Canman

Check Out my Posts at Cliscep

Mike Dombroski — Tue, 05 May 2020 02:19:31 +0000

[Update: This post is behind the times. Here’s the sidebar link to my cliscep posts]

The great unknown Australian humorist, Brad Keyes, has invited, … dragged, … shanghaied me into blogging at cliscep.com. Please check out some of my posts:

James Randi RIP

Amazon Climate Book Rankings

Tesla’s Battery Day

Peter Gleick Sticks Up for Malthusianism

New Book by Michael Shellenberger

From Skeptoid — Wind Turbines Save Birds

Michigan Dams Collapse

From Janet Cooke to Chris Mooney

Mark Jacobson and the Legalistic Scientific Method

Planet of the Humans—Is This the Best They’ve Got?

How’s a Mann get into the NAS?

Check out some of the other bloggers at Cliscep too:

A Rate for Transporting CO2 to Antarctica

Mike Dombroski — Wed, 28 Sep 2016 23:59:25 +0000

As noted in previous posts, I’m interested in the concept of storing CO2 in Antarctica as snow or ice. For an amount to store there, I came up with an amount equal to the nice round number of 100 ppmv. CO2 was below 300 ppmv before the industrial revolution and is at about 400 ppmv now. This works out to about ~~660~~ 760 cubic kilometers or 200 cubic miles. I did not specify a time frame which I will do now. Half a century (50 years) sounds like another good round number and it’s only off from the old Soviet Union’s five year plans by one order of magnitude.

The point of this whole exercise is to get some idea of the scale of such an undertaking and I’ve come up with about ~~113~~ 130 supertankers of liquid CO2 a day. The supertankers would be nearly 400 meters long and hold 320,000 cubic meters each (two million barrels of oil). I found this from Wikipedia. I don’t know how comparable a proposed liquid CO2 tanker would be to the oil tankers described, but it does give some idea of scale.

What if it were to be pipelined? I will also use an oil comparison. According to Wikipedia again, the proposed Keystone pipeline would move about 100,000 cubic meters a day (94,000 after the first two phases, 110,000 after the third phase). So I came up with a daily volume equivalent of about ~~360~~ 416 Keystone pipelines. And needles to say, piping liquid CO2 is not the same thing as piping oil, but it does offer a sense of the huge scale. While it may never be practical, it does not look completely undoable. My simple calculations are below the fold.

(UPDATE: I mistakenly copied 760 cubic kilometers as 660. I’ve struck the old numbers. The new ones amount to only a 15% increase.)

~~660 cubic kilometers of liquid/solid CO2~~

~~/ 50 = 13.2 km**3 /year~~

~~/385~~[sic] ~~= .0362 km**3/day~~

*1000,000,000 = 36,200,000 m**3/day

~~/320,000 = 113 supertankers~~

~~/100,000 =362 Keystone pipelines.~~

760 cubic kilometers of liquid/solid CO2

/ 50 = 15.2 km**3 /year

/365 = .0416 km**3/day

*1000,000,000 = 41,600,000 m**3/day

/320,000 = 130 supertankers

/100,000 =416 Keystone pipelines.

Some Thoughts on Storing Frozen CO2 in Antarctica

Mike Dombroski — Sun, 08 May 2016 16:37:59 +0000

As I’ve explained in this post, I’m intrigued by the concept of storing frozen CO2 in Antarctica. I got interested in it by reading about this paper at Climate Etc. I’ve since learned a few interesting things about frozen CO2.

To make dry ice, CO2 is pressurized into a liquid. When this pressure is released, some of the CO2 evaporates and draws heat away from the rest of the CO2 causing it to freeze into snow. This snow is then pressed and shaped into dry ice. Most of the energy used is for liquefying the CO2. The implications of this for my plan to store CO2 as ice in Antarctica is that a lot of the energy used would not have to be expended in Antarctica. It would be used where the CO2 is collected and liquefied. This liquid would then be shipped or piped to Antarctica. The paper mentioned above calls for freezing and precipitating CO2 out of the air. My scheme would provide readily frozen CO2 and a rich source of CO2 gas that can be frozen and precipitated.

Another thing about liquid CO2 is that it maintains a constant vapor pressure. This makes it useful for things like CO2 cartridges for air guns. This might simplify the engineering of creating an infrastructure for piping and shipping liquid CO2.

Long Comment at Climate Etc. on Whether Cutting CO2 is Enough

Mike Dombroski — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 22:48:58 +0000

I’m usually not very wordy, but I made a long comment on an open thread at Climate Etc. so I thought I’d make it a post here. I often wonder if CO2 is actually a serious problem whether it is possible to solve it by only cutting CO2 emissions.

————

Pat Michael’s did an evaluation of what Waxman-Markey cap-n-trade would have done to temperature in 2050:

He came up with these resulting increases:

1.) Business-as-Usual: 1.584 C

2.) Waxman-Markey (US only): 1.540 C

3.) Waxman-Markey (Kyoto Countries): 1.500 C

He comes up with a range of only 0.084 C. He only goes out to 2050, so perhaps there’s a much larger divergence to 2100 and beyond. But for the lifespans of most people living now, this spread looks pretty valid, unless someone can show that he’s off by an order of magnitude or two (if you can please do). So if the equivalent of Waxman-Markey can be accomplished by:

1.) A nuclear build out (perhaps).

2.) The two Marks (Jacobson and Ruffalo) bringing us 100% wind, water and solar (WWS — I think not).

3.) Turning the world into some combination of Maoist China or North Korea. (I think this actually appeals to a lot of greenies).

4.) Some heretofore unknown breakthrough.

5.) Some combination of the above.

It may not solve the CO2 problem if it is indeed a problem.

I don’t know how bad of a problem increasing CO2 is. It certainly looks like it will cause warming, but there is also a lot about its effect on the climate that is not understood. Maybe someday natural variability and other forcings will be better understood and a compelling case can be made. But maybe a Waxman-Markey level of CO2 reduction won’t solve it! I think there should be more discussion of direct human control over the climate. This means control of Earth’s albedo and huge CO2 mega-projects like this:

Detailed Description of the Idea

This would require a lot of energy and I think the only practical source would be nuclear. Of all the things that are proposed for the climate, the only sure thing I see is nuclear power. The only other thing about the climate I’m sure of is that there is nothing urgent about it. “Climate emergency” is an oxymoron.

—————

The short video doesn’t say how he got his results, but he has other longer ones where he says he computed them from the IPCC projections.

How Much Dry Ice is 100 ppmv of Atmospheric CO2?

Mike Dombroski — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 23:55:10 +0000

I once read this interesting post at Judith Curry’s blog, Climate Etc. It’s a rather fanciful scheme to precipitate CO2 out of the air in Antarctica and store it as snow, with the process being powered by wind turbines. I thought a better energy source for this would be nuclear power and even commented on it. Since then I’ve been intrigued by the concept of using nuclear power in Antarctica to freeze and store CO2.

So I thought I’d do some calculations to get some idea of the scale of such an operation. I picked 100 ppmv as a good round number for how much CO2 to store (pre industrial was below 300 and is now 400) and converted it to volume of dry ice. I came up with 760 cubic kilometers or 182 cubic miles. A huge undertaking to be sure, but it does not seem totally out of the range of possibility. Notes on my calculations are below the fold.

________________________________________

Math! How much CO2 by weight in the atmosphere?

According to wikipedia (CO2):

As of January 2007, the earth’s atmospheric CO2 concentration is about 0.0383% by volume (383 ppmv) or 0.0582% by weight. This represents about 2.996×10^12 tonnes, and is estimated to be 105 ppm (37.77%) above the pre-industrial average.

CO2 concentration by weight is obtained by the formula below:

0.0383 V% x [44.0095/28.97] = 0.0582 m% CO2

whereby molar mass=44.0095 g/mole and mean molar mass of air=28.97 g/mole

Then, to obtain the total mass of CO2, via wikipedia: according to the National Center for Atmospheric
Research, “The total mean mass of the atmosphere is 5.1480×10^18 kg.

Thus, the total weight of CO2 = 0.0582% x 5.1480 x 10^15 tonnes
= 2.996×10^12 tonnes.

https://micpohling.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/math-how-much-co2-by-weight-in-the-atmosphere/

The density of dry ice varies, but usually ranges between about 1.4 and 1.6 g/cm3 (87 and 100 lb/cu
ft)

METRIC UNIT CONVERTER

1 g/cm3 = 1 ton/m3

Density of dry ice is 1.5 tonne/m^3

1 km^3 = 1000m x 1000m x 1000m = 1000000000 m^3 = 10^9 m^3

100 ppmv is about 38% of total CO2 in 2007. Total tonnes was about 3×10^12. 0.38 x 3×10^12 =
1.14×10^12 Tonnes. The density of dry ice varies, but usually ranges between about 1.4 and 1.6 g/cm3
(87 and 100 lb/cu ft)

METRIC UNIT CONVERTER

1 g/cm3 = 1 ton/m3

Density of dry ice is 1.5 tonne/m^3 = 1.5×10^9 tonne/km^3.

1.14×10^12 tonnes / 1.5×10^9 tonne/km^3 = 760 km^3. 760 km^3 x 0.24 mile^3/km^3 = 182 mile^3.

Introductory Post

Mike Dombroski — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:42:17 +0000

Me and My Sites

I’m Mike D and I’m interested in climate and energy. I comment on various forums as the Canman.

My Sites

http://tinyurl.com/paqrnjq (Amazon Reviews)

http://canmancannedcomments.blogspot.com/ (Misadventures with Comment Moderation)

Profiles

http://en.gravatar.com/canmane

https://disqus.com/by/CanmanE/

Pages

http://canmancannedcomments.blogspot.com/2015/03/introductory-post.html (My Views)

http://www.skeptic.com/insight/willie-soon-be-gone/#comment-38158 (Michael Mann Links)

http://www.skepticblog.org/2012/08/29/the-republican-brain-on-science/#comment-79461 (Real Time Review of Chris Mooney’s Book)