On 11/25/05, Perelman, Michael <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The Wall St. Journal has an article about the prospects for burying C02. > The idea always seemed like a non-starter to me. Does it really have > any promise? >
In a limited context yes, especially in the long run. Overall sequestration tends to be more expensive than emission reduction - at least at the moment when we have not begun to tap the no-cost and low cost emissions reduction scenarios. (There are exceptions, which I won't go into. ) And you can't be certain once you sequestered CO2 that it will stay sequestered. But by the time we phase out net CO2 equivalent emissions we will have a number of feedback cycles started - melted icecaps, reductions in the ability of the biosphere to absorb carbon and so forth. So we will probably need to do some sequestration in addition to reverse the damage we have done. No point in making the investment in deployment while we can still have less expensive reduction opportunities untouched - but we should invest in research. Because in the long term, we will need to replace (at a very high price) the services of the natural carbon sinks we have destroyed or reduced the effectiveness of.
