Pumping literal waste underground to sequester its carbon. What's the worst that could happen to nearby aquifers?

Pumping literal waste underground to sequester its carbon. What's the worst that could happen to nearby aquifers?

..........I don't even get the logic. How does burrying poop make energy more efficient???
So, thoughts on invasive seeds surviving in the waste and Microsoft adding creating a invasive nightmare put on top of their climate change emissions
I'll be impressed if the seeds can germinate and grow 5000 feet back to the surface.
I mean it's a really weird way to handle this and this wet slurry they are making isn't probably gonna fit neatly into this hole.
I will be honest I didn't really look at how deep but I still feel this is a weird and probably not super helpful carbon capture.
to offset AI carbon emissions
Does it actually do that?
In the eyes of the board of directors, sure . Plantings a billion worth of trees would probably have been too green
It's usually nonsense. I remember some carbon offsets being a guy owning a forest and essentially selling his inaction as a carbon offset. Give me a million dollars so I don't chop all those trees down which I totally would've done otherwise. It's just pushing numbers around on a spreadsheet.
In this case I can imagine their calculations being wildly off. How much CO2/methane does a ton of poop actually release? How much CO2 is released to transport that ton and build the facilities that hold it?
There's even worse stuff: Planting trees is sold as carbon offset. But where do you plant trees? Certainly not on valuable farmland. Instead they drain bogs to plant trees instead.
The issue is that bogs can store about 10x as much CO² as a forest can, and by draining the bog, that CO² is released.
And bog land isn't exactly well-suited for growing trees, and also the carbon offset only pays for planting the trees, not for keeping them alive. So the trees die almost instantly, thus releasing their stored CO². But the upside to it is that on the now re-deforested land, more trees can be planted.
It's complete greenwashing with at best no effect and at worst terrible effects.
The main issue with planting trees to remove CO² is that a forest doesn't consume CO² but instead just stores it. Once a forest is fully-grown, no more CO² is sunk in there. A hectare of forest stores ~400t CO2. Germany creates about 650 million tons CO² per year. So to offset that, Germany would need to plant 1.6 million hectars of forest a year, which is about 4.5% of the surface area of Germany. 32% of Germany is already forest, so that leaves a theoretical maximum of 14.5 years of CO² emissions that Germany could offset by planting trees.
But Germany has been creating CO² for much longer.
Some poop releases methane, a much worse greenhouse gas than Co2.
Fun fact, when striking oil, you often encounter methane pockets as well, the gas is commonly just burned in a giant flare, this is mainly done for safety, to prevent gas from accumulating on the ground and risking an explosion, but also far reduce the greenhouse effect of the gas.
The thing is that these carbon credits make it so that things which would otherwise reduce CO2 in the atmosphere don't happen unless some money changes hands. Most of the time credits effectively do nothing.
Greenwashing is a fraud.
Tecnowashing is also fraud.
Take a failed concept like the gold standard, technowash it, and you get crypto scamcoins.
Greenwashing, sportswashing (saudi arabia), sanewashing (presenting insane ideas as debatable ideas, like debating human rights with someone who is against human rights ends up sanewashing the anti-rights position), small business washing (using ostensibly a pro small business argument to push a fortune 100 agenda), worker washing (treat workers like shit in private but make pro worker noises in public), gender washing (the politician with an anti-woman agenda is a woman so it's OK), minority washing (a fascist pundit is a minority that fascism often targets, so fascism is OK now). Now we can add tecnowashing to the list.
Another example of technowashing is when a real estate company presents itself as a tech startup to inflate its valuation.
All this washing has exploded in recent years.
We truly are in the metaverse era.
They found a way to convert physical shit into virtual shit.
so the AI stuff causes too much CO2, instead of fixing their own hardware, the best they could do is to offset that CO2 amount by burying shit?
Yes, burying fertilizer traps biomass CO2 and then they can use that as carbon credit equivalent to claim CO² neutrality.
Of course, there's a reason why fertilizer is an inexpensive source of fixated carbon biomass and
this means all fertilizer will increase in price by the amount value of it's CO2 carbon credit equivalent
Then maybe the buried fertilizer will become so valuable that it can be dug out and sold as fertilizer again.
I don't see any problems with this plan !
Then maybe the buried fertilizer will become so valuable that it can be dug out and sold as fertilizer again.
Between the methane that generates and easily obtained phosphorous trapped down there, that's strictly a matter of time, unfortunately.
Then maybe the buried fertilizer will become so valuable that it can be dug out and sold as fertilizer again.
I don't see any problems with this plan !
except the part the planet may be uninhabitable for humans by then due to the massive CO2 we are spewing to get slop from AI...
other than that, no problem at all
It's poetic... MS AI slings out massive amounts of shit and now the company gets to bury some of it to compensate
I thought the billion dollars of excrement they bought was OpenAI
self-five 🙏 ohhhhhh
Microsoft buys back all the crap they sold us for years.
MicroShit
But that's fertilizer! WTF?
It's also precious cheap carbon credit, don't worry it will only increase world wide fertilize costs by the value of the carbon credits but thing of all the methane they can burn to make electricity.
It's like converting our fertilizer directly into electricity, except its carbon sequestered 5000 feet under ground !
Maybe the fertilizer prices will increase so much it will become worththile to dig that 5000 feet mine and get that fertilizer back in the bio carbon cycle in 30 years when fertilizer costs more than aluminium does today !
Meanwhile I’m out here pooping for free like a chump!
So this is what they plan to do with all the game studios they bought over the years.
I'm surprised they had to outsource that as they have been producing so much shit for decades.
When the planet burns down, the will be the ones who "did something about it"
What about the nutrients in the waste? Why not compost it, capture the methane offgassing, and store that?
But what do you do with the methane, can't story it and if you burn it, you release the CO² which was the point of burying fertilizer while it's CO² carbon credit value is less than the price of the fertilizer itself.
using human waste as fertilizer isn't a good idea.
human waste contains everything that a person has consumes. this includes disease causing pathogens and parasites.
if it were to be used as a fertilizer it would need to go through multiple stages of expensive processing and testing to ensure safety. it's far more cost effective and safer to use food by-product like fish cuttings to create fertilizers.
Not to forget: It contains a ton of medicine as well. If you want to have antibiotics in your salad, use human waste as fertilizers.
Treated waste water sludge is very commonly used here in Sweden albeit using anaerobic digestion rather than regular composting. High temperature composting would kill any pathogens so you can absolutely get permission to use a composting waste system in small scales. For larger scale waste treatment it is with anaerobic digestion, as mentioned.
The captured methane is typically used for fuel, e.g., in public transport.
As far as I know the sludge used for fertilizer needs to be certified under something called REVAQ. Some controversy does exist surrounding safe levels of the various harmful substances and perhaps PFAS in particular.
Pathogens are less of a problem, they die off before they cannot infect a plant. But chemicals from medication and contraceptives, as well as heavy metals, are.
"To reach the golden temple you and your companions must first pass through the vast Caverns of Corruption."
Microsoft has just signed a deal with Vaulted Deep, paying it to remove 4.9 million metric tons of waste over 12 years sourced from manure, sewage, and agricultural byproducts for injection deep underground.
https://investigatemidwest.org/2023/12/07/us-push-to-produce-methane-from-manure-raises-concerns/
“It can provide a substantial portion of global energy needs,” Rudi Roeslein , CEO of Roeslein Alternative Energy, told the attendees. His company has built farm-based methane systems around the country that produce enough fuel to displace 6 million gallons of diesel fuel and 80,000 cars. “If we do this on a large scale in the U.S. we could generate $63.6 billion worth of revenue for farmers around the country.”
Roeslein’s company promises on its website to “restore a balance” to farmland “by using the sustainably harvested biomass to create renewable natural gas.”
A million BTUs (MMBTu) of methane digested from manure is currently worth $3 in the value of the gas
I know where to find a valuable source of methane in 12 years.
Damn from that photo it looks like some people have a seriously high fiber diet.
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