Nice big-picture essay on carbon capture and sequestration, the current magic pony being dangled before our eyes to distract us from taking meaningful action on the enemy of the human race:
Capturing and storing carbon dioxide is a solution the anti-global warming contingent (read, political pundits and bloggers using science to attack Democrats) say can keep us in an SUV Promised Land today. Then future technology can deal with it permanently.
To those people (Republicans) I say, 'pretend a Democrat is saying Social Security will take care of itself in the future. Would you be skeptical?' Well, that's how I feel when they insist nothing needs to change and it will all be okay.
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Currently, CCS is storing a few million tons but to have a meaningful impact on global warming would require the storage of several billion tons - and an entire transportation industry would have to be created just to store carbon dioxide. We would basically be storing carbon dioxide we created in the transportation of ... carbon dioxide. The world's largest transported good would not be food, people or oil - it would be CO2.
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Michael Tobis Posted 8:23 am
12 May 2008
"The UN Climate Panel released a report on CCS last year and it was unanimously supported by the research community. It's easy to get unanimous support on UN committees. You just throw off the people who disagree."
I am sorry. The kindest word I have for that is "terrible".
Where have we heard that talking point before? Is opposition to CCS reduced to stealing talking points from the climate change denial crowd?
We need all the technical assistance we can muster for this problem. Social change is hard. Saving the world is more important than ideological purity. We shouldn't count on speculative technofixes but that doesn't mean we should ignore technologies that can help. The situation is too serious to be throwing away useful tools based on some gut feeling.
Carbon sequestration in one form or another is the only way to reduce CO2 concentrations to natuiral backgrounds in a reasonable time. If we have already overshot safe limits we need to explore every possible path to retreat to safety.
We have only one planet, and anti-scientific rabble rousing is a threat to it no matter from what quarter it arises. We need to use the information we have, not throw away the parts we find ideologically inconvenient. That counts for non-Republicans too.
mt
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GRLCowan Posted 12:39 pm
12 May 2008
How shall driving gain nuclear cachet?
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