Reply #11: No CO2 emissions will not be an easy problem to fix

[txlibdem]

We can require CO2 capture devices on all the coal plants. Ok. Now what do we do with all of that CO2?

"Complete combustion of 1 short ton (2,000 pounds) of this coal will generate about 5,720 pounds (2.86 short tons) of carbon dioxide."
...from http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/quarterly/co2_article/co2.html

"Around 5.9 billion tonnes of hard coal were used worldwide last year and 909 million tonnes of brown coal. Since 2000, global coal consumption has grown faster than any other fuel. The five largest coal users - China, USA, India, Japan and South Africa - account for 82% of total global coal use."
...from http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/uses-of-coal/

Burning one ton of coal produces 2.86 tons of CO2, best explained below:
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Remember back to High School Science when you learned the first few atoms in the periodic table of elements. Both Carbon and Oxygen are relatively close together on that table, so each atom ‘weighs’ approximately the same, so combining that one atom of Carbon with two atoms of Oxygen virtually triples the weight of the original Carbon atom.

...from http://papundits.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/why-does-one-ton-of-coal-make-286-tons-of-carbon-dioxide/
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... this is easily confirmed by looking at any periodic table: carbon is element 6 and oxygen element 8, 6+8+8 (minus a few shared electrons) gives you the answer.

Let's just take the 5.9 billion and multiply by 2.86 and we get 16,874,000,000 (almost 17 billion tons of CO2).

So where will we store 17 billion tons of a gas each year? That is why carbon capture and storage is a total farce.

Or... did you mean that the easy solution is to replace all of the world's coal plants with renewables like solar, wind, geothermal power, tidal power, wave power. That would work too.