Hi All

According to a New Scientist report about 11 trillion tons of carbon dioxide can be buried in old oil fields and underground saline aquifers. For comparison there's currently 2 trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere - a concentration of 378 ppm, with about 100 ppm from human efforts since c. 1750. If the CO2 came from pure coal the 11 trillion tons represents about 3120 TW-years. If half-gas and half-coal then it's about ~ 6,000 TW-years. While that sounds like a lot we currently use about ~ 15 TW-years/year, so it'd be 400 years at zero-growth. But a developing world is more likely to develop towards about 10 kW/person and since there will be 9 billion of us by 2050 the potential output will be more like~ 90 TW-year, or perhaps ~ 45 TW with efficiency improvements. If we say an average of ~ 30 TW-year/year between here and there that's just 200 years.

Breathing room, but we can't afford to be slack about it!

Adam