Carbon’s Storage Problem Above Ground and Below

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Today, MongaBay reports that sequestering carbon underground may result in increased earthquakes, releasing the carbon. According to Stanford geophysicist Mark Zoback, CO2 injected into the earth can activate faults. And although the earthquakes triggered by such injections would only be “moderate,” as someone who lives in the Bay Area, I’d love to find a non-earthquake related alternative. At any rate, as Zoback points out, there’s too much carbon to shove it all underground, even if we wanted to.

Though humans are trying to find ways to store CO2 and other greenhouse gases, they aren’t the only ones producing them. In fact, as this piece in Wired mentions, volcanoes released a huge amount of greenhouse gases 250 million years ago, a release that is suspected of causing climate changes that triggered a mass extinction. The extinction event, called the Permian-Triassic Extinction, killed 90% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial species and was more devastating than the one that killed the dinosaurs.

Some scientists say that due to human-related climate change, we’re on track to see another huge extinction event. Despite the discovery new species, like this adorable lemur, we’re still expected to see around a quarter of all species go extinct or close to it by 2050. And that 25% estimate is not inclusive of any releases from huge volcanic events or earthquakes. “These estimates show the importance of rapid implementation of technologies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and strategies for carbon sequestration,” the authors of a key paper on species extinction wrote in 2004. Six years later, the US government has been leaning toward underground sequestration, slating $4 billion for carbon storage and capture and recently giving close to $600 million for capture technology research and development. But even if the US (one of the top GHG emitting countries, incidentally) does find a way to sequester a significant amount of carbon underground, with the chance of earthquakes, life-snuffing leaks, and unknown environmental effects, it’ll be a hard job convincing the people living above the proposed carbon stores that the technology’s benefits outweigh its downsides.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate