European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.

Pachauri wants CO2 suckers

by Nomad
Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 05:47:51 AM EST

Despite the difficulties ahead this still is a good introduction:

The countdown to Copenhagen is ticking. Between 7 and 18 December this year, the United Nations Climate Change Conference will take place in Copenhagen, and should result in a successor for the Kyoto protocol, outlining a new framework for mitigating climate change and reducing emissions from green house gasses.

In the meantime, all sorts of people are appearing out of the woodwork to contribute to the discussion their vested interest / hobby horse / scare story / preferred solutions / and so forth. The wrangling continues, and it might be worthwhile to keep track of some, map them out in advance and see how far this sort of public lobbying gets them ahead.

We already know a bit about James Lovelock’s position.
IEA’s chief Tanaka announced his faith in Carbon Capture and Storage plants.
Bjørn Lomborg puts chips on geo-engineering.

Now there is Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in an interview with the Times massaging some further support in the back of carbon capture geoengineering:

“There are enough technologies in existence to allow for mitigation,” he said. “At some point we will have to cross over and start sucking some of those gases out of the atmosphere.”

Picture from The Times

Unfortunately most of the rest of the article is dedicated to that bothersome climate science scandal now undergoing political spin. That must be somewhat fortunate for Pachauri as it leaves little space for critical questions on practicality, feasibility or how well researched the idea of CO2 scrubbers actually is. You know, pesky sort of details. At the end, the article lists another set of geo-engineering proposals, such as:

Artificial trees
These 12m boxes, filled with absorbent materials, soak up and store carbon. The devices, which could be placed by roads, would be emptied regularly and the carbon buried. About 100,000 artificial trees would require about 600 hectares of land, but the carbon that they remove from the atmosphere would be equivalent to all the non-stationary and dispersed emissions to the UK
Algae-coated buildings
Strips of algae are fitted to the outside of buildings in units called photobioreactors. Algae naturally absorbs C02 through photosynthesis. Periodically the algae are harvested and used for biofuels that have an energy rating similar to coal. This solution requires no extra land use
Reflective buildings
Between 10 and 50 per cent of solar radiation can be reflected back out of the atmosphere by painting buildings and road surfaces in light colours

I observe that the idea of olivine implementation still hasn't really filtered abroad. Should it? Wait for it...

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Pachauri wants CO2 suckers | 18 comments (18 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Looks to me (4.00 / 3)

carbon capture is the bomb in 2010...

by Nomad on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 05:49:36 AM EST

Re: Pachauri wants CO2 suckers (4.00 / 7)

Other preparations are also being concluded for the summit:

Denmark approves new police powers ahead of Copenhagen | Environment | guardian.co.uk

The Danish ministry of justice said that the new powers of "pre-emptive" detention would increase from 6 to 12 hours and apply to international activists. If protesters are charged with hindering the police, the penalty will increase from a fine to 40 days in prison. Protesters can also be fined an increased amount of 5,000 krona (671 Euros) for breach of the peace, disorderly behaviour and remaining after the police have broken up a demonstration.
The Danish police also separately issued a statement in August (pdf) applying new rules and regulations for protests at the climate conference, warning that "gatherings that may disturb the public order must not take place".

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!

by A swedish kind of death on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 06:26:58 AM EST

Re: Pachauri wants CO2 suckers (none / 1)

And of course this is being billed as "not a significant extension of police powers" because the police already has the power to ~~abduct innocent people~~ carry out preventative arrests.

And now Dansk Folkeparti want Big Brother to listen on entire housing units [translation courtesy of GoogleTranslate, with minor modifications].

Intercepts everything
Monitoring is technically feasible by using a so-called false base station, which can collect and record the identity of all mobile phones in the area around the false base station.
It is also possible to intercept the content of conversations, SMS and data traffic from mobile phones in the vicinity.
Handy suspicion
The purpose of telephone scanning is that the mere idea that there is something interesting going on in a particular area should allow the police to launch an interception of all people in a particular area,

Time to dust off those Stasi 2.0 stickers.

- Jake

"Terraforming your own planet to make it uninhabitable hardly counts as epic win." - ThatBritGuy

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 01:54:04 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Pachauri wants CO2 suckers (none / 0)

BTW, JakeS, could you give us some background on this resp. this?

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

by DoDo on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 03:17:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Pachauri wants CO2 suckers (none / 1)

My tea-leaf reading is that the Social Liberals are using it to secure a bargaining chip that they can use the next time they fancy growing a spine and standing up to our Benevolent Imperial Overlords. And they know perfectly well that there's no (legal) way to apply it only to brown people who speak funny, the way the Popular Party wants to.

But the Social Liberals are flirting with the 2 % additional member cut-off for parliamentary elections, and parties tend to start hitting panic buttons when that happens. Which makes them a bit unpredictable. So this tea-leaf reading should be taken with an even larger grain of salt than is usually the case.

The Popular Party, meanwhile, is grandstanding. They get a soundbite where they get to show how tough they are on brown people, and by the time it gets killed in Parliament (by my count, R and DF have all of 20 % of the MPs between them...), everybody will have forgotten about it.

On the off chance that they can rope in a majority, the government's lawyers will tell them that they can't legally apply such rules only to brown people. Then the Popular Party will probably drop it. With the mandatory hissy fit about The Unelected (EUropean) Courts/Lawyers/Bureaucrats obstructing The Will Of The People, As Expressed By The People's Anointed Representatives - namely, the Popular Party. Or they'll carry it through on the (depressingly justified) expectation that they have been able to pack the Ausländeramt with enough quasi-skinhead goons to ensure preferential treatment of white Americans anyway.

- Jake

"Terraforming your own planet to make it uninhabitable hardly counts as epic win." - ThatBritGuy

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 04:04:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Pachauri wants CO2 suckers (none / 0)

And they know perfectly well that there's no (legal) way to apply it only to brown people who speak funny, the way the Popular Party wants to.

I'm not clear about this point: do you mean they don't advocate such a line (and perhaps distinguish themselves from the DF over that explicitely); or that they go along with the DF but don't play up this point?

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

by DoDo on Thu Dec 3rd, 2009 at 01:22:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Pachauri wants CO2 suckers (none / 1)

It's not exactly clear from the soundbites in the news reports, but the Social Liberals are talking about "the same rules for Americans that the Americans have for Europeans" while the Popular Party are talking about "checking people from the US more closely - especially brown people."

Such subtlety is generally lost in the astonishment that R and DF have managed to agree on the general outline of a law. There's so much personal animosity between those two parties that it'd be a newsworthy story if they agreed that the sky is blue.

- Jake

"Terraforming your own planet to make it uninhabitable hardly counts as epic win." - ThatBritGuy

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Thu Dec 3rd, 2009 at 07:38:25 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Pachauri wants CO2 suckers (4.00 / 2)

Carbon capture and storage at the source is a variant of what we call 'end of pipe' technology. By extension, we could call mechanical or biomechanical air capture an 'end of atmosphere' technology.

It's better than most other forms of geoengineering as per my proposed ranking. Still, would come behind soils and trees.

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 06:42:22 AM EST

Spot those turbines (4.00 / 2)

Looks like a small, outdated design to me on that London Times picture. I assume the turbines are also photoshopped because their positioning is... stupid. So, lack of imagination on part of the Times.

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 07:30:26 AM EST

Most (none / 0)

of the article is Da Stupid IMNSHO. Pic included.

But it sure would be nice to hear some expert voice for validation...

by Nomad on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 07:58:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Most (4.00 / 2)

That wouldn't have been 'shopped in-house - it looks like a generic press-release artist's impression.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 08:08:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Spot those turbines (4.00 / 4)

Well, for one, they're not spinning. Far worse, they're 4 rotor diameters apart in the prevailing wind, where tip vortices and other turbulence will destroy the turbines within a few years. Rule of thumb here is 12 diameters downwind minimum, though developers tend to push it down past 10 for reasons of greed.

Oh, and the blades have no root cuff or twist. The whole shebang looks like something out of mid-90's.

But what are the fly swatters (hiding his ignorance)?

Skennah Kowa

by Crazy Horse on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 01:29:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Spot those turbines (4.00 / 3)

Presumably the filtration units powered by the windmills.

But there's a far more fundamental flaw here:

If you took those all those nice megawatt produced by those nice windmills (let's pretend that they're put somewhere which actually makes sense...), and used it to run a nice little train instead of all those commuter cars and long- and medium-haul trucks in the picture... you wouldn't need the scrubbers in the first place.

This is a general feature of most of these "carbon capture" schemes that pop up in the press: You could reduce net emissions with far less fuss and bother by simply using existing industrial-scale energy saving technology.

- Jake

"Terraforming your own planet to make it uninhabitable hardly counts as epic win." - ThatBritGuy

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 02:00:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Spot those turbines (none / 1)

Which also means that THEY. ARE. NEVER. GONNA. HAPPEN. If the state is not willing to invest in those railways, it won't spend even more on these fruitcake projects.

*Traitor*, n.
A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.

by DoDo on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 03:20:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Spot those turbines (none / 1)

Never underestimate the willingness of politicians to pander to car drivers. If those scrubbers can provide a fig leaf for not encouraging people to switch from cars to trains, the minor matter of a few orders of magnitude higher cost won't matter.

Of course, as long as they are viewed simply as an excuse for not taking serious action (rather than as a minor part of a larger overall campaign), they will never be constructed in any meaningful quantity. Which is almost as "good."

- Jake

"Terraforming your own planet to make it uninhabitable hardly counts as epic win." - ThatBritGuy

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 03:44:13 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Pachauri wants CO2 suckers (4.00 / 2)

Underground sequestration is highly problematic, given the possibilities and local consequences of leakage, but also because it is highly unlikely there will be or could be storage capability adequate to the dimensions of the requirement. I have seen one wet scrubber process that produces gypsum as an output, with wall board as the final product. But that would likely produce a glut of wall board if relied on solely to solve the problem.

I do tend to prefer processes that convert CO2 to a solid form, but we may well find that even converting it to limestone, cement and marble, given technical feasibility and regardless of cost, would be inadequate. After all, the oil I lived above in Whizbang Oklahoma was covered by thousands of feet of limestone. It is likely that that limestone was a significant part of reducing the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to the levels we have known in the 19th and early 20th century.

As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer at eurotrib.com) on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 01:26:23 PM EST

Uhm (4.00 / 2)

Should I add "Write a geological primer to Carbon Capture Storage" to my list of diaries?

by Nomad on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 05:37:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Uhm (none / 0)

Yes!

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Wed Dec 2nd, 2009 at 06:35:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Pachauri wants CO2 suckers | 18 comments (18 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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