of polysilicon produced1. This has raised environmental concerns, especially when considering the full life cycle of solar panels, from manufacture to disposal1. It’s important for the solar industry to manage and mitigate these environmental impacts effectively. (from Bing ask me anything mackinac.org and others),
Its not about carbon capture but rather dollar capture.
The best carbon capture would be to plant trees. Instead, the forest across the street from me was clear-cut to make way for a housing development. For days we were treated to the sound of the trees being ground into mulch which will be consumed by microorganisms that return the carbon to the atmosphere. How many trees are harvested to make junk mail which goes straight from your mailbox to your trash can?
Right! Why are junk mail and flyers, excess packaging, etc., still a thing? Wouldn’t it be easier to ban all that than trying to live without fuels?
Studying the comparative graphs, there is a strong correlation between COP conferences and rising CO2 levels.
According to the IEA there are 40 commercial carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) facilities in operation in industrial processes, fuel transformation and power generation with over 500 projects in various stages of development.
Their recent ‘World Energy Outlook 2023’ expects 400Mt of CO2 capture capacity will be online by 2030 though “current policies however are wholly insufficient to support the outcomes that match government net zero emissions pledges”
No mention of any downsides in their documents funnily enough 🙂
You can’t expect a suicide death cult to be honest about it’s beliefs.
My modest CCS proposition to the UN :
Buy billions of beer, Coca-cola, San pellegrino, Perrier, …, bottles and cans and throw them into the sea.
PS : Do not make any announcement until I purchased some shares …
Ah, but then you are contributing to rising sea level 😀
Murphy’s Law: If something can go wrong, it will.
“CO2 is heavier than air, so it hugs the ground.”
Okay I need some help here, if CO2 is heavier than air how can it be a well mixed gas?
It’s not heavy enough to prevent mixing, but mixing isn’t instantaneous. There were lots of survivors to the Lake Nyos disaster so the gas did dissipate quickly – but not quickly enough for 1700 people.
Welders who use a trickle of inert gas for protecting the metal from oxidation have to be careful about ventilation, plenty of welders have died because their inert shielding gas displaced too much air. Even though the welding gas mixes quickly with ordinary air, it’s sometimes not quick enough to prevent loss of life.
It’s rather curious that the CO2 maniacs make no mention of the issues with dry ice, which is, of course, CO2 in a solid form. As it cools whatever it’s meant to, rather then melting, it sublimates, turning into a gas without the intermediate step of liquification. An interesting incident regarding this was the shipment of a quantity of dry ice by small plane to a remote village. The sublimation of the dry ice displaced the air in the cabin of the aircraft but the pilot recognized the problem before becoming asphyxiated and threw it out of the plane.
I once managed a fairly large pilot plant to study full scale production of synthetic rutile from sand minerals like ilmenite. The aim was to strip the natural iron from ilmenite grains to make more pure TiO2, the whitest white pigment for paint and for Titanium metal used in aircraft and satellites.
We used Chlorine gas at a very hot 1,050 deg C and a couple of atmospheres pressure. Chlorine this hot can cause iron to burn, so plant was cooled by water flow.
We were on a small hill above a town with some 1,500 people. We used up Chlorine at a rate of 10 tons a day during runs typically 12 hours or longer. This daily amount of chlorine is similar to that from WWI trench warfare.
The point, finally, is that heavy, poisonous gases have been used in industry are are being used. Managers take all precautions because that is their key responsibility, but some events can happen that defy prediction.
The quality of management matters not when the worst happens and many people are killed.
…..
This business of CO2 capture and storage has many players who have never been in a position to know or imagine the real dangers. Unless the CO2 has a defined use and need like enhanced oil recovery, it is energetically and financially NOT an allowable activity in any educated society.
….
We with hands on experience simply have to resist the “ambition” of under-educated dreamers and cult members who, pathetically, have no idea of the harm that they consider as benefit. The green movement is largely populated by such dangerous fools.
Geoff S
I wish I could give you +100 – the CO2 obsession is a death cult.
to put this in perspective, there used to be a couple of chlorine gas carriers on the mersey. the company i worked for was asked by the govt to do a risk study. we worked on a scenario where the ships collided. in the worng weather conditions a cloud of chlorine gas would be released, a mile wide, and blow from lverpool to newcastle, killing everything in its path.
that report was shelved.
Everyone who does sensitive work for the British Government has to sign the Official Secrets Act, which makes being a whistleblower kind of risky.
When I first started working for the then North East Thames Regional Health Authority in the mid 1970s one of my tasks was to maintain the list of stockpiles of drugs held at various hospitals in the Region in the event of a nuclear war. I too had to sign the official secrets act.
I should point out that the stockpiles were somewhat pathetic and would have been of very little use anyway.
Eric, while CO2 sequestration has dangers, it is not as dangerous as Lake Nyos. Lake Nyos has volcanic venting of CO2 at the bottom of the lake. A disturbance in the water causes some out-gassing, which reduces hydrostatic head on the lake bottom, which causes massive out gassing. All the CO2 is released very quickly. The initial disturbance is probably the CO2 saturation point being surpassed.
In well sequestration, any release would be via a single wellhead. It would take months or years to empty a reservoir.
Ironically, a single well head is what prevents a recurrence at Lake Nyos. There is a pipe to lake bottom, that is venting CO2 continuously. This prevents a buildup of gas to deadly levels.
So, while I disagree with most CO2 sequestration, I don’t see rock reservoir sequestration, as a readily catastrophic danger. Just stupid and useless.