irh said:
Our county of Darke County,Oh just fought to keep co2 from being pumped under our ethnol planet. We didn't want our farmland ruined, our water supplies, and possibly a man made earthquake because of all the pressure under the ground. Western Ohio sits right on a fault line. Someone was going to make 93 million dollars off this little project and it wasn't going to be our little community, either. We have alot of very smart people that steadied this sitution and it could not justify the risks to our region. So, please be aware of a company called Batelle if they come into your neighbor hood and want to push co2 sequestion in your community... Just remember follow the money trail.....
Underground carbon sequestration is most likely proverbally "pi***ing into the wind", but just a few facts for you to consider:
You didn't want your farmland ruined - what gas do plants use as part of photosynthesis? Carbon sequestration via underground poses zero risk to your farmland.
Underground injection of CO2 is performed extremely deep - way below any aquifers used for groundwater supply. CO2 is naturally in water. If you put a whole lot of it in water, you get "carbonation". Last I looked in a grocery store cokes weren't stored on the poison aisle. Relative to the volume of water in aquifers, the amount of CO2 pumped in is miniscule.
Battelle is not just "some company". They are a private entity, but they were founded during the Great Depression and they've worked hand in hand with the U.S. Department of Energy for as long as that agency has existed to develop some of our most important energy related technology. They are a legitimate, apolitical, company that does lots of really good work. They make money, but they aren't scamming people in any sense of the word.
Follow the money is correct. If you really follow it, you'll find a bunch of lawers that represented the "concerned citizens and landowners" that are the only ones that wind up making money on these "not in my backyard" issues. When you wonder why any publicly funded project dosts so much money, that's one of the main reasons.
As Justintime posted, there can be some real beneficial uses to this technology in our oil and gas fields. In fact, these are the only places it's likely to ever be performed because after you pull out oil and gas from their porous source rocks, that's the only space you really have to put large amounts of a gas back in.
Do you know where our National Petroleum Reserve is stored - underground - and put there in the very same way.
Whether its useful or not is up for debate, but Battelle or anyone else doing this right isn't trying to take advantage of anyone. This is all in the study phase.
Behind the scenes - at the university level and deep inside NOAA and EPA, the issue of global warning isn't political. There are lots of people really trying to figure out what's happening and what (if anything) we need to do. As far as Al Gore goes, do we consider the internet bad just because he claimed he invented it? Same kind of deal.
Do you know where most people that work on the various aspects of global warming issues actually reside in universities? In the AGRICULTURAL colleges! That alone ought to make people not discount every discussion on the issue.
