Pacific Spirit Marine Institute
Friday, May 9, 2008
If the treatment is more deadly than the cure, then find another cure. That’s the Canadian motto.
Canadians are working on a project that would store, underground, a billion tonnes of CO2. The Redwater reef could soak up all greenhouse gas emissions for 20 years if their plan can be implemented. What’s the plan?
$50 billion and 7 oilsands bitumen upgrader projects in Alberta Industrial Heartland district. $500 million to be spent on capturing carbon-dioxide emissions from nearby could be turned into liquefied C02 and pumped into Redwater wells to revive the old oil field. 130 million to 180 million barrels of light premium oil could be pumped out at a rate of 10,000 to 15,000 barrels a day.
The U.S. has taken the position that it won’t buy fuel from Alberta’s tar sands, on the grounds that, it is too environmentally tainted. That’s the pot calling the kettle black, but a good decision none the less.
The U.S. can’t sign contracts to buy gasoline and other fuels whose production releases more global warming pollution than conventional petroleum.
Neil Shelly, executive director of Alberta Industrial Heartland Association says, this project could make Edmonton area’s oilsands upgrader ally one of the very few heavy industrial areas in the world able to comply with emerging controls of greenhouse gas emissions.
It seems to me carbon capture is a modern-day C02 distillery; of a sort. Capturing something that would normally rise up, mix with the air and become lost is the same principle Bootleggers use to make moonshine.
Some industrial operations put off C02 gases that simply rise up and mix with the air and become lost, or at least out of our control; of course they aren’t really lost.
Carbon capture will trap those gases transform them into something magical, or so it would seem. The CO2 will get pumped into the ground for a time yet to be determined and with an outcome yet to be determined.
Bootlegging Moonshine has been going on in nearly every country on the globe, in nearly every generation. Man usually finds a way to alter his perceptions, hide what he doesn’t want to face and often times bury the problems he creates; hoping they simply disappear, or at least stay buried until he is long.
At Redwater reef, the intent is to send the CO2 about 1,000 metres under a hard rock cap where it will be stored. How long, how well, and how safely is yet to be determined.
Carbon capture and sequestration, like Moonshine, could be hazardous to your health.
As as luck would have it, carbon credits are becoming a valuable commodity. Now, with worth to them, everyone will be trying to capture, trade and cash in on greenhouse gases.
Photo Thanks: A Wilkes County copper moonshine still
Courtesy of Applachian Cultural Museum
Applachian State University
Boone, North Carolina
Illustration Thanks: co2capture project
Labels: Alberta, CCS, Canada, Carbon, Carbon-credit, Geosequestration, Oil Sands, Oil shale, Oil tar, carbon dioxide, carbon-trading market
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Turning CO2 Into Liquid Gold or Corn Into Moonshine; one man’s trash is another one’s treasure.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
A company in California plans to plow a field under the sea with iron dust.
The company, Planktos says it is “possible to boost the ocean’s absorption of carbon dixoide by increasing the production of phytoplankton”.
How much iron do they want to ‘dump’ into the sea? how about a whopping 80 tons?
Where do they want to ‘dump’ their 80 tons of iron particles? 350 miles west of the Galapagos islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Johannah Barry, Galapagos Conservancey says, “it’s still this extraordinary place that contains 95% of its prehuman diversity.”
Planktos intends to drop iron dust into the ocean, feeding plankton and encouraging growth. The ‘restored’ plankton blooms would generate food for sea life. Some plankton would sink and store carbon deep beneath the surface of the sea.
As I’ve said before, I’m not a rocket scientist, but Russ George says I don’t have to be. According to George, “This isn’t rocket science, it’s ocean farming.”
In what sounds like a story that rivals ‘Citizen Kane’ the protagonist in this novel is Russ George. Planktos plans to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide captured by the plankton and sell it on the nascent carbon-trading markets.
Where Kane inserts the words ‘you provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war” in place of W.R. Hearst’s “You provide the pictures, I’ll provide the war” one could be tempted to imagine George saying, you provide the market, I’ll provide the credits!
Color me dubios yet again. When I wrap my mind around carbon-trading, it falls back on the dot.com boom and bust.
Worse yet carbon-trading leaves me with the bitter taste of the rich man’s war, and the poor man’s fight. pay either $300 or supply a substitute as happened during the US Civil War. Will people like George ultimately turn our oceans into ‘the 300 credit seas’…amassing carbon-credits with which to buy influence.
From the Galapagos to the Vatican, Russ George is a man that seems to be all over the map. Both literally and figuratviely. Billed as CEO of Planktos, and managing director of its ‘forest subsidiary’, KlimaFa, George recently presented Cardinal Paul Poupard a bushel basket of carbon credits. George hopes to make the Vatican the first carbon-neutral sovereign state.
Whoowah!
This carbon-credit donation is coming from not the iron dumpped off the back of a boat near the Galapagos, but from a new “Vatican Climate Forest” planted in Hungary’s Bukk National Park. The dimensions of said ‘Vatican Climate Forest’ will be determined by the Vatican’s 2007 energy usage. Fair enough.
Frankenplankton and carbon-credits as always, follow the money. This idea isn’t passing my Acid Test, if I have to drink the kool aid, I’m going to chase it with a large dose of skepticism.
Labels: Carbon, Carbon-credit, Frankenplankton, Galapagos, Ocean, Plankton, Sea, Vatican, carbon dioxide, carbon-trading market
© 2009, Pacific Spirit Marine Institute.
Frankenplankton: Plans to force feed iron to plankton may create the world’s first Carbon-credit bank.
