[Discuss] [Mostly OT:] Visualizing Canada's Carbon

[pw]

Arthur Ralfs wrote:
> Also don't forget the example of the African village (in Cameroon I
> think) that was
> suffocated to death by a cloud of carbon dioxide escaping from an
> extinct volcano.
> Burying gigatons of carbon dioxide as some people are proposing might be
> setting
> us up for an unintended environmental disaster in the future.
> 
> Arthur Ralfs


Well, the reality is that we are *digging up*
gigatons of carbon for use as energy with no replacement
of that bound carbon back to the earth where it came from.
Plants are the most efficient sequesters of
carbon dioxide. By setting aside some carbon from biomass
and returning it to the same pits where our oil and coal
come from, we can mitigate at least some of the carbon
we are freeing from petro sources more efficiently than by
any other means.

Putting carbon back where we get/got coal or oil from
is a rational approach. It would otherwise
take oceans and forests millions of years to sequester
that same carbon once again through natural layering processes.

It is probably not a good idea to sequester carbon dioxide
per se. Better to sequester a more stable solid carbon.
You'd get more out of your cubic meters of space that way.

ie: if you used old oil wells and filled the void with
solid carbon you would actually be able to store more carbon
in the hole than originally came out.

Peter