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I worry that this is another way to poison our Mother earth.
www.newhousenews.com/archive...105.html
Researchers Try Novel Global Warming Fix: Channel Emissions Underground
BY KEVIN COUGHLIN
c.2005 Newhouse News Service
WEYBURN, Saskatchewan -- Oil-pump jacks bob like dime-store dipping birds as a chilly wind ripples across the Canadian prairie.
The horizon yawns so far in all directions that locals joke a basketball could roll clear to Calgary, a time zone away. Listen at night, and you swear a harmonica is wailing somewhere under the spiky Northern Lights.
Yet this remote expanse of hay bales in an oil field may hold the cure for global warming. "This," says Michael Monea of the Petroleum Research Technology Centre, "is one of the most-studied 8 square kilometers in the world."
Weyburn is a proving ground for a process called "carbon sequestration."
Lessons learned here, Monea says, will show the world how to safely store millions of tons of carbon dioxide. Other commercial ventures have used CO2 to coax every last drop of crude oil from wells. Weyburn has added the environmental goal of burying the greenhouse gas.
Why bury it? The future of energy, and perhaps the future of mankind.
Make no mistake, CO2, an odorless and invisible gas, is absolutely essential for life on Earth. We just have way too much of it. The fossil fuels that drive modern life, the good life, are belching billions of extra tons of CO2 and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.
Scientists are pretty sure this spells big trouble. Already, glaciers are melting and sea levels are inching up. With every turn of the ignition switch and every bump of the thermostat, we are "poking the angry beast," says Princeton University's Robert Socolow. Our atmosphere is becoming an oven that eventually could roast us to death.
Thirty-five industrial nations (though not the United States) have agreed to modest cuts in their greenhouse emissions. Yet governments everywhere still are counting on oil, gas and coal to supply more than 85 percent of the world's energy through 2025.
No other energy source can swoop to the rescue. China and India will burn mountains of cheap coal as they too chase the good life. "It's very hard to provide the energy people want without fossil fuels, at a reasonable price," says Howard Herzog, a research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
So the trick -- for now, anyway -- may be to find slick ways of capturing and stashing the surplus CO2. Inject it into the Earth or the ocean, like adding extra fizz to your soda. Just make very sure it doesn't fizz over -- hundreds died in 1986 when CO2 came bubbling out of an African lake.
* * *
Every day, enough CO2 to fill almost 1,500 Olympic swimming pools whooshes through a 1-foot-wide pipe to Weyburn from a synthetic fuels production plant 200 miles away in North Dakota.
The CO2 gets compressed from a gas to a "supercritical" state that acts like a liquid. This fluid form is more compact and simpler to pump into Weyburn's oil wells, nearly a mile deep.
Monea's research center in the provincial capital of Regina has coordinated the $42 million U.S.-Canadian experiment since 2000.
As the bizarre-sounding research moves forward, some environmental groups worry that projects like this only stall what they see as the inevitable switch to renewable energies such as solar and wind power. "It is seen as the panacea for the fossil fuel industry," says Kert Davies, a spokesman for Greenpeace. "It's the only way out, sequestration, the only way for coal. The oil boys know as well they can't continue to be vendors of oil ad infinitum unless they figure a way to take the carbon out."
Others would prefer spending billions of federal dollars for breakthrough technologies such as nuclear fusion, the power source of the sun. But President Bush and his administration back sequestration for now, and it is gaining momentum around the world. It doesn't hurt that the United States sits on as much as 250 years worth of coal reserves, enough for generations of energy independence.
At least 40 sequestration projects are under way worldwide, says Arthur Lee, an environmental policy adviser to ChevronTexaco.
(Click the link for the rest of the story--there's more)
www.newhousenews.com/archive...105.html
Researchers Try Novel Global Warming Fix: Channel Emissions Underground
BY KEVIN COUGHLIN
c.2005 Newhouse News Service
WEYBURN, Saskatchewan -- Oil-pump jacks bob like dime-store dipping birds as a chilly wind ripples across the Canadian prairie.
The horizon yawns so far in all directions that locals joke a basketball could roll clear to Calgary, a time zone away. Listen at night, and you swear a harmonica is wailing somewhere under the spiky Northern Lights.
Yet this remote expanse of hay bales in an oil field may hold the cure for global warming. "This," says Michael Monea of the Petroleum Research Technology Centre, "is one of the most-studied 8 square kilometers in the world."
Weyburn is a proving ground for a process called "carbon sequestration."
Lessons learned here, Monea says, will show the world how to safely store millions of tons of carbon dioxide. Other commercial ventures have used CO2 to coax every last drop of crude oil from wells. Weyburn has added the environmental goal of burying the greenhouse gas.
Why bury it? The future of energy, and perhaps the future of mankind.
Make no mistake, CO2, an odorless and invisible gas, is absolutely essential for life on Earth. We just have way too much of it. The fossil fuels that drive modern life, the good life, are belching billions of extra tons of CO2 and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.
Scientists are pretty sure this spells big trouble. Already, glaciers are melting and sea levels are inching up. With every turn of the ignition switch and every bump of the thermostat, we are "poking the angry beast," says Princeton University's Robert Socolow. Our atmosphere is becoming an oven that eventually could roast us to death.
Thirty-five industrial nations (though not the United States) have agreed to modest cuts in their greenhouse emissions. Yet governments everywhere still are counting on oil, gas and coal to supply more than 85 percent of the world's energy through 2025.
No other energy source can swoop to the rescue. China and India will burn mountains of cheap coal as they too chase the good life. "It's very hard to provide the energy people want without fossil fuels, at a reasonable price," says Howard Herzog, a research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
So the trick -- for now, anyway -- may be to find slick ways of capturing and stashing the surplus CO2. Inject it into the Earth or the ocean, like adding extra fizz to your soda. Just make very sure it doesn't fizz over -- hundreds died in 1986 when CO2 came bubbling out of an African lake.
* * *
Every day, enough CO2 to fill almost 1,500 Olympic swimming pools whooshes through a 1-foot-wide pipe to Weyburn from a synthetic fuels production plant 200 miles away in North Dakota.
The CO2 gets compressed from a gas to a "supercritical" state that acts like a liquid. This fluid form is more compact and simpler to pump into Weyburn's oil wells, nearly a mile deep.
Monea's research center in the provincial capital of Regina has coordinated the $42 million U.S.-Canadian experiment since 2000.
As the bizarre-sounding research moves forward, some environmental groups worry that projects like this only stall what they see as the inevitable switch to renewable energies such as solar and wind power. "It is seen as the panacea for the fossil fuel industry," says Kert Davies, a spokesman for Greenpeace. "It's the only way out, sequestration, the only way for coal. The oil boys know as well they can't continue to be vendors of oil ad infinitum unless they figure a way to take the carbon out."
Others would prefer spending billions of federal dollars for breakthrough technologies such as nuclear fusion, the power source of the sun. But President Bush and his administration back sequestration for now, and it is gaining momentum around the world. It doesn't hurt that the United States sits on as much as 250 years worth of coal reserves, enough for generations of energy independence.
At least 40 sequestration projects are under way worldwide, says Arthur Lee, an environmental policy adviser to ChevronTexaco.
(Click the link for the rest of the story--there's more)
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