Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story

text.npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 74 posts

Re: US is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story

#31

Post by justrealist »

Retric wrote: post #5
exabrial wrote: post #4

Can we please avoid mass hysteria about pipelines? As you've seen, bulk shipping by rail is incredible stupid.

Can we please avoid mass hysteria about rail? As you've seen, bulk shipping by pipelines is incredible stupid. Moving dangerous stuff is always risky, there’s plenty of disasters from both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents From 1994 through 2013, the U.S. had 745 serious incidents with gas distribution, causing 278 fatalities and 1059 injuries, with $110,658,083 in property damage. US: From 19…

> From 1994 through 2013, the U.S. had 745 serious incidents with gas distribution

This is incredibly misleading because of the scale and method of distribution. Tens of millions of houses in the US have gas pipelines leading directly into the kitchen! Of course there will be a lot of serious incidents.

If people shipped gas to their kitchen ranges by rail, there would be a lot more serious train incidents too!

Similarly, if you shut down pipelines, you have to include all TRUCK accidents as well, because trains are never going to solve the last-mile problem that pipelines already have.

Re: US is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story

#32

Post by DoingIsLearning »

q1w2 wrote: post #28
webmobdev wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be a shady political operation to help the fracking industry in the US: > Huffman notes that today most of the carbon dioxide transported in pipelines is used for something called "enhanced oil recovery." That's a process where oil companies inject CO2 into oil wells to boost the pressure and pump out more petroleum. > Currently over 70% of carbon capture projects involve "enhanced oil recovery," says Bruce…

There's nothing shady about this practice. It's simple science.

I have not seen any convincing evidence of the Economic _feasibility_ of Carbon Capture irrespective of the scientific _possibility_ of Carbon Capture.

Forgive the general public's skepticism but so far Carbon Capture comes across very much like another greenwashing attempt from industries that will drag their feet into emissions reduction.

Re: US is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story

#33

Post by pfdietz »

dabluecaboose wrote: post #26
asah wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're gonna compare... CO2 dissipates but nuclear accidents cost $100B+ to cleanup and decades - to Sally Average voters, Fukushima was the third strike (after 3 mile island and fukushima): if the Japanese can't safely operate nuclear, then no way is Sally gonna trust Homer Simpson. And even if she can believe, good luck explaining to her friends and family, let alone potential renters and buyers of her largest fi…

> no way is Sally gonna trust Homer Simpson. The Simpsons and its consequences have been a disaster for nuclear power, and the human race.

Nuclear bros like to invent absurd reasons for why nuclear power is not being adopted.

Re: US is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story

#35

Post by pyrale »

q1w2 wrote: post #28
webmobdev wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be a shady political operation to help the fracking industry in the US: > Huffman notes that today most of the carbon dioxide transported in pipelines is used for something called "enhanced oil recovery." That's a process where oil companies inject CO2 into oil wells to boost the pressure and pump out more petroleum. > Currently over 70% of carbon capture projects involve "enhanced oil recovery," says Bruce…

There's nothing shady about this practice. It's simple science.

The shady part is when you tell people it's carbon capture, with a clear hint of helping avoid CO2 emissions, when actually the end state is even more oil out of the well.

Re: US is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story

#36

Post by DwnVoteHoneyPot »

q1w2 wrote: post #29
Retric wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please avoid mass hysteria about rail? As you've seen, bulk shipping by pipelines is incredible stupid. Moving dangerous stuff is always risky, there’s plenty of disasters from both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents From 1994 through 2013, the U.S. had 745 serious incidents with gas distribution, causing 278 fatalities and 1059 injuries, with $110,658,083 in property damage. US: From 19…

The science is conclusive that pipelines are the LEAST dangerous and leaky method of transporting anything.

Most environmentally friendly too. Oil tankers, trains and trucks get into accidents and use large amounts of fuel to transport.

Re: US is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story

#37

Post by derobert »

dilippkumar wrote: post #27
bagels wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cheaper to capture it where it is concentrated, at the source (eg. power plants).

Is the efficiency gained by capturing it from a stronger concentration enough to offset the costs of building pipelines? Why not burn wood in a room near the destination site and get extremely concentrated CO2 right there and capture that instead? Are pipelines somehow even more economical than that?

Because then you have to transport the wood to the site, transport the ash (etc.) off the site, and build something useful to do with the produced energy. Most of that would be trucks or ships if it's on a navigable waterway.

Oil and pipeline companies are building pipes to move gases because it is the cheapest way to do it.

Re: US is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story

#38

Post by coffeefirst »

dathinab wrote: post #34

Wasn't there a general consensus from most scientist that methods for CO2 storage or filtering it out of the air are highly flawed, inefficient and not worth pursing when it comes to combat climate change? Or do I misremember?

Last I read there were solid ideas but nothing that realistically outperformed “plant a bunch of trees.”

Re: US is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story

#39

Post by quaintdev »

Pigalowda wrote: post #21
gus_massa wrote: post #2

Somewhat related: A natural disaster when a lake released a giant burp of CO2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster

Worth the click! I had no idea there were such things as limnic eruptions.

Who would have thought lakes could choke surrounding area. TIL

Re: US is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story

#40

Post by lozenge »

pyrale wrote: post #35
q1w2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing shady about this practice. It's simple science.

The shady part is when you tell people it's carbon capture, with a clear hint of helping avoid CO2 emissions, when actually the end state is even more oil out of the well.

Yes, it's called Carbon Capture and Storage. Once we switch to renewables and don't need this oil any more, the expensive fancy plant is useless as it is only designed to store carbon that one way.
Post reply on HN