Why do we mine carbon?

JunkScience.com -- Steven Milloy, Publisher

Here's a question for you: why do we mine carbon? Why de we expend effort and energy extracting coal, oil and gas? Could it have anything to do with our desire to utilize some of the energy stored within, you think? So how do we do that?

Think about that for a moment before reading on -- go ahead, we'll wait.

...

Ready? Alright then:

We mine it to burn, you say? Well, true enough but intellectually lazy.

Why do we want to burn it?

To harvest some of the energy stored when the original bonds between carbon and oxygen molecules were broken by photosynthesis would be a more correct answer wouldn't it and we release that energy by restoring the bonds, don't we.

How?

We facilitate the reaction between carbon and oxygen in controlled situations like internal combustion engines, furnaces or whatever our particular need may be and utilize the resultant energy release as best we can.

What are we specifically seeking to produce in order to release this energy?

Carbon dioxide, right? We also produce a little monoxide but not if we can help it since that leaves some of the desired energy bound in the molecule through incomplete combustion.

So, the desired end product is carbon dioxide plus energy, yes?

The energy underpins our society and the carbon dioxide is restored to the biosphere from whence it came, ready for solar-powered recycling, everyone is happy, all living critters gain and all is right with the world.

Another question: is it expensive to retrofit generating plants to capture carbon dioxide "just in case" enhanced greenhouse panic merchants are right? Decide for yourself -- latest available average residential price for electricity in the U.S.: 10.40 ¢/kWh, cost increase with 90% carbon capture 6.92 ¢/kWh -- so you pay 167% for power to reduce essential trace gas emission 90% and then you have to get rid of the captured carbon somewhere, increasing power requirement and reducing plant output and also replace the power parasitized from the plant required to drive the capture/reconstitute solvents or whatever system is being used, driving up net energy consumption significantly rather than reducing and conserving.

Here's the next question: why would we want to expend more energy and effort capturing and reburying carbon we have already expended effort and energy mining in the first place? Especially when that effort merely denies the biosphere access to an essential trace gas which is already in historically short supply? For most of its history life on Earth has had access to many times the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide now available and rarely has it been forced to cope with levels so low as now. So why would we want to harm life in general and humans in particular by restricting humanity's generous (albeit accidental) gift to the biosphere?

Two kinds of people are driving this absurd mania: those who are profiting from the hysteria through sales, donations and advantageous mandates and those who simply hate people and seek to constrain human activity through strangling the energy supply.

What is missing is any indication that life on Earth is in any way harmed or disadvantaged by atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that humans can possibly achieve even if we extract and burn all the fossil fuel reserves thought to exist.

The bigger question (for which we have no answer) is why we are allowing these maniacs to panic people and politicians into actions which harm not only humanity but all life on Earth. It makes no sense at all.