Obama Administration Stupidity About Man-Caused Global Warming

Try and understand the logic of this. ClimateGate, among many recent developments, such as the failure of the climate meeting in Copenhagen, and the revelation that the United Nations Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is hopelessly flawed, fraudulent, and decidedly un-scientific, and the case for man-caused global warming and/or climate change is dead.

With that clear, why is the Obama administration going to spend (waste) another $154 million to try and "capture" and store (sequester) harmless carbon dioxide gas from the burning of coal in a power plant? Let's say it again. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, in spite of what the politically driven, Obama controlled EPA might say. We exhale CO2 with every breath; plants need it to grow, and yet our wonderful government is going to spend another $154 million of taxpayers money to capture this harmless gas and pump it underground. It doesn't get much more idiotic than that.

Note how in the following article, published today in USA Today, that the "green-washed", ignorant reporter(?) and even the Energy Secretary, Stephen Chu uses the term "carbon pollution", when anyone who is half-informed knows he's talking about simple carbon dioxide!

This is carefully calculated deception. I think Americans are beginning to catch on. Will Congress? Will Obama? Not any time soon. They have their agenda to follow. To heck with logic and common sense.
Peter

Clean coal? Obama funds research to capture carbon

Source

Al Ranson, a project manager for Alstom, readies a new facility last month that will capture the carbon dioxide produced by We Energies' coal-fired power plant in Pleasant Prairie, Wis.

CAPTION

None

Can coal really be clean? Environmentalists may be skeptical, but President Obama is moving ahead with efforts to create non-polluting coal.

On Tuesday, the Department of Energy announced that it will give up to $154 million to NRG Energy, a Texas-based company, to create a facility that will capture coal's carbon and store it underground, thereby reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. It's one of several such federally funded coal projects.

"Advancing our carbon capture and storage technology will create new jobs in America and reduce our carbon pollution output," Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who won the 1997 Nobel Prize for physics, said in a statement.

In his State of the Union address, Obama called for a diverse mix of clean energy sources, including -- to the dismay of many environmentalists -- nuclear power plants and "clean coal technologies."

"We're highly skeptical," Bruce Nilles, the Sierra Club's national coal campaign director, says of Obama's plans to clean coal by capturing its carbon, according to a recent story by McClatchy Newspapers. He and other critics say it will be too costly to retrofit existing coal plants with such technology.

The Sierra Club says coal, which provides about half of U.S. electricity, should instead be phased out by 2030 and replaced by renewable power sources and energy efficiency, including efficient uses of natural gas.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, like other environmental groups, says there's no such thing as "clean" coal. France Beinecke, president of its New York City chapter, says "every single step in the coal power cycle is dirty," but she agrees with Obama's plan to fund efforts to clean it.

NRDC believes that a technology known as carbon capture and storage for coal plants should be included in the (climate) bill. This is what President Obama was referring to as "clean coal." We don't think that term is appropriate, but the technology really will reduce global warming pollution from power plants.

How does this technology work?

It removes carbon dioxide from coal's smokestack emissions, compresses it and pumps it deep underground, where it's stored. Such techniques for large coal plants have doubled the cost of producing power, so research is aimed at finding more cost-effective methods.

NRG Energy, which will match the Energy Department's funding, will build a 60-megawatt carbon capture demonstration facility at its plant in Thompson, Texas.

"Development and deployment of these carbon capture technologies at scale, not only in the United States but also worldwide as well, is essential if we are to meet successfully the challenge of global climate change," David Crane, president and CEO of NRG Energy, said in a statement.

Scheduled to begin operating in 2013, the project is designed to capture 90% of incoming carbon dioxide, compress it and use it to enhance oilfield recovery operations.

A report to be released Wednesday by Advanced Resources International, a research and consulting firm, says capturing carbon and pumping it into oil reservoirs could increase U.S. oil production.

Another Billion Taxpayer Dollars Wasted

There is so much in the following article that is nonsense that it is enough to make a rational person gag. Here we have a proposal to spend (another) One Billion dollars of Federal, meaning taxpayer's money, on a project to capture, compress, and pump under ground, carbon dioxide produced from the burning of coal for the generation of electricity.

Think of it, carbon dioxide, a harmless gas that we exhale with every breath, that is vital to the growth of plants, has been so vilified by global warming alarmists that our government is going to spend a BILLION dollars in an experiment to capture it and pump it underground. This is like gas exploration and production in reverse. Maybe it will provide jobs for a couple of geologists. Whoopee!

This is a "make work project". It reminds me of someone digging a hole in the ground and then filling it back up. Yes, a lot of work is done, but nothing is accomplished. There is no way the tiny fraction of CO2 captured and stored underground at this one coal-fired power plant can possibly have an affect on GLOBAL warming, or "climate change" as it is now called.

The article contains another phrase I haven't heard before, "climate change pollution"; what a nonsensical phrase that is. It is totally unproven that carbon dioxide causes "climate change"; yet we're having this rammed down our throats by our government. This wasted one Billion dollars is also just the tip of the iceberg surrounding the great hoax and myth of man-caused global warming.
Peter

U.S.-Private Bid to Trap Carbon Emissions Is Revived

By KATE GALBRAITH (source)

A public-private project to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions that was abandoned by the Bush administration is being restarted, Steven Chu, the energy secretary, announced Friday.

The project, known as FutureGen, was dropped in January 2008 because the Bush administration said that costs had doubled to $1.8 billion, from $950 million. A study later found that a math error had caused the increase to be overstated; costs had actually risen 39 percent, to $1.3 billion.

Under the project, a coal plant will be built in Mattoon, Ill., that will store nearly all of its emissions underground, where they cannot contribute to global warming.

“This important step forward for FutureGen reflects this administration’s commitment to rapidly developing carbon capture and sequestration technology as part of a comprehensive plan to create jobs, develop clean energy and reduce climate change pollution,” Mr. Chu said in a statement.

The project does not have a green light yet. The Department of Energy said it and FutureGen would make a final decision early next year, after additional cost assessments. For now, the department is estimating government contributions at slightly more than $1 billion, with most of that coming from stimulus money designated for advancing clean coal technologies. The FutureGen Alliance of large coal producers and users will provide $400 million to $600 million.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, praised the decision to restart the project. “For nearly a year and a half, the people of Illinois have endured delays, reversals and disagreements over costs and funding of FutureGen,” Mr. Durbin said. “Today, patience and perseverance pay off.”

Henry Henderson, the director of the Midwestern program for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said that from the perspective of climate, it was critical to pursue carbon sequestration projects like FutureGen at a commercial scale.

“We need to get actual experience at scale, and this is a way to do it,” he said.

The plant would test techniques for converting coal to a gas, capturing pollutants and burning the gas for power. The carbon dioxide would be compressed and pumped into deep soil layers. Monitoring devices would test whether any had escaped into the air.

Carbon Dioxide Sequestration and Enhanced Oil Recovery

I think the problem with this idea is the capture and transport of carbon dioxide to use in enhanced oil recover is prohibitively expensive. Any comments?
Peter


News Media Contact(s):Craig Stevens, 202/586-4940
For Immediate ReleaseMarch 3, 2006 (source)

New CO2 Enhanced Recovery Technology Could Greatly Boost U.S. Oil

WASHINGTON , D.C. – The Department of Energy (DOE) released today reports indicating that state-of-the-art enhanced oil recovery techniques could significantly increase recoverable oil resources of the United States in the future. According to the findings, 89 billion barrels or more could eventually be added to the current U.S. proven reserves of 21.4 billion barrels.

“These promising new technologies could further help us reduce our reliance on foreign sources of oil,” Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said. “By using the proven technique of carbon sequestration, we get the double benefit of taking carbon dioxide out of air while getting more oil out of the earth.”

The 89 billion barrel jump in resources was one of a number of possible increases identified in a series of assessments done for DOE which also found that, in the longer term, multiple advances in technology and widespread sequestration of industrial carbon dioxide could eventually add as much as 430 billion new barrels to the technically recoverable resource.

If the 89 billion barrels in resources is converted to reserves, the U.S. would be fifth in the world behind Iraq with 115 billion barrels, and an additional 430 billion barrels would make it first, ahead of Saudi Arabia with 261 billion barrels.

Next-generation enhanced recovery with carbon dioxide was judged to be a “game-changer” in oil production, one capable of doubling recovery efficiency. And geologic sequestration of industrial carbon dioxide in declining oil fields was endorsed last year as a potential method of reducing greenhouse base emissions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The assessments looked at maximizing oil production and accelerating the productive use of carbon dioxide in all categories of petroleum resources, including as-yet undiscovered oil and the new resources in the residual oil zone. The findings are consolidated in the February 2006 report Undeveloped Domestic Oil Resources: The Foundation for Increasing Oil Production and a Viable Domestic Oil Industry.

The 430 billion barrel potential was identified in increments of up to 110 billon barrels from applying today's state-of-the-art enhanced recovery in discovered fields – 90 billion in light oil, 20 billion in heavy oil; up to 179 billion barrels from undiscovered oil – 119 billion from conventional technology, 60 billion from enhanced recovery; up to 111 billion barrels from reserve growth – 71 billion from conventional technology, 40 billion from enhanced recovery; up to 20 billion from tapping the residual oil zone with enhanced recovery; and, another 10 billion from tar sands.

The separate assessments and reports contributing to the total resource estimate are: Basin Oriented Assessments, ten assessments of producing U.S. basins and the potential of state-of-the-art enhanced oil recovery; Stranded Oil in the Residual Oil Zone (ROZ), five reports looking at new resources in the residual oil zone; and, Evaluation of the Potential for "Game-Changer" Improvements in Oil Recovery Efficiency for CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery, a report on next-generation technology. They were prepared by Advanced Resources International and Melzer Consulting.

U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Public Affairs, Washington, D.C.