Geosequestration: Burying carbon or burying our heads in the sand? : Melbourne Indymedia

:::A Question of Permanence and Liability:::

Geosequestration invovles the capture of CO2 emitted by power stations, its compression and transport in pipelines to burial site such as underground aquifers. There has been an overseas pilot ocean sequestration project, the Sleipner project in Norway, that has been operating for five years.

However, one of the biggest questions for this new technology is whether the liquefied carbon dioxide will remain where it is deposited and for how long. Estimates by scientists with the GEODISC program conclude that CO2 burial sites will have to be maintained for as long as 100,000 years (Bradshaw et al 2002). There is no national or international legislation to deal with such a long-term liability of care. Current regulatory proposals by the Ministerial Council for Mineral and Petroleum Resources include government taking the liability for leakage and maintenance after the proponent (corporation) has completed the project, which is generally between 30 and 50 years. This is moves the burden to the government and therefore tax-payers for ensuring the project does not leak or contaminant surround areas for thousands of years a completely unacceptable injustice for future generations of Australians and not nearly long enough for ecological security. Air need only be contaminated with as little as 25% CO2 to be lethal to humans and animals. CO2 leakage into groundwater causes acidification. Catastrophic leakages of CO2 do occur: in 1980, CO2 escaping from Lake Nyos (Cameroon) asphixyated 1700 people to death.

Geosequestration as a solution to GHG emissions negates both the precautionary and the polluter-pays principles. The technology should be rejected as an ecological solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The fact continues that the safest ‘storage’ of carbon dioxide is in the form of coal and other fossil fuels in the underground forms that they naturally occur in. If the industry is truly worried about CO2 emissions we should be moving away from fossil fuel energy sources.

:::Social and ecological injustice in the fossil fuel industry:::

Regardless of whether geosequestration adequately ‘deals’ with the carbon emissions of combusting fossil fuels, globally there are several environmental and social burdens of extracting fossil fuels. The World Bank's own extractive industry review found that extractive industries create more poverty, disease, and dislocation of peoples and greater environmental damage than the benefit brought by the trade of those primary products. The World Bank itself recommends investment in renewable energy as a poverty alleviation measure.

Why do the extractive fuel industries increase poverty and social injustice?

1. Ecological damage: Nigeria alone has an estimated 300 oil leaks per year from badly maintained oil pipelines.

2. Support of military and oppressive regimes: Many of those energy corporations have been implicated in thousands of human rights violations and environmental mismanagement. Shell, Chevron Texaco and Exxon Mobil are well known for their involvement in oil spills and human rights abuses in the Niger Delta and Latin America.

3. Diversion of Government funding: Rio Tinto, Australia’s biggest coal producer, has already received as much as $340m in Australian government subsidies in the last few years (Bob Brown, Senate Inquiry, 2003). Rio Tinto was implicated in human rights violations in Bougainville and PNG in the 1990’s.

4. Energy poverty: Geosequestration cannot be claimed as an environmental solution, if it will further entrench out dependence of fossil fuels with all of the association environmental problems of extraction and consumption. In developing nations this means massive infrastructure developments compared to renewables technologies. Investment in geosequestration technology by the biggest emitting companies will not deliver justice for the rest of the world, nor will it contribute to the alleviation of energy poverty in the global South: It will not be a useful technology for mitigating climate change for some time, if it works. If it does not, it actually makes the greenhouse gas problem worse as capturing, compressing and transporting the carbon is a very energy intensive process.

5. Decline in environmental health: All fossil fuel emissions contain a number of noxious substances that are harmful to human health at many levels. Smog causes acid rain that causes fauna deaths and smog particles contribute to respiratory illnesses, lung cancer and asthma; the consumption of lead enriched fuels contributes to retarded intellectual development of children, causes cancer and birth defects. Fumes and noise in industrial and traffic-heavy areas can render some areas unpleasant, indeed dangerous, for pedestrians and animals alike. Ultimately, exhaust fumes from cars are contributing in a big way to global warming.

Geosequestration deals with only one of the many adverse effects of fossil fuel usage, while leaving the poverty stricken to still live in concrete highways zones, in oil spill and gas flaring zones and adjacent to emitting industries, breathing in toxic emissions. In the wider view, it is obvious that investment in non-emitting industries is always going to be the most humane option.

:::Bridging technology or TNC's profit making ruse?:::

Geosequestration has been promoted as a potential ‘bridging’ technology that will enable the reduction of emissions whilst renewable technology and energy efficiency technology advances to the point of being able to supply our energy requirements. This position is neither practical nor realistic due to the current lack of funding for renewable technology. In the 'Energy White Paper' (2004) the government committed itself to geosequestration research and development through the $500 million ‘Low Emissions Fund’. This is on top of the $30 million already allocated to CSIRO for geosequestration research. Whilst this fund is not for geosequestration and ‘clean coal’ per say, the funds from government need to be matched dollar for dollar from private industry this is simply beyond the financial capacity of most of the renewable energy and energy efficiency industry. Renewables simply cannot compete with a fossil fuel industry that already enjoys $9 billion a year in government subsidies.

It is naive to believe that fossil fuel TNCs will gracefully bow-out of energy generation and supply as renewable energy/energy efficiency grows. This is clear from the history of fossil fuel corporations both nationally and internationally, and in particular the behaviour of the fossil fuel cartels who have attempted to undermine international climate negotiations. This has been well documented by the non-government community internationally.

In Australia, the proponents of the Gorgon project, which will become the biggest geosequestration project in the world, located under A grade nature reserve, are Shell, Chevron Texaco and Exxon. For such a greenhouse pollution intensive project as this, beginning at a time when carbon emissions are likely to become costly, as will inevitably occur within the next decade, the project will become economically unviable. Therefore, GJV propose to inject 60% of the CO2 emissions underground. Their interest in this project is profit, not environmental protection.

If this were truly a bridging technology we would be experiencing at least equal support for geosequestration and fossil fuel technologies AND renewable energy/energy efficiency technologies. There is current no co-operative research center for renewable energy in Australia and only a tiny 2% of the energy market is dedicated to renewable energy generation. Action in these areas of research and market share is absolutely necessary if Australia is to make a transition to renewable energy.

The funding and research diverted to geosequestration technology will have long term and possibly dangerous consequences for all people affected by climate change, and for Australians alive today and for future generations. Investment in this technology now, to the detriment of renewable energy will disadvantage the future of all of us.

:::Business as usual for the worst emitters:::

Geosequestration is an end-of-pipe solution that does not deal with primary causes of climate change: the gross overconsumption of fossil fuels by the minority world. Australia's first place in the per capita emission stakes indicates how severely unsustainable our lifestyles, industry and economic systems are. A primary response to creating climate justice is consuming less. We don't need to suffer to do this, but industries and governments must take responsibility for efficiency and alternatives, rather than relying on technological fixes that will further our dependence on fossil fuels.

Any climate justice strategy must deliver more equitable access of natural resources (including energy) to peoples across the world. A genuine solution to climate change would be a commitment by the Australian federal government to a 20% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 60% by 2050 and the development of policy to enable the application of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies to achieve our energy needs rather than our energy greed.

Investing so much our country’s research funds for climate change into geosequestration will divert important funding from renewable technologies that will help energy poor countries and remote areas of Australia jump the ‘technology barrier’ and circumvent going thorough a financially burdensome and energy-intensive industrialization process to develop. Research dollars for renewable energy technology can enable Australia to help small poorer nations to convert to sustainable energy technologies before they are caught in the fossil fuel investment cycle. This is particularly pertinent to our near neighbours in the Pacific who will suffer greatly from the impact of climate change, who are also trapped in poverty because there is limited access to electricity from which to increase their quality of life via health and education services, with increased opportunity for local enterprise. Best of all, it can improve our quality of life at home too: freeing up funds for socially useful projects, improving air quality and giving us that warm inner glow that comes from having done the right thing by the rest of the world.

Authors:
Kim Stewart (Phd Researcher, Griffith University)
Steph Long (Climate Justice Campaigner, FoE Australia)

:::References:::

ABC, 2003, “CO2 underground: the answer to climate change of part of the problem?” broadcast on Earthbeat, February 15, 2003 transcript online at http://www.abc.net.au

ABC 2004, “Sleipner, Gorgon and Geosequestration” broadcast on The Buzz, Jluy 10, 2004 at http://www.abc.net.au

ABC, 2004 “Geosequestration Won’t Rock the World, expert” in News in Science August 4, 2004 at http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1168015.htm

Bradshaw, J. etal, 2002, “The potential for geological sequestration of C02 in Australia: preliminary findings and implications for new gas field development. APPEA Journal, p42. Online at http://www.apcrc.com.au/Programs/GEODISC_APPEApaper2002.pdf

Davidson, P.J., Freund, P and Smith, A 2001, “Putting carbon Back into the Ground”, International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas Research and Development Programme, p23. Online at http://www.ieagreen.org.uk/

Davidson, S. 2003, “Putting CO2 back”, ECOS magazine, No 116, July-September 2003, p22-24, CSIRO Australia.Diesendorf, M 2003 “Propping up the old smokestack industries” in The Canberra Times April 22, 2003 p11

MacGill, I and Outhred, H 2003 “Beyond Kyoto innovation and adaptation: A critique of the PMSEIC assessment of emission reduction options in the Australian stationary energy sector” in EcoGeneration Magazine June/July 2003

Reuters, 2004 “Using CO2 to prolong UK North Sea oil too costly” online at Planet Ark World Environment News at http://www.planetark.com/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=24659

Hawkins, D.G. 2003 “Passing gas: thinking about leakage from geologic carbon storage sites”, Natural Resource Defense Council, Washington DC: USA

Tarlo, K 2003 “Comparing the risks in reducing greenhouse gas emissions: coal with geosequestration vs. sustainable energy” Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney. Presentation to Green Capital Geo-sequestration Debate, Melbourne, 30 October.

World Bank 2001 "Extractive Industries Review" Website at http://www.eireview.org/

Thank you both, I have saved the article.

This is what troubles me, the term ‘subterranean aquifers’ conjures up an image of a hollow void….this is incorrect…once oil is extracted its previous home is not a void… with the oil gone rock is left behind… made of mostly sandstone.
So to my understanding the intention is to pump pressurizes CO2 into a rock…ok put like this either I am a complete idiot (it has been suggested) or those who are peddling snake oil have a market place populated by fools…
I’ll take my chances…

The other plausible alternative is that a vacant subterranean cavern can be found and the pressurized gas can be pumped directly into the natural container. But this would be like spaying the contents of an aerosol can into a colluder....even oil and gas fields leak...and as more gas is pumped in equal amounts will leak out above ground as the liquid gasifies in the absence of any restrictive confinement.

Although regardless of the obvious failings of such a plan the value is plain to see, it gets us out of Kyoto, and it allows us to pollute even more.

When it doesn’t work our politicians can still say, we believed in the plan, there was no deception and if we had our time all over again we would not have done anything differently, it was the right decision and the world is a better place.

Science can't stop politicians Simon, these days it can't even whisper in their ear. Even assuming we could pump our noxious gases into ground so they wouldn't leak, ever, still problems of consuming more energy (which releases heat, feeding clim.chng), sourcing fuels (feeds war), and net energy cost (separating & pumping waste gas).

What did D.Adams write, something about "systems whose fundamental design flaws were completely obscured by their superficial design flaws?"

But if theres a bob in it..

Great article K & S, glad to see youse identify overconsumption as the problem; coulda mentioned the potential of efficiency efforts will drive easiest gains(1), but there no avoiding a future of much less cheap energy. We have NO completely greenhouse-friendly energy generation/consumption systems, we HAVE to use less. Technological solutions universally consume increasingly scarce energy and other resources, usually also at some greenhouse gas cost. Its lifestyle or nothing.

1. on energy efficiency programs http://energybulletin.net/2844.html
http://energybulletin.net/2807.html
http://energybulletin.net/2815.html

· Not to be taken the wrong way....well intentioned
·
· You mention using too much (resources) causing too much pollution and I couldn’t agree more...
·
· However you seem to be saying the heat we create in manufacture adds to global warming.... from factories Mexican chillums or lighting farts.
·
· Agricultural CO2 contributes 14% of all emissions
·
· It might add a little to the problem but the main cause of global warming is the total production of CO2 which acts as a one way insulation tent suspended in the atmosphere. The heat from the sun is more than enough to cook the planet, what we are actively doing is creating the oven...back again to your opinion that we are using too much.
·
· Sorry if my correction upsets but there's enough confusion already.
·
· Reading this weeks Guardian I was amazed to read that a group of scientist dismissed global warming/ climate change as an imminent threat. The article went onto explain global warming it was the groups opinion that threats will not occur for centuries, therefore as a species we should deal with aids and third world poverty.
Global development fair trade, industralisation all in an effort to banish poverty.
It made me laugh when I read that the group were economist ….not as previously stated scientists!!…. so we should expect a solution from those who advise governments,

your right! Scientists are not listened to unless a more respected bean counter is using their title.

cheers for yr effort to clarify, but me thinks you misunderstood the admittedly obscure point i was making.

Many techno-utopianists look to abiotic oil, zero point energy, hydrogen producing solar panels etc to 'solve' our energy & greenhouse problems. What they miss is that the energy released by us (we are INCAPABLE of creating energy, vis Laws of Thermodynamics), adds to the total energy within 'our' climate and hence contributes to changing it from the balance that makes life possible for us. More energy use = more climate change, whatever the source.

Its easy to slip into language implying that humans 'generate' or 'create' energy, but we mostly just dig it up as fossil fuels. Using wrong language perpetuates the fantasy that we are anything but voracious parasites on the planets stored energy.

What you cannot seem to understand is that the sun is continually releasing energy for the next few billion years... THe sun's energy warms our earth and drives the wind, the rain, the plants and the people. It's gravity keeps our earth turning and the moon which moves the tides. The sun's energy does not come from "the void", but it is free and we can have as much of it as we can have as much of it as we will ever need. We are tiny irrelevant creatures which means that there is plenty of space for us in this universe.

What you cannot seem to understand is that the sun is continually releasing energy for the next few billion years...

THe sun's energy warms our earth and drives the wind, the rain, the plants and the people. It's gravity keeps our earth turning and the moon which moves the tides.

The sun's energy does not come from "the void", but it is free and we can have as much of it as we can have as much of it as we will ever need.

We are tiny irrelevant creatures which means that there is plenty of space for us in this universe.

"What they miss is that the energy released by us (we are INCAPABLE of creating energy, vis Laws of Thermodynamics), adds to the total energy within 'our' climate and hence contributes to changing it from the balance that makes life possible for us."

We are also INCAPABLE of destroying energy... WHich means that we are NOT about to run out of it. Also your theory that any energy we release goes to climate change assumes that all the energy we release is pumped directly into the atmosphere rather than used for stuff (some of which - like growing crops - can actually reduce greenhouse gasses). Your view of the world and energy seems a little over-simplified lj.

Everything’s over simplified in this world other wise how are we simple people going to understand nature?
The whole chaotic thing is so dazzlingly brilliant!
Nature
Sea life sequestering co 2 with Tree’s covering 2/3 of the planets landmass dissolving their cargo into wetlands where carbon deposits are laid down as oil coal or gas.
All plant life-changing Co2 into oxygen, a system that maintained the planet for 4 billion years on automatic, self-sustaining (apart from the last two hundred years of course)

Iberian (Sounds like) noticed impending doom a century ago in his native Sweden, he wondered what effect so much industrial smoke would have on the environment, and he became the founder of Global warming theory. Hotly disputed and now generally accepted…but its taken over one hundred years to be understood widely, some people even think its a good thing, the deserts blooming, Indian summers in England saves a trip to Benedorm......

To simplify things, we often model the natural world upon things we understand…

Air conditioning- Climate Control -CO2-sun shine- pink bat insulation = Global warming………

. It gets us from being ignorant to becoming aware, learning curves in leaps and bounds through wider education and disbelief then argument and finally acceptance,

Dinosaurs- geology- Darwinism-evolution and finally if all goes well.... advance. (except where such idea's are heresy)

The question is this, we are still ignorant of nature, therefore logic states we are missing the vital clues, there all there staring us in the face, but we cannot decipher them.
Perhaps its because we have no model yet………

Not all energy causes pollution and not all energy ends up as waste, just what we create now, today but that can change.
Geothermal gives more than it gets and the energy is already there for free, no burning no digging or any transport in ships sharing pollution.
Salt can be used, while solar is too far away from efficient and hydrogen is to be created by burning fossil fuels so supplies could be maintained.
The interested traditional mega corporations will not give up life tenure and the polies cannot afford to retract support so there's the bind, the bund, the barrier before advance......but we can change that…we have to

Getting a bit ethereal for me now, but here goes..

Troll:
"What you cannot seem to understand is that the sun is continually releasing energy for the next few billion years..." Yes, so? The next 100 are my main worry, 10,000 tops.

"The sun's energy does not come from "the void", but it is free and we can have as much of it as we can have as much of it as we will ever need." Prob with suns energy is that it is a) discontinuous & b) diffuse. Its only there sometimes (day/night/cloudy/dusty), & it is not very concentrated, we'd need to cover enormous areas with energy harvesting devices (whether PV panels, concentrating mirrors, biomass crops etc). How we make/harvest these devices is a problem too, costs scarce energy & materials, =more GHG's...

"We are tiny irrelevant creatures which means that there is plenty of space for us in this universe." Right, yeah, umm, okay.

"We are also INCAPABLE of destroying energy... WHich means that we are NOT about to run out of it." Completely wrong. We humans can only use energy in quite particular forms, e.g. wood, oil, gas. Energy radiated out into space adds marginally to temperature of universe, buts thats not energy we can ever harvest or use. Energy bound up in benzoic hydrocarbons polluting our watertable aint energy we can use either, nor is the exhaust heat of an F111.

"Also your theory that any energy we release goes to climate change assumes that all the energy we release is pumped directly into the atmosphere rather than used for stuff (some of which - like growing crops - can actually reduce greenhouse gasses)." Growing crops does nothing for Greenhouse, as crops are rapidly consumed and thus convertd back into CO2/other GHG's and their embodied energy dissipated. Only if carbon is laid down PERMANENTLY (in human terms +100yrs) is it 'taken out of play' as far as Greenhouse is concerned, and that is not the rule - we make and consume on ever shorter production cycles, e.g. forestry on 25yr rotation.

Afraid its not me thats is oversimplifying, Troll. Its fine to believe in a benificent universe, but smiling blandly upon our impacts on the biosphere is not even slightly constructive.

We are incapable of creating energy but are capable of destroying it. You people are morons. I'll be sure to tell the NT police that you helped me because you would do the movement way more good inside than you would spouting your shit out here.

You win. I'm gonna go talk to some mormons or jahovas or something because they make more sense than you fuckers.

Didn't say destroying energy, but degrading its utility to us, how useful/usable it is to us.

Can you see a difference between firewood and hot smoke? The latter 'contains' energy from the former, but is hard to store or transport, smelly, gets in yr eyes, etc.

Sorry if reality is too complicated for ya 'troll', go back to yr internal looping monologue.

The whole point is that you can take waste of energy and resources down to nearly zero with current technology. But that goes against all your survivalist hopes to be one of the chosen few to survive the crash and be able to say "i told you so" from your shack in the mountains doesn't it lj?

No shack, no mountain, no where is far enough away.
No way will alternative clean tecnology be used while theirs money in dirt cheap alternatives.
Just face it you can hope prey while sinking or gather together the bodies of those who caused the capsise and float away on their bloated remains.

In short, destroy industralisation...don't buy...take it out at the knees...then make your demand, right now you are the demand therefore your saying give me more or less of what we want, so here it is.

Can I take your order?

"The whole point is that you can take waste of energy and resources down to nearly zero with current technology."

This raises so many questions

Where in hell are you studying?
When did Fantasyland set up a campus?
Have you heard of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and entropy?
Perhaps your sect of optimism has binned that one.
How do your stand on evolution? A bit tricky also?

BTW Have you ever noticed how people who don't believe in evolution look so un-evolved?
You can kid your Witness friends with that one. They always respond to a joke.

Life is so short. Thank heavens for obstinant, simplistic tedium to make it seem so much longer.

So because I believe the maority of the green movement and scientists (and my own eyes) that it is possible to have a green sustainable society I must not believe in evolution? That really makes sense - not.

Fake greens who rave against green technology
Fake palestine activists who promote holocaust denial and anti-semitism or even zionism
Fake libertarians who think girls should have their head scarves ripped off in the name of religious freedom
Fake anarchists who spend all their time attacking anyone who doesn't agree with their particular brand of "anti-authoritariansm" (yeah right)
Trolls who post lies under other peoples names
People who claim to be scientists in order to promote apocalyptic religious garbage....

Why don't you leave your bloody bedrooms and take a look at the rest of society for once? None of you have ANY connection to the real world what so ever.

You seemed to habe missed parts....

"The whole point is that you can take waste of energy and resources down to nearly zero with current technology."

Besides which you do not take into account the fact that there is a lot of energy coming in to the Earth from the sun. One the sun dies that may pose a problem. But that wont be happening for a while yet.

Firstly, your confusion about the relevance of evolution beliefs.

I am identifying a categorically similar faith in procedures and outcomes that exists, not only without any demonstrable of empirical evidence to support it, but in fact contradicts such evidence that does exist.

To return to your statement of unsupported faith:
"The whole point is that you can take waste of energy and resources down to nearly zero with current technology."

Nearly zero???

Examples please?
(And full real-world process cycles please, not some little isolated component that depends upon grotesque operations at a foreign minesite for its inputs.)

BTW Can I add a category to your hit (hate) list?

Naive technotopians who have no clue about basic system energy arithmetic.

Try google. Try google "permaculture", "solar power" "sustainable developement", "Cuba", "sustainability". Anything really and you might learn something. You probably wont because you are a religious fanatic who only involves themselves in these discussions to feel morally superior to the rest of the planet. No you wont find a single example of absolute green purity for the simple reason that there are no closed systems (including the Earth as a whole which is why your babblings about entropy are irrelevant). In fact you will never ever find an example of purity or perfection in any thing. The actual issue is about how to solve the problem and that takes as many big or little steps as can be made. You will find literaly millions of examples of almost waste-free systems and designs (where the "waste" from one element is used to fuel an other) however, but you are clearly not interested in the real world.

"You will find literally millions of examples of almost waste-free systems and designs (where the "waste" from one element is used to fuel another) however, but you are clearly not interested in the real world."

Yes and those examples are ALL in the natural world, which our expanding fabrications are steadily dismantling and dispersing into entropic pollution.
In fact it is the real world that I am very much interested in.

Simply having an open system does not prevent entropy.

The moon is an open sytem like the earth.
How much more stable, complex form and order is present on the earth than on the moon?
Is the difference reflecting a difference in entropy?
Both are open systems.

How much of this stable, complex form and order on earth has been dismantled since our quite recent techno-industrial, expansionary assault upon it began?
Does this continuing reduction of self-generating natural form and order within our global open energy system constitute entropy?
If not, what is it?

Your green-tech answers should not be approached religiously.
They all fall well short of renewable on a full audit basis.
If this is not so, please name just one of the million processes you broadly cite as having or occuring within a sustainably balanced full cycle.

Your examples may be less intrusive than current profligate methods, but they are all (far) less than perfect thermodynamically. As such they must still be limited in overall scale of implementation and not naively deployed a panacea which can allow exponential material growth to continue.
And BTW, population increase is a material growth, regulated by nature (specifically by thermodynamics) unless you temporarily overwhelm nature itself by robbing the thermodynamic bank to some point of system collapse.

A valley full of 'sustainable ' housing, particularly at or near to our western level of aspiration, still fucks the natural function of the valley.
Therefore how many valleys, ridges, estuaries, etc., in total proportion that we intend to fill up remains a vital question.

In some cases green tech can be even more intrusive as its decentralised function allows dispersion of large numbers of not very responsible people to establish in naturally intact areas that were previously protected from their (in)discretions by the ambient discomforts involved.

Green tech is good, but do the sums and stay polite to nature or she will kick us all out.

All you are doing is setting up arguments (which I have NOT actually made) and repeating rote arguments against them. I have never promoted "exponential growth" or anything that is even along those lines. You read somewhere that that is what everyone who dissagrees with you is really about then spew out the same answers every time, regardless of the discussion. This is exactly why the left (though I suspect you are not actually one of them), greens and everyone else is losing.

The entropy garbage has nothing to do with this discussion (except for you to make yourself sound like you have some kind of scientific basis to your beliefs), simply because in terms of human and biological history we will always have a shitload of energy coming in to the Earth from the sun (and the moon from that matter - we extract energy from tides). THat is what keeps the ecosystem going and that is why we will NOT run out of energy.

And your digs about "large numbers of not very responsible people", "near to our western level of aspiration" and population really show where you are coming from - an elitist, racist and dogmatic hatred of humanity.

Arctic Town Plugs Into Tidal Energy

Divers working on the tidal turbine system being planned by Hammerfest Stroem off the Norwegian coast.
In a novel use of clean energy, the world’s most northerly town will soon be the first to get electricity from an underwater power station run on tidal currents tugged by the moon. Gigantic forces in the oceans — waves, currents and tides — have often proved too costly or awkward to harness, compared with wind or solar power, in the global efforts to cut reliance on nuclear power or on fossil fuels blamed for global warming.

However, a tidal current will start turning the blades of a windmill-like turbine standing on the seabed near Kvalsund at the Arctic tip of Norway.

“We will be the first in the world to use tidal currents to generate electricity to be fed into the

local grid,” stated Harald Johansen, managing director of Hammerfest Stroem.
Other unorthodox sub-sea experiments to generate power from tidal currents from Australia to Britain have not gotten to the stage of selling power. All the technologies mark a shift in traditional methods of exploiting the tide. Tides have previously been tapped for use in power plants in France, Canada and Russia by building barrages to trap water in artificial lagoons at high tide. When the tide goes out, gravity sucks the water through turbines to generate electricity.

These giant damming projects are out of fashion because they can damage the ecology of rivers and coastlines. Seabed turbines, are silent and invisible, and fish can swim around them without getting sliced up. “Of all the renewable energy technologies, ocean energy is probably the one in the earliest stages,” said Mark Hammonds at the International Energy Agency in Paris, “This is because many of these projects are too costly.”

Tidal power exploits the gravitational pull of the moon, and to a lesser extent the sun, on the oceans as the earth spins. The seas rise and fall in a cycle of 12 hours and 25 minutes and can cause sweeping currents along the seabed at the same time, like the ones seen off the north Norway coast. The Norwegian sub-sea turbine will have a tiny capacity of 300 kilowatts and is due to expand to 20 million kilowatts in 2004, giving enough power for over 1,000 homes.

Hammerfest, with 11,000 inhabitants, calls itself the world’s northernmost town. Johansen says the project there has cost 50 million Norwegian crowns ($6.7 million) so far and will cost twice that much by completion in 2004. High oil prices and pledges to curb emissions of greenhouse gases as part of the Kyoto pact to limit global warming, blamed on emissions from burning coal or oil, are helping make green technologies like tidal power more attractive despite their drawbacks.

Other systems to tap the oceans range from giant snakelike tubes that generate power when rocked by waves, to machines that extract power from the contrast between warm surface waters and chill temperatures at ocean depths. Experts are uncertain about the potential, especially because of sub-sea maintenance costs. Storms have wrecked many experimental ocean power stations. “We need to harness all low-impact renewables we can develop. But offshore wind is more competitive and solar has more potential,” said Greenpeace spokesman Truls Gulowsen.

The biggest tidal power plant in the world is a barrage across the La Rance river in northern France, in place since the 1960s. It has a 240-megawatt capacity, but Electricite de France has no plans to build new ones. Canada’s Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia has the highest tides in the world, at about 39 feet. Nova Scotia Power’s 20-megawatt plant at Annapolis Royal, built in 1984, is the only one in North America, but the company is now focusing more on wind. “There are ecological objections to building more tidal plants along the coast,” said Margaret Murphy, spokeswoman for Nova Scotia Power.

All the plants are tiny. Western-style nuclear generators typically have a capacity of 500 to 1,000 megawatts and can be counted on for reliable power generation, unlike many renewable energy sources.
In Norway, Hammerfest Stroem states that building tidal turbines could become a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It notes many experts used to dismiss windmill parks, now widespread in countries like Denmark, as impractical.

In Kvalsund, the water flows at about 8.2 feet per second apart from a pause at high and low tides. By contrast, windmills are useless in calm weather and have to be built to withstand hurricane force winds. Solar power is a nonstarter in winter in Hammerfest, where the sun sets for about two months (the town was the first in Europe to get street lighting almost 100 years ago.) The costs of the electricity are initially likely to be three times that of typical hydro-generated electricity in Norway. Once tidal power will be added to the mix of electricity in the local grid, consumers will be obliged to absorb the cost.

The tidal turbines weigh about 200 tons including the base and are well below the keels of passing ships. They turn to face the tide when the currents change direction. The turbines are designed to be maintenance-free for three years, but divers can go down if needed. British-based Marine Current Turbines, which plans to test a similar tidal current system off Devon in southern England next year, says that maintenance could be a problem for Hammerfest. “When you have strong enough currents for tidal energy generation, there are few slack tides when divers can work,” said Peter Fraenkel, the group’s technical director. Marine Current Turbines’ design, which sticks above the water, allows the turbines to be winched up to the surface. “The size of this resource is not understood,” he said. He said that a British study a decade ago estimated that the eight most promising sites off the British coast alone could generate a fifth of Britain’s electricity

"The moon is an open sytem like the earth.
How much more stable, complex form and order is present on the earth than on the moon?
Is the difference reflecting a difference in entropy?
Both are open systems."

There may be some minor differences between the moon and earth which are more relevant than entropy... Like the fact that it has 0.012 of the mass of earth, hardly any atmosphere and days about 1 month long.

Re the last three posts (in reverse order)

No. 1
"There may be some minor differences between the moon and earth which are more relevant than entropy... Like the fact that it has 0.012 of the mass of earth, hardly any atmosphere and days about 1 month long"

Could it have something to do with the action of liviing systems creating complex order out of the incoming insolation that they trap?

The same incoming insolation (per unit area) completely dissipates from the moon without these bio-mechanical sytems to trap it.
Dissipation = entropy last I heard.

Our technologies are diminishing living system function, and thus accelerating net global (and local) entropy, because their development and operation draw upon natural resources and flow energies beyond their capacity to replenish.

'Green' technologies may not do this as quickly as traditional ones, but they still do because they are NOT perfectly looped. This imbalance means they must still be used within very conservative thresholds that are determined by honest and rigorous energy and materials accounting.

No. 2
Illustrating the above point, can these tidal turbines provide their useful energy output as well as the total power required to produce the next generation of replacement turbines? Or do you need an energy subsidy?
Are all the turbine materials renewable?
Are we debasing the meaning of the term sustainable, enabling activity above and beyond genuinely sustainable levels to continue under a green banner?

No. 3.
Unless you explicitly (and descriptively) de-couple exponential growth from your green tech plans you are implicitly promoting it.

It is very unfortunate that green tech. is developed and marketed as an alternative within our growth economy, not as an alternative to it. You only have to look at some the many unsustainable activities given green badges to see that. There is no such thing as sustainable motorised private vehicles, OR sustainable project housing for an endlessly increasing population. The ubiquitous greenspin that proclaims so is brainrot.

Sustainability relates to dynamic system function, and system proportions are critical. You cannot call a thing or a technology sustainable. It is its proportion and performance within a total system (and in the real world, many interleaving systems) that determine its quality.

Nothing in any part of the commercial green tech. sector addresses this absolute fundamental. It is simply too complicated to allow success within the business and marketing paradigm.

I am not saying green tech is bad. I am saying it is not a silver bullet, but it is being treated as one. It is also highly and deceptively variable in the quality of what creeps under its banner.
This narrow and misleading view simply develops a false confidence in the durability of the status quo.

Linked to this, where is the evidence that green tech is going to usher a lower aspiration for affluence? I stand by my point that its indiscriminant promotion actually provides a rationalisation for that absurd aspiration.

Entropy is not irrelevant just because "we will always have a shitload of energy coming in to the Earth from the sun".

As already stated, the moon has this same insolation but cannot prevent its constant and total dissipation.
When the convenient, often hidden top-ups of fossil fuels aren't available, the entropy equations on your green tech plans and their rigid compliance to flow energy budgets will become very important. As things are, most of them are wheeling a lot of oil in through the back door to stay in operation.

It doesn't have enough gravity, and due to earths pull does not turn fast enough and is really hot on one side and cold on other. OK.

Go talk to your white supremacist mates here...

That might be a very large part of why there is no life on the moon, but it is because there is no life that there is such unabated entropy of the moon's incoming insolation.

My analysis of entropy on the moon makes me a white supremicist?

You do get hysterical quite easily don't you?
That might be jiggling your causal recognition.

Of course not...
by .........................+2 Tuesday November 09, 2004 at 12:48 PM

your analysis of the moon makes you at best an idiot and at worst a deliberate fraud. Your views on society, the future and humanity make you a fascist.

....does my analysis of the moon (and my associated points) make me at best an idiot and at worst a deliberate fraud?

I have made clear logical statements.
Can you please detail the technical or factual error(s) if you so vememently disagree with them?

If you cannot, your ideology can only be considered as a religious fervour.

Don't crack up. Put up or shut up.

The Moon is significantly less dense than the Earth. Although it is about a quarter the diameter of the Earth, the Moon contains barely over 1% of the mass that the Earth contains. Because gravity is directly proportional to an object's mass, the Moon has a relatively weak gravitational field when compared to denser bodies with similar volume. One side effect of this weak gravity is an inability to retain an Atmosphere. Any gases or water that might have been present during its formation would have quickly dissipated into space.

Although no atmosphere means no water vapor, a large patch of water ice discovered near the Moon's south pole has recently changed the way we think of our barren neighbor. Preserved in a zone of permanent shadow below lunar "sea level" called a cold trap, the water probably arrived as an ill-fated comet long ago. Its availability as a resource to Moon-based colonies is an exciting possibility.

With no gaseous medium to moderate the effects of solar radiation, the temperature swings dramatically from day to night. These diurnal extremes of from -184°C (-300°F) to 101°C (214°F) throughout most of the Moon's regions is typical, while the poles tend to remain a relatively constant -96°C (-140°F).

The influence of Earth's gravitational force on the Moon is strong. It locks the Moon into a 27.32 day captive orbit, and grabs onto a mascon, or area of densely concentrated mass, and prevents it from rotating. This synchronous rotation means that the Moon spins on its axis at exactly the same rate at which it orbits the Earth, and we always see the same face of the Moon. The near hemisphere was all we knew of the Moon until camera-bearing spacecraft first peeked around the far side in the early 1960's...

JUST GOOGLE IT!

Yes, you have explained that four times.

What you don't get is the point.

You are explaining why there is no life on the moon. I totally ageee with you on that.

What I am saying is that because there is no life on the moon, for all the reasons that you state, total entropy of all incoming insolation is not arrested.

Just forget it moonbeam. You seem to be jammed on linear.

Hey, just for a healthy jostle of your perspective on democracy, sociology and technology, go and read this:

http://www.primitivism.com/mumford.htm

Insanity
by A Racist Friday November 12, 2004 at 10:53 PM

The modern folly amongst western nations' liberals/conservatives is that race doesn't exist or matter.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/051788433X/qid=1100262796/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-7055661-7129651?v=glance&s=books

As for me my religion forbids me to consider race doesn't matter :) Give me that old time religion, give me that old time religion...

See, in the old days midst my peoples, it was a wide spread belief that each person had a daimon or genius, and it didn't stop there. Every family had its own guiding spirit and every nation its sacred God which kept watch over it. The Romans' kept theirs secret, only the Pontifex Maximus knew the tutulary God of the Roman State, that way no other people could try and entice the God/dess to leave the Roman Gens (race) in the lurch. People are different, families are different, races are different, see...

Now this may all look like a madness itself (of course not on a par with the belief that families and individuals are all the same), but consider the first Golden Verse of Pythagoras:

First worship the Immortal Gods, as they are established and ordained by the Law.

Now we have been ignoring the Law ordained by God (an example of which are the Laws of Thermodynamics) and thus have ignored the Immortal Gods and now we are about to be punished. Taste the lash for denying me my religious rights you race denying madmen, for the Law of God is established and there is no escaping Gravity! He, he, he...