Monday, April 09, 2007

Learned Something New Today: 'Sequestering'

In the Time magazine I read on the plane today, I encountered a Global Warming concept I'd never seen before: sequestering of carbon gases. The idea is that the CO2 gases are trapped, rather than being released into the atmosphere, and then pumped into the Earth at points where other gases had previously been removed. It sounded wonky to me, but apparently it's actually viable, especially in places where the extraction equipment is still there. Converting from extraction to insertion, the experts say, isn't all that hard. And if the original natural gas could safely stay there for millenia before being removed by us, then carbon dioxide could similarly reside there indefinitely without endangering those of us up on the surface above it.

One of the strange aspects - for me anyway - of the Time coverage came in an extended article called "51 Things You Can Do To Make A Difference." They had lots of great ideas (few of them new to people who've cared about this stuff for any amount of time) and no shortage of silly ones (live in a house that's really, really small.. like 100 sq ft; and, have clothes-trading parties with your friends rather than buying new clothes), but nowhere on that list of 51 was "Ride a bicycle to work!" Biking was mentioned in passing in an item that talked about taking public transit, but that was it! Considering how many Americans live in climates where you could bike to work all year round - I can only dream of that scenario! - this seemed an odd omission. They even had "Dry your laundry on a clothesline" (another thing Vicki and I have been doing since, well, forever!) but no recognition for the value of cycling over driving.

Again, I wonder about Americans' priorities...

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