Bryan Fischer
Global warming hystericists want to sequester plant food
By Bryan Fischer
The Washington Post features an article today arguing for the urgent necessity to build devices to capture and sequester carbon emissions from coal-fired energy plants, which are responsible for one-third of the U.S.'s "harmful" greenhouse gas emissions.
Such devices, even the WaPo admits, are "hugely expensive," costing about $700 million for a modest-size coal plant. This might make some sense if CO2 was a pollutant, but it's not. It's plant food, for crying out loud.
It might make some sense if CO2 emissions were responsible for global warming, but they're not. Global temperatures have flatlined since 1998, and have actually declined by .74 degrees F since Al Gore's hysteria-inducing documentary came out in 2006. All this while CO2 levels have skyrocketed, and while China blissfully brings one new coal-fired plant online each week with nary a thought for sequestering their emissions.
The test contraption the Post profiles, at a coal plant along the Ohio River in West Virginia, pumps captured emissions into saline aquifers two miles underground, where of course they provide absolutely no nourishment to forests and farms, rendering them not only expensive but useless.
Plus the project consumes 15 percent of the energy the plant produces, energy of course that is not available to American families to heat, cool and light their homes.
Worse, Greenpeace estimates that the volume of CO2 which would have to be captured every day to sequester all the carbon produced by evil coal plants would be the equivalent of 28 million train cars a day. Where exactly are we going to put it?
The bottom line: carbon capture and sequestration devices are enormously expensive and utterly unnecessary. They will only drive up the cost of energy for every American family and make us less competitive in global markets. Other than that, there's a lot to like.
© Bryan Fischer
August 11, 2009
The Washington Post features an article today arguing for the urgent necessity to build devices to capture and sequester carbon emissions from coal-fired energy plants, which are responsible for one-third of the U.S.'s "harmful" greenhouse gas emissions.
Such devices, even the WaPo admits, are "hugely expensive," costing about $700 million for a modest-size coal plant. This might make some sense if CO2 was a pollutant, but it's not. It's plant food, for crying out loud.
It might make some sense if CO2 emissions were responsible for global warming, but they're not. Global temperatures have flatlined since 1998, and have actually declined by .74 degrees F since Al Gore's hysteria-inducing documentary came out in 2006. All this while CO2 levels have skyrocketed, and while China blissfully brings one new coal-fired plant online each week with nary a thought for sequestering their emissions.
The test contraption the Post profiles, at a coal plant along the Ohio River in West Virginia, pumps captured emissions into saline aquifers two miles underground, where of course they provide absolutely no nourishment to forests and farms, rendering them not only expensive but useless.
Plus the project consumes 15 percent of the energy the plant produces, energy of course that is not available to American families to heat, cool and light their homes.
Worse, Greenpeace estimates that the volume of CO2 which would have to be captured every day to sequester all the carbon produced by evil coal plants would be the equivalent of 28 million train cars a day. Where exactly are we going to put it?
The bottom line: carbon capture and sequestration devices are enormously expensive and utterly unnecessary. They will only drive up the cost of energy for every American family and make us less competitive in global markets. Other than that, there's a lot to like.
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
