A) build something with them (houses, furniture)

B) stick them underwater or submersed in artificial bogs

That way they won’t rot and release the CO2 back into the atmosphere again.
It is also the way that nature had sequestered all that carbon in the first place.. that gave us fossil fuels.

Like I said, Dr. Keith is a pragmatist. I’m sure that he’s well aware of the potential problems of deep sea storage of CO2, but these risks have to be weighed against the the risks of having CO2 gas floating around in the atmosphere. The likelihood of the world continuing to use fossil fuels is very high…even to the point of exhaustion of these resources. The greenhouse gases from burning all of these fossil fuels have to go “somewhere” besides the atmosphere or we will face global-mean-temperature rise of between 1 to 5 degrees C. One degree might not be so disruptive, but 5 degrees would likely be catastrophic, if only for the sheer number of environmental refugees that would be displaced. Dr. Keith proposes a way of keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere, thus avoiding catastrophic changes to the surface climate that could put many many species at risk of extinction. This will probably be damaging to the flora and fauna of the deep ocean, but this might be a better option than letting the CO2 hang around in the atmosphere.

Is it good to pollute the abyss with suffocating liquid carbon-dioxide just so that we can make our toast in the morning and watch Survivor in the evening? No. But this is a societal problem. Society wastes energy, and uses it for foolish things.

This is a great forum for advocating changes to society, where we can see ideas or products that have much less impact on the environment. Kudos to Inhabitat, and I’m with everyone here…I dream of the evolution where we power our societies solely with the current solar capital. That will be a great society. But I think we can all agree that evolution is slow, and in the mean time we are still pumping an aweful lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It would be a good idea, for the benefit of everybody, to do “something” about those emissions right now.

I think it is entirely possible that Dr. Keith has proposed this “practical” solution (if not “palatable” solution) to climate change simply as a wake-up call to demonstrate exactly how much trouble we are in.

Trying to see both sides of the story – is it that more proposterous and unlikely than some renewable energy ideas? Some theoretical ’solutions’ to the energy question are equally as hollow and contain just as many potentially fatal unknowns:

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/02/18/round-the-clock-solar-energy-from-space-solar-power-system/

But not to lose focus – this is like spraying yourself in deo instead of having a shower – at the end of the day – it still stinks.

Then we got smarter and realised that the oceans are a precious resource and we tried to find better ways to manage our wastes.

One fine day we found out that were also producing an evil gas as our waste, so a group of smart scientists got together to talk about solutions, and came up with the idea of dumping it all into the oceans.

“We are so clever”, the scientists all cried together, and they cheered, and clapped eachother on their backs, and popped champagne because they wer all so smart, and had solved the problem.

NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Am I not surprised that this idea came from a chemical and pertoleum engineer? I wonder which oil company pays his research dollars?

Just goes to show that there’s some out there who are still looking at the problem through the same rose coloured lenses as always. Don’t fix the disease – just find new (old) ways to treat the symptoms.

Long story short, due to extreme pressure and low temperatures of the average ocean depth (3800m), which is “pre-Abyssal” btw, the CO2 in the bag will be in liquid form. Therefore, any rupture will cause liquid CO2 to spill out of the bag, rather than gaseous CO2 exploding out of it.

This isn’t necessarily so good, though, since – in the absence of oxygen – it will likely increase local acidity as it dissolves with the water, changing into carbonic acid. Additionally, this liquid CO2 will flow across the ocean floor, seeking out the lowest point (just like any liquid does), meaning it will suffocate any organism living on the sea floor, which just happens to be in its path.

So, I don’t know if the image of an “explosion from the depths” is worse than an image of a “flowing stream of suffocating liquid”, but bad news nonetheless.