June 11, 2009 • 30 mins
Carbon capture and storage is a way to filter excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it. Tune in as Josh and Chuck discuss current methods of carbon capture and storage -- and how feasible they are -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is
the lovely Chuck Bryant staring at our new jute rug
(00:23):
hanging from our new wall. What's up, Chuck? We must
be like going places. We have a jute rug hanging
from the wall. I feel silly because they called it Berber.
That's okay, I'm over here feeling stupid. They're both from
the same area. That's the world that they better be
because if you start getting the cool thing is is
when we're corrected though we are literally corrected. I'm sorry,
(00:45):
we're corrected by literal experts. Have you noticed. Yeah? True,
yea many times, like it would be like a jute
rug manufacturer or somebody with a PhD and jute rug
studies who will email us about or Henry Jute himself, right,
the father of jute ruggery. Yeah, so other than the
(01:05):
whole Berber jute thing. How are you feeling? Oh, I'm good.
A little tired, but I'm fine. Are you tired? Chuck,
you should look into energy drinks. I just drank one
and I'm like, yeah, I'm not a fan. I like
the taste. No, no, good enough? Do you want to
move on? Sure, let's do that. What's funny is is
that came out is like seven seconds and it really
(01:25):
lasted what like four minutes? Yeah, if people only knew
thanks to the wonder of YERI. Yeah, So, Chuck, um
you may have noticed, and I know you did because
that person we used to relay information to us between
the two of us because we can't stand one another really,
Uh told me that you told her that you already
knew this. Are you following me so far? No? I
(01:46):
don't think anyone else is either. Okay, we already did
this one. Yeah, we should go ahead and say that, Yeah,
this is about carbon capture and storage. And uh, it
seemed oddly familiar when I was researching, and that's because
we did, in fact do this last lie. But it
was one of our little baby podcasts when we first started,
and it was like five seven minutes long something like that,
and it just really didn't do this topic justice. And
(02:09):
I gotta tell you, hot dog, carbon capture and storage
is cool enough and important enough to do twice. Yeah,
and don't worry, folks, We're not gonna start rehashing things.
We have plenty of topics weeks or you have to cover.
But we just want to do this because we're in
a little green sweet kick exactly. Yeah. And plus you know,
the first one just didn't quite do it. Usually when
we do a podcast, it stays done, right. This one
(02:31):
didn't quite stay done and it was still squirming. We
hadn't put the nail into the back of the head yet.
We're gonna do that here. Yeah, So, Chuck, this one
is laden with stats. As I was reading this article,
I thought, Chuck is going to go crazy for this one.
Give me the first stat buddy. Let's talk about c
O two in the greenhouse effect, right, let's do Okay,
(02:53):
So we do have this layer of carbon dioxide that
allows sunlight to pass through and some to stay. It
keeps bouncing back and forth, which we need to degree
or else trees wouldn't grow, children wouldn't skip and play
supported for photosynthesis, right, so we do need it. What
would happen if we didn't have this, uh, this greenhouse
(03:13):
layer surrounding the earth like a warm blanket, Josh, if
we had no greenhouse effect, our planet would be about
minus twenty two degrees fahrenheit, which is minus thirty degrees
celsius for our friends who don't use the Imperial system.
So it would be a frozen planet basically, yeah, oh yeah,
we wouldn't be around, I'll tell you that. So we
want the greenhouse effect. We want this stuff to come
(03:34):
through and to warm our Earth. The problem is is
when enough of it doesn't get bounced back into outer space,
then it gets a little too warm because the other
the other direction. We don't have a stat on that,
but as you can tell, summers are getting a little hotter,
and uh, I'm sweating a lot more. We do have
a stat on that as far as it getting hotter.
(03:55):
Uh well, emissions, I'm sorry, emissions increasing. I kind of
bent that one little bit. But from nineteen seventy two
thousand four, the greenhouse gas emissions have increased over that
thirty four year period, right and there there's actually plenty
of different greenhouse gases You've got, like nitrous oxide, methane, um,
(04:15):
even water vapor is technically a greenhouse gas up there. Um,
So all this stuff kind of combining traps in the
sun's heat. Um. But worst among them as far as
what we're doing to contribute, which is called anthropogenic contribution, uh,
is carbon dioxide. Because between that same period, would you say,
(04:36):
it's nineteen seventy two thousand four, our carbon dioxide emissions grew.
That's that's significant. Yeah, close to doubling. That's that's a lot. Right.
Then you remember the chloro hydrofluorocarbons I think is what
they were called, the CFCs yet chlorofluora carbons, uh, And
then they were in aerosol sprays and like everybody's like,
(04:57):
oh god, you know, it's everything's going to end, and
the we just got rid of aerosaults. Kind of we
need to figure out a way to do that with
carbon dioxide emissions too. Well, we kind of are yeah,
and what is it? Well, that's what we're talking about again,
which is a carbon capture and more importantly storage, because
capturing carbon, I mean, none of it's easy, but what
(05:18):
you do with it is what's important. Sure, yeah, I
mean we can't yeah put in the backyard, sure right,
you can put it very deep in the backyard. You
could not get to that nice for shadowing so let's
talk about trapping carbon dioxide. First. They capture part of
carbon capture and storage, which, if you want to look
green savvy in front of your friends, just toss out
ccs and they will be wowed. Yeah, we've actually been
(05:40):
doing this for a while, Josh, what you and I
year at least ye know capturing carbon. Oh, yeah, we've
been doing that for a while because the oil and
gas industries do that. They they've been doing that for
decades to enhance oil and gas recovery. Right, because you know,
when when you tap in uh oil reserve all the
deposit in the earth, it's actually there's a ton of
(06:01):
gases holding it down. It's pressurized actually, so the stuff
is it comes out really easily. But as the gases
that are holding this, they're pressurizing this underground cavern, escape
into the atmosphere, um, it becomes harder and harder to
get the oil out. So they figured out that if
you pump CEO two into these half depleted deposits, it
repressurizes it and it makes the oil easier to to
(06:24):
get out. Right, So out of that becomes a more
environmentally friendly use, which is capturing carbon from Mother Earth. Right,
and even more so since we're already or since the
oil companies are already using sea pressurized c O two
uh to to for enhanced store recovery. There's already a network,
a system of pipelines and stuff in in in our
(06:45):
infrastructure structure. Wow, I love that word infrastructure. But that's
I do too. It's very comforting, it is. Yeah, it
sounds like somebody's in charge, so we're I'm getting ahead
of myself. That's the that's part of the storage. Right,
Let's keep talking about capture, Josh. There are three main
steps to CCS, and that is the trapping of the
(07:07):
carbon uh the separating of the CEO two from other gases,
and then transporting it to a place where you can
store it away from the atmosphere. Right. And actually, strangely enough,
there's three methods that we've come up with for doing this. Right.
So you've got you love that, dun't you. You've got
post combustion, pre combustion, and oxyfuel combustion right down. Okay,
(07:30):
well I'll break down post combustion. It's exactly what it
sounds like. Say you've got a coal fire power plant.
Coal is super dirty, even clean coal is very dirty. Uh.
If you can figure out a way to trap that
CEO two that's escaping from the fluid, Uh, then all
of a sudden you've just captured carbon. Right. And one
(07:50):
way to do that is to introduce some sort of
like gel or compound. Uh. There's some I know Georgia
text working on one called hyper branched you know, silica. Wow,
look at you. Thanks? You weren't even reading that. No,
it wasn't very impressive. Oh, it's not even in this article, pal,
And my brain is musters no. Um. And actually I
guess it's because it's so hyper branched. Um. It traps
(08:15):
carbon dioxide molecules and it actually locks into them. So
it's a silica. It's kind of sandy. So it works
as a filter. It does. But you know, so some
flu gases get out, but the carbon dioxide doesn't. And
the cool thing is it's like it just sits there,
just traps it until it's heated again. And if you
heat it in the under the right circumstances, you can
capture just the c O two and compress it and
(08:36):
get rid of it. That's one example of post combustion.
The key to post combustion is you're already burning the
fospil fuels and you're capturing as much CO two as
you can before it escapes into the atmosphere out of
smoke stack. Right. One thing I noticed in that where
you said once you heat it again, it leaves behind
the concentrated uh CEO two, but it releases water vapor.
Is I wonder if that water vapor is part of
(08:58):
the problem as well, though it seems get water vapor
is again it's a greenhouse gas, but it's also a
flu gas, which is a mixture of a whole bunch
of stuff that that that comes out of burning fossil fuels.
But again we're after the CEO two, but it seems
like getting the CEO two separated from the water vapor
is a problem as well. Yeah, so you want to
do precombustion. Yeah, uh, this is when carbon is carbon
(09:23):
is trapped I'm sorry, carbon dioxide, I guess I should
say is trapped before the fossil fuel is burned, so
before it's diluted with other flu gasses. Um is when
you when you capture it, so precombustion, before it's burned
and apparently chuck what you do is you actually heat
whatever fossil fuel you're using, uh, in the presence of
pure oxygen, and you get this other, this brand, this
(09:45):
completely different thing, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, right. And then
you run into a catalytic converter and it produces more hydrogen,
which is good because you can actually reuse that for
energy to maybe even power this whole process, right uh.
And then you get car and dioxide as well, right uh.
And then you put them in a flask with a
(10:06):
chemical called aimine, and the aiming actually holds the CEO
two down on top of it. Right, and then eventually
you can extract the aiming and the hydrogen, reuse the
aiming and trap the CEO two. It sounds like kind
of a lot, it does. I wonder if we're gonna
get get any cool sound effects like our distillery. That
would be very cool. That would be super cool. And
(10:28):
if we did, Yeah, didn't you just hear it. Yeah,
Jerry's ignoring us right now, so that might not happen. Um.
So the it is a lot pre combustion. Is it's
a big process. Yeah, it's already in use actually for
natural gas. They've already been using this. It is the
thing is is it's in use in a brand new
power plant. The good thing about post combustion is you
(10:48):
can run around the country and retrofit old power plant
to capture carbon dioxide. Pre combustion you pretty much have
to build that in as you're building a new power plant.
And it's also super expense. Well, this has a lot
of energy. What precombustion Yeah, oh yeah, No, I thought
it was lower in cost, is it. Well, the process
is lower in cost, but I think it's more expensive
(11:09):
because it's not a retrofit, right. But it also it's
it's higher in the cost of energy that it uses
to this process. From what I understand, I was talking
about dollars. Buddy, Hey dude, you still for energy somehow,
pay an hour, pay later, right, right. And then the
last one is oxyfuel, right, oxyfuel combustion, Yeah, that's uh.
The power plant burns fossil fuel and oxygen and this
(11:32):
results in a gas mixture comprised of steam and carbon dioxide.
So the steam and c O two are separated when
you cool it and compress the gas, uh stream Right,
So there you have it. There you have, and all
three of these captured between eighty and the carbon dioxide
that's escaping. I think oxy fuels the most oxy feels
(11:55):
topping out at nine um. So those are pretty much
the three competing ways to UH capture carbon dioxide and
use right now. And it seems like we're talking about
power plants a lot. Those are definitely the focus of
carbon capture right now. You know, they're huge emitters of
carbon diox So, like there's a I think a Southern
(12:15):
Company plant in Juliette, Georgia, and it emits more carbon
DIOXI than the entire power infrastructure of Brazil, which seems
a little lopsided because you just blogged about Brazil recently
on a sugarcane biofuels, right, and they're very, very energy
independent thanks to the cellulistic ethanol that they make from sugarcane.
(12:36):
So it's a lopside in comparison. But still one power
plant shouldn't be putting out, you know, more CEO two
than any country. Sure you would think, right, but that's
less that country is tiny, Like maybe Vatican City Is
that a country, dude? I I walked around Vatican City
one time by accident. Well it was my friend Brett
(12:58):
and I kind of well we were on the wrong
side of of where we needed to be, and we thought, well,
we'll just skirt around this wall here, and I think
it'll be quicker. And I didn't realize that we're walking
around the country. Did you come face to face with
the pope and they're just like But it took forever.
It was much a much longer walk than I anticipated.
And now that I realized it's a country that kind
of all makes sense. Does it make sense? It does
(13:20):
cool place though I've heard moving on. Yes. So now, Josh,
what we have is captured carbon. We got a whole
lot of carbon dioxide. What do we do with the chuck? Well,
you need to transport at first before you can store it?
How through a pipeline? Oh yeah, I already talked about that. Right.
That's a good thing is that infrastructure is in place.
And uh, I think here's another stat there's more than
(13:41):
fift miles of CEO two pipelines already in place here.
And it sounds like technically it's not like consider the
then oil pipelines and that kind of thing, and that
actually I was talking about a lopside of figure with
the Southern Company plant in Brazil. Um, you know CEO
two pipeline safe. Uh as far as fatalities and accidents go,
(14:03):
it's really low compared to like natural gas and in
hazardous materials pipeline. I think to the tune of um,
I've got stats, I can't now. These are death Okay,
that's uh, we're talking. These are death. We're talking Between
nine six and two thousand six, there's only been twelve
CEO two pipeline leaks with no injuries and none yeah
(14:26):
none zip and over the same period more than five
thousand accidents within a hundred and seven fatalities with liquid
um petroleum pipelines. So whoop whoop. It sounds like CEO
two pipelines are way safer, but there's a lot fury. Yeah. Uh.
And your friend Debbie Ranka thinks that these things, that
these accidents will probably increases the UM CEO two pipeline
(14:50):
infrastructure increases in in breadth. Right, and we should say
Debbie wrote this, we didn't just chat about this and
Debbie throughout her opinion, Debbie wrote this awesome formal trains
and pediatrics, Right, Debbie a freak girl dot com? Is
that her? Huh nice good girl? Oh, you're just plug happy,
aren't you. You know, I think just for old times sake,
you should plug our audio book I mean, you know,
(15:12):
uh spoken word album. Yeah, well, I'm never going to
get that right there in the front of my head.
They will never be the first thing I call that.
So now we have it in a pipeline and we
are transporting it where it needs to go, which it
depends on where you pick it up and where it
needs to be for where it needs to travel, I mean,
is pretty simple, right, but we're also we should probably
say that there's different You could transport CEO two three
(15:34):
different ways, right, gas, liquid, and solid, right, and the
most efficient is is uh is gas? Right? Yeah? Yeah,
of course? Um solid CEO two actually is dry eyes
did you Yeah, yeah, I didn't. And it's not very
cost effective to transport as a solid obviously, um, and
gas is easier because you can compress it with these
uh you know, these compressors kind of push it through
(15:55):
the pipeline every so often they have these compressors. And
where are you shooting it too, though, shooting into the
storage area chuck there? Yeah, Which that depends on what
storage you're gonna use, what kind of storage you're gonna use. Well,
what kind do you want to use? I mean, there's
only two underground and underwater, right right? What kind do
I want to use? What kind do you want to use?
If you're Chuck King of the World and somebody says, what,
(16:16):
let's see something about CCS, you say, I decree that
we're going to store it underground, underground? Alright? Nice? The
ocean thing worries me a little bit. They both worried
me a little bit, actually, but yeah, let's start with underground. Okay,
let's do underground. Um, well, Josh, there are some estimates.
If you want another stat you're right, this is chuck
full of stats. Um, the planet can store up to
(16:38):
ten trillion tons of CEO two underground, which is a
hundred years of storage of all human anthropogenic carbon contributions,
which sounds good, but that's really not very long d years. No,
but consider this. I was actually um when I wrote
the article can we bury our CEO two problem under
the ocean? I think is what it was called. There's
(16:59):
no telling what kind of technology we're going to have.
We could conceivably take that trap carbon dioxide and and
exert tons of force and and make synthetic petroleum out
of it. Yeah point yeah, So a hundred years is
a really long time with the kind of technological advances
we've been we've been undertaking in the last hundred years,
(17:20):
right yeah, I mean think about nineteen odd nine and
what it was like then. I don't like to compare
to now that's a syphilis yeah yeah sure. So yeah,
that's underground. Um. You know, it's pressurized when it's at
deep underground, and it behaves more like a liquid than
a gas when it's at fronder ground because it like
seeps into other little cracks and porous rocks, which is
(17:42):
a good thing, right. And actually there there's a specific
rock that they found um works really well for carbon storage,
and that is basalt, which is volcanic rock, right yeah, yeah,
and they just inject us what is it? Do they
inject gaseous gasified CEO two? I think so? Yeah, they
injected directly into the rock. And actually the rock transforms
(18:04):
from base all into limestone. Pretty cool. It converts it
into rock. So basically like it's like a hyper accelerated,
uh geological process that's going on. But when I read that,
I thought, wow, that's great, what a great idea, we
just need to run around injecting all the base all
in the world with c O two and will be set.
It will just have a big limestone planet. And then
(18:25):
again I thought, we really don't know what we're tinkering
with here, Like what happens if we have like too
much limestone on the planet. We we can't say we
don't know. Like this, I can't tell almost I hate
to admit this, but I can't tell if this kind
of tinkering may actually result in much more catastrophic consequences
(18:46):
than just going the way we're going and trying to
go with biofuels. I don't you know, a lot of
the End of the World movies where it shows like
the future, how mankind was wiped out, the little thing
they'll use to to turn the story was we were
trying to do something great and discovered something we thought
was great, but it turned out to be some irrevocable
change that lead to our demands. You're talking about soil
(19:10):
and Green, of course, Well yeah, and just a lot
of movies like that. But that's a great point. Actually,
Slowly Green is a great example. I think we're doing
something really good and that might lend lead to our
undoing water World. Greatest movie ever made? Definitely? Maybe? Really? Yeah,
what did that have to do with this? It's highly
post apocalyptic. Okay, let's just see that one. I thought
(19:33):
it was you haven't seen it. I thought it was
a cheesy romance. No, it starts out like that and
the twist at the end is mind boggling. Yeah, it's
like The Road Warrior. So go ahead, Chuck. We're talking
underground or are we done with that part? No, well
we're almost done. What happens is they're studying all that
right now, so your fears hopefully can be dismissed because
they're looking to see what the result will be. Sure
(19:53):
and as far as it goes, I think the oldest
um underground uh CEO two Georage site is actually under
the sea floor in Norway and it's only as old
as nine and it hasn't had an accident or anything,
but it's still it's only thirteen years old. Yeah, so
I mean what happens in fifty years or a hundred
(20:14):
years exactly? And that's what they're keeping their eye on.
I mean they're worried about it too. I mean, we
definitely have to do something, but I don't know. I'm
just a little hesitant, all right, I agree, Yeah, well
you wanna talk about the ocean. Yeah, let's talk about
the ocean. I'm I'm with you. I'm much more trepid
about the ocean storage and that, Um there's again. I
wrote an article called can we bury our CEO two
(20:35):
problem in the ocean? And in that article, um, there's
this guy who came up with these the idea of
having these pipelines pump liquefied not gasified, but liquefied CEO
two directly into enormous bags. That's right at the abysmal plane. Yeah,
not abysmal plane, the Yeah, but I imagine it's pretty
(20:56):
abysmal down there. Yeah. Um, so yeah, down on the
abysmal plane, right, And uh, it's it's a pretty good idea.
The problem is, these huge, enormous bags can only store
I think a day or ten worth of carbon dioxide captured.
It would be a lot of bags, and they end
up really quick, and if any one of them ruptured,
we don't know what would happened. But apparently from a
(21:18):
little more investigation, if we bury this stuff or dump
it in the ocean deep enough which is to the
tune of about eleven ft um. Then we can just
let it go and hope for the best that the
the incredibly low pressure uh and temperatures will basically globify it,
(21:40):
compress it, it it ull be floating around. Sounds like that terrible,
terrible idea to me, with any kind of cloud that
I may have as a human being and a podcaster,
I would like to hear now say that I think
just dumping our captured carbon diode die oxide into the
(22:00):
ocean is one of the worst ideas I've heard this year. Yeah,
I know, Green Pieces and wild about the idea, and
they said it's not even feasible until at least the
year so you know, I mean, I have two camps.
It's good that we're exploring things like this, but you know,
it would be much better if we had electric cars
(22:22):
powered by solar energy rather than just thinking of different
ways to keep using fossil fuels over and over and
over right now, And and that's a good point. I
noticed Green Pieces kind of not too hip on this either,
and I agree with them as well. I think that
we basically have to stuff like this really distracts us
from making hard decisions and hard choices. So this is easy.
(22:44):
We get to like our lives don't change at all.
It's just the power companies need to go retrofit their
old their old flus with you know, scrubbers of some sort. Uh.
And but for us to have electric cars or to
have bio fuels, we're gonna have to pay more gallon
kind of thing. So it does affect us. So people
aren't paying that much attention to it. That's how to say.
(23:05):
This is pielos Y technology, though, you know, I mean,
it's very viable and it's going on now still right,
Hopefully works are going to be done on a lot
of fronts and there will be multiple solutions. You know
what my favorite idea was, But did you read it
that little sidebar about the company's sky Mine. Okay, So
sky Mine has figured out a way where they just
take um sequestered carbon dioxide and they inject it with
(23:28):
salt and water sodium hydroxide, right, and it creates a
chemical reaction that forms baking soda. That's it kind of baking.
So it's good for everything, it is everything. I just
think that's the greatest idea ever. The problem is we'd
have massive baking soda stores and the baking soda market
in which I'm heavily invested with just bottom out. So
(23:51):
I mean, I like it as an idea, but financially
it would suck for me. Right, No fridge would ever
stink again, though, No, we can probably make fridges out
of baking soda with that muchly, you know, if they
can make a suitcase out of cocaine, they can probably
make a refrigerator out of baking soda. The operative word
is they. But getting back to the water real quick.
You were talking about leaking CEO two from the ocean,
(24:13):
remember our Little Exploding Lake podcast. Yeah, that's a great
example of the coming up through the water. So that
could happen lakes. And we should also probably mention carbon sink, yeah,
which is a phenomenon the The ocean actually does absorb
CEO two from the atmosphere already, and what happens now
is it's sinking to the bottom ideally, but some oceans,
(24:37):
like the Southern Ocean, have soaked up so much that
it's not soaking it down to the bottom anymore. It's
not sinking, it's kind of staying on top. And that
makes the water very acidic, which is not good for fishies. No,
which is again like nives. We have no idea what
happened in the marine life, probably because they were exploded
into trillions of pieces. That's toughs account. So yeah, a
(24:58):
little troublesome. I mean capturing carbon this is this is
a good thing. Storing it a little more dodgy, yeah,
I mean, we'll see what happens. We're gonna script this
planet one way or another. Might as well make it quick,
like in just a huge massive eruption of c O
two into the atmosphere that chokes us all the death.
That sounds encouraging. Sure, well, it'll get filtered out eventually
in some strange new life form will eventually take over
(25:20):
and screw it up later on. So, oh you're a
bright one today. It's just a shining light. Yeah, so Chuck,
I'm glad we did this again, buddy, This one, this
one's done until next time, until that carbon dioxide exploit.
Let's agree right now, we don't do carbon capture and
storage again until that massive eruption takes place, All right, okay?
(25:41):
Deal Part three that you have it coming not too soon,
so you know what time it's for then it's time
for Chuck to plug our spoken word album. Go ahead. Wow,
it's been so long. Um it was on economics, if
I remember correctly, The Stuff you Should Know a super
Stuff out of the Economy. Yeah, you can buy it
in your iTunes store for what was planal price four
bucks something like that, something like that. Nice and and
(26:06):
again we got really good feedback on it. We did. Yeah,
and that was a good experience. So yeah, there's Chuck
plugging our audio book, The Stuff you Should Know super
Stuff Guide to the Economy. I can't believe I remember
the name. And it's just World Time Safe and that
means that it is listener mail time. All right, Chuck,
what do you have for us, baby compass head Catcher's mit.
(26:28):
I have something I'm just gonna call shocking listener mail.
We have a lot of that lately. Yeah. We had
a fan that wrote in that UM was struck by lightning. Yeah,
but not just the fan, but her dog too. Yeah,
And she just kind of off handedly mentioned it because
she was talking about she read that spontaneous human combustion
could be caused by lightning, and I was struck by lightning,
(26:50):
by the way, And that was kind of it, and
I wrote her back. It was like, no, no, no, no,
you need to give me some details here because I
would like to read this on the air. And I've
never talked to anyone who I was struck by lightning. Yeah,
so here we go. It turns out it was a
side strike, which I never heard of. Uh, And she
says a side strike is a really well phenomenon of lightning.
It struck about a half a block from me. It
(27:10):
was incredibly bright, and I was blinded for a few
minutes afterward. I was not back about six feet but
still landed on my feet and I couldn't hear for
a good half hour afterward. It was a booming and
crackling yet incredibly quiet, which I thought it was interesting.
I can't totally explain the sound except to compare it
to the sound you get when you skydive, which didn't
(27:31):
help me. It's I've never been skydivan. It's kind of
have you done it? No, no way, it's terrifying. Okay,
I believe it the rush of wind booms around you,
but it's definitely still would you agree with that? Yeah,
similar sort of Oh you were all hammered when you
did it? When you're talking about remember uh. In my
research about lightning strikes and strike victims, I found it
(27:53):
incredible that a side strike can occur UH up to
a mile away from something and you can still receive
the electrical charge. I saw the lightning strike, but I
didn't feel any pain, so I assumed I wasn't hit.
It wasn't n till later in the day when Burnmark
showed up. I don't think I lost consciousness, but I
was totally routed on the spot where I was standing.
(28:14):
Rooted is r O U T. I'm not sure. If
it wasn't for my dog, I probably would have continued
to stand there for a while. Yeah, I guess she
was rooted. That makes sense. My dog was so frightened
that she just took off running. I was holding onto
the leason couldn't let go, so I sort of ran
blindly after her to her house. I was an emotional
blur for a decent while afterwards. Consequently, my dog's black
(28:38):
fur is now very speckled with white hair. And let
me see actually coincides with another of our podcast. Oh yeah,
and she had singes across her fingers and toes, little
burn blisters and as far as long term damage. And
you see she has affected her balance sum and messes
(28:58):
with her inner ear at her frontal lobe is fine,
and she's taking neurological exams in psychological testing and she
is fine and normal and considers herself very lucky. I
consider her very lucky too. That is doll. That is
Hannah of Tennessee. And we're very glad that you and
your little girl Pucci are all Okay, Hannah, I would
strongly recommend that you play the lotto as often as
(29:18):
you can. Yeah. So yeah, If you want to tell
us any amazing true stories about lightning, shark attacks, far fights, whatever,
you can send us an email. That's what they call
in these stags, right, chuck electronic men. You can send
that to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com
(29:43):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot Com brought to you by
the reinvented two thousand twelve Camra. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is
the lovely Chuck Bryant staring at our new jute rug
(00:23):
hanging from our new wall. What's up, Chuck? We must
be like going places. We have a jute rug hanging
from the wall. I feel silly because they called it Berber.
That's okay, I'm over here feeling stupid. They're both from
the same area. That's the world that they better be
because if you start getting the cool thing is is
when we're corrected though we are literally corrected. I'm sorry,
(00:45):
we're corrected by literal experts. Have you noticed. Yeah? True,
yea many times, like it would be like a jute
rug manufacturer or somebody with a PhD and jute rug
studies who will email us about or Henry Jute himself, right,
the father of jute ruggery. Yeah, so other than the
(01:05):
whole Berber jute thing. How are you feeling? Oh, I'm good.
A little tired, but I'm fine. Are you tired? Chuck,
you should look into energy drinks. I just drank one
and I'm like, yeah, I'm not a fan. I like
the taste. No, no, good enough? Do you want to
move on? Sure, let's do that. What's funny is is
that came out is like seven seconds and it really
(01:25):
lasted what like four minutes? Yeah, if people only knew
thanks to the wonder of YERI. Yeah, So, Chuck, um
you may have noticed, and I know you did because
that person we used to relay information to us between
the two of us because we can't stand one another really,
Uh told me that you told her that you already
knew this. Are you following me so far? No? I
(01:46):
don't think anyone else is either. Okay, we already did
this one. Yeah, we should go ahead and say that, Yeah,
this is about carbon capture and storage. And uh, it
seemed oddly familiar when I was researching, and that's because
we did, in fact do this last lie. But it
was one of our little baby podcasts when we first started,
and it was like five seven minutes long something like that,
and it just really didn't do this topic justice. And
(02:09):
I gotta tell you, hot dog, carbon capture and storage
is cool enough and important enough to do twice. Yeah,
and don't worry, folks, We're not gonna start rehashing things.
We have plenty of topics weeks or you have to cover.
But we just want to do this because we're in
a little green sweet kick exactly. Yeah. And plus you know,
the first one just didn't quite do it. Usually when
we do a podcast, it stays done, right. This one
(02:31):
didn't quite stay done and it was still squirming. We
hadn't put the nail into the back of the head yet.
We're gonna do that here. Yeah, So, Chuck, this one
is laden with stats. As I was reading this article,
I thought, Chuck is going to go crazy for this one.
Give me the first stat buddy. Let's talk about c
O two in the greenhouse effect, right, let's do Okay,
(02:53):
So we do have this layer of carbon dioxide that
allows sunlight to pass through and some to stay. It
keeps bouncing back and forth, which we need to degree
or else trees wouldn't grow, children wouldn't skip and play
supported for photosynthesis, right, so we do need it. What
would happen if we didn't have this, uh, this greenhouse
(03:13):
layer surrounding the earth like a warm blanket, Josh, if
we had no greenhouse effect, our planet would be about
minus twenty two degrees fahrenheit, which is minus thirty degrees
celsius for our friends who don't use the Imperial system.
So it would be a frozen planet basically, yeah, oh yeah,
we wouldn't be around, I'll tell you that. So we
want the greenhouse effect. We want this stuff to come
(03:34):
through and to warm our Earth. The problem is is
when enough of it doesn't get bounced back into outer space,
then it gets a little too warm because the other
the other direction. We don't have a stat on that,
but as you can tell, summers are getting a little hotter,
and uh, I'm sweating a lot more. We do have
a stat on that as far as it getting hotter.
(03:55):
Uh well, emissions, I'm sorry, emissions increasing. I kind of
bent that one little bit. But from nineteen seventy two
thousand four, the greenhouse gas emissions have increased over that
thirty four year period, right and there there's actually plenty
of different greenhouse gases You've got, like nitrous oxide, methane, um,
(04:15):
even water vapor is technically a greenhouse gas up there. Um,
So all this stuff kind of combining traps in the
sun's heat. Um. But worst among them as far as
what we're doing to contribute, which is called anthropogenic contribution, uh,
is carbon dioxide. Because between that same period, would you say,
(04:36):
it's nineteen seventy two thousand four, our carbon dioxide emissions grew.
That's that's significant. Yeah, close to doubling. That's that's a lot. Right.
Then you remember the chloro hydrofluorocarbons I think is what
they were called, the CFCs yet chlorofluora carbons, uh, And
then they were in aerosol sprays and like everybody's like,
(04:57):
oh god, you know, it's everything's going to end, and
the we just got rid of aerosaults. Kind of we
need to figure out a way to do that with
carbon dioxide emissions too. Well, we kind of are yeah,
and what is it? Well, that's what we're talking about again,
which is a carbon capture and more importantly storage, because
capturing carbon, I mean, none of it's easy, but what
(05:18):
you do with it is what's important. Sure, yeah, I
mean we can't yeah put in the backyard, sure right,
you can put it very deep in the backyard. You
could not get to that nice for shadowing so let's
talk about trapping carbon dioxide. First. They capture part of
carbon capture and storage, which, if you want to look
green savvy in front of your friends, just toss out
ccs and they will be wowed. Yeah, we've actually been
(05:40):
doing this for a while, Josh, what you and I
year at least ye know capturing carbon. Oh, yeah, we've
been doing that for a while because the oil and
gas industries do that. They they've been doing that for
decades to enhance oil and gas recovery. Right, because you know,
when when you tap in uh oil reserve all the
deposit in the earth, it's actually there's a ton of
(06:01):
gases holding it down. It's pressurized actually, so the stuff
is it comes out really easily. But as the gases
that are holding this, they're pressurizing this underground cavern, escape
into the atmosphere, um, it becomes harder and harder to
get the oil out. So they figured out that if
you pump CEO two into these half depleted deposits, it
repressurizes it and it makes the oil easier to to
(06:24):
get out. Right, So out of that becomes a more
environmentally friendly use, which is capturing carbon from Mother Earth. Right,
and even more so since we're already or since the
oil companies are already using sea pressurized c O two
uh to to for enhanced store recovery. There's already a network,
a system of pipelines and stuff in in in our
(06:45):
infrastructure structure. Wow, I love that word infrastructure. But that's
I do too. It's very comforting, it is. Yeah, it
sounds like somebody's in charge, so we're I'm getting ahead
of myself. That's the that's part of the storage. Right,
Let's keep talking about capture, Josh. There are three main
steps to CCS, and that is the trapping of the
(07:07):
carbon uh the separating of the CEO two from other gases,
and then transporting it to a place where you can
store it away from the atmosphere. Right. And actually, strangely enough,
there's three methods that we've come up with for doing this. Right.
So you've got you love that, dun't you. You've got
post combustion, pre combustion, and oxyfuel combustion right down. Okay,
(07:30):
well I'll break down post combustion. It's exactly what it
sounds like. Say you've got a coal fire power plant.
Coal is super dirty, even clean coal is very dirty. Uh.
If you can figure out a way to trap that
CEO two that's escaping from the fluid, Uh, then all
of a sudden you've just captured carbon. Right. And one
(07:50):
way to do that is to introduce some sort of
like gel or compound. Uh. There's some I know Georgia
text working on one called hyper branched you know, silica. Wow,
look at you. Thanks? You weren't even reading that. No,
it wasn't very impressive. Oh, it's not even in this article, pal,
And my brain is musters no. Um. And actually I
guess it's because it's so hyper branched. Um. It traps
(08:15):
carbon dioxide molecules and it actually locks into them. So
it's a silica. It's kind of sandy. So it works
as a filter. It does. But you know, so some
flu gases get out, but the carbon dioxide doesn't. And
the cool thing is it's like it just sits there,
just traps it until it's heated again. And if you
heat it in the under the right circumstances, you can
capture just the c O two and compress it and
(08:36):
get rid of it. That's one example of post combustion.
The key to post combustion is you're already burning the
fospil fuels and you're capturing as much CO two as
you can before it escapes into the atmosphere out of
smoke stack. Right. One thing I noticed in that where
you said once you heat it again, it leaves behind
the concentrated uh CEO two, but it releases water vapor.
Is I wonder if that water vapor is part of
(08:58):
the problem as well, though it seems get water vapor
is again it's a greenhouse gas, but it's also a
flu gas, which is a mixture of a whole bunch
of stuff that that that comes out of burning fossil fuels.
But again we're after the CEO two, but it seems
like getting the CEO two separated from the water vapor
is a problem as well. Yeah, so you want to
do precombustion. Yeah, uh, this is when carbon is carbon
(09:23):
is trapped I'm sorry, carbon dioxide, I guess I should
say is trapped before the fossil fuel is burned, so
before it's diluted with other flu gasses. Um is when
you when you capture it, so precombustion, before it's burned
and apparently chuck what you do is you actually heat
whatever fossil fuel you're using, uh, in the presence of
pure oxygen, and you get this other, this brand, this
(09:45):
completely different thing, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, right. And then
you run into a catalytic converter and it produces more hydrogen,
which is good because you can actually reuse that for
energy to maybe even power this whole process, right uh.
And then you get car and dioxide as well, right uh.
And then you put them in a flask with a
(10:06):
chemical called aimine, and the aiming actually holds the CEO
two down on top of it. Right, and then eventually
you can extract the aiming and the hydrogen, reuse the
aiming and trap the CEO two. It sounds like kind
of a lot, it does. I wonder if we're gonna
get get any cool sound effects like our distillery. That
would be very cool. That would be super cool. And
(10:28):
if we did, Yeah, didn't you just hear it. Yeah,
Jerry's ignoring us right now, so that might not happen. Um.
So the it is a lot pre combustion. Is it's
a big process. Yeah, it's already in use actually for
natural gas. They've already been using this. It is the
thing is is it's in use in a brand new
power plant. The good thing about post combustion is you
(10:48):
can run around the country and retrofit old power plant
to capture carbon dioxide. Pre combustion you pretty much have
to build that in as you're building a new power plant.
And it's also super expense. Well, this has a lot
of energy. What precombustion Yeah, oh yeah, No, I thought
it was lower in cost, is it. Well, the process
is lower in cost, but I think it's more expensive
(11:09):
because it's not a retrofit, right. But it also it's
it's higher in the cost of energy that it uses
to this process. From what I understand, I was talking
about dollars. Buddy, Hey dude, you still for energy somehow,
pay an hour, pay later, right, right. And then the
last one is oxyfuel, right, oxyfuel combustion, Yeah, that's uh.
The power plant burns fossil fuel and oxygen and this
(11:32):
results in a gas mixture comprised of steam and carbon dioxide.
So the steam and c O two are separated when
you cool it and compress the gas, uh stream Right,
So there you have it. There you have, and all
three of these captured between eighty and the carbon dioxide
that's escaping. I think oxy fuels the most oxy feels
(11:55):
topping out at nine um. So those are pretty much
the three competing ways to UH capture carbon dioxide and
use right now. And it seems like we're talking about
power plants a lot. Those are definitely the focus of
carbon capture right now. You know, they're huge emitters of
carbon diox So, like there's a I think a Southern
(12:15):
Company plant in Juliette, Georgia, and it emits more carbon
DIOXI than the entire power infrastructure of Brazil, which seems
a little lopsided because you just blogged about Brazil recently
on a sugarcane biofuels, right, and they're very, very energy
independent thanks to the cellulistic ethanol that they make from sugarcane.
(12:36):
So it's a lopside in comparison. But still one power
plant shouldn't be putting out, you know, more CEO two
than any country. Sure you would think, right, but that's
less that country is tiny, Like maybe Vatican City Is
that a country, dude? I I walked around Vatican City
one time by accident. Well it was my friend Brett
(12:58):
and I kind of well we were on the wrong
side of of where we needed to be, and we thought, well,
we'll just skirt around this wall here, and I think
it'll be quicker. And I didn't realize that we're walking
around the country. Did you come face to face with
the pope and they're just like But it took forever.
It was much a much longer walk than I anticipated.
And now that I realized it's a country that kind
of all makes sense. Does it make sense? It does
(13:20):
cool place though I've heard moving on. Yes. So now, Josh,
what we have is captured carbon. We got a whole
lot of carbon dioxide. What do we do with the chuck? Well,
you need to transport at first before you can store it?
How through a pipeline? Oh yeah, I already talked about that. Right.
That's a good thing is that infrastructure is in place.
And uh, I think here's another stat there's more than
(13:41):
fift miles of CEO two pipelines already in place here.
And it sounds like technically it's not like consider the
then oil pipelines and that kind of thing, and that
actually I was talking about a lopside of figure with
the Southern Company plant in Brazil. Um, you know CEO
two pipeline safe. Uh as far as fatalities and accidents go,
(14:03):
it's really low compared to like natural gas and in
hazardous materials pipeline. I think to the tune of um,
I've got stats, I can't now. These are death Okay,
that's uh, we're talking. These are death. We're talking Between
nine six and two thousand six, there's only been twelve
CEO two pipeline leaks with no injuries and none yeah
(14:26):
none zip and over the same period more than five
thousand accidents within a hundred and seven fatalities with liquid
um petroleum pipelines. So whoop whoop. It sounds like CEO
two pipelines are way safer, but there's a lot fury. Yeah. Uh.
And your friend Debbie Ranka thinks that these things, that
these accidents will probably increases the UM CEO two pipeline
(14:50):
infrastructure increases in in breadth. Right, and we should say
Debbie wrote this, we didn't just chat about this and
Debbie throughout her opinion, Debbie wrote this awesome formal trains
and pediatrics, Right, Debbie a freak girl dot com? Is
that her? Huh nice good girl? Oh, you're just plug happy,
aren't you. You know, I think just for old times sake,
you should plug our audio book I mean, you know,
(15:12):
uh spoken word album. Yeah, well, I'm never going to
get that right there in the front of my head.
They will never be the first thing I call that.
So now we have it in a pipeline and we
are transporting it where it needs to go, which it
depends on where you pick it up and where it
needs to be for where it needs to travel, I mean,
is pretty simple, right, but we're also we should probably
say that there's different You could transport CEO two three
(15:34):
different ways, right, gas, liquid, and solid, right, and the
most efficient is is uh is gas? Right? Yeah? Yeah,
of course? Um solid CEO two actually is dry eyes
did you Yeah, yeah, I didn't. And it's not very
cost effective to transport as a solid obviously, um, and
gas is easier because you can compress it with these
uh you know, these compressors kind of push it through
(15:55):
the pipeline every so often they have these compressors. And
where are you shooting it too, though, shooting into the
storage area chuck there? Yeah, Which that depends on what
storage you're gonna use, what kind of storage you're gonna use. Well,
what kind do you want to use? I mean, there's
only two underground and underwater, right right? What kind do
I want to use? What kind do you want to use?
If you're Chuck King of the World and somebody says, what,
(16:16):
let's see something about CCS, you say, I decree that
we're going to store it underground, underground? Alright? Nice? The
ocean thing worries me a little bit. They both worried
me a little bit, actually, but yeah, let's start with underground. Okay,
let's do underground. Um, well, Josh, there are some estimates.
If you want another stat you're right, this is chuck
full of stats. Um, the planet can store up to
(16:38):
ten trillion tons of CEO two underground, which is a
hundred years of storage of all human anthropogenic carbon contributions,
which sounds good, but that's really not very long d years. No,
but consider this. I was actually um when I wrote
the article can we bury our CEO two problem under
the ocean? I think is what it was called. There's
(16:59):
no telling what kind of technology we're going to have.
We could conceivably take that trap carbon dioxide and and
exert tons of force and and make synthetic petroleum out
of it. Yeah point yeah, So a hundred years is
a really long time with the kind of technological advances
we've been we've been undertaking in the last hundred years,
(17:20):
right yeah, I mean think about nineteen odd nine and
what it was like then. I don't like to compare
to now that's a syphilis yeah yeah sure. So yeah,
that's underground. Um. You know, it's pressurized when it's at
deep underground, and it behaves more like a liquid than
a gas when it's at fronder ground because it like
seeps into other little cracks and porous rocks, which is
(17:42):
a good thing, right. And actually there there's a specific
rock that they found um works really well for carbon storage,
and that is basalt, which is volcanic rock, right yeah, yeah,
and they just inject us what is it? Do they
inject gaseous gasified CEO two? I think so? Yeah, they
injected directly into the rock. And actually the rock transforms
(18:04):
from base all into limestone. Pretty cool. It converts it
into rock. So basically like it's like a hyper accelerated,
uh geological process that's going on. But when I read that,
I thought, wow, that's great, what a great idea, we
just need to run around injecting all the base all
in the world with c O two and will be set.
It will just have a big limestone planet. And then
(18:25):
again I thought, we really don't know what we're tinkering
with here, Like what happens if we have like too
much limestone on the planet. We we can't say we
don't know. Like this, I can't tell almost I hate
to admit this, but I can't tell if this kind
of tinkering may actually result in much more catastrophic consequences
(18:46):
than just going the way we're going and trying to
go with biofuels. I don't you know, a lot of
the End of the World movies where it shows like
the future, how mankind was wiped out, the little thing
they'll use to to turn the story was we were
trying to do something great and discovered something we thought
was great, but it turned out to be some irrevocable
change that lead to our demands. You're talking about soil
(19:10):
and Green, of course, Well yeah, and just a lot
of movies like that. But that's a great point. Actually,
Slowly Green is a great example. I think we're doing
something really good and that might lend lead to our
undoing water World. Greatest movie ever made? Definitely? Maybe? Really? Yeah,
what did that have to do with this? It's highly
post apocalyptic. Okay, let's just see that one. I thought
(19:33):
it was you haven't seen it. I thought it was
a cheesy romance. No, it starts out like that and
the twist at the end is mind boggling. Yeah, it's
like The Road Warrior. So go ahead, Chuck. We're talking
underground or are we done with that part? No, well
we're almost done. What happens is they're studying all that
right now, so your fears hopefully can be dismissed because
they're looking to see what the result will be. Sure
(19:53):
and as far as it goes, I think the oldest
um underground uh CEO two Georage site is actually under
the sea floor in Norway and it's only as old
as nine and it hasn't had an accident or anything,
but it's still it's only thirteen years old. Yeah, so
I mean what happens in fifty years or a hundred
(20:14):
years exactly? And that's what they're keeping their eye on.
I mean they're worried about it too. I mean, we
definitely have to do something, but I don't know. I'm
just a little hesitant, all right, I agree, Yeah, well
you wanna talk about the ocean. Yeah, let's talk about
the ocean. I'm I'm with you. I'm much more trepid
about the ocean storage and that, Um there's again. I
wrote an article called can we bury our CEO two
(20:35):
problem in the ocean? And in that article, um, there's
this guy who came up with these the idea of
having these pipelines pump liquefied not gasified, but liquefied CEO
two directly into enormous bags. That's right at the abysmal plane. Yeah,
not abysmal plane, the Yeah, but I imagine it's pretty
(20:56):
abysmal down there. Yeah. Um, so yeah, down on the
abysmal plane, right, And uh, it's it's a pretty good idea.
The problem is, these huge, enormous bags can only store
I think a day or ten worth of carbon dioxide captured.
It would be a lot of bags, and they end
up really quick, and if any one of them ruptured,
we don't know what would happened. But apparently from a
(21:18):
little more investigation, if we bury this stuff or dump
it in the ocean deep enough which is to the
tune of about eleven ft um. Then we can just
let it go and hope for the best that the
the incredibly low pressure uh and temperatures will basically globify it,
(21:40):
compress it, it it ull be floating around. Sounds like that terrible,
terrible idea to me, with any kind of cloud that
I may have as a human being and a podcaster,
I would like to hear now say that I think
just dumping our captured carbon diode die oxide into the
(22:00):
ocean is one of the worst ideas I've heard this year. Yeah,
I know, Green Pieces and wild about the idea, and
they said it's not even feasible until at least the
year so you know, I mean, I have two camps.
It's good that we're exploring things like this, but you know,
it would be much better if we had electric cars
(22:22):
powered by solar energy rather than just thinking of different
ways to keep using fossil fuels over and over and
over right now, And and that's a good point. I
noticed Green Pieces kind of not too hip on this either,
and I agree with them as well. I think that
we basically have to stuff like this really distracts us
from making hard decisions and hard choices. So this is easy.
(22:44):
We get to like our lives don't change at all.
It's just the power companies need to go retrofit their
old their old flus with you know, scrubbers of some sort. Uh.
And but for us to have electric cars or to
have bio fuels, we're gonna have to pay more gallon
kind of thing. So it does affect us. So people
aren't paying that much attention to it. That's how to say.
(23:05):
This is pielos Y technology, though, you know, I mean,
it's very viable and it's going on now still right,
Hopefully works are going to be done on a lot
of fronts and there will be multiple solutions. You know
what my favorite idea was, But did you read it
that little sidebar about the company's sky Mine. Okay, So
sky Mine has figured out a way where they just
take um sequestered carbon dioxide and they inject it with
(23:28):
salt and water sodium hydroxide, right, and it creates a
chemical reaction that forms baking soda. That's it kind of baking.
So it's good for everything, it is everything. I just
think that's the greatest idea ever. The problem is we'd
have massive baking soda stores and the baking soda market
in which I'm heavily invested with just bottom out. So
(23:51):
I mean, I like it as an idea, but financially
it would suck for me. Right, No fridge would ever
stink again, though, No, we can probably make fridges out
of baking soda with that muchly, you know, if they
can make a suitcase out of cocaine, they can probably
make a refrigerator out of baking soda. The operative word
is they. But getting back to the water real quick.
You were talking about leaking CEO two from the ocean,
(24:13):
remember our Little Exploding Lake podcast. Yeah, that's a great
example of the coming up through the water. So that
could happen lakes. And we should also probably mention carbon sink, yeah,
which is a phenomenon the The ocean actually does absorb
CEO two from the atmosphere already, and what happens now
is it's sinking to the bottom ideally, but some oceans,
(24:37):
like the Southern Ocean, have soaked up so much that
it's not soaking it down to the bottom anymore. It's
not sinking, it's kind of staying on top. And that
makes the water very acidic, which is not good for fishies. No,
which is again like nives. We have no idea what
happened in the marine life, probably because they were exploded
into trillions of pieces. That's toughs account. So yeah, a
(24:58):
little troublesome. I mean capturing carbon this is this is
a good thing. Storing it a little more dodgy, yeah,
I mean, we'll see what happens. We're gonna script this
planet one way or another. Might as well make it quick,
like in just a huge massive eruption of c O
two into the atmosphere that chokes us all the death.
That sounds encouraging. Sure, well, it'll get filtered out eventually
in some strange new life form will eventually take over
(25:20):
and screw it up later on. So, oh you're a
bright one today. It's just a shining light. Yeah, so Chuck,
I'm glad we did this again, buddy, This one, this
one's done until next time, until that carbon dioxide exploit.
Let's agree right now, we don't do carbon capture and
storage again until that massive eruption takes place, All right, okay?
(25:41):
Deal Part three that you have it coming not too soon,
so you know what time it's for then it's time
for Chuck to plug our spoken word album. Go ahead. Wow,
it's been so long. Um it was on economics, if
I remember correctly, The Stuff you Should Know a super
Stuff out of the Economy. Yeah, you can buy it
in your iTunes store for what was planal price four
bucks something like that, something like that. Nice and and
(26:06):
again we got really good feedback on it. We did. Yeah,
and that was a good experience. So yeah, there's Chuck
plugging our audio book, The Stuff you Should Know super
Stuff Guide to the Economy. I can't believe I remember
the name. And it's just World Time Safe and that
means that it is listener mail time. All right, Chuck,
what do you have for us, baby compass head Catcher's mit.
(26:28):
I have something I'm just gonna call shocking listener mail.
We have a lot of that lately. Yeah. We had
a fan that wrote in that UM was struck by lightning. Yeah,
but not just the fan, but her dog too. Yeah,
And she just kind of off handedly mentioned it because
she was talking about she read that spontaneous human combustion
could be caused by lightning, and I was struck by lightning,
(26:50):
by the way, And that was kind of it, and
I wrote her back. It was like, no, no, no, no,
you need to give me some details here because I
would like to read this on the air. And I've
never talked to anyone who I was struck by lightning. Yeah,
so here we go. It turns out it was a
side strike, which I never heard of. Uh, And she
says a side strike is a really well phenomenon of lightning.
It struck about a half a block from me. It
(27:10):
was incredibly bright, and I was blinded for a few
minutes afterward. I was not back about six feet but
still landed on my feet and I couldn't hear for
a good half hour afterward. It was a booming and
crackling yet incredibly quiet, which I thought it was interesting.
I can't totally explain the sound except to compare it
to the sound you get when you skydive, which didn't
(27:31):
help me. It's I've never been skydivan. It's kind of
have you done it? No, no way, it's terrifying. Okay,
I believe it the rush of wind booms around you,
but it's definitely still would you agree with that? Yeah,
similar sort of Oh you were all hammered when you
did it? When you're talking about remember uh. In my
research about lightning strikes and strike victims, I found it
(27:53):
incredible that a side strike can occur UH up to
a mile away from something and you can still receive
the electrical charge. I saw the lightning strike, but I
didn't feel any pain, so I assumed I wasn't hit.
It wasn't n till later in the day when Burnmark
showed up. I don't think I lost consciousness, but I
was totally routed on the spot where I was standing.
(28:14):
Rooted is r O U T. I'm not sure. If
it wasn't for my dog, I probably would have continued
to stand there for a while. Yeah, I guess she
was rooted. That makes sense. My dog was so frightened
that she just took off running. I was holding onto
the leason couldn't let go, so I sort of ran
blindly after her to her house. I was an emotional
blur for a decent while afterwards. Consequently, my dog's black
(28:38):
fur is now very speckled with white hair. And let
me see actually coincides with another of our podcast. Oh yeah,
and she had singes across her fingers and toes, little
burn blisters and as far as long term damage. And
you see she has affected her balance sum and messes
(28:58):
with her inner ear at her frontal lobe is fine,
and she's taking neurological exams in psychological testing and she
is fine and normal and considers herself very lucky. I
consider her very lucky too. That is doll. That is
Hannah of Tennessee. And we're very glad that you and
your little girl Pucci are all Okay, Hannah, I would
strongly recommend that you play the lotto as often as
(29:18):
you can. Yeah. So yeah, If you want to tell
us any amazing true stories about lightning, shark attacks, far fights, whatever,
you can send us an email. That's what they call
in these stags, right, chuck electronic men. You can send
that to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com
(29:43):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff works dot Com brought to you by
the reinvented two thousand twelve Camra. It's ready, are you
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