Posted on 02/23/2024 5:13:11 PM PST by Twotone
Carbon sequestration has become Republicans’ most popular answer to climate change, with GOP governors across western states pumping massive stores of concentrated CO2 into underground chambers. Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, who chairs the Western Governors Association, currently leads the charge to his state’s detriment as a carbon-powerhouse and leading coal producer.
Last week, lawmakers in Wyoming heard from members of the CO2 Coalition who challenged Governor Gordon’s pledge to decarbonize the energy-intensive state with carbon capture programs. Dr. William Happer, the founder of the CO2 Coalition, compared such efforts to a “religion” before the Senate Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee.
“If you look around, you need something bigger than yourself to make your life worthwhile: Happer said. “What’s bigger than saving the planet? The problem is the planet doesn’t need saving.”
The hearing featured testimony from Happer along with the coalition’s executive director, Dr. Gregory Wrightstone, and Frits Byron Soepyan, a chemical engineer with the non-profit. Other members of the CO2 Coalition’s board who did not testify at the hearing include Drs. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, and John Clauser, a current Nobel laureate in physics honored at the White House last spring.
“Let me just address this 1.5-degree narrative,” Wrightstone said.
It’s already warmed 1.2 degrees. So, of that 1.5, it’s warmed 1.2. So, what they’re telling you is beware of three-tenths of a degree centigrade of warming which equates to half a degree Fahrenheit. It’s just changed half a degree Fahrenheit in this room recently, you’ve never noticed it. It wouldn’t trigger the thermostats on or off. It changes more than half a degree Fahrenheit between 11 a.m. and noon on almost every single day, and if you’re that worried about half a degree Fahrenheit of warming, you can move 19 miles farther north and your average temperature will drop half a degree Fahrenheit. That’s what they’re warning us about.
Last week’s proceedings were held in response to Gordon’s decision to back out of a debate with the coalition he had agreed to in November.
“It is no secret that many legislators disagree with the governor and his stance and policies regarding CO2,” said Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, the chair of the committee. “However, this meeting is strictly about CO2 and related policy issues, and in no way intended to be personal in any way to the governor.”
The forum was orchestrated to protest Gordon’s “decarbonizing the West” initiative that was declared a top priority while head of the Western Governors Association. In a speech at Harvard University last fall, Gordon, who presides over the nation’s leading coal producer, boasted, “We are the first state that has said we are going to be carbon negative.”
“You can’t really do that without direct air capture or somehow doing carbon capture and sequestration,” Gordon said, betting success on a new technology embraced by Republican governors across the country. The Wyoming governor doubled down on the initiative with an interview on “60 Minutes” pledging “aggressive” action, and other governors are following suit.
Last year, Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy introduced a legislative package to “capitalize on carbon markets” with carbon capture programs, “particularly in Cook Inlet.”
In North and South Dakota, landowners have faced eminent domain lawsuits as a major carbon capture company constructs a more than 2,000-mile pipeline across the upper Midwest. Carbon capture projects have been championed by the states’ Republican governors, Doug Burgum and Kristi Noem.
“Today, we’re on our way toward achieving carbon neutrality as a state by 2030, thanks to our extraordinary capacity to safely store over 252 billion tons of CO2, or 50 years of the nation’s CO2 output,” Burgum said last year. “And in the process, we can help secure the future of our state’s two largest industries, energy and agriculture.”
Last summer, Wyoming struck a bipartisan partnership with Colorado to expedite development of carbon capture technology, and Idaho Gov. Brad Little joined Gordon at a “Decarbonizing the West” workshop in Boise in December.
“Natural sequestration is a critical component of decarbonization efforts,” Little said. “Healthy forests, soil, and rangelands can sequester enormous amounts of carbon. However, when those resources are poorly managed the opposite can be true … Decarbonization is also creating new opportunities for agricultural producers, for whom carbon sequestration can generate additional revenue while reducing emissions.”
Carbon sequestration, however, doesn’t come without risk. Residents in rural Mississippi have first-hand experience of what can happen when things go wrong. Carbon Catastrophe
An explosion three years ago filled the air of Yazoo County in central Mississippi with a dense concentration of carbon dioxide that caused mass poisoning. More than 200 people were forced to flee, and at least 45 wound up in the hospital. Cars were stuck as inoperable because of the lack of oxygen in the air, disrupting emergency services.
“It looked like you were going through the zombie apocalypse,” a local emergency director told National Public Radio.
There are, however, risk-free alternatives to sequestering carbon to the construction of intrusive pipelines. In biological carbon sequestration, carbon dioxide is absorbed into soils, oceans, grasslands, and forests. Natural soil storage can be amplified with proper agricultural practices and responsible land management.
Hundreds of scientists, meanwhile, dispute the popular narrative that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere presents an urgent existential threat. Last summer, Clauser, one of the board members for the CO2 Coalition, became the second Nobel laureate to sign a 2019 declaration that the climate “emergency” is a myth. The declaration included more than 1,600 signatures and was organized by the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL).
“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” the statement reads. “Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”
Atmospheric carbon has also been shown to proliferate forest growth, known as the “greening” effect. Vegetation happens to grow faster in regions with relatively high concentrations of carbon dioxide. Michael Shellenberger explained in his 2020 book Apocalypse Never, “From 1981 to 2016, four times more carbon was captured by plants due to carbon-boosted growth than from biomass covering a larger surface of Earth.”
What could possibly go wrong with storing CO2 under pressure, in the ground near a gigantic super volcano with a rising dome under Yellowstone? Seems like a really great feel-good solution to a non-existent problem to me. Let’s do this near the San Andreas Fault too!
I am all for it!
“The problem is the planet doesn’t need saving.”
AI is going to disagree.
We will be the carbon they want to eliminate.
“ Carbon sequestration has become Republicans’ most popular answer to climate change…”
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STUPIDITY ABOUNDS!
Here’s a guy that might have gone deep into the primaries 24 years ago, and instead he’s swinging in the wind because he is anti-American and anti-Trump. Don’t keep friends like Lizard Cheney, Mark.
CO2 attracts mosquitos
It has been fun reading all the comments to my dumb question. THANKS
My question was based on the ability of the “climate scientists” to actually have a chance in hell of collecting and storing enough CO2 to change the climate.
Storing CO2 is a fools errand but one hell of a money maker for Democrat Donors.
Interesting that we are pumping CO2 underground. In NE New Mexico there is a natural dome(Bravo Dome) of CO2 that has been there since forever.
Here's their website; they appear to be the 'good guys'.
CO2 attracts mosquitos
Is a big problem, and an indicator of a problem.
Nature’s Decay Department shows up - and increases in magnitude.
We are accustomed to S-L-O-W decay. “Green” is accustomed to natural processes - and nature’s established rates of decay.
And kill plant life?
I assume this guy is a Rat!
Rats are this stupid!
Exactly? What s it with these Yahoos?
“Carbon sequestration has become Republicans’ most popular answer to climate change”...Not *this* Republican! I don’t play into enviromarxist con games or delusions myself. I’ll take “wars on coal” seriously once Red China does.
Want to stop using coal for power generation? Good idea! Replace coal fired power plants with nuclear plants. Use the coal thus saved for liquefaction into diesel and jet fuels. Fissile uranium is a limited resource, you say? Breeder and fast neutron reactors will make this resource last 100 times longer, plus giving us weapons grade plutonium and uranium for the nuclear warheads we need as a deterrent against Red China.
It will also kill all human life. And they are dumb enough to do it. Just give them time. Anyone who believes they can control the climate is dangerous. The climate is exactly as God wants it to be.
Mr. Reily, was being kinda sarcastic. But give man enough time and he will begin trying to remove this gas and that gas from the atmosphere to “improve” it.
Is this guv a Rat or a particularly stupid GOP’er?
In the absence of wind, CO2 from a leak would creep along the ground like an invisible suffocating blob.
At this very moment the SD Legislature is attempting all kinds of legislation to make things “fair” for the CO2 pipeline folks who’s motivation for taking farmland for pipeline access is strictly financial based on the billions of taxpayer dollars just waiting for every pound of CO2 the pipeline builders are able to sequester.
Speaking of the unconstitutional business of Government picking winners and losers in life’s lottery in the name of supporting the State’s number one business of Agriculture. Corn for Ethanol is the real reality, which in the end does nothing more than extract more money from those with ICE vehicles in the form of additives to gasoline that increases the price to consumers.
Coal is the cheapest fuel for home heating, so in the name of common sense, why don’t we eliminate coal fired power production? One more strike against Governor Gordon of WY who shouldn’t have been elected to dog catcher much less Governor of the Energy State. I’m sure you are all aware of the possible nuclear facility proposed in Kemmerer WY which has only a negative chance of producing nuclear energy. A joint effort between Gordon and another person of dubious distinction, none other than Bill Gates.
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