Where to Put the Pollution We Make

The Brits are getting more and more vocal about global warming and trying to do something about it (US must act over climate says Queen). The plan currently being pushed in the UK ( and more quietly in the US) is carbon sequestration. (Carbon sequestration is a collection of theories about somehow capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) in plants, soil, or pumping under high pressure into the deep ocean or underground.) And well there might be alarm moving into panic as the news gets worse and worse about the pace of global warming and the sensitivity of the planet to CO2 increases.

Unfortunately, carbon sequestration might not be the answer. While it is being held out as a hope (or a stop gap), it is hardly a proven approach and there are serious questions about the potential ramifications.Various studies are underway on different methods of capturing CO2 and "storing" it somewhere. Tests of using iron in the oceans to help certain phytoplankton capture and retain CO2, raise questions of iron balance, throwing off the balance of lowest level food sources, and eco-system interaction. Similar issues arise with various ideas for trapping and storing in soil and terrestrial plants. Plans to capture CO2 and pump it into the deep ocean bed or into caverns on land, also have unknown impacts and effectiveness.

In other words, the pressure is to move full speed ahead and hope that the short and long term ramifications are not too great. But it seems that they could be great indeed.

What is suspected at this point is that CO2 is part of a complex formula of climatic change and response. The mechanisms are unknown, but what is known is that current models cannot explain past global warming events. What research does show is the super sensitivity of the planet to CO2 changes. This has (or should have) raised alarms with the news that carbon levels have soared in the last two years. While the article attempts to downplay the findings, I can't help but believe that concern is moving to panic as everything accelerates and models can't account for the changes.

Most of the carbon sequestration plans focus on capturing CO2 primarily from electric generation, though other fixed sources might offer capture opportunities. Power generation accounts for about 1/3 of US carbon emission. Other US sources are industrial (21%), transportation (32%), and other (4%). Coal fired power generation accounts for about 80% of CO2 from power generation. Since many of the fixed sources of CO2 are not close to the ocean, and certainly far away from deep ocean, one has to wonder about the feasibility of ocean sequestration. Can you imagine the infrastructure needed to trap CO2 from coal-fired plants in the center of the US liquefying it under pressure, and then somehow transporting it from say Kansas to at least 20 miles off the east or west coasts? Further, those deep waters are (globally) mostly in international waters. Might this require some sort of cooperation with other nations? That is not a US strong point.

But carbon sequestration is not the real issue. Generation of CO2 is the issue. In other words, what needs to be addressed is not simply persistent CO2 in the atmosphere, but the use of fossil fuels creating it. It seems to me that there is very little movement to significantly reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. Indeed, across the world, use is projected to increase - dramatically. Further, it is increasing in the face of the collapse of fossil fuels.

As the US, China, Europe, and other nations focus and maneuver to extract more, there is less to work with. The remaining sources of coal, natural gas, methane, and oil, are increasingly limited and inefficient to extract. Given the growth in use of fossil fuels, they also meet the demand for shorter time spans. For example the move is on to strip the oil and gas reserves of Alaska one way or another ( Tentative Alaska Land Swap Raises Drilling Fears, Under the Radar.

A case in point is the plan to run a 3500 mile gas pipeline from Alaska's north slope to the lower 48 states. It is estimated that there are 32 trillion cubic feet of natural gas there, but US annual consumption is 22 trillion cubic feet (Energy firms benefit in US tax bill signed by Bush). Part of the $136 billion Bush corporate bonanza allows major energy firms a rapid depreciation rate on the costs of such a pipeline. And given the assumed reserve versus consumption, even with accelerated depreciation the gas could run out before the pipeline is fully depreciated.

Underlying the issues of CO2 problems, fossil fuel depletion, increasing consumption, and a plethora of linked issues is a troubling cultural tendency - if you can't see it, it is not there. There are endless examples large and small of this predilection:
- putting junk yards and dumps behind walls to obscure their presence;
- leaving a screening of trees between roadways and clearcuts
- loading nuclear waste onto missiles and shooting them into the sun (we haven't pulled this one off yet);
- or entombing nuclear waste in underground caverns (still working on this one).
- the US shipping its garbage around the planet for disposal in someone else's back yard.

Now we need to do something with the massive amounts of CO2 the burning of a diminishing supply of fossil fuels are creating. HIDE it, shift it, put the problem (and its cause) off until later. Have we reduced the production of nuclear waste? No. Have we reduced the amount of toxic pollutants? Questionable. Have we reduced the amount of plain waste? Not hardly. Have we decreased energy use - even in terms of electrical needs? No. It is growing.

Is this cultural blindness a function of belief in science and technology? Put the problem off and we'll "invent" our way out of it? Or is it a cultural tendency to not want to face the consequences of action? It is certainly more than an issue that people "don't know." My guess is that the overwhelming majority of folks in the US do know. They can easily play into the denial and rosy pictures put forward by government, corporations, and the media, but they DO know. They are just willing to not think about it. Certainly not thinking about the issues makes it much much easier to not address them - or force elected officials to do anything. Or maybe it is pure self-centered interests. With luck, none of the shit will hit the fan before I die.

But a lot of those "I s" are parents. I guess that they just put their faith in science and technology. No parent could want to see their children live through the total obliteration of life as we know it. It is just too terrible to think about it. So it is easier to not think, and easier to pretend that what we know is going to happen won't. It makes believing the propaganda (or edited spin) much, much easier. Of course, one can always hope for the "rapture" or its equivalent to sweep one away before one has to deal with the consequences of following a very short path to destruction.

So let's sequester carbon dioxide, and if there are environmental impacts of that little ploy, hopefully by the time they hit we will have figured out something else - like teleportation to distant planets that have not been exhausted by another foolhardy bunch of folks.

Sources & Resources
Carbon Dioxide Sources

Ocean Carbon Sequestration Abstracts, Office of Science, Dept. of Energy

Carbon Sequestration R&D, Office of Fossil Energy, Dept. of Energy.

10/31/04 Carrell, Independent/UK, UK to pump greenhouse gas under sea

10/29/04 Leahy, Wired News, Earth Reveals Its Sensitive Side

10/11/04 Browne, Guardian/UK, Climate fear as carbon levels soar

10/28/04 Justin Scheck, Mother Jones, Under the Radar

10/21/04 Yereth Rosen, Reuters, Tentative Alaska Land Swap Raises Drilling Fears

10/22/04 Reuters, Energy firms benefit in US tax bill signed by Bush

Posted by rowan at October 31, 2004 11:06 AM | TrackBack | [eMail this article!] |