Fracked Shale Could Sequester Carbon Dioxide 235
MTorrice writes "The same wells that energy companies drill to extract natural gas from shale formations could become repositories to store large quantities of carbon dioxide. A new computer model suggests that wells in the Marcellus shale, a 600-sq-mile formation in the northeastern U.S. that is a hotbed for gas extraction, could store half the CO2 emitted by the country's power plants from now until 2030."
Why not.. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's something ironic about extracting oil, burning it, and then putting the resultant CO2 back in it's place. Unfortunately, if this is only in the computer model stage it will probably be 2030 before it even has a chance of getting implemented.
That is, unless we come up with some catchy slogans to rally behind, I suggest: "Make the world a soda, carbonate our shale!"
you stupid monkeys are pathetic (Score:3)
There's something ironic about extracting oil, burning it, and then putting the resultant CO2 back in it's place.
That must be the most roundabout way possible to use that fusion reactor that's just 8 minutes away.
Sounds like a great plan. (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's store the next 30 years worth of excess carbon dioxide in huge underground chambers
so that instead of gradual climate change that the environment can adjust to and compensate
for we instead have a massive catastrophic climate change when one of those chambers
springs a leak.
Not chambers (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Uh... its miles down, under millions of PSI. The CO2 is in liquid form under that kind of pressure. The kind of earthquake it would take to release that would be so large, the CO2 would be the least of our worries.
Re: (Score:3)
It would be more accurate to say over a kilometer rather than miles and thousands of PSI instead of millions. But the net result of it being extremely unlikely to be released is still true.
Re:Sounds like a great plan. (Score:4, Interesting)
Rock hasn't been known for its impenetrability to water, otherwise basements wouldn't need sump pumps.
Of course, CO2 + water = carbonic acid, which has a tendency to dissolve rock. We will likely see those chambers leak sooner or later.
Re:Sounds like a great plan. (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of people forget that material properties change with pressure and depth. The first time the Alvin submersible found black smokers (active volcanic vents) on the mid-oceanic ridge, they moved in for a closer look. They found out afterwards that they'd recorded temperatures close to 400 C. The melting point of Alvin's portholes was far less than 400 C [whoi.edu], and they would've died if they'd stayed there too long. People see liquid water, and just assume the temperature is below 100 C and therefore the glass portholes are safe. But at the depth they were at, the pressure is much higher and thus the boiling point of water was around 400 C.
I did some quick research. Fracking is typically done 2-3 km underground. The ground temperature at that depth [mpoweruk.com] is about 75 C. The pressure at that depth [spec2000.net] is about 200-300 bar (atmospheres).
Looking at the phase diagram for CO2 [wikipedia.org], that's in the supercritical fluid phase. So the CO2 wouldn't need to be pressurized at that depth like it has to be at sea level. The ground pressure alone would be enough to prevent it from reverting to a gas, and thus it would be impossible for the chamber to catastrophically spring a leak. The only way that could happen is if another drilling operation tapped the chamber and suffered a blowout. Normally that doesn't happen - they keep the bore filled with heavy mud to maintain the pressure at depth. But occasionally (e.g. Deepwater Horizon) there is a blowout, the pressurized mud is lost, and the liquid/gas underneath is then squeezed out by the surrounding rock through the "straw" (bore). I don't see this as being any more risky than regular oil drilling. If anything it's safer since CO2 is pretty inert and won't catch fire. The biggest risk would be the CO2 gas pooling in a depression and suffocating anyone/anything inside.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No one intends to ACTUALLY solve climate change this way. That'd cost MONEY!
Not if you get creative, this could be funded entirely by carbon offset credits.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that plants can't concentrate pure O2...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Carbon Dioxide isn't flammable.
Instead what you'll get is the gas pressure rupturing the well casing at the water table line and we'll all have fizzy water. And then asphyxiate.
I believe the grandparent meant flammable water from the Fracking use to empty out the shale so the CO have eventually be placed inside.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah...except it it doesn't [cbsnews.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Carbon Dioxide isn't flammable.
Instead what you'll get is the gas pressure rupturing the well casing at the water table line and we'll all have fizzy water. And then asphyxiate.
You do realize that, in addition to casing, there's several inches of concrete isolating the ground water from the wellbore, right?
Right (Score:5, Insightful)
What could possibly go wrong? [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
We could always ask Yoda [youtube.com]. I hear he lives in a swamp where the sequestered CO2 comes up all the time.
BSG was right... (Score:2, Funny)
What is with all this fracking schist?
fracking tag? (Score:2)
Not Good (Score:2)
Co2 in water forms a mild acid. It could be rather dramatic in its effects on water quality and also if limestone is present or several other kinds of rock the reaction might be rather violent over time. Try growing your house plants on carbonated water and you will rapidly see the problem. Maybe we could pump enough Coke syrup down with the CO2 so that the Earth could spew an interesting beverage. Let's rank the notion of down pumping CO2 as absurd.
Re: (Score:2)
Carbonated water - It's What Plants Crave!
Yeah, so besides pushing in toxic who-knows-what to get at the gas we will add in tremendous amounts of some who knows what it will do CO2 back into to the mix. So, now the earths surface is like some giant rug we are sweeping our grime into.
Re: (Score:2)
Co2 in water forms a mild acid. It could be rather dramatic in its effects on water quality and also if limestone is present or several other kinds of rock the reaction might be rather violent over time. Try growing your house plants on carbonated water and you will rapidly see the problem. Maybe we could pump enough Coke syrup down with the CO2 so that the Earth could spew an interesting beverage. Let's rank the notion of down pumping CO2 as absurd.
Funnily enough, they're pumping metric shitloads (exact measurement) of CO2 into the ground in order to scrape the last little bits of oil off of the rock. Seems to work a treat... We call this tertiary recovery or a "CO2 flood." Nothing violent seems to be happening over time.
Shale already does sequester carbon dioxide (Score:3)
sequestration not enough (Score:2)
It isn't enough to sequestrate the CO2. Part of the sequestration will include O2 needed for life. It would be much better to plant billions of trees which free up the O2 for humans and animals. Please, do it naturally, as man made attempts are often very short sighted.
Re: (Score:2)
Could and Can, pfff. whatever. (Score:5, Insightful)
"could store half the CO2 emitted by the country's power plants from now until 2030." -- Yes, well, but that can't actually be done... Additionally, 2030 isn't very far away. If I'm going to sell my future humans down the river I would prefer them not to be alive right now -- Or more importantly: I would like to be dead long before they realize we rigged their short lot on the temporal lottery.
Here, let me demonstrate how bullshit the claim is:
Sunlight at Earth's surface could provide ALL of the energy needed by mankind for the foreseeable future.
See? It 'could'. However, CAN we overcome the greed barrier and actually do so? Not fucking likely. Could, Should and Would, CAN go fuck themselves. Let me know when these mother frackers commit a 'Will'......
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. "How much does it cost compared to other methods of generating energy?" is the question. And the answer is "More than solar and wind, making coal uncompetitive."
use plants maybe? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Good idea. Note that greenhouses often buy CO2 generators [greenhousemegastore.com] to increase plant growth.
And the increase in ambient CO2 levels is already making the Earth greener [agu.org].
Re: (Score:2)
What will you do with the carbon that the plants sequestered? Especially so that it won't rot and be returned to the atmosphere?
Sea could sequester plutonium (Score:2)
And in other news..
"The same seas that we evaporate and drive boats across could become repositories to store large quantities of plutonium. A new computer model suggests that holes in the Atlantic Ocean, a 106400000 sq-kilometres formation right next to the U.S. that is a hotbed for water, could store all the radio active waste emitted by the country's power plants from now until 2080."
0_o
It's always good (Score:2)
some with long term effect, the radiating thingies and the ones with immideate effect - odorless, colorless gas taking your breath away.
It's already being done (Score:2)
Carbon sequestration, the myth that won't die (Score:5, Interesting)
The *cost* of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is way, way too high to do this. Even with cool tech, you've got to build the power plant right next to the sequestration site -- which means getting the fuel to the site -- which means building right of way, pipelines or rail, etc. Transmission lines too. Then you take the performance hit in the generation to run the sequestration equipment.
It's cheaper to build big wind in the breadbasket, lesser wind offshore, solar on roofs and in the southwest, bits of biomass and geothermal where it works, and use transmission to move it around. What about no sun or wind? Well, it's windy or sunny someplace nearly all the time in tUSA, but yes we'd have to use our ~21GW of pumped hydro storage differently, maybe build more, maybe use electric vehicles (EVs) for storage, maybe upgrade our infrastructure to change when we demand electricity [run electric hot water heater, air source heat pumps extra when flush with renewable generation so that we use them less when we'd be short]. All of that is way cheaper than CCS, and as a bonus it won't leak the carbon later, it doesn't require creating mini earthquakes, chopping off the tops of mines, figuring out what to do with the ash, the SOx, the NOx, the Hg, and other pollutants, the nuclear waste, how to deal with water shortage or water temperature problems, and on and on and on.
Look, I've been on slashdot 15 years or so. I know the community believes in nuclear power. The answer to CCS is the same as nuclear: it's too expensive. You can argue breeder or reprocessing or any number of other things, but the age of cheap gas has killed any nuclear renaissance, and the age of plentiful cheap wind in the breadbasket, plentiful expensive wind on the coasts [where electricity is expensive anyway], and plummeting PV costs means that nuclear and coal are dead for economic reasons, it's just a matter of time.
(footnotes) I didn't bother to provide links, but you might check out "2012 Wind Technologies Market Report," the economics behind the closures of Vermont Yankee and Kewaunee, "Analysis of Drought Impacts on Electricity Production in the Western and Texas Interconnections of the United States," the recent output reductions at Pilgrim and Millstone nuclear plants due to the Cape Cod Bay and Long Island Sound water too hot for cooling, how Xcel Colorado electric utility is procuring 450 of MWs of wind and 170 MW of solar because it's cheaper than gas, coal, or nuclear, and on and on and on. We built loads of coal in the 50s and 60s, nuclear in the 70s and 80s, combined cycle natural gas units in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and now those will operate until retire, while being replaced with wind, solar, some new gas, and energy efficiency. Know why? It's the cheapest way to do things. CCS (and nuclear) aren't, not by a long shot. There's no reason to think that they will be, either.
Re: (Score:2)
To do anything with the shale on or near a power plant site would have serious seismic consequences.
I don't like the idea at all (Score:2)
I would prefer separating the C from the O2 rather than simply putting it away somewhere. And can it seriously put enough CO2 away to make a difference? I doubt it very much.
Re:interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
plus how much energy (that comes mostly from fossil fuels?) will it take to pump the carbon dioxide back into the shale? and how much energy did it take to get the natural gas out in the first place? and how much carbon dioxide did that produce?
Re: (Score:3)
plus how much energy (that comes mostly from fossil fuels?) will it take to pump the carbon dioxide back into the shale? and how much energy did it take to get the natural gas out in the first place? and how much carbon dioxide did that produce?
Does it matter?
The alternative is no sequestration. Pick your poison.
Re:interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it matters. What if the sequestration process produces more CO2 than it sequesters?
You're just following the mindless, "We HAVE to do SOMETHING, NOW!" dogma. And that's a bigger risk to our lives than climate change.
Re: (Score:3)
If a car emits 5 tons of CO2 annually, that means every day ~25-30 pounds of CO2 needs to be collected, pressurized and stored on vehicle. That's going to add up quick and it's not really something the average person can store up even to a weeks worth of I wouldn't think.
'At least' with nuclear the waste can be stored on site (but obviously w
Re: (Score:3)
Will anything else remotely practical do any of the above? No? There is your answer.
Re: (Score:2)
This statement is deeper than it seems. Assume for the sake of argument solutions will appear that do not involve massive command-amd-control takeover of the economy (we've dodged several bullets already like the BTU tax from the 1990s.)
Under the admittedly cynical theory certain leaders are more interested in command-and-control for good ol' political reasons like kickbacks, general power, or even wistful longing for the long-failed Workers of the World Unite! socialost rhetoric-as-rationale, what could w
Re: (Score:2)
You don't get it:
You don't really need to slow down oil consumption, if the CO2 thus produced is buried instead of polluting the air.
Because environmentalists had no opinion one way or another about oil before climate change became an issue, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
If the CO2 gets into the ground water (which is where your pumping it), it will turn the water acidic. Do you really want acidic water running through our limestone deposits?
No, that's not where you're pumping it. Generall speaking the ground water is shallower than 500ft. Five Hundred. The depths that they're frac'ing are generally greater than 5000. Five THOUSAND.
Re: (Score:2)
Dejavu!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
"Hey, if we screw the environment, we can store a little of the pollution we cause for a while!"
Yup, real dilemma there...
Re:interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
"Hey, if we screw the environment, we can store a little of the pollution we cause for a while!"
A while!?!? this is "from now until 2030"!!! (well, half of it).
Or we could store a percent of all CO2 emitted by the country's power plants until 2363!!!
I have no idea why they used those figures. How about, "it could store as much CO2 as the country's power plants produce in 3 years".
Sure, it's something, if it is even possible/feasible, but it's obviously not going to solve any issues, even in the near term.
Re: (Score:2)
A while!?!? this is "from now until 2030"
Keep in mind that this is essentially pumping a gas into undeground caverns and making an educated guess that it won't leak back out. Sweeping it under the rug, if you will. Note that the power plants that sequester in this way will have to be built where their emissions can be transported to such sites.
True the proposal expects the CO2 to adsorb to the rock, but how durable a bond that will be long-term, considering this shale has already been cracked to aid in the escape of gas, in that environment down
Re: (Score:3)
Well considering we already use man-made caverns to store compressed gas and it doesn't leak out... And considering the areas where fracking is occurring have also been areas where coal and gas have been previously extracted and thus is the location of a lot of existing coal and gas power plants so transportation should be relatively short.
Usually fracking is done very deep within the earth. So your worries about temperature increases are highly unlikely as well as not likely to increase the pressure in the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Portland cement absorbs CO2 when it is being produced. It's a closed cycle.
Re: (Score:3)
Portland cement absorbs CO2 when it is being produced. It's a closed cycle.
It is also baked in a kiln heated to thousands of degrees, that is usually fired with either gas or coal. Cement production is a huge net generator of CO2.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember reading that a majority of the energy used in the USA is for concrete production. Switching to locally sourced geopolymers will reduce the amount of power we need and drop us from the top per-capita energy consumer to one of the most "green" nations in the world.
It is definitely better than messing around with mercury-filled bulbs and pumping CO2 into the ground.
So the way environmentalists will go with this is to say no.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No. That CO2 was absorbed when the cement was produced.
The majority of CO2 produced in 'crete production is the heat used to make the cement and drive the endothermic reaction opposite the one you describe.
Re:interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
This. The location of the devices burning the natural gas and the location of the fracked shale deposits mean that you will either have to build a pipeline from North Dakota to New Jersey or run pressurized rail cars the same distance. Either one is very, very expensive. It is not even cost effective to transport natural gas to the end users via pipeline in many places - the stuff is still flared. Now you want to pipe the waste product back to the middle of nowhere?
Righto.
Re: (Score:3)
How so?
This plan will never happen. Carbon capture would require capture and transportation which would be expensive enough to seriously hinder the use of fossil fuel based power plants.
Re:interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
As a few others already pointed out, there is to be no clamor. The problem of pump and dump does not change because of this, and the potential for more extreme problems grow.
Let me give an example to clarify. Landfills were seen as a great savior. Bury the trash, especially in colder climates and build ski resorts on top of the fills. Michigan did this. The first year was cool, a new village sprouted up around the fill and ski fans flocked in. Then the seepage contaminated the water supply of not just the small village, but water supplies for hundreds of thousands of suburbanites and it all closed down. Nobody wanted to ski in turd smelling snow, let alone live near it or drink the water from the areas around it.
The better solution would have been to extend and grow recycling operations, limit massive dumping by large companies to paid officials to look the other way, and help society be more aware of their impact. You know, kind of like we started to do in the early 70s and forgot about due to massive add campaigns and cheap toys.
What will pumping CO2 into the ground get us? Temporary reprieve from increasing CO2 levels (with thinning green areas to process that back in to Oxygen)? What happens if the well leaks? Massive deaths from O2 starvation?
Now if they could remove the O2 and put that back in the air and dump the remaining Carbon down the tubes, well in a few million years we'd have lots of diamonds. They won't or can't, so there is no use in investing lots of time and effort into this type of project.
Society needs to stop accepting bandaid fixes to problems that people are creating in order to make massive profits from society. The people making profits should be re-investing that into making society at least remain stable instead of constantly shitting in the wells.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not easy, it's very expensive and time consuming. This is why I was rather generic in my response. It's kind of like the ole CO2 scrubbers. They made a mess, reduced efficiency, costs a whole lot of money, and required lots of maintenance.
In a technical sense you are correct that we "can" separate. In a business sense, you "can't".
Re: (Score:2)
Now if they could remove the O2 and put that back in the air and dump the remaining Carbon down the tubes, well in a few million years we'd have lots of diamonds.
And once you've finished burying the carbon we could immediately start mining it to burn (combine with oxygen to release energy) in existing coal (aka carbon) burning power plants!
They won't or can't, so there is no use in investing lots of time and effort into this type of project.
As long as we get energy by burning naturally sequestered carbon based fossil fuels in solid, liquid, and gaseous forms and producing gaseous CO2 we will be fighting an increasingly inefficient uphill battle.
Re: (Score:2)
O2 concentration in the air is something like 28%
CO2 concentration is something like 400ppm, that is 0.4% if I made no errorr with the many zeros.
So converting CO2 back to O2 and Cx is not really that important.
Re: (Score:2)
help society be more aware of their impact
Smelly snowballs and yellow snow were not enough, huh?
Re: (Score:2)
I was not wrong, you are trying to nitpick.
If we dump CO2 underground, that CO2 does not sit in the atmosphere. Obviously it does not remove CO2 from the Universe, but our "air" and atmosphere is temporarily showing improvement.
If O2 levels drop to 20.5% human productivity goes down. This is a natural phenomenon. We heal slower, require more rest, and can not exert as much energy. At .5% it would be a measurable impact on human health and energy. Of course if we continue to slide downward mammals start
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure you're not confusing CO2 poisoning with CO poisoning? http://chemistry.about.com/od/medicalhealth/a/Carbon-Dioxide-Poisoning.htm [about.com]
The latter is HIGHLY unlikely.
Re: (Score:2)
Come now, if I said only "won't" then someone would have preached about how it's not cost prohibitive. If I said only "can't" then technically I would be wrong. I did not think it important to write a dissertation on the merits of both arguments
Re: (Score:2)
You make it sound like it was my idea..
How about not cherry-picking worst-case scenarios and really talking about solutions?
I hinted various solutions through my post. How about you read it and stop cherry picking what you want to bitch about?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not at all. There are many other ways to sequester carbon so this particular method isn't very valuable. Next, what's the value of a place to store carbon if nobody's capturing it? Nobody's actually doing carbon sequestration anywhere in the world yet, as far as I'm aware.
False choice. (Score:2)
It kind of puts the environmentalists in a bit of a clamor. They wont know which way to go with this
Not really. Sweeping environmental problems under the rug not only doesn't address the core issues but ignores that things have a way of slipping out from under the rug when no one's paying attention anymore.
Additionally, carbon sequestration is expensive and generates no sellable product. It's like dealing with mine tailings. As soon as a company no longer has to watch it to take care of accidental spills and leaks, they won't, leaving the government to pick up the bag.
Worse, one of the advantages of na
Re: (Score:3)
Not really. Nobody's going to pay money to put carbon money back into the ground after breaking it out of there. The energy companies sure ain't gonna do it, and if the government tries, assholes will piss themselves in fury that money is being spent to "sequester" something that they don't think is a problem in the first place.
The use of the hole after the fact is the least of the problems with fracking.
Re: (Score:2)
any scheme oil companies come up with to try this is likely to pollute just as badly.
At least they'll be drinking Perrier.
(Perrier that tastes of brimstone...)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
NPR [npr.org] and ProPublica [propublica.org] have done a few pieces regarding this topic that I think you should check out before writing off the phenomena completely.
Re:interesting (Score:5, Informative)
I listened to the NPR piece by Diane Rehm and it is SOOOO horribly biased. She only asks the one not very official spokesperson for fracking loaded questions and then cuts him off and lets the director of GasLand (and sequel) pretty much give a sales pitch on his movie. I'm not saying there aren't environmental consequences from fracking, but when the director of the documentary is saying the EPA, USGS, and other government studies showing the fracking isn't to blame can't be believed, then who DO you believe?
http://www.iogcc.state.ok.us/Websites/iogcc/Images/2009StateRegulatoryStatementsonHydraulic%20Fracturing.pdf [state.ok.us]
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3489 [usgs.gov]
Now I'm not saying oil and gas extraction can't pollute the water supply. It can and frequently does. But even if there is contamination around fracking sites, it isn't due to the fracking itself, but poor environmental controls in the supporting operation. The key here is not to fight fracking, but to fight to keep all the processes associated with well drilling within the rules of existing environmental regulations.
Blaming fracking for well contamination is equivalent to blaming GM because your gas tank leaks. (Obligatory Slashdot car analogy)
Re: (Score:2)
Well-fuckin'-said, man!
Re: (Score:3)
Does it hurt to be so wrong? [cbsnews.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Except given that fracking is polluting ground water and wells, any scheme oil companies come up with to try this is likely to pollute just as badly.
Trusting the oil companies is generally a bad idea.
Trusting government is generally a worse idea. Remind me again, was it Exxon or BP that was setting off above-ground nuclear explosions, a while back? Heck, mushroom clouds from the Nevada desert tests were such a common sight in Las Vegas that one of the casinos (the Stardust) had a sign partly inspired by them.
Re:interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Because pollution is something that never ever existed anywhere and was entirely made up by Liberals, rather than being produced by corporations?
If you bother to read TFA you will see what a petrochemical industry researcher says about this computer model: "the model does not consider several important factors, including the buoyancy of the gases, the heterogeneity of these kinds of formations, and the presence of water and other fluids, all of which will affect how much CO2 will be absorbed by fractured shale".
But you are confident that one grossly simplified computer model, without any field data to test it, is the answer?
Tell me, AC. Are you similarly convinced of the accuracy of the very thoroughly researched and comprehensively supported global climate models? Do you denounce those who doubt these models with the same profanity?
Re:interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
how would the water used in fracking get up to pollute?
It doesn't go up. It goes down. The water pollution is caused by gunk leaking from waste water surface ponds. Solution: better seals on surface ponds, more inspections of the ponds, and bigger fines for violations.
Re: (Score:2)
Were that true, they'd be perfectly happy to watch humanity kill itself, since they are so good at doing it in very inventive ways. The anti-population nutters can get a bit extreme, but run of the mill environmentalists are placing a lot of hope, not hate, towards their fellow man by trying to encourage them to help address the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Environmentalists will always find a way to hate on humans, no matter how many of their "problems" you solve. Nothing short of mass human suicide will ever appease them. They'll just find some new corporate boogeyman to bitch about.
Corporations will always find a way to hate on humans, no matter how many of their "problems" you solve. Nothing short of mass human suicide will ever appease them. They'll just find some new environmental boogeyman to bitch about.
Pointless, no?
Re: (Score:2)
Heh, yeah. More like 95,000 sq miles.
Re: (Score:2)
According the the WIKIPEDIA LINK IN THE ARTICLE the shale covers approximately 104,000 square miles which seems much more realistic. Come on editors. If you are going to link the source, you know actually check the source!
Re: (Score:2)
At least they didn't link to Wikipedia.
Re: (Score:3)
The wiki article linked says "The Marcellus covers several times more area,[138] stretching 600 miles (970 km)", which is to say the linear measurement is 600 miles. The summary is wrong. I think it's the first incorrect summary I've seen here in at least a half hour.
Re: (Score:2)
Any time I hear about underground CO2 sequestration, I think about the Lake Nyos Incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos [wikipedia.org]
Pumping mass amounts of CO2 underground would be a disaster waiting to happen.
Jeez
I'd heard of the lake and its acidic nature... but never heard about the 1,700 people that it asphyxiated. That sucks on toast.
Re: (Score:2)
Except what happens with sequestration in the proper bedrock is the CO2 reacts and forms carbonate and bicarbonate. Solids. And stable.
Re: (Score:2)
So far, there is no proof to demonstrates that CO2 has any negative effects on the atmosphere or the ecosystem.
Try this little experiment then: Seal yourself in an airtight room and breath. Record results.
Re: (Score:2)
Mind if I bring some tanks of Algae and a sunlamp with me?
With out CO2, we would all be dead... starting with the plants.
Re: (Score:2)
Mind if I bring some tanks of Algae and a sunlamp with me?
With out CO2, we would all be dead... starting with the plants.
Only if the amount of algae is less than what would be required for homeostasis. After all, we're trying to simulate what would happen with an overabundance of CO2.
Re: (Score:3)
So far, there is no proof to demonstrates that CO2 has any negative effects on the atmosphere or the ecosystem.
None? If you have convinced yourself of that, then there is nothing that can be said to disprove it.
The infrared absorption profile of CO2 is well-known. So is the reaction of CO2 and water. If you still persist in believing that global warming and ocean acidification aren't real, then you have probably invested yourself heavily in that belief in spite of the evidence surrounding you. No amount of proof will satisfy a zealot.
Re: (Score:2)
Gasland is crap [cbsnews.com]