
Pilot test of storing carbon dioxide in rocks - jseliger
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/injected-into-icelandic-rocks-carbon-dioxide-stays-there/
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moftz
Humans put out 40 billion tons of CO2 every year. Offsetting all of this would
require 1 trillion gallons of water which sounds like a lot but is only 1
cubic mile of water. It doesn't say how fresh the water needs to be but if
salt water is possible to use, then these injection systems could be setup all
over the world in places where access to ocean water and basalt bedrock is
plentiful. That energy company says they plan to setup facilities to inject
10000 tons of CO2 every year. It would still take 4 million more of these
facilities to offset all carbon emissions.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
At this point, the CCS tech is all there; cost is the main problem. Currently
we're at or above $100/tonne of CO2 captured, transported and stored, with
capture being the main cost driver.

To make this economically feasible, it requires a carbon tax equivalent to a
price increase on gasoline of around $1/gallon (IIRC). Which would be
unpopular, to say the least.

~~~
schoen
Gas prices vary a lot more than that between countries today (largely due to
differences in existing taxes).

[http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/Europe/](http://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/Europe/)

That's stated in dollars per liter (an unusual unit). In dollars per gallon,
Germany would be $5.79/gallon today and the U.K. would be $6.13/gallon.

~~~
lucaspiller
Here in Italy it varies a lot even within the country. Yesterday I drove
~600km from the south to Rome and prices varied between €1.45 and €1.75 per
litre.

~~~
fpoling
In Norway prices can vary by 10-15% on the same gas station withing hours. In
many places the cheapest gasoline is on Sunday evening with significantly
higher price coming on Monday.

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SquirrelOnFire
Neat! Storing carbon stably is huge. We have much easier ways to get to 10,000
year storage (turning fast-growing biomass like miscanthus or other giant
grasses into charcoal and throwing it in an old mine), but i haven't heard of
other super-long-term storage options.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
Link(s)?

And why is 10,000 year storage not good enough for us to already be doing it?

~~~
SquirrelOnFire
Apparently I mentally added an order of magnitude - best link I could find
says 1,000 year storage

[http://www.carbolea.ul.ie/files/Biochar%20Swift%20Hayes%20Ch...](http://www.carbolea.ul.ie/files/Biochar%20Swift%20Hayes%20Chemrawn.pdf)

and

biochar.org

~~~
aeorgnoieang
But even 1,000 years is a long time.

I'm really curious what economists, or business-people, think about biochar.
Not only is it apparently inexpensive but it also improves plant yields! That
seems too suspiciously like a $100 bill lying on the sidewalk. Why has no one
picked it up yet?

The following paper doesn't explicitly state that this is the case, but it
certainly seems like biochar is not as _relatively_ effective a fertilizer, or
fuel source, as alternatives and that therefore it's relative advantage when
compared to its alternatives or substitutes lies in its ability to sequester
carbon:

\-
[http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40095-014-0106-4](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40095-014-0106-4)

So I guess it's really a $0 bill until the price of carbon rises (for whatever
reason).

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bpodgursky
I know geo-engineering schemes are well-intentioned, but I'm worried that once
productionized, country-specific motivations are going to move from "status
quo" to "arms race"

Yeah we all know global warming will cause chaos etc, but some countries will
be net winners, and some net losers. Canada and Russia have a lot to gain from
global warming, with sea routes and more farmland. African nations,
Bangladesh, India have huge amounts to lose.

Once we have sequestration technology working, would anyone put it past the
Indian / Egyptian / etc governments to set a goal CO2 PPM below the "historic"
status quo to lower temperatures for the benefit of their people?

Would anyone put it past Russia to be upset about this and intentionally
release methane to counteract the cooling effect?

I think it would be very hard to prevent weaponization of this tech; "keep
everything how it is" is easy to say but I don't think will actually happen.

~~~
graeme
>Canada and Russia have a lot to gain from global warming, with sea routes and
more farmland.

Is this really true? I'm Canadian. I think we have less to lose, but I'm not
sure we'll gain.

Currently we have a boreal forest wildfire larger than Delaware that's still
burning out of control and already destroyed much of Fort McMurray. From what
I've read, the Boreal forest is at risk of fire and ecosystem death, and not
much is suited to replace it in the near term due to soil quality.

We'll also lose cities due to sea level rise.

~~~
hughes
"More farmland" to me reads "highly sensitive to drought".

Warmer does not mean better if it brings with it less rain.

~~~
ktRolster
Look at all the water available in Canada, you can even see it on the map:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@50.6040128,-73.1500427,7z](https://www.google.com/maps/@50.6040128,-73.1500427,7z)

Not all of Canada is like that, of course, but in parts they get a lot of rain

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_red
98% of a trees mass comes from "carbon capture".

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SquirrelOnFire
True! But it also returns to the atmosphere when it burns or decays. Turn it
into charcoal [1] and you have about 1,000 years of stability. Turn it into a
mineral and you have indefinite stability.

[1]
[http://www.carbolea.ul.ie/files/Biochar%20Swift%20Hayes%20Ch...](http://www.carbolea.ul.ie/files/Biochar%20Swift%20Hayes%20Chemrawn.pdf)

~~~
masklinn
> it also returns to the atmosphere when it burns

Don't burn it?

> or decays

In a healthy forest, a decaying tree is replaced by new growth, and part of
the carbon is captured into soils (including high-carbon peaty soils, which is
what's under the forests currently being burned for palm in south-east asia),
so a growing forest is a large carbon sink and a stable grown forest is at
best carbon-neutral, possibly a small sink depending on its composition.

> Turn it into a mineral and you have indefinite stability.

The lithospheric carbon cycle is still a cycle[0]. Lithospheric carbon gets
released by volcanoes and by acidified oceanic water.

[0]
[http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/page2....](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/page2.php)

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semi-extrinsic
The flipside of this is that mineral precipitation (though not necessarily
carbonate) is also a problem for CO2 injection into aquifers, which are more
readily available and for which we have better understanding, better
technology and better infrastructure.

(No disrespect for the CarbFix people implied, they do great work.)

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ChuckMcM
This seems like a great result, and its pretty easy to parallelize if you have
a lot of basalt available.

It will be interesting to see if we succeed at encasing CO2 before we get
another "oxygenization event".

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co2isfine
Great! Now all that needs to be done is establish that anthropogenic CO2
represents a significant risk. That has not been proven.

~~~
moe_ronald
I'm going to have to flag this comment and have it deleted, because I disagree
with it. Or something.

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Fej
Can we start panicking now?

We need to get to 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and we're above 400, with
no easy solutions on the horizon.

~~~
xigency
There's certainly something good that there isn't an "easy" solution. If it
were trivial to reduce CO2 from 400 ppm to 350 ppm, it would be easy to get to
0 parts per million, which would extinguish all plant life on the planet and
also kill us.

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randyrand
What if we just planted more trees?

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SquirrelOnFire
Trees are great short-term carbon storage. When they burn or rot, they re-
release most of their carbon back into the atmosphere though.

~~~
joshvm
On the other hand burning trees are one of the better ways to produce heating
and power because (using fast growing trees) it's a fairly closed cycle of CO2
release and capture. Modern wood burning stoves are incredibly efficient, the
one my Dad has approaches 90% if you use it correctly.

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Fiahil
I would really like if americans could stop using deprecated units like
gallons and miles. Especially when starting a paragraph using regular tons. It
would really make the whole thing more meaningful.

~~~
linkregister
Agreed, but since this is an American website your complaint is unlikely to
change any minds.

When I lived in other countries, I adapted to metric and learned enough of the
native languages to get by. Maybe it's not too much to ask that we let
Americans use their own units on their own websites. I don't whine about
people speaking French on Skyrock.

~~~
spiderfarmer
Oh I'm so sorry, I feel like I'm intruding. How did I end up here? They should
have used an IP blocker..

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hueving
Nobody cares if you participate. It's just pointless to complain that US
styles are used in a US article posted on a US website.

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ck2
It's hilarious how certain people keep talking about "clean coal" like it's
plausible and scientists don't even have this basic requirement worked out
yet.

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AnimalMuppet
"Clean coal" doesn't usually mean "no CO2". It means "no mercury" or "no
particulates".

~~~
smt88
That is absolutely not the implication of clean-coal marketing in the US.

