Letters to the Editor
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Got my MS studying deep-ocean CO2 sequestration...
... at least until Greenpeace kept shutting down our field experiments (first in Hawaii, then in Norway). I then bailed from academia (for that and other reasons).
Putting CO2 in the deep ocean (not what Statoil is doing) itself is not a hot idea, but it's arguably less worse than emitting to the atmosphere (from whence the excess goes into the oceans' surface waters, lowering the pH- at least in the deep ocean the CO2 is more likely to interact with mineral carbonate, nature's antacid).
Putting CO2 under the seabed like Statoil is doing is probably pretty safe. Certain geological structures have proven to be very effective at trapping stuff like, you know, oil and gas for long periods of time.
Sequestration doesn't feel like an elegant solution, and it's not. But given that the magic solar pixie isn't going to give us $1/W solar at industrial volumes any time really soon, we need to keep all options on the table. I personally like biochar-based organic sequestration (biomass to terra preta), but that's not exactly ready for prime time at any scale just yet.