Re: Global Warming (NUCLEAR)

[David Bowman <David_Bowman@GEORGETOWNCOLLEGE.EDU>]

Regarding Doug W's question;

> What is that going to do to life on the ocean floor.  I don't think that
> it could exist in liquid CO2.  Do they figure that there is not enough
> there to worry about?

I don't remember what the authors of the article said about that.  The
deep ocean floor is not sterile of all life, but I think I recall that
the life forms there tend to be mostly bacteria that feed on the
bio-fallout from higher up in the ocean.  Also the thermophile
archebacteria live near the various hydrothermal vents/black smokers on
the ocean floor.

The CO2 would collect in the deepest nearby basin and tend to fill upward
from there.  Presumably the living things that had occupied the CO2 catch
basins would have a hard time of it.  But many land-based terrestrial
life forms have a hard time coping with the paving over of a large part
of the land environment (as well as the other changes that humans have
made to it), and those life forms are probably more fragile 'higher' life
forms whose health is more important for the overall health of the
biosphere than some procaryote microbes at the bottom of a few oceanic
abyssal deep spots.  Maybe you can call me a eucaryocentrist if I'm not
politically correct about this.  (Then, again, what do I know about this?
Environmental science and deep ocean ecology are not my fields.)

I don't necessarily advocate this method of CO2 sequestration.  (I just
don't know enough about the relevant issues to have an informed opinion
one way or the other.)  I just mentioned it as a conceivable possible
counterexample to Ludwik's claim that the only way to significantly cut
CO2 emissions in electricity generation is to go nuclear.  Maybe going
all nuclear would be best.  I just don't know.

David Bowman
David_Bowman@georgetowncollege.edu