[HN Gopher] $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
___________________________________________________________________
$100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
Author : captn3m0
Score : 278 points
Date : 2021-07-13 16:08 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.xprize.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.xprize.org)
| kisamoto wrote:
| There's a few "plant trees" or "terraform the sahara" comments in
| here.
|
| For some context, if we planted trees wherever we could around
| the world we can only undo a decades worth of emissions[0].
|
| Not only that but it would still take a century for the trees to
| reach maturity.
|
| Our use of technology threw nature out of balance and we need to
| use technology to get the balance back again.
|
| [0]
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/eaaz0388.ful...
| mbgerring wrote:
| There's no reason not to plant trees in addition to everything
| else we'll need to do to fix this problem. The advantage of
| planting trees is that we know it works, it's cheap, and we can
| do it right now. So some people should be doing that, and
| others should be doing R&D on other means of carbon removal. No
| need to pit one against the other.
| fooker wrote:
| >There's no reason not to plant trees in addition to
| everything else we'll need to do to fix this problem.
|
| Yes, there is. Trees take a up valuable real estate. As long
| as people can do something even remotely profitable with land
| they own, this can not work.
| jnosCo wrote:
| With carbon credits, planting trees can be a profitable
| land use.
| kisamoto wrote:
| I totally agree and I'm sorry if I gave the impression that
| trees should not be part of a solution. Trees (and other
| nature based methods) should definitely not be neglected.
|
| I merely wanted to try and raise some awareness to those who
| question the need for technological removal methods as there
| is a bit of a toxic "trees will save us" attitude when things
| like this get mentioned.
| elevaet wrote:
| This kind of civil discourse is what makes HN such a gem on
| the internet.
| flingo wrote:
| Meta-warning;
|
| I'm more into the juxtapositions of interactions between
| idiots vs experts, specialists vs generalists, startup-
| billionaire vs unemployed-drug-addict-hacker, and the
| level of insight that can be gained from these
| conversations.
|
| I believe that the civility, and desire for unfettered
| conversation (avoiding ad-hominem, flame-wars. etc***)
| are more of an instrumental-goal of this process, than
| the true goal.
|
| I don't really know why the comments on hn are the way
| they are, and I doubt anyone ever will. But that's what
| keeps me coming back here. It's the only place on the
| internet I can get this kind of thing, whatever it is.
|
| I do have to say, there's something special and unique
| here. Like the userbases of wikipedia, stack overflow,
| 4chan, or twitter, there's something here that's
| impossible to recreate and worth preserving.
| foota wrote:
| You're sure it's not comments like these?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27826277
|
| I thought it was funny to see similar sentiments back to
| back :)
| Arete314159 wrote:
| A decade sounds like a pretty good start. If we could combine
| that with transitioning away from lawns and towards gardens /
| orchards (like even on highway medians!), imagine the savings
| in terms of shipping food.
| bognition wrote:
| Highway medians are lawn for safety reasons. Planting an
| orchard between two lanes of traffic going 75 mph would
| result in a ton of fatalities
| schiffern wrote:
| Seems like you'd intentionally plant many small/short trees
| that will act as nice crash barriers, not large strong
| trees that act like brick walls. Orchards tend to be short
| trees anyway.
|
| Hitting the tree equivalent of those sand-filled barrels
| sounds a lot better than dissipating that same energy by
| either A) flipping, or B) colliding with oncoming traffic.
|
| It would be interesting to see the videos of "crash
| testing" various types of orchards!
| foobarian wrote:
| Do trees actually help? AFAIK once a forest reaches equilibrium
| it puts out as much CO2 as it takes in through various
| decomposition processes.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| Using more wood as construction material helps to tie the CO2
| for longer period.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| This. Early trees sequestered a whole bunch of carbon in
| their structure (and there wasn't efficient methods of
| breaking down lignin at the time, so the carbon stayed in
| the ground instead of rotting and returning to the sky). If
| we build long-lived structures out of wood or other carbon
| bearing materials whose carbon source is the atmosphere,
| we'll be doing the same thing as trees but with human
| civilization as the organism.
| schiffern wrote:
| So the question is, how does 1 hectare of stick frame
| buildings compare to 1 hectare of mature forest? What
| stores more carbon-per-hectare?
|
| While the hectare of forest may be "only" CO2-neutral, the
| hectare of buildings typically are net CO2 emitters.
| tekstar wrote:
| Also, planting trees sequesters co2 into the biosphere. That is
| not good enough, we need to be sequestering co2 into the
| geosphere if we want to remove it from the equation
| mrfusion wrote:
| Has anyone checked if earths total biomass has increased as
| co2 increases?
| ralusek wrote:
| There is more greenery/forestation, and likely more biomass
| downstream, but I would expect other effects to cancel
| those effects beyond certain thresholds. For example, even
| though plankton and algae might benefit from additional
| carbon and heat, acidification of the ocean might lead to a
| net decrease in both.
| kisamoto wrote:
| Naturally (without human influence) a combination of
| biosphere (decades) and geosphere (millenia) would keep CO2
| levels in check.
|
| We (humans) have accelerated emissions (by burning, thus
| reversing, geosphere capture via oil) and destroyed the
| biosphere through deforestation. This has also been
| accelerated as raising temperatures thaw permafrost & destroy
| ocean life (among others).
|
| Anything we can do to reverse this is beneficial.
| detritus wrote:
| I'm sure it's been mentioned elsewhere here already by
| someone, but I've always thought that converting felled
| 'sequestration stock' to bio-char and making terra preta out
| of it would be win-win-win, as it could then be used to
| improve desertified land.
|
| As much as CO2 emissions befear me, so too does increasingly
| poor topsoil, globally.
|
| - ed
|
| I'm not even sure we'd need to wait for trees to mature
| either - we just need work with whatever plant absorbs the
| most CO2. Perhaps algae, even?
| kmtrowbr wrote:
| This is definitely a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B
| ioenergy_with_carbon_capture_...
|
| In theory it's energy positive: burning the crop can
| produce energy.
| Zababa wrote:
| I've heard that planting trees in the Sahara would be worse
| because since they're darker they would absorb way more heat.
| kisamoto wrote:
| Actually yes, planting trees (especially the wrong trees) is
| not always a good thing. Darker leaves will attract more heat
| (imagine if it was possible to turn the polar regions into
| trees - this would have a very negative effect).
|
| Also mono cultures and replacing natural vegetation with man-
| made forestation can actually be more limited to the amount
| of carbon they can capture long term.
|
| Source: https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk:8443/bitstream/10044/1/
| 80271/6...
| burgessaccount wrote:
| A few other problems - 1) trees take a lot of water to grow,
| and 2) all the carbon they sequester can go right back into the
| atmosphere in a forest fire. Some very scrupulous carbon-offset
| companies (like YC co terraformation!) are careful to plant
| diverse, native species in a way that rebuilds habitat and fits
| local water supplies. But there are a huge number of
| irresponsible tree-planting orgs that plant monoculture trees
| in places they don't belong. For instance, eucalyptus trees in
| California - an invasive species that sucks water out of the
| ground, then burns up like an oil rag
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| >For some context, if we planted trees wherever we could around
| the world we can only undo a decades worth of emissions[0].
|
| Not even, say you could transform the Sahara to rain forest,
| awesome right? I mean it would be an incredible feat, but it
| would give you exactly 0 with reducing carbon. Contrary to
| popular belief the Amazon rain forest aren't the "lungs" of the
| planet, the Amazon rain forest is basically net 0. Why? Because
| the rain forest also has a tremendous amount of life/animals,
| those animals use the oxygen and produce carbon. The real
| "lungs" of the planet are in the ocean.
| otterley wrote:
| Wait a minute. Are you saying that the animals in the
| Amazonian rain forest produce more CO2 than the plants within
| it consume? Do you have any data that shows this?
| eloff wrote:
| The Amazon rain forest is not net zero because of animals.
| It's net zero (actually net negative last I heard) because
| humans are burning it to make way for agriculture.
|
| Trees sequester carbon. They also return that carbon to the
| atmosphere eventually, but as long as they're replaced by new
| trees, that's fine. That's not what's happening in the
| Amazon.
|
| From a carbon perspective forests for timber are even better
| because then we keep several generations of trees worth of
| carbon locked up in our structures. It's also an easier sell
| because that has real economic value.
|
| From a biodiversity perspective it's not as good to have
| monoculture crops of any kind, including trees.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| When people talk about adding new forests, they're mostly
| talking about the carbon used to _make up_ the trees and
| animals. That all comes out of the air.
| brightball wrote:
| Depends on the tree.
|
| Empress seems to be the ideal candidate.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-02/we-alread...
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| Planting a monoculture would be a disaster, as we've seen
| when a billion poplars died in china's green wall.
| lvs wrote:
| > we can only undo a decades worth of emissions
|
| Sounds like dramatic progress to me. It uses a technology we
| already have against a problem that is only getting worse by
| the second. The side effect of fostering sustainable natural
| resources would be an unquestionable good as well.
| songzme wrote:
| Trees do much more than remove carbon from the air. Carbon
| removal machine could potentially create c02 deficit regions,
| creating hostile environments for trees.
|
| We can't possibly build a machine for every function a tree
| does.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > Carbon removal machine could potentially create c02 deficit
| regions, creating hostile environments for trees.
|
| If we could remove so much CO2 from the air that it prevented
| plants from growing (even if the effect were highly
| localized, which is pretty much a certainty), then we might
| actually have a shot at being able to remove CO2 in a
| reasonable amount of time. So this definitely sounds like a
| good problem to have. Personally I think that's pretty
| unlikely though.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| CO2 is pretty well-mixed and it takes a lot of energy to
| pull CO2 out so it is unlikely to be the primary method of
| address Climate change. Also at this point we are
| substantially above the pre-industrial level of CO2 so
| there's essentially no chance of having CO2 poor regions.
| [deleted]
| kisamoto wrote:
| Are there any sources of this?
|
| As I understand it the air carrying the CO2 is constantly
| moving and will not create any deficit regions?
|
| Besides, with the large over concentration of carbon dioxide
| we have at the moment I think increasing temperatures have a
| higher chance of creating hostile environments.
| p_j_w wrote:
| I think the point GP was making was that just planting trees
| is not enough, not that we shouldn't be doing it. If all we
| do is plant trees, we're still running full bore up shit
| creek.
| kisamoto wrote:
| Yes thank you - trees are part of the solution, not _the_
| solution.
| rcpt wrote:
| It does seem unlikely that we'd be able to control temperatures
| without resorting to sulfur dioxide.
|
| It'll probably start a war, but once natural resources start
| getting scarce I fully expect the affected nation to deploy
| SO2.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I don't think you should be downvoted. People really don't
| like it because it is clearly not the optimal way to solve
| the problem, but we should take the possibility seriously
| instead of down voting anyone who brings it up as something
| that might happen.
|
| We are letting anthropogenic global warming happen because
| it's cheaper in the very near term. But climate change is a
| real thing and will have real, life-threatening effects
| especially for some geographic regions.
|
| If we accept the reality that: 1) humans often just do what
| is cheapest and easiest even if the long-term consequences
| are bad AND 2) global warming will start killing massive
| numbers of people from things like heat stroke, putting
| enormous political pressure on governments to do something,
|
| ...then The logical conclusion (combined with how insanely
| cheap SO2 is to deploy, we're talking maybe $50 billion a
| year, maybe less) is that there is an extremely high
| probability that some nation will just unilaterally do sulfur
| dioxide. Think of a Nation like India, with a large
| population that will be vulnerable to heat stroke and a big
| enough budget and military to just unilaterally do something
| like this to stop the political unrest of hundreds of
| thousands of heat stroke deaths per yearz
| rcpt wrote:
| And on top of that I don't think it'd even be possible to
| know who deployed the SO2.
|
| The stuff isn't uranium and not much is needed. Any nation
| with an airplane should be able to get away with it.
| burgessaccount wrote:
| Calcium carbonate is a better fit - see Gates's experiments.
| Likely to still be disastrous, but better than sulfur dioxide
| rcpt wrote:
| Interesting thanks.
|
| Why disasterous?
| pope_meat wrote:
| The average human is about 18% carbon.
|
| We could all be doing a little more to reduce our carbon content.
| [deleted]
| rob_c wrote:
| Why not invest that directly in various different prototyped
| technologies already being developed for this _now_ to accelerate
| the process?
|
| It feels like offering free swimming floats to the first one who
| can swim out to get them.
| stanmancan wrote:
| XPrizes are a BRILLIANT way to get a big multiplier on your
| investment. The price is $100 million. You might end up with
| 100 companies that all spend $10 million on research towards
| it. A $100 million prize resulted in at $1 billion worth of
| research.
| kisamoto wrote:
| I don't think this prize disqualifies those right? It's looking
| for any scalable carbon removal technology
| rob_c wrote:
| No I don't think it does. (and for disclosure I'm unlikely to
| ever read the details enough to know for myself for certain)
|
| I just wish it was tiered such that proper seed money backs
| various alternatives and the best proven tech (not just the
| first) gets a big boost when attempting to scale.
|
| But not my millions to spend so I just hope it had a good
| impact.
| humbledrone wrote:
| Offering a prize could potentially result in more than the
| prize value ($100M) being invested into those very
| technologies.
|
| As an example, we can look at the Netflix Prize [1], which was
| only $1M. But that $1M bought them way, way more than $1M worth
| of work: "over 20,000 teams had registered for the competition
| from over 150 countries. 2,000 teams had submitted over 13,000
| prediction sets." It's hard to guess the value of having 20,000
| teams working on the Netflix problem, but $1M invested directly
| by Netflix would probably only pay for 3-4 engineers for 1
| year, so it seems like they got a lot of leverage out of that
| $1M.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| How about industrial institutions who are overwhelmingly
| responsible for the issue be made to pay up for r&d and clean it
| up instead of paying more money to put the burden others.
| newintellectual wrote:
| 25,000 years ago, CO2 levels stood at 180 ppm - the lowest in 4.7
| billion years of earth's history. About 30 ppm above the level at
| which RuBisCo stops effectively working, which would bring a halt
| to most photosynthesis on earth.
|
| You can blindly accept dogma or you can think about the
| implications of that in light of fanatical calls to remove CO2
| from the atmosphere - CO2 which has been steadily removed by long
| term geological processes, and which is now below the levels of
| over 99% of earth's history.
| mchusma wrote:
| Elon is such an amazing force in the world. This prize is great,
| and overdue. Not surprised to see Elon involved.
| datameta wrote:
| Everything he does is in some way to make the post-scarcity far
| future of The Culture more attainable.
|
| For all of his social flaws this thought alone gives him my
| deep respect. I don't think he is infallible but in my opinion
| a lot of attempts at character assassination don't truly
| understand the underlying purpose of why he does what he does.
| I still look at developments in his companies with a critical
| eye - for example neuralink is rather close to making me
| uncomfortable with how soon we may have commerically viable
| high-speed BMI. And then I remember all the medical good that
| can be done with it. I am wary of Starlink interfering with
| space observation and science, and yet I can think of all the
| good that can come from more minds having better access to
| humanity's greatest learning tool, the internet.
|
| He's not perfect, and I most certainly cannot defend the work
| ethic required of those employed under him. But if I were to
| have a chance to do it for a year, I would know the reasons I
| was going through it for.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| "But he is manipulating the Crypto market"
|
| Good. If you invested without thinking into crypto, 100% full
| responsibility is on you. Elon is just a litmus test how
| fragile crypto currencies are and how they can be
| manipulated. Fully functional adults need to be a bit more
| cautious with their funds. We're not talking about people
| with mental issues here.
|
| Elon has got a shitty attitude regarding his
| popularity/celebrity status but the things he has done to
| improve the world dwarfs his misdeeds. For some reason public
| loves grocery-store aisle tabloids and Elon is no exception
| to this gossip. The tabloid now is in the form of Twitter.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| The biggest problem with Elon and it's not just him or his
| fault is that the biggest barrier is our political systems.
| $100M is like a small city's annual budget. In Ashland, OR
| the city budget is $140M/year with about 20,000 residents.
| This prize is not going to solve anything. Even if Elon spent
| all of his money on this prize, it would still be a drop in
| the bucket compared to how many resources our political
| systems control. As much as these well intentioned
| billionaires try, they're never going solve anything
| important.
| mleonhard wrote:
| The largest barrier to human progress is personal greed. It
| reduces the effectiveness of our governments. It directs
| our brightest minds toward harmful projects like making
| addicting apps. Personal greed deforms peoples' attitudes
| about work, leading them to marginalize those few people
| who are driven by other motivations.
|
| I think we need to experiment with new political systems.
| One I am interested in is democracy + communism. I think
| it's time to start a new city where everyone earns the same
| salary. I have many ideas for how to start and build the
| city and make it a great place to live.
| datameta wrote:
| I would say the measured impact of something like an xPrize
| is not expressly in how much money is awarded even though
| it does directly fuel further R&D and other expenses of the
| leading teams. I think it is rather the time and effort
| that is directed toward achieving the goal and the public
| discourse that is generated from the process. It is also
| the fact that a portion of up-and-coming engineers and
| scientists still in their studies will see it as
| inspiration to dedicate themselves toward the relevant
| field(s).
| newman555 wrote:
| this is super positive of course, but I wonder - will it matter
| if we achieve it, but don't stop the destruction of the
| environment caused by animal agriculture and fishing?
| tito wrote:
| I'm curious what people here think about their own role in a
| prize like this. Are you interested in joining a team? Starting a
| company? Working on gigaton scale carbon removal?
|
| I've been working on carbon removal for the past few years, eager
| to help anyone who is considering actually making a leap into
| this industry for their own curiosity or even career.
|
| That said there are plenty of other massive juicy challenges
| facing the climate. Whatever you choose, good luck!
| lucb1e wrote:
| > I've been working on carbon removal for the past few years
|
| How? And can I join?
| tito wrote:
| There's a 101 Guide listed on AirMiners
| (http://airminers.org). You can also browse the startup index
| there to get inspired.
|
| One you go through that, there's a 5 week group discussion on
| carbon removal basics, check out AirMiners Boot Up:
| https://bootup.airminers.org/
| alexose wrote:
| I would work on this problem for free. Climate change is an
| existential threat to my life in Southwest Oregon.
| tito wrote:
| Heck yeah! Check out my other comment about Boot Up - may be
| a helpful start
| paulcarroty wrote:
| > I've been working on carbon removal for the past few years
|
| Great, guess you should tell more about your experience.
| tito wrote:
| I've got a talk up here about my experience: https://www.ted.
| com/talks/tito_jankowski_take_carbon_out_of_...
| kisamoto wrote:
| I choose to help people support a portfolio of carbon removal
| at https://carbonremoved.com
|
| If you're working on carbon removal or want to support carbon
| removal please feel free to email me directly:
|
| ewan (at) above website
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tito wrote:
| Nice work! Are you already on AirMiners? If not, you would
| fit right in. You're on it with all the replies the thread
| today...I'm replying opportunistically while sitting by a
| pool :D
| kisamoto wrote:
| Lucky for some!
|
| We're not on AirMiners - will check it out tomorrow. Have
| to sign off shortly unfortunately but will check back
| tomorrow for replies.
|
| Enjoy that pool!
| tito wrote:
| All good, cya soon!
| knodi123 wrote:
| I wonder if there's any possibilities in engineering a quick-
| growing trash tree that would have a higher percentage of
| mineralization, or properties that facilitate quick pseudo-
| petrification, so that it can be embedded in concrete without
| worrying about rot. They would serve the same purpose as rebar,
| but with greater volume meaning less concrete needed. And it
| would be a near-permanent carbon sink.
| smoovb wrote:
| Yes, it's called bamboo and it sequesters 3x the carbon and
| grows to maturity 10x faster than a normal forest (3 years vs
| 30 years). And bamboo has some of the qualities of rebar, so
| should mix nicely with concrete. Of course it is best grown in
| tropical regions, hence why most of the talk here is about
| trees.
| path411 wrote:
| Bamboo is also incredibly invasive which is great for self
| propitiating the carbon solution, but terrible if we ruin all
| of our eco systems for
| gruez wrote:
| That seems much more complicated than just planting some fast
| growing plant (eg. bamboo), converting it to charcoal, and
| burying it somewhere. That achieves the same carbon
| sequestration effect, without having to worry about
| petrification.
| knodi123 wrote:
| It certainly is more complicated. The difference is that
|
| 1.) it attacks three different problem sources - the carbon
| already in the air, and the carbon generated by concrete
| production, and the carbon from steel production. Cement is
| responsible for about 8% of global CO2 emissions [1], and
| steel another 8% [2].
|
| 2.) it offers profit incentives, since the people using the
| trees get a direct benefit (unlike people throwing biochar
| into an ocean trench). Any long-lasting solution to our
| carbon problem is going to have to find a way to exist on
| something other than direct carbon-dedicated subsidies. A
| self-sufficient business can survive shifting political winds
| much better than a _literal_ money-sink.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46455844
|
| [2] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/metals-and-
| mining/our-in...
| axaxs wrote:
| This is exactly what I was thinking. Bamboo has to be one of
| the fastest growing therefore carbon sucking plants, right?
| ars wrote:
| Switchgrass is faster, and grows in more climates.
| uranium wrote:
| Living Carbon is doing something similar, working on quick-
| growing trees that take up enough metals from the soil to slow
| decomposition.
| re-al wrote:
| Why cant we just plant more trees? Or let the trees we have grow
| bigger, to soak up all that extra carbon?
| PeterisP wrote:
| It's difficult to get enough total quantity, and it's also not
| rapid enough as it takes decades after planting (which would
| also take a lot of time) to soak up that extra carbon.
|
| One aspect is that the required land area -
| https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2927/examining-the-viability-o...
| mentions 900 million hectares (2.2 billion acres), which would
| roughly cover the 10Gt/year asked by the x-prize - is enormous,
| and it's not an accident or negligence that this land isn't
| forested now, it's generally because we turned it into farmland
| or pastures.
|
| Are we willing to take away 900 million hectares of land that
| produces food for the world and money for the locals away from
| that productive use and turn all of it into unproductive forest
| that won't get used for logging? Perhaps we are, but if there
| are other options for carbon removal that don't require as much
| land resources, that would be preferable.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"Why cant we just plant more trees?"
|
| We can, and we certainly should, but that does not solve the
| problem because those trees will eventually die and that carbon
| will cycle back through the biosphere. Mankind extracted a ton
| of carbon from the ground, where it was locked away, and we put
| it back into the air. People are trying to find ways of putting
| all that extra carbon back somewhere where it won't affect the
| cycles in nature. Trees just temporarily lock up carbon.
| dharma1 wrote:
| If you cut down trees (sustainable forestry with selective,
| not clear cutting) and use the logs in durable housing
| construction, furniture making etc you are taking that carbon
| out of the loop for a hundred+ years if the housing/furniture
| is well looked after. Most housing could be built with
| timber. It might be temporary but buys us time, and trees are
| amazing CO2 capture machines that are cheap to scale up -
| they run for free on solar energy and look after themselves.
|
| Stopping deforestation and massively boosting reforestation
| is one of the most effective things we can already do at
| scale. At this point we also need active carbon capture and
| significant reduction in emissions too, though - a multi-
| pronged approach.
| lutorm wrote:
| Trees, unless you clearcut them (or they die off due to
| climate change) permanently lock up carbon. Yes, some die and
| decompose, but new ones grow up to take their place. It's
| just the total amount of biomass created that matters.
| nostromo wrote:
| > those trees will eventually die and that carbon will cycle
| back through the biosphere.
|
| Trees in forests are self-replicating. When one dies another
| grows in its place.
|
| Yes, this isn't the only solution, but it's certainly part of
| the solution.
| lend000 wrote:
| Yes, but the point is that there is an upper limit to the
| contribution, and even reforesting unrealistically vast
| tracts of land does not make up for carbon extracted from
| deeper in the crust. Growing, cutting, and burying fast
| growing trees deep in the Earth, then replanting them,
| would not have that limit (although there would be other
| problems keeping the land fertile).
| nostromo wrote:
| If you wanted to keep sequestering after the forest
| matures, just bulldoze the forest ever few years and put
| the logs in a cave.
|
| You've accomplished everything other sequestration
| technology promises, but you've done so in a way that is
| environmentally friendly.
| mabbo wrote:
| Well, most of the carbon in the ground that we're burning are
| long-buried trees, right? I wonder what it would take to just
| bury a lot of trees and let them regrow naturally.
|
| This paper has some interesting ideas: https://cbmjournal.bio
| medcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0...
|
| My approach would be to find the best CO2/$ types of trees,
| buy them straight from the lumber industry, and sequester
| them in no-longer-used quarries. Just need to figure out a
| scalable way to ensure anaerobic conditions to help prevent
| CO2 release on breakdown.
| fy20 wrote:
| At the time coal deposits formed the bacteria that broke
| down lingin and cellulose hadn't yet evolved, so just
| burying trees wouldn't work today as they would decay. You
| could probably burn the wood to produce charcoal (burning
| it in a low oxygen environment), and the bury that, but
| just cutting down a forest and burying it won't work.
| ars wrote:
| In a low oxygen, low water environment it would work
| fine.
|
| For example an old coal mine and then seal it.
|
| Old coal mines are too dangerous for humans to enter so
| you need some kind of robotics to load them up with trees
| and other biomatter to bury.
| Method-X wrote:
| This would never scale.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| You also need to find a way to speed up tree growth rate by
| 10x or 100x for this solution to be effective before most
| of the damage is done.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| My understanding is that when wood first appeared on Earth
| nothing was able to decompose all of that cellulose for
| millions of years until microbes evolved a way to break the
| molecules apart and feed on them. I don't know if simply
| burying the trees is enough to sequester it away now that
| wood decomposes so readily.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I'm no chemist, but, wild guess, you might actually make
| things worse by favoring decomposition into methane instead
| of CO2.
|
| I would think that a proper solution would require figuring
| out how to get all that carbon into a chemical form that is
| chemically stable and won't biodegrade. The ideal looks a
| whole lot like coal, I'd guess?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yep methane is multiple times more potent as a greenhouse
| gas.
| shadowlight wrote:
| no. Unless the tree vaporizes or burns, none of it gets back
| into the air. It is for all intents and purposes a permanent
| lock up. Mankind is the gatekeeper of whether to unlock this
| carbon prison in our choice to burn oil or wood.
|
| Trees aren't the complete solution and the reason why has
| nothing to do with the tree dying and releasing the carbon.
|
| What's going on here is that plants are converting CO2 into
| mass. A tree that isn't growing isn't creating new mass and
| therefore isn't lowering carbon in the atmosphere.
| otterley wrote:
| Dead trees lie on the ground, with all their sequestered
| carbon sitting there. It's not like the carbon is going back
| into the atmosphere, at least not without some process like
| combustion. Coal is basically dead trees. Before we started
| extracting coal and burning it, it was harmless to the
| atmosphere.
| redisman wrote:
| They release the carbon as the decompose or burn. Sahara
| sounds like a very likely place for wildfires
| r00fus wrote:
| > It's not like the carbon is going back into the
| atmosphere, at least not without some process like
| combustion.
|
| Western USA has had a "fire season" for every year for the
| last like 4 years. Last year, other places like Brazil and
| Africa join in on the fun.
|
| So planting trees without a robust animal/insect ecosystem
| to decompose them before they combust is an incomplete
| solution.
| m12k wrote:
| Doesn't rotting, or being eaten by microbes or termites
| that eventually get eaten or die and rot eventually lead to
| the release of the stored carbon?
|
| AFAIK coal is composed mostly of trees that fell back
| before microbes evolved that could eat through their
| cellulose walls, and have had millennia of underground
| compression to further increase their stability - basically
| that process isn't available naturally to trees that fall
| today.
| otterley wrote:
| It takes roughly twice as long for a tree to decompose as
| it does to grow. So over time, the net sequestration
| should be positive.
| lsiq wrote:
| We can, how many have you planted?
|
| The problem is the space issue and that it takes a decade or
| two for there to be meaningful carbon uptake.
|
| Most land is private so you can't go around planting willy
| nilly. What's worse is that you are technically not allowed to
| plant on most public land either, although for small amounts of
| native species, you can sneak by.
| elevaet wrote:
| Ahem.. Not OP, but Canadian ex-treeplanter here, and I've
| planted 1.2M trees. I have many friends who've planted more,
| a couple probably up into the 10M+ range.
|
| It seems insane that we aren't looking at trees more
| seriously. Here we have a self-reproducing, exponential,
| solar powered, organic, low-tech, carbon capture system. We
| don't even have to plant them, we can simply allocate land
| and let them do their thing on their own if we're patient for
| natural succession. Or we can accelerate the process by
| planting select species, thinning etc.
|
| We should also be setting aside more of the remaining old-
| growth forests to protect them from being logged, as these
| forests represent a standing carbon sink (aside all of the
| other ecological benefits of protecting old-growth forest).
|
| I know it's not the complete solution and that we need all
| the cards on the table, but I fear that in our appetite for
| high tech fixes, we're overlooking this simple biological
| solution.
| jvm_ wrote:
| Trees follow a slow-fast-slow pattern for capturing carbon.
| Small new trees don't capture much. Middle-aged trees
| capture a lot as they grow. Old-growth trees don't capture
| as much as they reach the end of their life-cycle.
|
| As others have said, trees are only temporary as they
| eventually die and need to be replanted. They're also slow
| to start, and need to be maintained (which costs carbon as
| well).
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Most land is private so you can't go around planting willy
| nilly.
|
| That's pretty much how we got here, except instead of
| planting we mined, cut and burnt.
|
| The pathway back is rather harder.
| cryptofistMonk wrote:
| Forests are basically carbon neutral once they're mature, peat
| bogs would probably be much more effective as carbon is
| continually sequestered underwater.
| liuliu wrote:
| We release carbons from dead trees accumulated over millions of
| years on Earth though.
| kisamoto wrote:
| Trees definitely need to be part of the solution but
| unfortunately global potential only revereses a decade of
| emissions.
|
| I wrote a short piece about it (with sources)[0]
|
| [0] https://carbonremoved.com/blog/trees-are-not-the-answer-
| to-c...
| joshuawarner32 wrote:
| That's covered under 'natural' solutions, also eligible for the
| prize. All you need to do is develop a plan to scale that
| economically to gigaton/year capacity and claim your prize!
| Should be easy, right? So just do it!
| newsclues wrote:
| Nuclear power plants for desalination plants and the build
| out water pipelines and rail into the Sahara desert from the
| ocean.
|
| Use irrigation canals covered in solar power panels for pumps
| etc.
|
| Plant vegetation and build up forests slowly. Slowly expand
| across the desert and connect both ends the block off grids
| and repeat irrigation and planting until the desert is gone.
| breck wrote:
| Yeah this seems like the obvious thing.
|
| If everyone stopped mowing their lawns for 20 years and let
| trees run wild instead, would that make a dent?
|
| What about that plus turn half of our roads into parks?
|
| Anyone got a link to a good open source interactive simulator?
| sbierwagen wrote:
| In 2016, the US burned 728 million tons of coal:
| https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/how-coal-works
|
| That's one country, for one year. The world has been burning
| coal for more than a century. To get back to preindustrial
| CO2 levels, all that coal needs to be unburned and buried
| again. That's the scale of the problem.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| What about covering oceans in plankton?
| abeppu wrote:
| This sounds cool from a tech-nerd perspective, but of course it
| all is pretty futile if we don't get emissions under control. The
| video says 10 gigatons/yr by 2050. Our 2019 emissions were ~36
| gigatons. I.e. even if capture is successful, it needs to be
| accompanied by aggressive emissions reductions for us to even get
| to neutral, let alone reversing damage.
|
| I'm guessing Musk had some thought process around the expected
| marginal impact of funding this vs more on energy storage vs
| energy production. And perhaps capture/sequestration is under-
| explored.
|
| But I wonder what could be achieved with $100M of funds directed
| at research to intentionally changing and shifting culture
| towards consuming stuff with smaller footprints? Tesla made some
| people want an electric car really badly. For some, very small
| houses are becoming attractive. But so far this stuff mostly
| arises from ad-hoc marketing efforts around particular brands,
| products, influencers. What if we need systematic memetic
| engineering, to make lower energy consumption actually feel
| desirable?
| tito wrote:
| Indeed, getting emissions under control is key. And so are
| developing solutions to removing carbon from the ambient air,
| with fewer than 2,000 people working in the industry worldwide.
|
| Regarding your point about carbon capture, XPRIZE recently
| closed a $20 million prize for making products out of carbon
| emissions captured at industrial sources:
| https://www.xprize.org/prizes/carbon/articles/xprize-announc...
| slothtrop wrote:
| Those 36 gigatons aren't largely a result of consumer
| behaviors, but industry (which, admittedly, increases as a
| function of demand)
|
| Reducing footprints through innovation will go a ways. Changing
| "culture" (i.e. coerced minimalism) is a thing, but it's a
| band-aid solution on a leaking hoover-dam; virtue signaling for
| the most part.
|
| Carbon footprints scale up with population. Everyone eats,
| wants gadgets, wants a home, good infrastructure. If these
| demands can't be met without excess encroachment of land and
| destruction of the environment, then there's too many people.
| Innovation and increased efficiency can't outrun growth. Yes,
| it's poised to level off in the next 100 or so years after
| adding an extra few billion to the total, but the interventions
| needed are more urgent and by extension the reduced rate should
| be more urgent. Though changes to the energy sector alone can
| make a substantial dent in emissions in the near-term, given
| political will.
|
| All of this would be a moot point if the global population were
| halved and remained stagnant.
|
| The rampant op-ed push for minimalism on the part of the
| consumer, for housing especially, seems almost like a nefarious
| ploy to plant the idea that commoners should now be content
| with less, with environmentalism as the red herring. So being
| unable to afford a detached home is to be thought of as a happy
| virtuous accident.
| burgessaccount wrote:
| I actually think all people in the developed world - rich
| people of course most of all, but "commoners" too - do need
| to learn to be content with a lot less. Before the industrial
| era, the average person in England owned 36 objects. And
| that's counting like 1) table 2) bowl 3) cup 4) knife. The
| way people in America and Europe have been taught to live in
| the last century - even the lower-middle and working class,
| let alone the rich - is inherently unsustainable, and can
| never be sustainable. "Buy less sh*t" should be the first and
| most powerful front in our fight against climate change, but
| it isn't because we are selfish and gluttonous beasts.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > Our 2019 emissions were ~36 gigatons
|
| The plants absorb about 25% of that and the oceans another 25%.
| If we absorb 10 gigatons yearly by 2050, that might be good
| enough.
| daddylonglegs wrote:
| Surely dissolving CO2 in the ocean acts as a buffer, not a
| sink? We will have to stop emitting all of that CO2 as well
| (and future generations will have to sequester it). The net
| absorption / emission from the biosphere involves a lot of
| emission following from our changes to the planet. We can
| significantly reduce our emissions (and slowly recover some
| of them) with better stewardship of the environment but there
| is a risk to the sequestered carbon: eg. where climate change
| causes forests to die and release most of their stored
| carbon.
| lutorm wrote:
| Moreover, higher CO2 content in the oceans leads to
| acidification. This is bad for coral and organisms that
| build shells. I don't recall the exact reason but my
| understanding is that it tends to dissolve carbonates.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Wait, 36 originally x .75 from plants x .75 from oceans - 10
| captured = 201/4 Gt. I think you're off by about 10 Gt?
|
| And that's assuming the ocean and plants will infinitely
| capture more and more carbon, which I sincerely doubt as
| well, but I'll go ahead and assume you mean this as a
| bridging method to get us another decade or two to finalize
| real solutions.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| it's actually 36 - (36x0.25) - (36x0.25) - 10 = 8.
|
| But yeah, we would have to reduce our emissions by at least
| 8GT to get to zero. That is totally doable, advanced
| economies are already reducing CO2 at a faster rate than
| 25% over 30 years: the US has reduced it's emissions by 1GT
| in 10 years (16% reduction).
| lucb1e wrote:
| If you _absorb_ 25% (you wrote "plants absorb about 25%"
| and same for trees), then 75% remains, so apply x0.75
| twice instead of applying x0.25 twice.
| lutorm wrote:
| I think at this point emissions reductions is a matter of will,
| not technology. Rather than waiting for some technological
| magic bullet when it comes to emissions reductions, we need to
| take aggressive action.
|
| But we're going to _need_ CCS technologies to start pulling the
| carbon back out if we want to avoid really bad outcomes, and
| those technologies are much less developed.
| kisamoto wrote:
| Underrated comment.
| sekai wrote:
| And it's futile if we don't start removing C02 from the
| atmosphere. I'd rather bet on C02 removal than anything else.
| lucb1e wrote:
| (Side note: it's CO2, carbon+(oxidex2), not C zero two)
|
| It's not futile if we don't remove atmospheric CO2, but we
| would have to get to net zero warming without cheating and we
| would have to get there within our emission budget to stay
| below <insert your temperature target>.
| apendleton wrote:
| I think the general consensus is that where it's possible to
| eliminate emissions, that's much better than emitting and then
| capturing later, but there are huge disparities across emitters
| as to how easy that is to do, and there's a likely outcome
| where getting to net zero (or even net negative) emissions
| involves eliminating emissions in most industries and then
| using capture to deal with the laggards.
|
| Getting less abstract: there are no real technological hurdles
| for eliminating emissions for personal vehicles, and probably-
| manageable ones for other surface transport (cargo shipping,
| etc.). Decarbonizing the electric grid has some technological
| challenges to solve (mostly around intermittency and storage if
| we go all renewables, or cost if we go mixed renewables and
| nuclear), but there are reasonably clear paths forward. On the
| other hand, we really don't know how to do zero-carbon long
| haul aviation, or concrete production and curing, or aluminum
| smelting, or trans-oceanic shipping -- maybe portable/modular
| nuclear could be used for the last two, but it's still pretty
| pie-in-the-sky. So, maybe in the future we have electric cars
| but carbon capture for long-haul jets, or something.
|
| (Aside: the recent Bill Gates climate book has a pretty
| thorough rundown of all the major current emitters and the
| levels of technological readiness for decarbonizing each.)
| kisamoto wrote:
| Agreed. Removal and reductions are not mutually exclusive.
|
| One huge positive I see from the creation of this prize is the
| publicity and interest in carbon removal. From my experience
| more people are learning about the requirement for carbon
| removal and realizing how expensive it is.
|
| For those of us who want to leave a minimal footprint, becoming
| aware of how expensive it is to undo our footprint incentivizes
| us to reduce too.
|
| (Credit where credit is due, Stripe, Shopify and Microsoft are
| also really helping this area grow too. )
| motoboi wrote:
| Elon tweeted about making rocket fuel out of arrested carbon.
| This technology could, it seems, be used outside earth as well
| (other planets, not space).
| abathur wrote:
| I don't mean to be a wet blanket (I imagine the prize will be a
| net good) but I want to talk into the void about something I've
| been befuddled by...
|
| I feel like I see/hear a lot of uncritical faith in
| (techno|market|competition)-solutions, with little discussion of
| what Nth-order effects may travel with those approaches. Just
| some scattered thoughts:
|
| - The best case for progress is probably technology that leads to
| profitable unsubsidized capture, but incremental technological
| progress may give the industry that springs up around it profit
| motives to overshoot.
|
| - Profitable capture would, if fossil-fuel producers get in on
| the action themselves, shift their break-even points around
| somewhat.
|
| - Even if this operates at a loss and depends on public funding,
| if the work is done by private industry and not the public
| sector, a few decades of capture may avert/blunt the crisis but
| leave us with yet another powerful lobby. It'll likely be flush
| with good-will and hard to regulate, let alone wind down once it
| has served its use.
|
| - As @knodi123 puts it: "I can not-pump 100M of oil in my own
| back yard. And you wouldn't believe the rate I can not pump it
| at!" If all of the operators depend on subsidy, there will be a
| decent incentive towards graft/corruption/fraud. There'll have to
| be some amount of administrative overhead going to verifying what
| is captured, that it isn't double-counted, that it actually gets
| sequestered, and so on. A deepening crisis could mean more of
| this money sloshing around and less will to build the compliance
| mechanisms that ensure it accomplishes the goal. Rampant graft
| could be enough to sink the program.
| sauwan wrote:
| With the exception of the last item, these are all problems I
| would love to have considering our current situation. Graft and
| administrative burden is a real concern, though, although I
| don't think it should stop us from trying.
| abathur wrote:
| For sure. I don't see these as comprehensive, nor as reasons
| not to try (nor even think it'd be possible to stop others
| from trying them).
|
| But I worry that this path is already the one we're disposed
| to fail/default into, and that a rose-tinted view of it will
| only make it easier for other opportunities slip through our
| fingers while gobs of smart people focus on the technological
| half of the moon-shot.
|
| Put another way, the degree of optimism I hear on these
| approaches smells like the kind of hubris that causes people
| to lose races they think they've won.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| There shouldn't be subsidies anywhere near producers. The
| emissions end should be handled entirely via taxes.
| abathur wrote:
| This comment makes me think you may reading me differently
| than I intend, though I'm not sure which bit you're
| responding to. Perhaps my use of the word "operators"?
|
| In any case, I do not intend to suggest any subsidy to fossil
| fuel producers, here. When I say operators, I mean the
| operators of capture operations. The only context in which I
| _intentionally_ point to producers is around the possibility
| that they might _also_ become capture operators if it was
| profitable.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You quoted someone talking about not-pumping oil as part of
| your line about subsidies. That's on the production side.
| abathur wrote:
| Yes. @knodi123 is joking about fraud. I am talking about
| fraud.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| And I'm saying _that kind_ of fraud shouldn 't be a
| worry, because there shouldn't be any money at all for
| reducing/preventing production.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| detritus wrote:
| Soil. It's soil.
|
| Soil, in prodigious quantities. We need to be making it.
|
| Using human waste - food and faecal from our cities; Using
| whatever plant fixes the most CO2 in a useful form that we can
| turn into charcoal (quick trees? bamboo grass? something
| genetically modified?), releasing heat energy, and then fixing
| carbon in a useful matrix, for soil regeneration a la Terra
| Preta.
|
| I sort of made this post elsewhere here, I just wanted to repeat
| and focus on the soil angle.
|
| We have huge swathes of the globe that due to poor historical
| environmental conditions have poor soil, so not much can grow.
| Some have become desertified, perhaps some of which is our fault
| (eg. Mediterranean deforestation). If we add soil to these
| places, at least hardier plants can grow and we can expand the
| reach of our efforts.
|
| Strikes me that the most important thing is that plants _can_
| grow, and for that we need soil.
|
| Soil.
| Mizza wrote:
| Have you done the math on that? It seems like it would take an
| awful lot of poop to counteract a coal fired power plant.
| detritus wrote:
| A city such as London (where I'm at) generates about 3600
| tonnes of wet mass poop a day. Thanks for making me work that
| out... .
|
| Given poop isn't even a main constituent ingredient in new
| soil, but rather forms the 'flavouring' for the development
| of the biological and mineral matter otherwise, I'd suggest a
| well-developed bio-recycling infrastructure could be quite
| productive.
|
| This isn't even factoring in food or farm waste, etc.
| dbrueck wrote:
| Conservation efforts, curbing emissions, etc. - that's all good
| and has its place, but on its own it just doesn't seem feasible
| to motivate enough people for a long enough time to make enough
| of a difference.
|
| Reducing amount of CO2 we emit is good, finding a way to
| capture/convert released CO2 is better, but there is Bezos-level
| wealth waiting for the person who invents/discovers an actual use
| for it. I hope this X-prize helps encourage that style of
| thinking.
| andyxor wrote:
| with this money you can terraform Sahara desert by planting a
| billion trees
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I knew this was already in progress but didn't realize how
| little funding it received. I think you're right, 100M could go
| a long way.
|
| > Seven countries of the Sahel region, an area located just
| south of the Sahara, therefore initiated a project that will
| see billions of trees planted across 11 countries by 2030
|
| > A total of 20 countries pledged support to the Sahel
| countries for the mammoth project. The European Commission has
| already invested more than EUR7 million ( $7.5 million).
|
| > But according to the United Nations, the initiative has only
| reached 15% of its targets after just over a decade. "Progress
| is slow, but we have learned a lot along the way," said climate
| consultant Vivekananda.
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/what-happened-to-africas-ambitious-gre...
| awestroke wrote:
| What is this species of tree that can grow without water or
| nutrients?
| Nydhal wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T39QHprz-x8
| baggy_trough wrote:
| You think you can get a tree planted and growing in the Sahara
| for a dime?
| neals wrote:
| One? No. A billion for 1 dime per tree? Maybe...
| highenergystar wrote:
| It seems like the only things that can 1. work at a planetary
| scale 2. mitigate our multi-year (and growing) emission problem
| 3. not on an energy flywheel (consume a significant amount of
| energy, mined resources or themselves emit significant waste
| heat)
|
| have to rely directly on solar energy (not intermediated by PV
| cell). To this end azolla ferns [1] and olivine weathering seem
| to be the most promising.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event
| Nydhal wrote:
| There's a few "Plants and trees won't do" comments here, which
| really misses the entire point of regenerative methods. Earth is
| an entire complex living system. Thinking of it as a simple
| chemical matter of CO2 is a very reductionist take. The point is
| to sequester carbon but ALSO trigger other cooling dynamics and
| reducing certain industrial practices that themselves release
| CO2. Too many engineers need to study complex systems and
| holistic approaches. The amount of patronizing makes me think of
| the fatal engineering flaw of "It can't be this simple".
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's true that there are "other cooling dynamics".
|
| But most of those don't involve trees. And "reducing certain
| industrial practices" has nothing to do with trees.
|
| So I don't really understand your point. It's correct that we
| shouldn't be too reductionist, but even if we avoid
| reductionism it's still correct to say that plants and trees
| won't do the job, and is not "missing the entire point of
| regenerative methods".
| burgessaccount wrote:
| Trees actually can provide tremendous cooling dynamics,
| beyond CO2 absorption. They provide shade at ground level. If
| every house in the US were surrounded by trees instead of
| useless lawns, energy use for both heating and cooling would
| be lower, so you'd get emissions reductions AND carbon
| absorption.
| Fiahil wrote:
| Plant and trees are definitely a very good solution. The real
| engineering challenge is really : 1. how to measure precisely
| how much carbon is in that tree and this other one here. 2. how
| to plant them efficiently so you can remove 1000T of co2 per
| year.
| omgwtfbbq wrote:
| I think financially it's not reasonable and you can't actually
| get enough carbon back or enough cooling for it to work on its
| own. Part of the solution but no it really isn't that simple.
|
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/eaaz0388.ful...
| Aerroon wrote:
| Nevertheless, plants and trees won't do it. They grow pretty
| much everywhere already where they can. Nature is better at
| reclaiming those areas than we are - there are an estimated
| three _trillion_ trees in the world.
|
| Then there's the problem that there's no significant process
| that turns trees into sequestered carbon for longer than the
| trees' lifespan.
|
| The reason it's important to keep saying this is that lots of
| people participate in these tree planting drives. They feel all
| accomplished and that they did their part. But if that doesn't
| have any real impact on the problem, then we've done lots of
| work, used up people's goodwill, but not dented the problem.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > They feel all accomplished and that they did their part.
| But if that doesn't have any real impact on the problem, then
| we've done lots of work, used up people's goodwill, but not
| dented the problem.
|
| Does the evidence support that people's goodwill get "used
| up"?
|
| It seems as plausible a theory to me that, when people get
| involved and take direct action, it ends up driving them to
| take further actions. Being personally invested in the result
| may drive _more_ action rather than using up the goodwill.
|
| (To be clear, I agree that we should always encourage action
| with the highest impact, and if tree planting actually does
| _nothing_ to help solve the problem, then we should direct
| people to other activities. I 'm not really jumping in to
| defend tree-planting initiatives, but more to question the
| assumption that people have a fixed amount of effort that
| they're willing to put into a given problem)
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _Does the evidence support that people 's goodwill get
| "used up"?_
|
| That's a good question. I assume it will be both for
| different groups of people. From my personal experience it
| seems to be that way, but I'm unaware of any studies on the
| subject.
| kevmo wrote:
| Highly recommend Thinking in Systems or Limits to Growth, both
| by Donella Meadows.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| Thank you, you have put it well. By no means I'm nature-knows-
| best person. But in this case nature does a great job in
| 'removing' CO2 by expending the least energy, with the least
| negative impact (actually a net positive) to the environment.
| Of course it's more nuanced than what even I stated. A wise
| engineer realizes the breadth of the issues and the 'true'
| engineering approach IMO will necessarily involve ( but not
| limited) a lot of trees/plants/algae etc.
| chris_overseas wrote:
| I'm curious to hear what people here think of Project Vesta?
| https://www.projectvesta.org/
|
| (No affiliation, just intrigued by what they're promising)
| tito wrote:
| We need 1000 shots on goal to get to gigaton scale carbon
| removal. Project Vesta builds on decades of academic research
| in olivine weathering that was itching for field trials and
| scale up. 999 more shots like this and we'll get there.
| floppiplopp wrote:
| It's one of the best options we know that could work. Basically
| grind up readily available basalt with technology we already
| have at scale and dump it into the oceans and onto agricultural
| soils - which is quite beneficial for soil structure, too. But
| I'm afraid it's not going to be sexy enough for technocratic
| phantasies and it cannot be monetized through some kind of
| futuristic looking devices.
| tt23523 wrote:
| most of the plans to sequester carbon in the ocean make me
| worry about how that would impact the broader ecosystem. As I
| understand it, it would change the chemistry of the ocean,
| which might trade one disaster for another. Not to mention
| ideally sequestration would last for millennia.
| thechao wrote:
| We're already sequestering a quarter of the CO2 in the ocean;
| this will do so in a safer way that mimics the large scale
| natural process that'd happen over the next few millennia
| anyways.
| tt23523 wrote:
| well scaling a natural process will change the chemistry of
| the ocean. Since the ocean is such a huge component of our
| planetary system it would be foolish of us to approach it
| without monitoring and planning for the consequences of
| this scale of engineering.
|
| i've found https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/an
| nurev.energy... to be a pretty good overview.
| burgessaccount wrote:
| I'm very excited about them as a possibility (I think there's
| another thread about them on HN?) but so much is unproven. We
| have no idea how much carbon the sand will absorb, or how fast,
| or how much it might mess with oceans along the way (it could
| be a positive because it would help fix ocean acidification,
| but it is a major mineral and ph modification to a complex
| system). No solution is as good as emissions reductions
| kisamoto wrote:
| Olivine has great potential (although it takes a while - up to
| 1000 years - to reach maximum sequestration).
|
| Project vesta tries to use the sea and waves to accelerate this
| process. It's a bit of an unproven experiment however it
| definitely has potential and needs supporting to prove the
| hypothesis and improve the method.
| daddylonglegs wrote:
| Most types of carbon capture technology [1] being touted are
| credit cards for climate change: You burn enough fuel to generate
| 4MJ worth of heat... Your internal combustion engine generates
| 1MJ worth of mechanical effort from this... You use this to
| propel a 2 ton vehicle... Carrying 1 person... To take part in
| the rat race or indulge in some consumerism. [2]
|
| The carbon dioxide sits in the atmosphere for 50 years where it
| heats the planet, trashes the ecosystem and likely feeds at least
| as many positive feedbacks as negative - amplifying the climate
| change effects.
|
| To capture this carbon you (your descendants) are going to have
| to: Put 4MJ of energy into the breaking the carbon-oxygen
| bonds... Which will take more than 4MJ of process energy and
| embodied energy in the capital plant... Once you have collected
| the diffuse CO2 from the atmosphere, which will not be free.
|
| Our 'plan' for dealing with climate change is that we hand a
| burning planet to our descendants to deal with, if we can stagger
| to hand-off without crashing the system first. Future generations
| will have to be far more responsible than us, for centuries, and
| imagining what they will have to say makes me squirm.
|
| [1] I am mildly optimistic about techniques that accelerate the
| weathering of (silicate?) rocks; and more trees will be nice.
| These technologies will be useful for the centuries of cleanup
| that will be needed, but cannot keep up with the huge rate of
| current emission.
|
| [2] Yes, much of our current consumption delivers real benefits
| to people's lives; but much (most) of it doesn't. The point of my
| analogy is that the sheer wastefulness of the present excess will
| be paid for in the future at far greater cost and is being spent
| on such trivial or actively harmful goals.
| gpt5 wrote:
| Genuine question - if CO2 half life in the atmosphere is less
| than 50 years, why are we so concerned about it? Wouldn't the
| problem solve itself given that we are both reaching peak
| consumption of fossil fuels and that they are expected to
| deplete with the next century?
|
| In other words, wouldn't the co2 concentration go down
| naturally within the next 100 years even if we let thing run
| naturally?
| malloryerik wrote:
| It looks as though those numbers are mistaken.
|
| https://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2008/02/26/ghg_lifetimes/
| [deleted]
| topkai22 wrote:
| Interesting. The grand prize timeline is 4 years from now. That
| seems VERY fast. However, I like the aggressiveness- if this can
| produce viable demonstrations of the technology at anywhere near
| what the aformentioned Prometheus Fuels ($36/ton) claims, then
| that produces a huge line in the sand for policy makers on carbon
| pricing and mitigation.
|
| $36/ton would raise the price of gasoline about 36 cents. The
| cost to capture ALL 6.5B tons of US emissions would be about
| $236B per year, or 1.1% of GDP. I think even getting it down to a
| $100/ton would change the discussion.
|
| These are real, manageable numbers that should undermine
| opposition to mitigating climate change and get something
| resembling a carbon tax based on a feasible number. Policies like
| "A 39 cent/gallon tax on gasoline" is much more understandable
| and politically feasible then "you'll have to change everything
| you do." And then, once in place, we'll see the economic effects
| of taxing carbon accelerate movement away from carbon emitting
| solutions, which are already becoming non-competitive in many
| scenarios.
|
| None of this means we shouldn't do things SOONER, espicially
| since DACC might never get that cheap, but I like the way this
| XPrize has the potential to change people's political calculus.
|
| Sources:
| https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/co2_vol_mass.php#:...
|
| https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas....
|
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Is that price net of the carbon put into the environment by he
| energy used by this tech?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I am skeptical of the $36/ton claim.
|
| The elephant in the room is that most of the proposed process
| chemistry does not have the necessary scale. If I need a
| billion tons of mined mineral per year to make a dent -- the
| reality for many of these proposals -- and current global
| production is a few thousand tons, you have a serious
| practicality problem. Not only would you need to develop those
| mines and the corresponding power generation facilities to
| manufacture the chemicals (which is energy intensive), _we may
| not have the necessary mineral reserves_. Addressing these all
| require massive amounts of capital investment that are not
| included in the cost per ton of the process at current scales.
| Buying a liter of water has completely different economics than
| buying a trillion liters of the same water, and the cost is
| always calculated as if it was the former case.
|
| While recycling of reactant chemicals is always a part of these
| proposals, they are typically only ~90% efficient as designed
| (each marginal increase in recycling efficiency tends to be
| exponentially more expensive). At the scales involved, that
| requires billions of tons of reactants being produced that
| don't exist today. It would be the largest mining and chemical
| manufacturing endeavor ever undertaken on the planet, starting
| from zero.
| aqme28 wrote:
| A lot of people saying "plant more trees" don't realize the scale
| of our carbon output.
|
| We release about 43 billion tons of CO2 in a year. A forest fire
| releases about 5-30 tons of CO2 per hectare.
|
| We're burning the equivalent of a forest the size of Africa every
| year.
| cowvin wrote:
| What we need is a cryptocurrency that is somehow mined by pulling
| carbon out of the atmosphere.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Sadly I think this would cause a cobra effect and people would
| start creating carbon emissions to mine it more cost
| effectively
| dbrueck wrote:
| Honestly, that's /precisely/ the type of thinking that we need
| more of.
|
| There's a lot of great work on the "this is a huge problem, how
| do we fix it?" side of things; we need to keep encouraging more
| on the "there's an abundance of this stuff that people consider
| bad and worthless, how can I use it?" side of things.
| geogra4 wrote:
| I'm laughing but honest to god I think this could
| work...somehow.
| teachrdan wrote:
| DiamondCoin: The world's first cryptocurrency based on Proof
| of Carbon.
| lovemenot wrote:
| Yes, this seems to have potential.
|
| The beauty of proof of work is the hashing algo is both 1)
| very hard to solve and 2) very easy to verify by anyone
| anywhere.
|
| Furthermore, 3) miners have a financial incentive to solve
| the algo and 4) They may do so in anyway they see fit.
|
| At a minimum a crypto-like solution should have these four
| properties.
|
| Now we already have a lot of unpaid CO2 miners (plants) doing
| it inefficiently, ad hoc and short-term. The first stage
| should be to allow these to opt in to get rewarded. Like you
| could mine bitcoin with spare CPU back in the day.
| m_herrlich wrote:
| This is literally how Snowpiercer begins
| giantg2 wrote:
| Time to quit my job and become an inventor (actually something I
| thought was a real thing when I was a kid).
|
| My idiot-layman brain says buy it from AirGas or capture from
| large emitters and pipe it into a geological structures like the
| do for storing helium. It could probably only get to gigatons if
| it's worldwide and we have enough geological structures capable
| of containing it.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I thought the same thing as a child. Recently I realized that
| programming and making apps _is like_ being an inventor. When I
| make applications for other people to use, is that not akin to
| making some kind of new machine or tool?
| ianlevesque wrote:
| Yeah, it's akin to it. In the won't help you get laid way.
| Method-X wrote:
| You're an idiot.
| MattRix wrote:
| ???
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't really see it the same way. I mean, as an independent
| project, maybe. Most of us are basically told what to build
| and largely how to build it too. Someone else invented it and
| we just build it - we're basically factory workers.
| defterGoose wrote:
| No, because the lynchpin of these physical technologies we
| need are going to be just that, physical. No amount of neural
| networking or cryptocurrency mining is going to be anything
| other than peripheral to the advancements based on basic
| research in physical science.
|
| If the solution to carbon capture comes from a company like
| Deepmind (ala protein folding), i'll eat my shoe.
| kisamoto wrote:
| Actually what would be really good is instead of looking at
| carbon capture you could use that invention brain to find
| solutions to reduce our emissions.
|
| Carbon neutral or negative alternatives to energy production,
| concrete production, travel (flight), meat and many others
| would be incredible.
|
| The best emissions are the ones never emitted in the first
| place.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Eliminating emissions would be carbon neutral. The
| competition wants carbon negative solutions for sequestering
| carbon in the atmosphere or oceans. Sure there are some
| carbon negative things like the replacement for concrete that
| reacts with CO2, but the negative impact is not extensible
| beyond a specific point without better mining/refining tech.
| kisamoto wrote:
| True although I wasn't referring just to the competition -
| it would be good to come up with sustainable solutions in
| general.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, but I'm not interested since the real solutions are
| generally off limits. The $100M is what I really want (or
| even $1M would be nice). In fact what i really want is to
| be employed to enter competitions like this and Gates'
| toilet competition. I'm just too dumb.
| kisamoto wrote:
| If you find a way please consider me for your team :-)
|
| My current attempt to support projects like these is to
| make them as accesible as possible on
| https://carbonremoved.com
|
| You get your $1M and I will include your removal method
| in our portfolio!
| giantg2 wrote:
| The real issue is consumption. This drives CO2, various
| pollution, factory farming, deforestation, decline of
| natural species (eg fish stocks), etc. Some Indian states
| recently announced efforts to basically cap the number of
| children at 2. Although China has expanded it's policy
| from 1 to 2 and is now suggesting that 3 may be ok.
| tito wrote:
| For startups going after Elon's prize, AirMiners partnered with
| XPRIZE and CDL to create the AirMiners Launchpad. Founders should
| check out https://launchpad.airminers.org/ Applications for Batch
| #2 close August 31st
|
| Also check out AirMiners, the hub for everything carbon removal
| at https://airminers.org/
|
| And those who are interested in a 5 week group discussion on
| carbon removal basics check out Boot Up:
| https://bootup.airminers.org/
| tohmasu wrote:
| I get the feeling there's a "snake eating its own tail" aspect
| here.
|
| Assuming carbon sequestration can be done at scale, it will
| likely require energy, maybe even _a lot_ of energy.
|
| So where's this energy going to come from? Well... global energy
| demand is increasing as-is and the winners are: coal, oil and
| "natural" gas (which is a fossil fuel):
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/222066/projected-global-...
|
| Even assuming the forecast 5x increase in "renewables*" (I can't
| find the double asterisk footnote) until 2050, it seems
| unreasonable that a ~250EJ "blue team" (hydro, nuclear, other
| renewables) could plug a ~500EJ hole created by the "red team"
| (coal, oil, fossil gas).
|
| We need a magnitude more clean power and all the wind, solar and
| wishful thinking in the world aren't going to cut it.
| londons_explore wrote:
| If you know ahead of time that you need a _massive_ amount of
| power, and you have no location constraints, then first you 'd
| buy up all the 'free' power from hydro stations that don't have
| enough transmission capacity.
|
| Next you'd probably build geothermal power stations at a huge
| scale in iceland or a similarly volcanic places. That power is
| still cheaper than solar or natural gas by a decent margin.
|
| Nuclear is a contender only if you can find a place willing to
| let you skip all the red tape and build rather unsafe 1970's
| designs...
| mbgerring wrote:
| > Even assuming the forecast 5x increase in "renewables*"
|
| I don't know where these figures come from, but the IEA
| underestimating the deployment of renewable energy, as well as
| cost reductions, has become a running joke among people who
| model energy or study the electric grid.
|
| Renewable energy is a growing and profitable field, and if
| you're concerned about not having enough clean electricity to
| power carbon removal, there are many opportunities to work full
| time on expanding renewable energy.
| lucb1e wrote:
| > carbon sequestration [will] likely require energy
|
| Yes, but that doesn't mean we won't need it.
|
| Take air planes. We can't just put batteries in there: too low
| energy density or something (I'm no physicist, but they won't
| fly very far is what I gather). But by capturing the CO2 (at
| exhaust, or atmospherically) that they put out, we can have
| both airplanes and a stable climate -- assuming it's all done
| right.
|
| Who wants to have a wind turbine in their back yard? A nuclear
| power plant? Who lives near that hydro plant in the middle of
| nowhere? We could instead capture CO2 away from people if power
| is cheap, before sending the rest down a slightly lossy
| transmission path.
|
| Driving regular passenger vehicles electrically is definitely
| less energy intensive than capturing the GHGs that a combustion
| engine produces, so it would obviously be counter-productive to
| use capture technology for those sorts of things. But we can
| use it for other things like chemical processes that produce a
| GHG as a byproduct where it's hard to capture (new buildings
| using concrete, for example) or when we don't have the
| technology to get rid of the emissions.
|
| Right now, the quickest wins are from emission reduction. This
| capture technology is something we need to have ready for the
| next phase of keeping our natural habitat stable.
| rcpt wrote:
| > Who wants to have a wind turbine in their back yard?
|
| Here in Los Angeles we have honest-to-god oil derricks in our
| neighborhoods and the NIMBYs don't even notice. Apartments
| OTOH...
| Mizza wrote:
| One of the more exciting things in green aviation is "air to
| fuels". There are companies working on converting atmospheric
| carbon into hydrocarbons for storage (using renewable
| energy). Those hydrocarbons can then be used as jet fuel, so
| it's isn't carbon-negative, but at least it's carbon-neutral.
| Any hydrocarbons left over that are stored are carbon-
| negative.
| FL33TW00D wrote:
| All of these systems are going to require radical construction
| of hundreds and hundreds of nuclear reactors.
|
| This has economics of scale benefits, and I expect reactors
| such as the ones discussed in this video:
| https://youtu.be/7gtog_gOaGQ to be produced on a factory line
| extremely quickly.
| dd36 wrote:
| Nuclear.
| brightball wrote:
| Honestly, if carbon capture is effective for the power
| requirements that it has...build a nuclear facility dedicated
| to the carbon capture tech.
| kisamoto wrote:
| Solar can be used to a certain extent.
|
| And geo-thermal - that is currently being used in Iceland by
| Carbfix + Climeworks.
|
| Also worth noting that a lot of these technologies do thorough
| lifecycle analysis to make sure that despite the energy usage
| required they are still carbon negative.
| filleokus wrote:
| I wonder how YC backed Prometheus Fuels will stack up. They
| claimed that they are able to sequester Co2 directly from the air
| for around 36 USD / ton [0]. If they truly can scale it at that
| price point, it seems very competitive.
|
| [0]: https://www.prometheusfuels.com/on-the-road/happy-earth-
| day-...
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| There may be a pattern here of YC funding carbon removal
| techniques that perhaps cannot work at all. Here's another one:
| Remora https://www.remoracarbon.com/
|
| As far as I know there is no research paper on the topic ...
| nothing to indicate it actually is a viable solution.
|
| They also don't want to talk to anyone about hard questions.
| It's like the Theranos of carbon removal, using Silicon-valley
| style secrecy.
|
| I can't help but feel that if we are to successfully save the
| climate, it won't be dependent on secrecy.
| typeformer wrote:
| Are they really sequestering it? If I understand their tech
| correctly they are recycling it back into fuel which then gets
| burned and the CO2 goes back into the air? It's a fascinating
| process but unlikely to undue our decades of harm.
| traverseda wrote:
| They claim that their technology will "replace fossil fuels".
| If it actually hits a price point where that's possible than
| I'd expect it to not be a problem either way.
|
| I guess in that future we're getting power mainly from
| renewables and using hydrocarbons as power storage? We'd
| probably be using those same hydrocarbons to make plastics
| and the like as well.
|
| Still, halting new fossil fuel extraction would be an
| excellent first step, even though the energy costs don't make
| much sense to me.
| filleokus wrote:
| Yeah, that's how I understand it also. But they are talking
| about putting it in (plastic) goods "that store it forever".
| So I'm thinking that they could just solidify it somehow and
| bury it in the ground? Feels fairly cheap?
|
| But I'm not clear on wether their price point includes the
| revenue they get from selling the carbon (in the form of
| fuels or plastic)?
|
| I.e, does it cost them 36 USD, or 351 USD? [0]
|
| [0]: 36 USD + (1 tonne of Co2 / 19 lbs of Co2 per gallon of
| fuel) * 3 USD / gallon of fuel [?] 36 + 105*3 = 351 USD.
| Makes a huge difference...
| ardit33 wrote:
| Sounds interesting/almost too good to be true. Do they have a
| working system?
| scythe wrote:
| There are about 2.2 teratonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere. There
| _should_ be about 1.5 Tt. That 's ~700 billion tonnes of CO2 to
| remove, or about $25tn at your quoted price. Not impossible,
| but certainly not cheap.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| At that scale, the price per ton would probably drop by a
| factor of 5-10 or more, so it looks quite doable.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| So, anyone got any good ideas for accounting tricks that lets you
| credit coal power emissions into a year the rules don't check and
| win by making coal power carbon neutral on (biodegradable) paper?
| burgessaccount wrote:
| Why doesn't he just use a few of his billions to build free
| renewable power plants? Emissions reduction, now, is so much more
| important than the possibility of carbon reduction in ten or
| fifteen years
| jdavis703 wrote:
| The impact that even a billionaires could have is relatively
| trivial. The Green New Deal is estimated to cost trillions of
| dollars. Even if some of the proposed ideas are dubious, the
| amount of infrastructure needed is an order of magnitude more
| than what a billionaire can provide.
| burgessaccount wrote:
| Yeah, I mean the green new deal was like 75% not climate
| spending? And a billionaire does not need to tackle the whole
| problem, just make a dent? My main point was that we actually
| already have most of the technology needed to fight climate
| change, we just aren't deploying it.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Because he has a one-off fortune that would require selling all
| of his investments to turn into cash. By 2050, all of the power
| plants he built would be just so much garbage in a landfill.
| Based on the growth projections of energy consumption, it
| wouldn't put a dent in the problem long term.
|
| By incentivizing economical carbon capture, he _might_ be able
| to kick off a self-funding industry, which _would_ be an
| important part of the long term set of solutions needed to
| address atmospheric carbon increases.
|
| He could also do other things like invest in some power plants
| too.
| burgessaccount wrote:
| I partly agree - yes, individual people spending money is not
| a long-term solution. But we aren't even in the stage of
| needing stable, long-term solutions - we need immediate,
| drastic, dramatic actions. And there are already strong
| incentives for carbon capture technology - it's a big and
| growing market. The bigger bottleneck is not in capture
| innovations, but in emissions-reduction action, now, here,
| this decade. So, yeah, I mean, I get why he wouldn't
| personally choose to do it that way, and I guess I'm excited
| about the prize? But man do I wish he would do more.
| liketochill wrote:
| He kind of has an interest in solar power
| wyager wrote:
| How is the answer to "carbon removal" not just "turn deserts into
| plant areas" or "encourage algae blooms" or something? It seems
| implausible to me that any chemical carbon extraction process has
| superior externalities to just planting more trees or something.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| You might find this interesting:
|
| 'What the heroin industry can teach us about solar power' -
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-53450688
|
| The satellite images show the green areas over the desert
| increasing.
|
| They're pumping water from underground to irrigate the poppies
| using electric pumps and solar panels.
|
| I wonder how quickly the water table will be depleted though.
| krastanov wrote:
| I do not have a complete well-sourced answer, but the common
| argument against your suggestion is that such a carbon sink
| would work for only a couple of decades until it reaches a
| steady state, and these couple of decades do not seem to be
| enough to make a dent.
|
| Also, it is difficult to plant trees in a desert. Also, algae
| blooms are dangerous for other life forms.
|
| However, there are some startups working with super-fast-
| growing (ugly) trees that are then used as construction
| material, which would be a longer-term-functioning sink. Not
| very clear whether that scales.
| prox wrote:
| Beyond carbon capture, trees cool an area, which is good in
| its own right.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Yes, everyone here seems to think CO2 is the most important
| thing to reduce, but we're not suffering from CO2 (2*C
| never hurt anybody), we're suffering from increased weather
| volatility as the homeostatic influence of the biosphere
| has been destroyed, slash and burned for cow pasture,
| drained for corn and soy farms, overfished and trawled
| until nothing is left.
|
| But since CO2 is easier to measure than biomass and
| ecosystem complexity, everyone is focused on sucking carbon
| out of the air when we need to be restoring grasslands,
| forests, and coral reefs.
|
| Source: Charles Eisenstein's "Climate: A New Story"
| nostromo wrote:
| Productive forests in the US are a carbon sink.
|
| The trees grow. We cut them down. We make houses out of them,
| which are wrapped to prevent deterioration. The sunk carbon
| becomes our buildings.
|
| Other uses of the wood are also usually carbon sinks. Paper
| either gets recycled (the carbon is preserved) or it gets
| buried in a sealed landfill where is takes decades or longer
| to break down.
|
| It'd be cool to calculate how much carbon Weyerhaeuser sucks
| out of the atmosphere each year.
| soperj wrote:
| Wouldn't it break down into methane instead though? I doubt
| that building buildings are carbon neutral, let alone a
| carbon sink.
| krastanov wrote:
| Dried up wooden building material is pretty stable and a
| fairly common (even commercialized) suggestion for a
| carbon sink. If you let it rot/burn, then no, it is not a
| carbon sink.
| soperj wrote:
| Sure, but the way we build buildings, there's no way
| that's actually the case. Transport alone to the sawmill,
| then the lumber yard, then the job site might actually
| release more carbon than the tree is storing.
|
| A 25 year old maple will sequester 400 pounds of co2 in
| it's lifetime. An average commuter car will emit that in
| 2 weeks. Hauling all that carbon out of the forest will
| likely emit far more than that.
| cesarb wrote:
| > Transport alone to the sawmill, then the lumber yard,
| then the job site might actually release more carbon than
| the tree is storing.
|
| If we're building the buildings anyway, we have to
| compare with alternative building materials. That is, how
| much more would transporting that lumber emit, compared
| to transporting for instance brick?
| Nydhal wrote:
| It's not going to be "anyway". Once you add incentive for
| wood you will also create incentive for building. Complex
| systems 101.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Unless it is allowed to decompose by fungi, insects, and
| the food chain that turns the wood into more biomass.
|
| Leaving the trees to rot by bacterial decomp will return
| it to the air since there's no one else to make use of
| the energy.
| wyager wrote:
| All fossil fuels were eventually living biomass. I don't see
| any reason we wouldn't "resuscitate" that biomass back into
| living organisms. It would take a long time for the living
| biomass to be re-interred into fossil fuels.
| kisamoto wrote:
| There is no silver bullet. It has to be a combination of:
|
| 1) Reduce emissions to zero (will take some time).
|
| 2) Use more natural solutions (trees, algae, kelp etc. - will
| also take time).
|
| 3) Enhance natural solutions with tech (enhanced weathering).
|
| 4) Develop carbon capture tech to reverse the damage done by
| the fossil-fuel burning tech.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Presumably entrants will skew towards #4 as we don't have as
| many solutions there, and depending on how quickly you could
| scale up a good one, it would be quicker than 1-3, you'd
| expect.
| vkou wrote:
| > 1) Reduce emissions to zero (will take some time).
|
| How many centuries is it going to take to reduce global
| emissions to... Half of their current levels?
| kisamoto wrote:
| Hopefully one century or less?
|
| But this depends on global willingness to do so by choosing
| (more expensive) sustainable products and voting for
| politicians who want to enforce/encourage carbon reductions
| vkou wrote:
| 1. Is there any reason at all to believe that billions of
| people will change their minds and make both of them
| happen in a century or less?
|
| The New Soviet Man was an experiment only 70 years in the
| making, and it was in no way a successful one.
|
| 2. Let's suppose that actually happens. Let's suppose we
| get to 50% of current emissions in... 50 years.
|
| We currently increase CO2 concentrations by 2.5 ppm/year.
| This would put us at over 500 PPM in my expected
| lifetime... In one of the more optimistic interpretations
| of your predictions.
|
| For bonus points, even if we hit 50% reduction in 50
| years, that would way overachieve what the Paris Accord
| set out. We are currently not on track to hit any of the
| targets in the Paris Accord.
| wyager wrote:
| Why do we have to reduce emissions to zero? I prefer freeing
| up carbon from the ground as long as it's not causing
| greenhouse heating.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Well, it _is_ causing greenhouse heating, that 's the whole
| point, any freeing up carbon is inherently linked to that.
| But it is more appropriate to say that we have to reduce
| _net_ emissions to zero; there would be no problem with
| emissions if there 's a compensating carbon capture of
| equal amount. At least after we've "paid back the debt" by
| recapturing the excess emissions of earlier decades - there
| needs to be some period of negative net emissions before
| zero net emissions would be okay.
|
| Why do you prefer "freeing up carbon from the ground" ?
| Usually that's just a sideeffect that happens only because
| we want some other thing e.g. extract energy from oil or
| manufacture cement by calcinating limestone; and if we want
| a stable atmosphere then we can't be freeing up carbon from
| the ground without putting it back.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| All the fossil fuels we've been burning is introducing carbon
| back into the biosphere. The key to carbon removal is to
| sequester it back somewhere where it won't be circulating in
| nature. It's not enough to plant more trees, as those new
| trees' carbon will just continue to cycle through the
| environment.
| wyager wrote:
| Why do I want to prevent carbon from circulating in nature? I
| like plants and animals and I want more of them.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| The main problem is that we've released so much, so fast,
| that there really isn't a productive place for it to go.
| The other problem is that humanity keeps expanding and
| there's not much free space left for nature preserves. If
| you wanted to plant a new rainforest, where would you
| possibly put it? We're already cutting down swathes of
| existing ones just to feed and house our expanding
| populations. So sadly, most of that extra carbon just
| remains in the air.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > not just "turn deserts into plant areas" or "encourage algae
| blooms" or something?
|
| That might be slightly more tricky (and less efficient) than
| you seem to imagine.
|
| Also, the prize is not exclusively for "chemical" carbon
| extraction, if you can find a way to scale algae bloom to be a
| long term carbon sink without ruining the environment in other
| ways you are eligible:
|
| > Any carbon negative solution is eligible: nature-based,
| direct air capture, oceans, mineralization, or anything else
| that achieves net negative emissions, sequesters CO2 durably,
| and show a sustainable path to achieving low cost at gigatonne
| scale.
| danuker wrote:
| Planting trees it is very difficult to keep up with global
| production.
|
| TL; DW: planting 20 million trees would equal roughly the CO2
| emissions of the USA for half a day.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqht2bIQXIY
| sevenf0ur wrote:
| Just one of the many problems of fundraisers like Team Trees:
|
| 1. Trees will eventually die and release their CO2 through
| rot or burning
|
| 2. Consequences of changing the ecosystem so rapidly
| wyager wrote:
| If you can increase arable land then other trees will grow
| there. I would prefer to create as much biomass as
| possible. Surely the net biomass stored in fossil fuels
| could be completely resuscitated, so to speak.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The usual way to increase arable land is by cutting down
| a forest.
|
| "Surely the net biomass stored in fossil fuels could be
| completely resuscitated, so to speak." - that's a strong
| no - fossil fuels have accumulated over millions of
| years, having all that carbon become biomass _all at
| once_ would not be returning to something that existed
| earlier but something completely unprecedented, it would
| require many times more biomass than the Earth has now or
| has had at any particular moment of history.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| At least for terrestrial plants, the math just doesn't work
| out. Plants are really not fast or efficient enough to suck up
| carbon in meaningful quantities.
|
| Algae can be >100 times as efficient at that than terrestrial
| plants, so there might be a there there, but even still,
| fracking basalt probably beats that by a couple of orders of
| magnitude.
| quaintdev wrote:
| I understand this concern but I was blown away when I heard
| this fact which I wanted to share with you.
|
| > Certain species of bamboo can grow 910 mm (36 in) within a
| 24-hour period, at a rate of almost 40 mm (11/2 in) an hour
| (a growth around 1 mm every 90 seconds, or 1 inch {2.54
| centimeters} every 40 minutes).
|
| At least it's better than no trees at all.
| lostlogin wrote:
| While it makes for impenetrable forest (scrub? Bush) when
| mature, you'd have to imagine that the acreage requires to
| sequester meaningful amounts of carbon would be absolutely
| vast. Bamboo just isn't that dense.
| mikeg8 wrote:
| My personal experience of having bamboo on my property is
| that it seems incredibly dense. Bamboo is a actually a
| grass and has root systems similar to grasses, it grows
| very close together. here is another resource about the
| carbon sequestration of bamboo:
| https://drawdown.org/solutions/bamboo-production
| mikeg8 wrote:
| Another interesting tidbit: bamboo is actually a grass, not
| a tree.
| kisamoto wrote:
| That's really cool.
|
| As long as we don't end up with monocultures (also bad for
| the environment) they should be part of the solution!
|
| We could plant fast growing bamboo and turn it into
| biochar/bio-oil? Or use it for sustainable housing?
| slavik81 wrote:
| The giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) is the fastest-
| growing plant in the world, living mostly on the Pacific
| coast, off the shores of California and British Columbia.
| It had economic value at one point, so kelp farming was a
| major industry in the early 20th century. Though, I suspect
| if CO2 is all that matters, simple algae is easier to
| manage than large plants.
|
| Sadly, the natural kelp forests are in really bad shape. I
| haven't seen the stats on giant kelp, but the bull kelp
| forests have been practically been wiped off the map by sea
| urchins and warming waters over the past decade or two. The
| natural kelp forests probably didn't provide much in terms
| of CO2 absorption, as dead plant matter would decay quickly
| in the ocean, but it's been a huge loss for aquatic
| wildlife.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Bamboo is something like 5 meters per kilo. You don't
| really care about the length. You care about the mass.
| wedn3sday wrote:
| Here's my proposal, take that $100M and find a Saudi/Venezuela
| oil well operator. Give him the $100M in exchange for not pumping
| $100M worth of oil out of the ground.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| But in the next 20 or 30 years when there is another energy
| crisis they'll just start pumping again under the pretext of an
| emergency.
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| I wonder if there is a way to poison an oil well, so that it
| becomes un-economical to purify. Chemical separation is
| obviously what the whole petrochemical industry is _about_ ,
| so maybe something like injecting radioactive material. Then
| you pay the well owner to poison and seal off their well.
| imaginenore wrote:
| $100M is a rounding error for the oil well operators at a
| country scale. And if you magically manage to convince one,
| there are others - Russia, USA, Canada, Norway, China, Iraq,
| etc.
| deelowe wrote:
| That would just artificially constrain supply, driving prices
| up and making other mining options more viable.
| nightcracker wrote:
| Ah yes, the thing that will solve our climate issues is to
| provide more capital to those groups/individuals responsible
| for it. Supply side Jesus would be proud.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| At 50$/BBl that's 2 million barrels, or one quarter of one
| day's worth of oil production for Saudi Arabia alone [0]. A new
| technology could do far more than just 'disappearing' 100
| million dollars worth of oil.
|
| [0]https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-
| ne...
| thinkcontext wrote:
| You wouldn't pay the market price. Its costs money to extract
| oil, less than $10 per barrel in Saudi Arabia, in the $20s in
| the US.
|
| http://graphics.wsj.com/oil-barrel-breakdown/
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| OK but if I can sell 10 million barrels of oil for $750M
| why would I accept $100M to keep it in the ground?
| PeterisP wrote:
| Reducing oil consumption by $100m worth of oil saves less than
| 1 million tons of CO2. We need - and the x-prize requests -
| solutions that can approach 10 Gt CO2 reduction per year. A one
| time reduction of 0.001 Gt CO2 is simply insignificant.
| jeffbee wrote:
| How about paying a $1m/head bounty for every dead oilman the
| local militia can bring me? Seems more economical.
| knodi123 wrote:
| A modest proposal indeed.
|
| I often wonder if, once the effects of climate change rack up
| a few million more dead, whether the people directly affected
| with nothing left to lose might go all Rambo on whatever
| responsible target of opportunity happens to be at hand. It
| certainly wouldn't take a $1m bounty. I suspect $1k would be
| just as effective in a couple of decades.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| Oil is about $75 per barrel and world wide we consume about 35
| billion barrels per year. Reducing $100M worth of oil barely
| makes a dent.
| oezi wrote:
| How about just buying the oil and putting it into storage
| somewhere (maybe just buy oil ships with oil in them).
|
| This will drive up price of oil for everyone which is the most
| effective way to accelerate the adoption of renewables.
|
| The world spends 6-9bn USD per day on oil (100m barrels at
| 60-90 USD), maybe we start with spending 1bn per day.
|
| Edit: Fixed calculation.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > How about just buying the oil and putting it into storage
| somewhere
|
| What about burying it in the ground?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Buying oil incentivizes producing more oil
| oezi wrote:
| We will pump the earth empty anyway, right?
| input_sh wrote:
| Yeah with oil reserves we know of today, most estimates
| put it around 50 years before we run out of it (that's
| with the current consumption, it doesn't take into
| account a completely possible increase in consumption).
|
| That doesn't mean that a) we should extract all of it,
| and b) we won't find more of it.
| PeterisP wrote:
| If you want to drive up the price of oil for everyone, then
| instead of buying some oil and putting it into storage, you
| can just tax it, gaining revenue (that can be used for
| subsidizing renewables) instead of spending money to buy oil.
|
| The problem is that driving up the price of oil for everyone
| significantly (so much that there would be a meaningful
| reduction in usage, not just a slight decrease) is
| politically unacceptable. Looking at historical gas crises,
| even literally doubling the price of gas probably would not
| cause sufficient reduction in driving; but a government
| intentionally doubling the price of gas to reduce driving
| would not get popular support, it get voted out for daring to
| impose such punitive measures.
| idolaspecus wrote:
| FWIW 100m * 100 = 10bn
| oezi wrote:
| Thx
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| That's basically carbon cap and trade. One of the problems is
| how do you ensure that the oil well remains blocked off
| forever? The risk of fraud is pretty high, especially when you
| consider that the involved parties are these huge practically
| untouchable corporations.
| SuchAnonMuchWow wrote:
| Burn it at the site of extraction. That way, nobody will be
| able to use it !
| mvanaltvorst wrote:
| If you have $100M worth of carbon captured from the air
| stored somewhere under the ground, how do you make sure
| nobody takes advantage of this vast supply of energy?
|
| You will have to deal with this problem either way, going
| straight to the Saudi Arabian oil operator just skips the
| middleman.
| jandrese wrote:
| End result: Price of oil goes up, more tar sands are extracted.
| [deleted]
| knodi123 wrote:
| I can not-pump 100M of oil in my own back yard. And you
| wouldn't _believe_ the rate I can not pump it at!
|
| But seriously, this is harder than it sounds. Unless you pay
| him to permanently sequester $100M of oil, I don't see how it
| would make a difference.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I've seen this happen with farm subsidies in the UK where
| farmers were paid to leave the land alone. However the
| farmers would choose the crappiest sections to leave alone
| and production would be unchanged. Profit.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| How would you cost-effectively enforce that commitment?
| amelius wrote:
| Buying the oil and not burning it.
| dtech wrote:
| Oil is expensive to store, and leaving it reintroduced the
| commitment problem
| amelius wrote:
| Ok, I'm open to better suggestions.
| _rpd wrote:
| See also http://carbon.ycombinator.com/
| viach wrote:
| Increase taxes for car owners globally, done.
| lovemenot wrote:
| I agree with 80% of this. Just the last part is overreaching.
| nullstyle wrote:
| If you're interested in a good starting place for carbon removal
| ideas, I highly recommend the Carbon Farming Solution:
| https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/the-carbon-farming-solu...
| matusz wrote:
| Lots of similar questions here, good answers:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmWpFCjh0Fk (Sabine Hossenfelder)
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