Oxygen geosequestration – perhaps not such a good idea?

I was listening to The Atomic Show * a couple of weeks ago, and Rod’s guest – John Wheeler, if I remember correctly – raised an interesting point.

Most of the mass of a carbon dioxide molecule is oxygen – so if we talk about sequestration of carbon dioxide underground, aren’t we removing huge amounts of oxygen from the biosphere?

That might present a bit of a problem. That oxygen is kinda important for a few things which I, for one, really care about.

Let’s see about quantifying it. [In case you had never noticed until now, I like quantifying things. I think it's pretty important.]

The Earth’s atmosphere has a mass of about 5 * 10^18 kilograms, and is comprised of 21% oxygen.

That’s a total of 1.05 * 10^18 kilograms of oxygen.

Total world emissions of carbon dioxide due to anthropogenic technological activity are about 2.7 * 10^13 kg per year, globally. Of course, that will probably increase in future – how fast it will increase, and how we might slow that down – is a problem that many people throughout the world are busy thinking about and working on at present. But let’s just assume, for my purposes, that it doesn’t increase.

Let’s say, just making up some very rough hypothetical numbers here for arguments sake, that we can capture and store 70% of total anthropogenic technological carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, and that we do that for 80 years.

That’s a total of 1.5 * 10^15 kg of carbon dioxide, which corresponds to [ 32 * (1.5 * 10^15 kg / 44) ] 1.1 * 10^15 kilograms of oxygen.

That’s 0.1% of all the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere – gone – in just 80 years. That’s probably going to be a problem.

Just another reason why, personally, CCS/geosequestration is a bad idea, and isn’t really a worthwhile solution to anything.

[* Shameless promotion - but hey, I personally think it's a really good podcast and I recommend listening to it.]

An open letter to Kevin Rudd and the Australia 2020 Summit.

As worldwide concern mounts over the potentially serious effects caused by potential forcing of changes in climatic systems resulting from anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases, Australia must undertake serious consideration of how best to reduce, within reason, the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions of our civilization.

In an Australian context, the most significant, obvious step which we can take towards the mitigation of CO2 emissions is the replacement of our extremely polluting and harmful primarily coal-fired stationary electricity generation capacity with alternative systems for stationary electricity generation on the large scale required, which are environmentally sustainable and not CO2 emissions intensive.

50% of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions in Australia come from stationary energy generation – clearly this is the most obvious place to start if we really want to make a dent in carbon dioxide emissions.

The idea that 80% of our electricity generation capacity is being generated from coal and fossil fuels, with the dangerous waste of fossil fuels just being spewed into the environment as usual, is absolutely appalling.

To this end, rational, factual, well-researched and scientifically motivated consideration must be paid in particular to the use of nuclear energy – which is a proven, mature, environmentally sound and non CO2 emissions intensive source of electricity generation which works on the large scales of energy output required.

Nuclear energy must be considered, and compared with the alternatives available, in a way which is informed, scientifically motivated and free of dogma, ignorance and political bias, and based on consideration of the environmentally sound technologies which are available and proven right now which can most successfully provide large scale electricity generation with the high capacity factors required to substitute for and replace dangerous and environmentally destructive coal-fired generation in the near future. Nuclear energy is a technology which satisfies all these criteria.

I would like to hear what account the Rudd government would give, what scientifically, factually motivated basis they could give, for their opposition to nuclear energy – and I strongly urge them to reconsider it, for the good of us all.
[Yes, I did officially submit something very close to the above to the summit.]