The West Central Tribune's July 30 story on page A3 tells of CURE working with landowners concerned about the proposed Summit CO2 pipeline, which could capture CO2 from ethanol plants and pump it into the ground in North Dakota so that the government won’t penalize the plants for emitting too much CO2 into the atmosphere.

The pipeline would capture some 8 million metric tons of CO2 per year from 31 ethanol plants.

An average size coal-fired power plant like Coal Creek in North Dakota puts out about the same amount (10 MMT).

Putting this into perspective: About 3.2 percent of all CO2 in the atmosphere is man-made.

About 44 percent of man-made CO2 is coming from coal-fired power plants world-wide. (E.I.A. 2019), so that makes coal-fired CO2 about 1.4 percent of total CO2 in the atmosphere.

America burns about 9 percent of the total worldwide coal usage (Enerdata, 2017), so that makes the total U.S. contribution to atmospheric CO2 about 0.126 percent.

Coal Creek’s contribution of CO2 into the earth’s atmosphere is about 0.0009 percent; which is also what that CO2 pipeline would do to “Save the planet.”

With China burning over four times more coal than the U.S., you can see why penalizing ethanol companies, or building a CO2 pipeline is totally worthless for controlling global warming.

Reality Check: The July 22, 2022 issue of AAAS ‘Science’ headlines; “Cleaner air is adding to global warming.” Satellite data is telling us that the reduction of sulfate and nitrate particles since 2000 is not reflecting as much sunlight back into space, thereby causing global warming.

Even “climate expert” James Hansen says we may need to use geo-engineering to start lofting sulfates back into the atmosphere to cool things down by increasing solar reflection.

Economical Suggestion: Why not just tell the power plants to dial down on their scrubbers and allow more sulfur and nitrogen compounds to be emitted into the atmosphere? Then dial back up if it gets too cool.