Carbon capture and storage and carbon sequestration are often confused, and the difference confusing, especially when influential people such as Angus Taylor talk about it with his politicians hat on.
Carbon capture and storage or CCS is referred to here as an artificial, non-biological technology for capturing carbon before it reaches the atmosphere, liquefying the carbon and storing the liquefied carbon in the Earth’s geological layers. Carbon sequestration referred to here is biological or natural sequestration and storage of carbon in soil and vegetation. The two things are worlds apart – one works and the other doesn’t.
Amongst other bad news on climate today, Morrison and Taylor have announced and spruiked a plan to spend $500 million (yes, half a billion) on yet more research and development of artificial carbon capture and storage. When will these supposedly intelligent people wake up to the fact that they can’t fiddle ‘while Rome burns’. Global warming is picking up velocity and we simply don’t have years to perfect a technology that has so far proven to be a failure, despite Angus Taylors’ rhetoric about how wonderful this technology is.
Rockflat has published an article on Carbon Capture and Storage, which you can read here … CARBON CAPTURE & STORAGE. Other than the artificial technology has so far failed to perform anywhere near the predicted levels, it is not a clean energy technology, and there is no evidence that liquefied carbon stored in geological layers will remain stable or in place. A second follow-up article on artificial or man-made carbon capture and storage will be uploaded on this website shortly.
The way to arrest global warming is to enhance processes to encourage natural global cooling. Humans can tolerate much higher levels of carbon dioxide than are present in the atmosphere today, or likely to be in the medium future. So, carbon dioxide isn’t going to kill you, however as an accomplice to the killer, carbon dioxide is dangerous.
Water dynamics govern about 95% of the heat dynamics of Earth. The natural process for keeping the Earth at a liveable temperature involves transpiration by green plants on the Earth’s surface taking the heat from the surface to the outer atmosphere where it is dissipated to space. It is in the upper atmosphere that cloud formation starts and results in rain that falls to Earth replenishing the soil, which is a giant natural carbon sponge – this is biological carbon sequestration. The more deforested and bare ground there is, the less green plants there are, there is less carbon sequestered, there is less transpiration and the Earth heats up. See Walter Jahne’s video (on this website) for a broader explanation.
From being an out and out sceptic a few years ago, Morrison has recently seen that Australians need some positive action on climate change. Morrison is probably still a sceptic, but as a clever politician he announced a climate policy today with all the right keywords. The problem is that Morrison has no idea about global warming and how to start fixing it – he just wants to win an election.
Sources: Walter Jahne “The Natural History of Water on Earth”
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