Saskatchewan approves carbon-capture project

[petros]

Saskatchewan has approved a $1.24-billion project to build one of the world’s first commercial-scale, clean-coal power plants, with plans to capture the carbon dioxide before it goes into the atmosphere and use it to recover more crude from nearby oil fields.

Backed with $240-million from the federal government, SaskPower, the provincially owned utility, will rebuild an aging coal-fired unit at its Boundary Dam site in southern Saskatchewan and capture the CO2 from flue gas using solvents.

The decision to proceed is a major step forward in Canada’s strategy of pursuing carbon capture and storage (CCS) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and oil sands facilities. While many environmental groups oppose clean-coal technology, others see it as a critical technology that will help Canada – and coal-dependent countries like China and the United States – meet their emission reduction targets.

While CCS technology may help reduce greenhouse gases in the power sector, it has limited potential in the oil industry, which is facing a growing backlash in the United States and Europe over its heavy emissions of greenhouse gases. Two projects in Alberta propose to capture CO2 from upgraders near Edmonton, but no company is proposing to deploy it at the mines or in-situ production sites due to its prohibitive cost.

As well, both the power and oil industry face major questions about the technology, including the lack of regulations governing the injection of CO2 underground, and skepticism about whether it will remain trapped.

The biggest hurdle to wide-scale adoption is the price tag. It can cost at least $80 a tonne to remove and sequester the carbon dioxide at power plants, and even more when the technology is used at upgraders. In the absence of more onerous carbon prices or regulations, companies have little incentive to spend the money, unless they are heavily subsidized.
But SaskPower president Robert Watson said that, with the federal contribution and the revenue from the CO2 sale, the cost per kilowatt hour of the electricity will be comparable to the new natural-gas-fired plant.

The Saskatchewan unit – one of six at the site – will generate 110 megawatts of electricity and yield some one million tonnes a year of CO2, which will be sold to oil companies. SaskPower said construction will begin immediately, with first the power expected in 2014.

 

[mentalfloss]

I've read there are some side effects or problems with carbon capture, but am too lazy to research now.

Still, it seems like a good step forward.

 

[darkbeaver]

​

There is no such thing as a greenhouse gas

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Louis Hissink
Hilton Ratcliffe (Astronomer Astrophysicist) writes:

I had a most amazing, serendipitous meeting with Professor Gert Venter, Agricultural Engineering, University of Pretoria. He is a world authority on hydroponic culture, hydrology, and greenhouses. He acts as a consultant all over the world on real, practical projects that work (eg, he introduced the production of tomatoes for the first time to Sweden, and they now EXPORT tomatoes to the EU!!!). I was seated next to him at a luncheon, and neither of us knew the other, what he did for a living, or what philosophies he preferred about anything. This guy was so humble and quietly-spoken, I thought he was a semi-literate potato farmer at first! Anyway, in view of my political aspirations in rural South Africa, I was very interested in his expertise in hydroponics. After a couple of hours of his talking and my listening (the way I like it!), he was explaining to me how they introduce atmospheric carbon to the greenhouse tunnel in order to literally increase green-ness and stimulate growth (they increase CO2 to ELEVEN times the ambient level outside!) when he suddenly paused, chuckled, and said,
“You know, that’s why all I can do is laugh when these global warming monkeys tell me that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. It is not, and I have live, precise experimental situations in over 30 sites around the world that prove that it is not. These guys create a model in their computers, based on arbitrary assumptions, and then ignore all the experimental evidence to the contrary. My experiments show that INCREASING ATMOSPHERIC CO2 IS CORRELLATED WITH A DECREASE IN ATMOSPHERIC TEMPERATURE in my agricultural environments.”
I nearly fell off my chair (H/T Hilton Ratcliffe via Facebook).
​

Update: The interesting corollary to this experimentally determined fact is that carbon based life forms which experience accelerating population growth, resulting in an accelerated production of CO2 from the conversion of hydrocarbons to energy, then suffer population reductions from the increased CO2 which decreases the system temperature as a feedback mechanism. After all, without exception, every ice age we know of has been associated either with a biological mass extinction, or a reduction in the surface biomass from death, whether from a lack of food or hypothermia. Ice ages are also associated with increased atmospheric CO2 levels. This is true for an isolated system but not for an actively managed one such as managed greenhouses used by Prof. Gert Venter, where temperature reduction of the greenhouse atmosphere can be compensated for by various methods.
No gas can store energy (heat). The belief that CO2 raises the temperature of a gas system is based on the assumption of a closed system in which energy cannot escape. The earth is an open system and hence it cannot accumulate heat in its atmosphere. Greenhouse gas theory seems to be the domain of mathematically dominated science, rather than empirical science.
Update 1: Reviewing my comments above, I quickly realised that in a greenhouse environment, one in which atmosphere is captured by a physical boundary, (the glass of the greenhouse itself) might be construed as a closed system. Introducing CO2 into this system should, then, increase the enclosed system’s temperature but Venter’s opinion is that this does not happen, and instead the system temperature decreases. This suggests that our theories of radiation and the kinetic theory gases might be incomplete.
This is ok since this is the nature of science where all scientific theories are provisional and subject to revision when illuminated by the light of new insights or experiment. This also distinguishes the scientific world from the religious, for in the latter, new data are either accepted or rejected on whether they confirm theology, while in the case of the former, new data causes changes in the dogma.

Climate Morons

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Louis Hissink

Global Warming Morons spreading like Cane Toads across the intellectual wasteland of mathematically and scientifically illiterate citizens. Saw an ad for “organic sugar” bragging that it was “carbon free”. Common sugar (sucrose) is C12 H22 O11 – and has twelve carbon atoms. Only a moron can be convinced that carbon is a “pollutant”.
​

H/T Jim Peden via Facebook

 

[TenPenny]

I didn't realize that a small greenhouse was a scientifically-accurate model for the earth and its atmosphere.
Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Only a moron can be convinced that carbon is a “pollutant”.

Only a moron would make a statement like that. What makes something a pollutant is that there's too much of it where it wouldn't naturally be. The human body needs a trace of iodine to be healthy, for instance, but try eating a kilogram of it and see what happens to you. Similarly, you can safely crap in the woods every day and natural biological processes will take care of it, but if a hundred people crap in the same place, you'll have pollution issues. You think carbon can't be a pollutant? Build yourself a coal-fired power plant and dump all the soot into the atmosphere.

 

[darkbeaver]

I didn't realize that a small greenhouse was a scientifically-accurate model for the earth and its atmosphere.
Thanks for clearing that up.

Well where else would you test greenhouse theory? In a computer?

 

[Tonington]

Well where else would you test greenhouse theory? In a computer?

You can test greenhouse theory in a lab, it doesn't require a greenhouse. But what TenPenny was commenting on, and you seem to have missed, is that an agricultural experiment in a greenhouse is not a proper analog for a planetary climate.

 

[darkbeaver]

Only a moron would make a statement like that. What makes something a pollutant is that there's too much of it where it wouldn't naturally be. The human body needs a trace of iodine to be healthy, for instance, but try eating a kilogram of it and see what happens to you. Similarly, you can safely crap in the woods every day and natural biological processes will take care of it, but if a hundred people crap in the same place, you'll have pollution issues. You think carbon can't be a pollutant? Build yourself a coal-fired power plant and dump all the soot into the atmosphere.

So you would buy the carbon free sugar instead of the polluted stuff?

 

[darkbeaver]

Understanding the Thermodynamic Atmosphere Effect

Joseph E. Postma
(M.Sc. Astrophysics, Honours B.Sc. Astronomy)
March 2011​

[Abridged by Andrés Valencia]

Introduction
It should be pointed out immediately that the "Greenhouse Effect" is indeed a theory - it is not a benign empirical fact, such as the existence of the Sun, for example. As a theory it has a scientific development which is open to inspection and review.
Therefore from this point on, the "Greenhouse Effect" will be referred to as the "Greenhouse Theory", indicative of the fact that it is a proposition which needs to be supported by observation and which also needs to agree with other well-established laws of physics.
This is analogous to the theory of gravity: just like the atmosphere, no one questions that gravity exists, obviously. What we do question is the theory that describes how it works, and just like Einstein's theory of gravity which breaks down and fails under certain conditions, and isn't compatible with some other branches of physics, we can examine if the Greenhouse Theory also breaks down and fails under the conditions it is supposed to describe.
This distinction needs to be stressed because many scientists, who really should know better, will make the claim that the effect of the Greenhouse Theory is a "scientific fact", when in reality a scientist should understand that there is no such thing as a scientific fact, but only scientific theories.
What scientists attempt to do is create theories which can describe the way these facts of reality work, in a logical way, and in a way consistent with other scientific theories.
The Greenhouse Theory is the proposition that the atmosphere warms the surface of the Earth to a temperature warmer than it would otherwise be without an atmosphere, via a process called "back-scatter





The greenhouse theory says that if greenhouse gases increase, the Earth will become hotter

• Thermodynamics says that the only source of heating is from the Sun, with the Laws of Thermodynamics then setting up a temperature distribution going from warm-to-cold off of the ground, with the average temperature obviously found in-between the ground and outer space. The Earth cannot be out of equilibrium with the Sun in the long term because the Sun is the only source of heat for the ground + atmosphere aggregate (assuming negligible geothermal effects). The Earth cannot emit more energy than it absorbs, nor can it less, in the long run. The only way to heat or cool the Earth in the long run is to change the amount of solar energy which is absorbed. This can only be achieved by a long-term change in brightness of the Sun, a change in Earth's albedo or atmospheric extinction, a change in Earth's orbital parameters, etc. Thermodynamics does not say it can be done by greenhouse gases, because these gases do not change the input energy. If you do not change the absorbed input energy, you cannot change the output energy, and increases in "greenhouse gases" do not change the amount of absorbed input energy.

The greenhouse theory says that greenhouse gases act like a greenhouse around the Earth
A real greenhouse gets warm because the glass ceiling prevents atmospheric convection. Like sand on a beach, the surfaces inside a greenhouse get warm from the solar energy. The air which is in contact with the surfaces inside the greenhouse then also warms by conduction, and then tries to convect and expand and cool. The glass ceiling prevents this however, and so the warm air stays inside the greenhouse. The greenhouse will therefore warm up to the temperature corresponding to however much total solar energy is being absorbed by the surfaces inside it. And so in fact, a real greenhouse actually prevents the atmosphere from doing what it naturally wants to do, which is cool itself. We build greenhouses because they do the opposite of what the atmosphere actually does.
Therefore, calling back-scattered radiative amplification a "greenhouse effect" is not even an accurate name for the theory in the first place, in any way. Supposed "greenhouse gases" in the free atmosphere do not replicate the behaviour of the solid glass boundaries in a greenhouse, nor do the glass boundaries cause heating by trapping radiation. The atmospheric greenhouse effect is therefore based on a theory which a real greenhouse doesn't do! The abuse of logic in this theory is offensive. If the completely infrared-opaque solid glass barriers of a real greenhouse do not cause the heating inside of it by reflecting or trapping infrared radiation, then why would merely partial absorption from a trace gas (CO2 accounts for only 0.04% of the atmosphere by concentration) in the turbulent free atmosphere be able to do what a real greenhouse cannotObservatorio ARVAL - Understanding the Thermodynamic Atmosphere Effect

 

[Tonington]

You are routinely posting this pseudo-scientific nonsense. Thermodynamics is much more than this fool wrote. It concerns the system, and it's properties. A system can warm up without changing the source. You for whatever reason, refuse to acknowledge that any matter with a temperature above 0 K, will radiate heat. So sure, the sun is the source. But if you change the system so that it emits less radiation, then there is a new equilibrium that the system will develop. The temperature will increase.

An igloo doesn't add heat, the blocks are frozen. With body heat alone the temperature can rise up to 15 degrees above freezing. It retains the emission of radiation, and so raises the internal temperature. This does not violate the laws of thermodynamics, all the energy is accounted for, it doesn't disappear, and anyone who believes it does doesn't understand radiative physics or thermodynamics.

 

[wulfie68]

I am not sold on the popular greenhouse gas dogma but I also intuitively agree with reducing ANYTHING that is not a natural occurring substance that does not have proven benefits on its own.

That being said, CO2 capturing is bound to be challenging and costly because of the fact that CO2 added to water creates carbonic acid. Now we may not blink about drinking carbonic acid whenever we chug a can of Coke, Pepsi or any other carbonated beverage, but dealing with it, in a pipeline environment (which is pretty much the only way to transport it with any hope of efficiency) means using much more exotic and expensive metallurgies, liners and/or chemical treatment programs because the industry standards aren't engineered to withstand its reactions. For facilities emitting large quantities it may be feasible but for smaller ones it won't be unless commodity prices go WAY up...

 

[darkbeaver]

You are routinely posting this pseudo-scientific nonsense. Thermodynamics is much more than this fool wrote. It concerns the system, and it's properties. A system can warm up without changing the source. You for whatever reason, refuse to acknowledge that any matter with a temperature above 0 K, will radiate heat. So sure, the sun is the source. But if you change the system so that it emits less radiation, then there is a new equilibrium that the system will develop. The temperature will increase.

An igloo doesn't add heat, the blocks are frozen. With body heat alone the temperature can rise up to 15 degrees above freezing. It retains the emission of radiation, and so raises the internal temperature. This does not violate the laws of thermodynamics, all the energy is accounted for, it doesn't disappear, and anyone who believes it does doesn't understand radiative physics or thermodynamics.

BS, the paper is solid, the paper is perfect there are no mistakes, the laws of thermodynamics overrule your puny and misinformed objection to proper science. If you don't understand the basics you should avoid stupid assertions that you cannot in any way shape or form prove. The greenhouse theory is completely and permanently dead.

 

[petros]

Is the mesosphere still ridiculously chilly?

 

[Tonington]

BS, the paper is solid, the paper is perfect there are no mistakes, the laws of thermodynamics overrule your puny and misinformed objection to proper science. If you don't understand the basics you should avoid stupid assertions that you cannot in any way shape or form prove. The greenhouse theory is completely and permanently dead.

So explain the temperature inside an igloo dumb beaver.

 

[TenPenny]

Well where else would you test greenhouse theory? In a computer?

If anyone thought you knew anything about science, your reponse should dispell that. You can't even grasp the meaning of what I wrote, so it's unlikely that you could understand anything scientific.

 

[Durry]

I'm sure glad we have so many experts here who know all about this stuff.

It's a good thing these same experts are not building this thing tho !!

 

[Tonington]

Is the mesosphere still ridiculously chilly?

Yup, and getting colder.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

So you would buy the carbon free sugar instead of the polluted stuff?

Anybody so dumb as to think that conclusion follows from what I wrote couldn't write a coherent sentence, so I presume you're being deliberately obtuse, as you usually are when you know somebody's right and your citations are not.

 

[darkbeaver]

So explain the temperature inside an igloo dumb beaver.

The temperature inside the igloo is caused by the radiating body. The igloo is a closed circuit the atmosphere inside the igloo is static and does not remove the heat till you open the door. Tomorrow I will esplain snowballs for you. Greenhouse gases clearly and irrefutably do not exist on earth nor anywhere else.

If anyone thought you knew anything about science, your reponse should dispell that. You can't even grasp the meaning of what I wrote, so it's unlikely that you could understand anything scientific.

"They just don't understand me". We hear that all the time at the clinic. Of course this is the favourite symptomatic lament of the deluded mind, and those experiencing puberty. When you begin to shave the doubts will lesson.

 

[TenPenny]

The igloo is a closed circuit the atmosphere inside the igloo is static and does not remove the heat till you open the door.

That's completely untrue. I can mail you a thermodynamics book if you need one.