As everyone knows, the world has a carbon dioxide problem, and there are many suggestions for dealing with it. One is sequestration, keeping the gas out of the atmosphere through long-term storage. A great idea, if you can figure out where to put it. Many ideas have been proposed — pumping it into old oil and gas fields or saline aquifers, to name a few.

At the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, researchers propose injecting CO2 into deep-sea basalt formations, specifically a huge expanse of the rock under 8,000 feet of ocean on the Juan de Fuca plate in the Pacific Northwest.

David S. Goldberg, Taro Takahashi and Angela L. Slagle suggest in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that these porous deposits have several advantages. One is that minerals in the rock would react with the CO2, forming stable carbonates. Another is that the deposits are blanketed by 1,000 feet of sediments that could block leaks. And the area is near the coast, so CO2 could be piped directly from power plants to injection sites. The researchers estimate there is enough basalt to hold more than 120 years’ worth of industrial and power-plant emissions by the United States.

(Por HENRY FOUNTAIN, NYT, 14/07/2008)