Re: CO2 sequestration

[John Denker <jsd@AV8N.COM>]

Rick Tarara wrote:
> Build houses, make furniture, etc.  This will sequester some of the
> carbon longer than the natural full life of the tree.

Let's put in some numbers.  Suppose that every time I put 16
gallons of gas into my car, I have to buy 100 lbs of wooden
furniture, take it home, and store it _in perpetuity_.
Before long, that gets to be lots more furniture than I want.
IMHO this is a nice graphic illustration of the essential
silliness of sequestering CO2 in the form of wood.

> Again, we need only sequester the carbon until we can stop adding so
> much into the atmosphere.

Again, no, that's not right.  Fuels such as coal and petroleum
involve carbon atoms that have been out of circulation for
millions of years, and would naturally have stayed out of
circulation for millions of years to come.  If you put those
carbon atoms into circulation, then to balance the scales,
proper sequestration means taking a corresponding number of
carbon atoms out of circulation _and keeping them out_ of
circulation for millions of years.

=============

> the idea here is to sequester enough carbon over the
> next 100 or so years such that we reduce the 'greenhouse' effect so that we
> can wean ourselves off the fossil fuels replacing them with more
> environmentally friendly energy sources.

I might agree with that version.

In my own words:  If sequestration makes sense at all
(which is highly dubious), then it might serve as a
temporary measure while we figure out an energy/power
system based on closed carbon cycles (e.g. bio-fuels)
or no carbon at all (e.g. solar photovoltaics).


I suspect that anybody who thinks about the issues comes
rather quickly to the following realization: rather than
burning petroleum and sequestering wood, why not just
burn the wood?  You can even crack the wood to make
producer gas, which is more easily piped around, and is
suitable in some applications where plain wood wouldn't
be:
  http://www.bartleby.com/65/pr/producer.html

I'm not saying that bio-fuels are problem-free, but they do
seem Pareto superior to burning petroleum and sequestering
wood.