RUSH: Marion in Greenville, Ohio you’re next. Great to have you on the EIB Network on Open Line Friday. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing?
RUSH: Good.
CALLER: I’m thrilled to talk to you. What I want to talk to you about, I think Bo may think I’m a little bit crazy because I called him a couple times to try to get on because there’s something going on in my hometown that’s just driving us crazy and I just wanted to talk to somebody about it and —
RUSH: What is it? Go ahead, we’re here.
CALLER: We have a large ethanol plant here that’s been here for about three or four years and it’s caused all kinds of trouble by like running our wells dry and —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — all these great things that it does. But now we are part of a Department of Energy experiment where they’re going to take the CO2 from this ethanol plant and pump it into the ground under our town to cut down on greenhouse gases due to —
RUSH: Oh, you have got to be kidding.
CALLER: No. No.
RUSH: So they’re going to carbonate the ground underneath your town?
CALLER: Yes. Yes. They’re going to put a million tons —
RUSH: For crying out loud. To save the planet?
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: What are they digging, trenches and tunnels to put the CO2 in?
CALLER: As we speak they are drilling holes right now to go down into the bedrock.
RUSH: My God. This is insane as something that happens every day along this regard in San Francisco. But this is happening in — wait a minute, this is Ohio or Oregon?
CALLER: Greenville, Ohio.
RUSH: Well, you know, that —
CALLER: (laughing)
RUSH: What’s the biggest close city to you?
CALLER: Dayton.
RUSH: Dayton.
CALLER: Yeah. Yeah. We’re catching part of the unemployment from —
RUSH: Yeah. What is the thinking here? And how are they going to capture the CO2 and then pump it into the holes in the ground?
CALLER: Well, they somehow liquefy it and then they’re going to inject it and then cap it and walk away from it and leave us with a million tons of CO2 in the ground.
RUSH: For crying out loud, this is like putting five million tons of fizzies underneath your town!
CALLER: Yeah. You know, we’re having meetings; we’re doing what we can do. We’re just a small town in a small rural county and we know that there’s no stopping these kinds of things. You know, it’s going to happen —
RUSH: Here’s the thing, CO2 in its normal state is odorless.
CALLER: Sure.
RUSH: I mean, it has weight but it’s immeasurable, it’s odorless, it’s tasteless, and here’s the real clincher, it’s harmless!
CALLER: You bet it is. You bet!
RUSH: It’s harmless! They are depriving — this CO2 — they are depriving — you gotta keep a sharp eye on your trees, your leaves, and your plants ’cause if they start dying, the greenery may have become accustomed to the CO2 being pumped out by this ethanol factory.
CALLER: They may hurt the corn that they’re growing for the ethanol. I mean, it’s just all crazy.
RUSH: Well, you liquefy it — I’m going to have to talk to a chemist. You liquefy it, I assume you have to concentrate it to liquefy it or maybe —
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: You have to concentrate it, you have to lower the temperature I would assume, and then you put the concentrated liquid — they’re putting liquid CO2 in the ground?
CALLER: It will be in a liquid form, from what I read. They’ve got a website, the Department of Energy has a website, and they talk about Greenville, Ohio, quite a bit about it.
RUSH: You know, I think this is like a scam. The idea they’re going to capture all this — what, from the smokestacks of the ethanol plant?
CALLER: Yeah, yeah. And what’s crazy —
RUSH: What’s that look like, what, got a bunch of tents up there? What are they going to capture it in? Are there tubes coming out of the smokestacks going right into the ground?
CALLER: I don’t know how it’s going to look. I don’t know. They’re out there —
RUSH: A big balloon? A big balloon over the smokestack?
CALLER: I don’t know.
RUSH: Has this not been a great Open Line Friday, or what? So the town of Marion, Ohio —
CALLER: Greenville, Ohio. Greenville.
RUSH: I’m sorry. You’re Marion.
CALLER: Yeah, I’m Marion, yeah.
RUSH: Greenville, Ohio, perhaps the first town in America to be carbonated?
CALLER: I think there’s going to be seven of these places around the Midwest that they’re going to do it. We’re the first town, as far as I know, we’re the first town. They’ve done it, I guess, they’ve done it in old coal mines, places where there aren’t any people already, from what I understand. But we’re going to be the first one that I can find —
RUSH: Wow.
CALLER: — that’s under an actual town with real people in it.
RUSH: Okay, look, you have a computer?
CALLER: Yes, sure do.
RUSH: Back it up. I’m going to tell you right now, you’re going to be living high atop — seriously.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: You know what? I’m sitting here thinking. I’m going to have to look into this. I’ve heard all these schemes about trapping CO2 emissions from smokestacks. I’ve heard about trying to do that and some of the other wacko things. But pumping it underneath a town, I have not heard about. I think you people in Greenville Ohio really ought to — I’m serious about this — change the name of the place to Alka-Seltzer Village. Get in on this before it happens.