Thursday, May 25, 2006

Climate Change

Several interesting proposals have come forward lately to deal with climate change with a technical solution.

1) A proposal to pump CO2 into the ground - this is being tested in Saskatchewan at the moment.

2) Tailings piles from the mining for certain minerals naturally extracts carbon from the air. The Clinton Creek Mine in Yukon has seen the sandy tailings turn rock like with the interaction to atmospheric CO2

If there is a technical fix for the problem of too much C02 in the atmosphere, then reducing the production of CO2 is not needed. But Kyoto does not seem to be able to capture this - though I could be wrong on that.

It will be interesting to see if having a way to get the CO2 out of the air is lauded by the NGOs and others that are concerned about climate change, or if it will be attacked as the wrong way to go. I suspect that it will be attacked because I am more and more convinced that the underlying interest is not climate change, but an opposition to development.

Ultimately the value of the land that could be in danger from climate change and rising sea levels is so high that developing an effective to cool the planet will be developed. This is not what likely what the activist community will be looking to have happen

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