Carbon Capture & Burial – Monuments to Madness

It is no surprise that Mr Rudd’s CCS Institute thinks that Carbon Capture & Storage will not be viable for twenty years (Aust 29th Oct).

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A viable business is one that gets no government favours or market guarantees, but earns profits selling products or services to willing buyers in an open market. There is no evidence that burial of carbon dioxide will have any beneficial effects on climate. Moreover, reducing the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere will reduce plant growth and lower the ability of plants to cope with heat and drought. Under CCS, every tonne of coal burnt produces three tonnes of carbon dioxide for burial. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but the source of carbon for all plants, which sustain all animals. It is precious plant food. Sterilisation of this valuable natural resource produces community losses not benefits. If you combine zero or negative benefits with huge capital and operating costs it is obvious that CCS can NEVER make a profit or be “viable”. Moreover, every three tonnes of carbon dioxide buried contains one tonne of carbon, the building block of all life on earth, plus two tonnes of oxygen, the gas of life for all animals. All planets gradually lose their atmospheres by natural processes. To hasten that fatal day by deliberately burying essential life-supporting atmospheric gases is biological suicide. Spending billions of dollars on burial tombs for the gases of life is as useful to Australians as the pyramids were to the ancient Egyptians. All of these expensive carbon cemeteries with their gas collectors, compressors and long pipelines to remote burial facilities are destined to be abandoned and, like the pyramids, will stand as mournful monuments to the madness of the modern Pharaohs. Carbon Capture and Burial is a non-viable idea. Let’s bury it.