Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumThink fracking sucks? You ain't seen nothin' yet.
If you thought shale gas was a nightmare, you ain't seen nothing yet. A subterranean world of previously ignored reserves is about to be opened up. These are the vast coal deposits that have proved unreachable by conventional mining, along with gas deposits around them. To the horror of anyone concerned about climate change, modern miners want to set fire to these deep coal seams and capture the gases this creates for industry and power generation. Some say this will provide energy security for generations to come. Others warn that it is a whole new way to fry the planet.
A primitive version of the technology behind this Dantean inferno of underground coal gasification (UCG) has already been running for 50 years in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. Some 300 metres beneath the plains east of Tashkent, Stalin's engineers and their successors have been burning a seam of brown coal that can't be mined conventionally. There are two well heads on the surface: one pumps air down to fan the flames while the other retrieves a million cubic metres of combustion gases a day. Scrubbed of coal dust, cooled and compressed on site, the gases are then sent down a pipeline that snakes across the countryside to a sprawling power station on the outskirts of the industrial town of Angren, where they are burned to generate electricity.
A deadbeat town in a forgotten rust-belt backwater of the former Soviet Union is an unlikely test bed for a cutting-edge technology. But if it can be scaled up successfully, the Australian engineers who bought the operation seven years ago think it could transform the world's energy markets, open up trillions of tonnes of unmineable coal and provide a new carbon-based energy source that could last a thousand years.
With trials of UCG under way globally from China to Queensland, and South Africa to Canada, the stakes are high. Not least for the atmosphere. Without a way to capture all the carbon and store it out of harm's way, it could raise the world's temperature by 10 degrees or more. Is this burning desire for fossil fuel pushing us towards disaster?
Another triumph of technology! We're saved!!!!
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)pscot
(21,024 posts)HappyinLA
(129 posts)Centralia PA x1000?
Sounds awesome.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)are these people insane?
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I think they're just normal human beings like you and me, which is why this is happening. Others may disagree.
pscot
(21,024 posts)It's caused by all of us, doing what we do. Ordinary leadership can't touch it. We would need a Messiah. It's a natural. He could preach fire and brimstone and horrible suffering in abundance.
NickB79
(19,253 posts)And we won't have to burn fossil fuels much anymore.
Of course, we'll have released so much carbon by then the Arctic will be ice-free most of the year and spewing methane like a fucking volcano, locking us into 4-5C of warming by 2100, but I'm sure it will all turn out fine in the end
Response to NickB79 (Reply #8)
kristopher This message was self-deleted by its author.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)Because I know I'm not alone in thinking the world's energy supply will be falling off a cliff within the next 5 years, and the impacts of global warming snowballing rapidly in the same timeframe.
If you're going to prognosticate, your record of accuracy should be out here.
NickB79
(19,253 posts)Success, we're saved! Er, um, yeah, not so much.
NickB79
(19,253 posts)Clearly, not snowballing. I was soooo wrong.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)That was in 2008.
Yep, you're clued in alright.
NickB79
(19,253 posts)Nailed it.
kristopher
(29,798 posts)Yes, if by nailed it you mean totally balls up on the verifiable part of the prediction then you are absolutely correct.
Trying to hide your penchant for gross mistakes behind twisting the progression of climate change is not much better.