Flawed idea

The enviro-headbangers can’t abide nuclear power, despite the fact that it is the “greenest” form of energy generation available, because of the problem of storing waste. So it is ironic that the technology which the warmists believe will save the planet, carbon capture and storage (CCS), suffers from the same flaw:

Professor Gary Shaffer from the Danish Centre for Earth System Science examined a range of CCS methods to determine their effectiveness and long-term impacts.

Reporting in the journal Nature Geoscience, Professor Shaffer says there are still questions over which sequestration process is best and which is least likely to leak carbon.

“CCS has many potential advantages over other forms of climate geoengineering,” he said.

“However, potential short and long-term problems with leakage from underground storage should not be taken lightly.”

The study reveals leakage of sequestered CO2 could cause large scale atmospheric warming, sea level rise and oxygen depletion, acidification and elevated CO2 concentrations in the ocean.

Professor Shaffer says storing CO2 in the deep ocean is a bad idea because of the problems it creates for deep sea life by creating a “large dead zone”.

He says deep ocean stored CO2 would return to the atmosphere relatively quickly.

Geological storage of CO2 – either underground or below the ocean floor – may be more effective, but only if leakage can be kept down to 1 per cent or less per 1,000 years.

Professor Shaffer says any long term leakage would need to be actively countered by re-sequestration, which would need to be carried out over many thousands of years.

Another brilliant idea down the pan.

Read it here.