Blowing up the earth

You wouldn’t expect the oil industry to waste their hard-earned money funding research to try and compensate for the ill effects of their activity on our planet, would you. Well, they did just that, in collaboration with the Canadian government and the American Department of Energy. It was reported yesterday that an experiment to re-inject carbon dioxide into the underground holes created by oil drilling was successful. They managed to rid the atmosphere of 5 million tons of CO2 and stick it underground.

I am not sure what that represents compared to what we produce, or how much needs to be removed from the atmosphere to hope to compensate for greenhouse gas effect on global temperature. The trumpeting from the experimentators is that, if we did this everywhere over the globe, we could reduce atmospheric CO2 by half, over the next century. Now, I am a pessimist, but is anyone going to first try and calculate the effect blowing up gas into the planet might have? What happens if an earthquake decides to crack the ground above one of these gas stores? Will the planet bolt in the other direction like a suddenly deflating balloon, until it hits Jupiter or whatever planet happens to be orbiting in the wrong place? Sure, this would help the extra-solar system exploration programs, but would we still be here to enjoy the scientific benefits? And, if the repartition of the man-made underground holes is uneven around the globe, as it is, is this intensive gassing going to change the density of one hemisphere compared to the other even so slightly to inch the planet out of orbit?

Of course, you cynics were right – this is not a philanthropic endeavor. The result of injecting CO2 in holes is that it increases the pressure inside the hole, thereby pushing out whatever oil is left there. It is therefore a way to increase the yields of existing holes, and to improve the benefits of oil companies. In the words of the Energy Secretary, "we would see billions of additional barrels of oil and a reduction of CO2 emissions equivalent to pulling more than 200 million cars off the road for a year." Am I the only one who sees the irony of removing CO2 from the atmosphere, so that we can get more oil to power more cars who can produce more CO2?