Make America Guzzle Again!?

[freebeard]

Quoting my own link:

The economic value of salt domes has been exploited for centuries.[6] Salt mining has been going on in Louisiana since the Antebellum period, and in the 20th century, the government began using these underground salt caverns as storage reservoirs for crude oil.[7] Where there is a juncture of mining, petroleum engineering, and drilling, care must be taken to maintain stability, so as to prevent a disaster as happened at Lake Peigneur.

Carbonic acid injected into oil fields will not be as recoverable as when injected into a salt dome.

It seems to me turning it into limestone is preferable.

ELSE

Sparkle milk: Early seltzer drinks contained lots of dairy

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

The CO2 would be injected in the ground under high enough pressure to stay liquid.

The problem is, you've drilled all these holes (AKA "oil wells") in the overlying rock formation. Once the seals on a few of them fail (as they will, over hundreds to thousands of years), the pressure will be relieved, the CO2 will turn to gas and come out.

Originally Posted by stovie

They already have methods for making fuels like methanol from co2 and co!

Well, sure. They're called plants :-) And the atmosphere already holds a good deal more than they need.

The problem with making fuel from CO2 is this little thing called conservation of energy. Once the petroleum (or wood, corn-based ethanol, or whatever) is burned, you've extracted the energy from it. You have to put more energy back in to turn the CO2 back into any sort of fuel. It's far more efficient just to use that energy directly.

Same applies to turning CO2 into limestone: it takes energy, so you're better off using that energy directly.

[freebeard]

Same applies to turning CO2 into limestone: it takes energy, so you're better off using that energy directly.

AKA kicking the can down the road.

I'm agnostic on whether Global Warming is a good or bad thing.

[oil pan 4]

It could stay down there for 100,000 years?
Then I say problem solved.
I'm sure in the not too distant future the CO2 could be used for something, maybe releasing it at the appropriate time to stop the next ice age. Some time in the next 2,000 years.

[freebeard]

...maybe releasing it at the appropriate time to stop the next ice age.

That was my thought exactly! Except in my version, it's runaway greenhouse punctuated by an asteroidal winter. Over a much shorter timescale.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

It could stay down there for 100,000 years?

Yeah, it could. And pigs could fly...

I'm sure in the not too distant future the CO2 could be used for something, maybe releasing it at the appropriate time to stop the next ice age. Some time in the next 2,000 years.

Nope. 1) The next ice age would have been about 20,000 years from now; 2) An ice age is generally good for life - consider for instance all the mammoths & other things that went extinct at the end of the last one. (Admittedly with quite a bit of help from humans; 3) 2000 years is irrelevant, since on current trends humans - and most higher life forms - will be extinct in about 500.

[acparker]

If you want to lock CO2 back into the earth, recent experiments in Iceland show that carbonic acid injected into deep basalt formations will quickly form limestone, something they were not expecting. That ought to keep it out of circulation until it upheaves and begins eroding in a few million years.

Pumping CO2 into the air in anticipation of a coming ice age is unlikely to result in the benefit anticipated. CO2 is a weak climate driver.

Ice ages are good for plants and animals that adapted successfully to it. Overall, a cold planet grows less food and, therefore, cannot support as many organisms as a warm planet.

For humans, historical periods of advanced social and cultural growth and stability have coincided with warm periods, warmer than what we have now. Cold periods are associated with drought, famine, mass migration and war.

We are unlikely to be moving away from liquid hydrocarbons. They are energy dense, easy to store and transport, and the infrastructure is established worldwide. When we finally do run out of fossil sources, it can be synthesized from biomass, or even water and limestone (it has been proposed that energy generated by nuclear plants during off-peak hours be used to reform water and CO2 to synthesize hydrocarbons, thereby making use of "wasted" energy).

Humans are clever and adaptive survivors -- but they often overthink things.

[freebeard]

I agree about making limestone; see #114.

A series of clever, interlocking initiatives could make a profound difference. The basalt you mentioned can be melted and extruded into fibers with less embodied energy than fiberglass or carbon fiber. Then that is used to build electric airliners and for reinforcement in concrete buildings.

Ice Ages reduce the available land area, but they also do push diseases back to the Tropics.

[Hersbird]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Yeah, it could. And pigs could fly...



Nope. 1) The next ice age would have been about 20,000 years from now; 2) An ice age is generally good for life - consider for instance all the mammoths & other things that went extinct at the end of the last one. (Admittedly with quite a bit of help from humans; 3) 2000 years is irrelevant, since on current trends humans - and most higher life forms - will be extinct in about 500.

Oh please! 500 years? Massive nuclear war wouldn't make humans extinct. The worst ice age in history wouldn't make humans extinct. Even Stevens Hawkins said 1000 years and that was the dumbest thing he has ever said. Yeah, let's terraform some planet that is 100 times less habitable than our own because our own might be 5 degrees warmer than it is today or Terminator robots might be out hunting us.

[oil pan 4]

20,000 is less than 100,000 years.
Still sounds like problem solved.
I wasn't the one who came up with the 100,000 year number, because I agree with it now it's wrong?