To the Editor:

In all of the recent discussion on carbon dioxide pipelines, why?

The belief is that carbon dioxide acts like a grenhouse that captures the sun’s infrared like a greenhouse. The truth is that it does not.

Carbon dioxide and water vapor act in a similar way. They both absorb the infrared from the sun and re-transmit it in random directions, acting as temperature moderators, with roughly half emitted back to space.

At ground level, water vapor is 30 times the concentration as carbon dioxide, and is ignored in climate discussions.

The earth’s natural production of carbon dioxide is estimated to be 240 gigatons annually and a proposed pipeline is to sequester 18 megatons of carbon dioxide.

To put 240 gigatons, or 240 billion if scaled to 2400 and if represented by 2400 miles, the straight-line distanceof the the U.S., east to west. A proposed pipeline to sequester 18 million tons of carbon dioxide, would represent 0.18 miles in 2400 miles.

Kevin Schultz
Huron