Sequestration is not likely to mitigate global warming significantly. The observed rate of increase atmospheric CO2 indicates that natural sinks of CO2 cannot absorb more than roughly 20 billion tonnes of human-created CO2 annually. The current rate of use of fossil fuels creates more than 24 billion tonnes of CO2 annually, or an excess of roughly four billion tonnes of CO2 annually, equivalent to 2000 cubic kilometers of gas or about 30 cubic kilometers of liquid. Even if completely successful, with no change in the use of fossil fuels worldwide this demonstration project would have to be scaled up 8000 times at a cost of some $160 billion per year forever.

Even if completely successful, with no change in the use of fossil fuels worldwide this demonstration project would have to be scaled up 8000 times at a cost of some $160 billion per year forever.

I don't see why project costs would scale linearly with the amount of CO2 sequestered. I assume that larger projects would store CO2 at fewer dollars per ton. Further, we will run out of fossil fuels, so there is no "forever" in the CCS world. Fossil fuels use may end before the occupation of Iraq, which has costs on the scale you state above.

Latest data from the DOE EIA
http://www.eia.doe.gov/iea/carbon.html
makes the picture more than twice as bad:

World human CO2 production from fossil carbon sources is now about 30 billion tonnes annually. At that rate the amount of CO2 that would have to captured, transported and stored is roughly ten billion tonnes of CO2 annually, equivalent to 5000 cubic kilometers (1200 cubic miles) of gas or about 80 cubic kilometers (20 cubic miles) of liquid at 60 bar (60 atmospheres) pressure. This is impossible. Assuming the costs of the demonstration project, attempting this impossibility would cost $400 billion per year.

I have no problem with this kind of sequestration if it works. Coal plants have the cheapest fuel and they can afford to add this with IGCC. If people have to pay 2 cents more per kWh, so be it. They may not like their electric bill going from $100 to $120 per month, but it will not break the bank.

I do not see any mentions of how much CO2 people breathe out every year. A rough figure could be derived from the caloric intake of people. There have been no obvious proposals on how to inject people with Hydrogen so that they can be pollution free. The general populace of weathy nations is the reason for the global warming problem. The people in Zimbawe and the Sudan do not consider it a problem worth thinking about, nor do the natives of the Amazon, the Congo etc.; finding food is of greater importance. People can fly around in jets and sit in their air-conditioned homes working on their high powered computers complaining about Carbon Dioxide while most of the people of the world are worrying about how to find a few sticks of wood to cook their few roots. They do not have the time or money to worry if uranium will leak out of a mountain in Nevada and kill someone ten thousands years from now.

If all of the spent reactor fuel was dumped into a pit thirty feet deep and the size of a football stadium and covered with clay and sand 20 feet deep, and all the money, that would have been spent for more secure facilities, used instead to build more roads to evacuate people from storm areas, far more lives would be saved.

Living near Chernobyl is obviosly far safer than living near the Sea in MYANMAR or New Orleans. If the people in California and elsewhere were truely interested in reducing CO2 production, they would insist on only nuclear power. Almost all of the deaths atributed to Chernobyl are fictional extrapolations by antinuclear opportunists. Less than a hundred died within a year and several cases of thyroid cancer and leukemia have also appeared. How many people were killed walking across the street last year.

Considering the fight to the death attitudes and actions of all of the japanese soldiers and civilians in the islands captured by the US prior to the atomic bombs, more japanese lives, alone, soldier and civilian, were saved by the use of the bombs than were taken by the bombs. The bombings of other japanese towns and the resulting fires caused more deaths than both of the atomic bombs put together. So especially considering the atomic bombs, atomic energy will save more lives than it takes. The sun is the ultimate proof of this statement as is the universe with all of the plants and animals existing on the earth depending it. Every bit of energy ever used by man is atomic, and every live thing that existed ever on the earth, including the first human and all subsequent humans were radioactive themselves all of their existance, and so are you.

In the Ukraine, you can pretend to have been damaged by Chernobyl and get special fares on buses. So many people make false claims including government officials who want more aid.

Most people in Myanmar would live far longer and healthier lives if they were allowed to move to the most contaminated areas surrounding Chernobyl. There are places in the world where people are living that are naturally far more radioactive than anyplace near Chernobyl except the immediate reactor site.

Replacing every fuel burning power plant, including those that burn natural gas with many identical nuclear power plants would be the least expensive and most rapid way of reducing CO2 emissions. The mass production of the reactors would help make their electricity far cheaper than coal generated electricity. It must be restated that if coal were delivered free to the piles of an ordinary power plant it would only reduce the cost of electricity by %20. There is enough uranium and other forms of nuclear fuel stored in the US, including unused material from bombs, to run all of these reactors for five years or more.

Using Canadian Candu reactors would cause the fuel to last much longer, but the Australians and Canadians have plenty of Uranium. If the designs of Carlo Rubbia's energy amplifier were implemented, The US has enough uranium, in storage alone, for 100 years of operation of all the reactors that will be needed in a hundred years for all of the electrical production wanted. A pound of uranium could then actually produce the energy of 3,000,000 pounds of coal. At $30 a ton for coal, a pound of plutonium or uranium from a dismantled bomb would be actually worth $45,000 in energy. Uranium from Russian bombs is right now generating electricity in the US. The energy could generate 2,500,000 killowatt-hours or $250,000 at $0.10 per kwh. The Department of Energy has 68,000 pounds of plutonium that could be transformed into Seventeen billion retail dollars worth of electricity($17,000,000) in the reactors in Arizona that are already designed for it.

Cars could then be converted to burn compressed natural gas mostly and gasoline as a backup fuel. New ones would be plug-in-hybrid cars. The small diesel cars now sold in europe are more efficient and far cheaper than fuel cells.

Natural gas and coal then could also be converted to gasoline or diesel at far less than $3.00 a gallon.

Any money invested in hydrogen fueling of cars is wasted. The production and compression of hydrogen is so costly of energy that the efficiency of a hydrogen fuel cell cannot make up for it compared to compressed natural gas.

Electric cars with very light, very small, very high speed but at least five to ten horse power gasoline engine generators will take a person any where where an ordinary car can go and more. Most drivers do not need the extra range provided by the engine on most days. And the tank can be filled with very long life butanol or ethanol. Electric cars without at least a one horsepower engine generator and a five gallon tank should not be allowed to be sold. Such an engine can weigh less than one pound and generate five to ten miles worth of electric travel in an hour. If such a law were in place then there would be no need for anyone to even talk about the range of an electric car; like no one mentions the range of any SUV.

All animals, plants and live organizms use hydrocarbons as energy sources, so humans should not pretend to be different and think that they can change this soon. Since hydrocarbon liquids are the most energy dense and easy to deliver and store, off all ordinary fuels it may make sense to use electricity to convert natural gas or other souce of carbon including CO2 to liquid fuels. It is easy to make a ZERO air emissions automobile that runs on coal, charcoal, crude oil or even ethanol. It would not even need the ordinary catalytic converter. It would be much more economical and logical to build such locomotives since most cars can be electric and charged when parked in most places.

Natural gas is far to convenient a fuel to be ever considered as a fuel for large power stations. It should be reservered for cogeneration systems in large and small buildings even homes. There is an automatic 40% reduction in CO2 production if buildings use cogeneration systems instead of buying power and using gas for heating and air conditioning. Heat has been used for over a hundred years for cooling buildings using several processes. There are now highly reliable battery systems that can store electricity at competitive prices for California. Heat can be stored in large tanks of cheap materials including water or just in the ground. And cold can be stored in tanks of ice, so that the system can be balanced. Excess electricity might be sold to neighbors.

Since California sold out its inhabitants to ENRON and others by deregulating electricity, the price of electricity has been the highest anywhere in spite of the fact that massive amounts come from Oregon, Nevada and Utah. Recently the Califonia government has decided to keep the prices high by forbidding more coal generated power from comming from Utah. It is now time for the hydroelectric power that is generated in federal facilities to be sold in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada and Utah instead of California so that California can be shown to be not generating its own "clean" power and so that these other states can now have the advantage of lower carbon release and cheaper prices. It is unconstitutional for state A to forbid a product made in another state to be sold in state A.

It is a lie to say that you are interested in reducing carbon dioxide production and then to allow the sale of cars that are larger and have higher horsepower than is needed to actually get the driver where he is going always driving under the speed limit. It is also a lie to say that you are seriously interested in the health of your inhabitants and allow the sale of tobacco.

It is a selfish, unthinking and inconsiderate action for a wealthy nation to buy up oil and other energy from the world market and ignore all safety statistics and not use atomic power plants for all of its electricity to free up fuel for impoverished nations.

..hg..