In the depths of the lake, the water is under great pressure and the CO2 is dissolved and in solution with the water. This CO2 is coming up slowly enough to not disturb the lake very much. The Lake is surrounded by high hills, which keeps the wind from disturbing the surface and apparently it does not experience much temperature change as well. This makes for a very quiet body of water, which allows super saturation to occur. A super saturated liquid, in this case water with CO2, can explosively release the gas at the slightest disturbance. To prevent that, the scientists are trying to release the gas in a controlled manner, so they came up with this tube.
The tube siphons water off the bottom of the lake. As the water rises the pressure reduces and when the pressure gets low enough, at some elevation in the tube, the CO2 comes out of solution (bubbles out of the water/CO2 solution). The flow continues up and the water and CO2, now a liquid/gas mixture and not a solution, blasts out of the pipe.
It seems kind of counter intuitive, but it works. You would think that the pressure spraying the water out of the pipe would stop the flow, but apparently not. That has something to do with hydrodynamics which involves scarier math than I want to do right now.
The CO2 that blasts out is coming out at a low enough rate that it is not a great hazard to the surrounding environment and the wind just carries it away.
As for what adding tons and tons of CO2 to the atmosphere will do for global warming, it is not known, regardless of what the GW scaremongers say. Global climatology is a science in its infancy right now. We don't know enough about it yet to reliably theorize, let alone reach a conclusion.
In the depths of the lake, the water is under great pressure and the CO2 is dissolved and in solution with the water. This CO2 is coming up slowly enough to not disturb the lake very much. The Lake is surrounded by high hills, which keeps the wind from disturbing the surface and apparently it does not experience much temperature change as well. This makes for a very quiet body of water, which allows super saturation to occur. A super saturated liquid, in this case water with CO2, can explosively release the gas at the slightest disturbance. To prevent that, the scientists are trying to release the gas in a controlled manner, so they came up with this tube.
The tube siphons water off the bottom of the lake. As the water rises the pressure reduces and when the pressure gets low enough, at some elevation in the tube, the CO2 comes out of solution (bubbles out of the water/CO2 solution). The flow continues up and the water and CO2, now a liquid/gas mixture and not a solution, blasts out of the pipe.
It seems kind of counter intuitive, but it works. You would think that the pressure spraying the water out of the pipe would stop the flow, but apparently not. That has something to do with hydrodynamics which involves scarier math than I want to do right now.
The CO2 that blasts out is coming out at a low enough rate that it is not a great hazard to the surrounding environment and the wind just carries it away.
As for what adding tons and tons of CO2 to the atmosphere will do for global warming, it is not known, regardless of what the GW scaremongers say. Global climatology is a science in its infancy right now. We don't know enough about it yet to reliably theorize, let alone reach a conclusion.