THE REASON WHY CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE HAS TO BE VERY CAREFULLY LOCATED.

It was around 9pm when people living in a tiny West African village heard a deep rumbling sound like distant thunder. The next morning one of the residents living in Nyos, Cameroon, woke up to find that virtually everyone he knew was dead. Ephraim Che was one of the few survivors after a silent killer swept through Nyos and killed everything in its sight – on August 21, 1986. Ephraim walked in a daze through the deserted and eerily quiet village before he was drawn by the sound of a woman crying. As he came closer he realised the woman was someone he knew, Halima Suley. To Ephraim’s horror he realised that the shapeless bundles of cloth around her feet were the bodies of her children. Halima cried: “Ephraim! Come over here! Why are these people lying down? Why won’t they move again?” Ephraim then spotted the bodies of more than 30 other members of Halima’s family and their 400 cattle, Daily Star reports. The death count included Halima’s dad who she was desperately shaking and trying to make him wake up. Most of the victims were found exactly where they would normally be at around 9pm, suggesting that they had died without even realising there was anything wrong. The death toll was a tragic 1,746 people and 3,500 farm animals. All had been killed when a freak plume of carbon dioxide had risen from nearby Lake Nyos. A total of 1.6million tons of the carbon dioxide had tumbled into the nearby valley, suffocating almost every living thing. Similar events that have killed bears and other wildlife, have been recorded in Yellowstone National park in the US. And in 1984, in a less isolated part of Cameroon, carbon dioxide gas had poured out of Lake Monoun which is about 60 miles south of Nyos. This lead to 40 people dying. Haraldur Sigurdsson, a volcanologist from the University of Rhode Island, described it as the phenomenon “a hitherto unknown natural hazard” that could wipe out entire towns. Pumping millions of tons of CO2 into old wells (onshore as well as offshore) may seem like a good solution so long as the old redundant abandoned drillings have been safely capped. Prevailing winds could move large clouds over long distances, google Chlorine gas leaks worldwide to see how far dangerous gases can travel.