Capture and storage, sure. Of carbon? Not so much.

September 2, 2021 11:45 AM

The Juice Media has made another Honest Government Ad for the Australien Government, this one explaining Carbon Capture and Storage (YouTube, 4m44s)
posted by flabdablet (30 comments total)

Aaargh, Australia has become Monty Python with jackboots and a raised right arm - genuinely fear for our neighbour.
posted by unearthed at 12:03 PM on September 2, 2021 [4 favorites]

The Juice Media is pretty awesome, though.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:34 PM on September 2, 2021

They want to store gazillions of tons of CO2 just to the East of Bakersfield. In a fault zone.
posted by Oyéah at 5:36 PM on September 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

That's brilliant, and more accurate technically than I could ever manage. I worked with an economist who was studying the Boundary Dam project in Canada, and its capture/enhanced recovery program was essentially a $1bm/year subsidy to the oil company.
posted by scruss at 5:38 PM on September 2, 2021 [8 favorites]

Savage, hilarious but also depressing.
posted by interogative mood at 6:19 PM on September 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

The Juice Media is pretty awesome, though.

Giordano Nanni of Juice was recently on the A Rational Fear podcast spinoff, The Greatest Moral Podcast of Our Generation. It's a good listen.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:31 PM on September 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

Aaargh, Australia has become Monty Python with jackboots and a raised right arm - genuinely fear for our neighbour.

Mate, wait until you read about our insane new police powers.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 7:33 PM on September 2, 2021 [6 favorites]

It's really terrifying His thoughts were red thoughts "enable the AFP and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission to modify and delete data" < that sounds like legalized planting of 'evidence' - there's no limits to that when Scotty (and his cabinet/congregation - is there a difference?), Dutton and the rest want revenge or just be their hateful selves.

The ballot box has failed in Oz, but this bunch of bad eggs need unseating before they get more power. They're really dragging Australia down, painful to watch, concerned over what's next.
posted by unearthed at 9:21 PM on September 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

Best take on this scam I've seen.

Shame that senators Duckworth and Cassidy both support it, so it s in the US infrastructure bill. Bipartisanship!
posted by eustatic at 9:41 PM on September 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

My professional role is in this area and this is the best summary that I've seen.
posted by happyinmotion at 10:27 PM on September 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

Around 3:39, the narrator says what sounds to my yank ears like "pull that trick of the moonbar." Can anyone translate/explain?
posted by doctornemo at 8:15 AM on September 3, 2021

"...given Santos millions to pull that trick off at Moomba..."
posted by flabdablet at 8:19 AM on September 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

It is extremely worrying that we can't figure out any scalable industrial method of capturing carbon dioxide. It seems like a critical part of any solution since we've got too much CO2 up there already.
posted by interogative mood at 10:56 AM on September 3, 2021

→ we can't figure out any scalable industrial method of capturing carbon dioxide

We can: it's called stop releasing CO₂. It's not easy and people won't like it, but it's what works.

I used to work with one of the foremost technical experts on CCS in thermal power generation. He summarized the technologies (a few years ago) to me as: “I can either use all the power you generate to sequester it, or I can take all the money you get from generating and use that for sequestration. One or other.”
posted by scruss at 5:21 PM on September 3, 2021 [5 favorites]

Bakersfield CO2 storage plan.
posted by Oyéah at 6:03 PM on September 3, 2021

The ballot box has failed in Oz
No, it hasn't. It's the political donation laws and the two-party system that has failed the country by allowing both parties to be bought out by fossil fuel donors. The ballot-box is the only life-line from outright rot and rorting.
posted by Thella at 10:59 PM on September 3, 2021 [4 favorites]

Juice presenter Ellen produced a cover of Coldplay's The Scientist with Esther, Triangle, Blue, and Harriet as a tribute to the scientists at the CSIRO and the BOM who have been gagged from speaking opening on climate change, as discussed in a recent Juice Media Honest Government Ad We Make Everything Good Sh!t
posted by Thella at 11:21 PM on September 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

The ballot-box is the only life-line from outright rot and rorting

True, though it has to be said that totally disturbing numbers of Australians remain willing to use it to install spivs, chancers, idiots and goons.
posted by flabdablet at 1:48 AM on September 4, 2021 [3 favorites]

Bakersfield CO2 storage plan

Like the HECA project, CO₂ injected more than a mile underground at the site would also serve to promote CRC's oil production in Elk Hills, extending the oil field's productive life.

Honest Government Ad, 3m16s:

There IS another way to make CCS profitable: Enhanced Oil Recovery. That’s when the captured CO₂ is used to flush out oil from deposits which would otherwise be too hard to reach. Oil which once burned can release more carbon than was captured! You might call that bullshit, but we call that Carbon Capture Use. Which is why we’ve added a U to CCS, given Santos millions to pull off that trick at Moomba, and called it cLeAn EnErGy.

Amory Lovins wrote about enhanced recovery via CO₂ injection for well pressurization in favourable terms back in the 1970s, but he was advocating using it for gas wells, not oil wells, with the CO₂ involved being produced by steam reforming of methane to hydrogen right at the wellhead so that the only product actually leaving the site would be hydrogen. Such a shame to see such a tidy idea completely bastardized the way it has been.
posted by flabdablet at 2:15 AM on September 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

I guess they don't call it shitfuckery for nothing.
posted by sneebler at 10:46 AM on September 4, 2021

I ask this with complete ignorance. Does carbonate capture have any viability? It sounds like it is a smarter way to neutralize CO2 instead of simply pumping it into the ground.
posted by pashdown at 2:34 PM on September 4, 2021

“Solid carbonate minerals aren’t going anyplace,” said Peter B. Kelemen, a geologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who has been studying the rocks here for more than two decades.

Hell, I'm not a geologist and even I know that solid carbonate minerals are going everyplace. Fuels aren't the only fossil carbon we're digging up at an unsustainable rate.

The rate at which the rocks in Oman are sequestering atmospheric CO₂ pales into insignificance next to the rate at which ocean microorganisms have been using the same chemistry to rain calcium carbonate down upon the ocean floors for hundreds of millions of years; they are the source of all that limestone we keep digging up and burning.

There are endless natural processes working continuously to pull CO₂ out of the air. The scale at which they work makes anything we could do look puny - with the sole exception of building entire civilizations on a foundation of desequestering as much fossil carbon as we possibly can, as fast as we possibly can, for hundreds of years.

As scruss mentions upthread, the fastest way we can get atmospheric CO₂ levels to start coming down again is stop doing that. The natural carbon cycle will take care of the rest.

The most enraging thing about the situation we currently find ourselves in is that far from being a drag on economies, the transition away from fossil carbon is a total economic powerhouse. If the fucking oil majors would just stop corrupting the processes of government in ways designed to slow down the transition away from fossil carbon, the rest of us could be making shitloads of money off replacing fossil carbon based processes with existing alternatives at scale.

Any proposal not aimed squarely at reducing our perceived need to desequester fossil carbon amounts to tinkering around the edges. All such are horseshit polished to a fine high shine, and none of them are worth your time and attention.
posted by flabdablet at 2:05 AM on September 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

Blue Hydrogen. The greatest fossil fuel scam in history? - Just Have a Think (YouTube, 15m42s)
posted by flabdablet at 12:10 PM on September 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

Bullsh|t climate solutions | with Richie Merzian - The Juice Media podcast (YouTube, 40m55s)
posted by flabdablet at 10:29 AM on September 7, 2021

I’m feeling incredible down. My religious-like faith in futurism and the progress of technology and humankind has been destroyed over the last few years. I miss the naive optimism of my youth
posted by interogative mood at 3:13 PM on September 8, 2021

I had to rewatch this so many times. Incredibly cathartic - fossil funded greenwashing is just out of control these days. What's infuriating is that governments are falling for it (see the recent UK hydrogen strategy).

"We can: it's called stop releasing CO₂. It's not easy and people won't like it, but it's what works."

100% agree that simply not releasing is the only thing that works. The thing, it actually is easy right now! Getting down to 0% fossil fuels is hard it's true... But down to 20% of what we do today is easy. The technology is there, its cheap, and it's superior.

The hard part is the fossil fuel industry, their capture of so many governments, and the extremely effective (and untrue) power of their message that a nice life is only possible with fossil fuels.

Life is better without fossil fuels - quieter streets, less air pollution, cheaper electricity and heating costs, less reliance on imported energy. Did I mention cheaper? Cheaper! Why are we now choosing to pay more for worse technologies that threatens our existence?
posted by molecicco at 9:10 AM on September 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

Don't even get me started on this direct air capture nonsense in Iceland!
posted by molecicco at 9:14 AM on September 11, 2021

Why are we now choosing to pay more for worse technologies that threatens our existence?

Capture and storage!
posted by flabdablet at 11:03 AM on September 11, 2021 [2 favorites]

What's infuriating is that governments are falling for it

They're not so much falling for it as actively complicit in it. What's infuriating to me is the sheer numbers of people still prepared to elect representatives that are so visibly complicit.

Wilful ignorance - cool and normal!
posted by flabdablet at 11:07 AM on September 11, 2021 [1 favorite]

> I had to rewatch this so many times

I reckon a rewatch is in order because I can't quite recall the exact figures of how much carbon each of these facilities have C&S'd.
posted by Bangaioh at 11:54 AM on September 11, 2021