[HN Gopher] Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen
___________________________________________________________________
Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen
Author : baptou12
Score : 234 points
Date : 2021-10-23 11:09 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mining.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mining.com)
| ohiovr wrote:
| Would this method be able to grow single crystal grahite crystals
| if it were controlled tightly? A single of crystal graphite would
| have a lot of useful properties much like silicon. Because of its
| anisotropic strength it can be much stronger and more flexible
| than composites. Things like turbine blades could be carved from
| single crystal graphite.
| anyfactor wrote:
| A tangential thought.
|
| Since the last crash of oil prices there was a radical move
| toward rare earth material mining. Every minining and exploration
| company tried look into ways to mine and find better uses of rare
| earth minerals that would generate the same pre-crash oli and gas
| profits.
|
| But reviewing half a decades stock research or DD of these newly
| pivoted mining companies I find nothing to be radical and it is
| often the same repackaged environmental well being rhetoric from
| the industry.
|
| There is no pioneering business, leader or technology in rare
| earth mining. And I am often very skeptical of mining industry
| talking about positive environmental consequences of mining.
|
| Even though we are divided on Musk's contribution in revolution
| in EV industry but he didn't push an environmental agenda IMO but
| he pushed for providing better consumer utility while minimzing
| negative environmental consequences. If rare earth industry as a
| whole quite non-inuitivetly provide or promise of enhanced
| utility (in the economic sense) without mentioning positive
| environmental consequences as a headline then I will believe.
| amts wrote:
| Can I get funded if I'd compile an R&D program aiming to achieve
| ~60% or more efficiency, but without gallium or silver?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm not sure: is the Gallium a catalyst?
| Lev1a wrote:
| And if so, could it be replaced by orgnano-catalysts which were
| in the news recently? I only had chemistry in school but maybe
| it's even as simple as using parts from the chemistry involved
| in photosynthesis?
| valw wrote:
| Folks, just to clarify: "catalyst" is a very broad chemistry
| term for "something that helps a chemical reaction take place
| without being a reagent nor product of said reaction." So
| don't get the wrong idea: catalysts have quite specific uses,
| and you cannot substitute any one catalyst for any other.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Yes. Thanks for that clarification. What I meant in my
| original question is if we consume huge amounts of gallium
| to do this. Ie. can it scale?
| adrian_b wrote:
| It depends a lot on which will be the lifetime of the
| catalyst at industrial scales.
|
| Gallium is one of the most expensive metals, not because
| it is very rare, but because it is very diluted. There
| are no minerals with a high concentration of gallium,
| enough to make their commercial exploitation worthwhile.
|
| There are no mines of gallium. Gallium is always
| extracted as a secondary product in mining operations
| where either aluminum or zinc is the main product.
|
| Because of that, the available quantity of gallium
| depends on the volume of the productions of aluminum and
| of zinc, and it follows their yearly oscillations.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The process described in the paper uses both gallium and silver
| as catalysts.
|
| The advantage of using gallium is that it is in liquid form.
| When the gallium is regenerated after catalyzing one cycle of
| the reaction, it mixes again with the liquid gallium.
|
| Being liquid ensures a long life for the catalyst. Solid
| catalysts are never recovered perfectly after taking part in
| the reaction and then being again deposited on their support,
| so they degrade much faster.
|
| The mechanism of solid catalyst degradation is similar to that
| which limits the life of a rechargeable battery with solid
| electrodes.
| javier_cardona wrote:
| A preprint of the paper mentioned in the post is available here:
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347609399_Mechanica...
| GistNoesis wrote:
| The following link has the additional supplementary images
| missing from your link
| https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-112257/v1
|
| I quickly skimmed it but the protocol on page 13 seems simple,
| the chemicals involved are relatively low risk (verify the
| MSDS).
|
| Mix some gallium metal with a powder of a Silver salt in a
| mortar and pestle, put it in a solvent, stir it with a magnetic
| stirrer, while bubbling CO2, in a N2 atmosphere, and carbon
| snowflakes should float to the top in a few hours.
|
| Maybe some chemist can help make it into a safe for all kid
| science-fair project.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I'm actually interested in using this for terraforming Venus.
| We've got plenty of energy from sunlight and very concentrated
| co2. To keep them at the right temperature We could build
| floating blimps with these machines on board.
| lend000 wrote:
| I wish there was more data on the reaction mechanism. It's
| unclear which way the equilibrium would shift at the high
| temperatures present on Venus, or if the solvent is an
| important part of the reaction/would be in liquid form on Venus
| (most solvents would not). But I agree that would be an awesome
| application.
| mrfusion wrote:
| There are certain altitudes on Venus where the temperature is
| earth like.
| taf2 wrote:
| This would be amazing. Venus having nearly the same gravity as
| earth gives it a big plus in terms of future colonies. The
| other issue I believe is it's spin - meaning a normal day on
| Venus is something like 5k hours compared to earths 24... that
| means you cook for a lot longer on one side instead of a nice
| even toasting like we have here on earth... still I like your
| idea because gravity is probably one of the bigger factors of
| creating a future nice home...
| mrfusion wrote:
| The long days are a tough cookie for sure. I wonder if we
| could make a planet scale Hvac system to pump the heat to the
| cold side.
| gonational wrote:
| A noble discovery...
|
| However, even if this was an economically viable solution to the
| perceived problem of CO2 in the atmosphere, this doesn't help
| with the goal of setting up a global government and global tax,
| so it would be ignored.
|
| Anthropogenic global warming, as a studied issue, is not about
| solving the world's problems; it's about setting up a global
| government with a global tax. It always has been; it hasn't even
| pretended to be anything else. The motivations have always been
| ostensibly about solving global warming, but the plans have
| always been very public; set up a global tax and a global
| government to implement this tax. That could not be more clear.
|
| Ask yourself, if you were planning on taxing the entire planet,
| even if it was only .1% of their GDP (~80 billion), would you
| rather have that money or have some random scientist discover the
| solution to the problem that leads to you getting 80 billion
| dollars?
| aychedee wrote:
| So, for $4.3 trillion dollars / year we can turn the 43 billion
| tonnes of CO2 we emit per year into oxygen and carbon crust.
| Which is twice the annual revenue for the global oil industry.
| maxerickson wrote:
| That would make it pretty feasible. A 25% reduction in
| consumption (if the activity were purely subtractive from the
| economy, which it probably wouldn't be) is manageable.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Which is twice the annual revenue for the global oil
| industry."
|
| That means that for every $1 the oil industry makes, it is
| creating $2 of debt for future generations.
|
| This is vandalism, pure and simple
| zz865 wrote:
| Yeah we could turn CO2 into coal or we could just stop burning
| coal in the first place.
| franky47 wrote:
| That is assuming it takes less than a year to convert all that
| amount. At the given rate of .1 liter/minute, you'd need a lot
| of those installations or quite the scale-up.
| ericd wrote:
| Well, don't forget the cost to concentrate CO2 from 440 ppm in
| the atmosphere to 10^6 ppm. The current cost of direct air
| capture that I've seen is about $600-$1000/ton (via
| Climeworks).
|
| Capturing CO2 from flue gas at power plants should be a good
| bit cheaper, but I think it's still significant.
| xwdv wrote:
| Any financing options?
| pjc50 wrote:
| That sounds about right, that it costs more to ameliorate the
| problem than can be earned by causing it.
| jarenmf wrote:
| > 92% efficiency in converting a tonne of CO2, using just 230kWh
| of energy. They estimate this equates to a cost of around $100
| per tonne of CO2.
|
| Not sure if this is really competitive enough. Just read
| recently[1][2] that EEMPA based solution can capture at a cost of
| $47
|
| [1]
| http://netl.doe.gov/projects/files/CostAndPerformanceBaselin...
| [2] https://scitechdaily.com/cheaper-carbon-capture-is-on-the-
| wa...
| harg wrote:
| But if you get a load of solid carbon as a byproduct that could
| offset a lot of the energy cost, assuming the solid carbon is
| in a useful form.
| WithinReason wrote:
| Assuming 16 tons per person per year emissions [0], you can
| offset 1 person's carbon footprint for $1600 per year.
|
| [0]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/carbon-costs-
| quantifie...
| flexie wrote:
| Every American uses around 400 gallons of gasoline and 12,000
| kwh electricity per year. So if you put a tax of $2 on each
| gallon of gasoline and 7 cent on every kwh electricity, you
| would finance that.
|
| And once it scales, it will be cheaper and cheaper, jut like
| most other products. With a 10 percent price reduction per
| year, it would be $620 per person in 10 years, roughly the
| same as an internet bill.
|
| In the rest of the world it's even cheaper. The average
| person in the world could be offset for $400 now.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... You are comparing a process that separates CO2 from a
| gas with a process that chemically breaks CO2. Those things do
| not compare.
| WJW wrote:
| That depends on what you are trying to achieve? Sure, the
| captured CO2 is still CO2, but you can put it in an empty gas
| field somewhere and the net effect on atmospheric CO2 (which
| is what we are concerned about with regards to climate
| change) is the same as if you had split apart the molecules.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The process described in the paper can be used only after
| CO2 is separated from the air, not instead of it.
|
| Nevertheless converting CO2 into a solid reduces the volume
| one thousand times and makes its storage very simple.
|
| I doubt that there could be found enough subterranean
| spaces that can be sealed well enough, in which to pump as
| much CO2 as it would be needed to reduce the concentration
| in the air.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes, and as long as you can store it somewhere, all the
| power to you. Just ignore the chemical option and do that.
|
| But anybody wanting to use the carbon or store it on any
| way that is not the limited amount of underground space
| will use both.
| [deleted]
| garyclarke27 wrote:
| Buy Silver
| s_Hogg wrote:
| How much of the cost is the energy? Would hooking it up to a wind
| turbine help?
| wcoenen wrote:
| The article says 230 kWh per ton of CO2, so you can just
| multiply that by a cost per kWh, e.g. 0.07 $/kWh for industry
| in the US.
|
| 230 * 0.07 = 16.1 dollars.
|
| So that suggests that most of the cost is not energy.
| neom wrote:
| I would be remiss not to post the amazing LockPickingLawyer
| videos using Gallium to pwn locks:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/lockpickinglawyer/search?query=Gal...
| cletus wrote:
| So let's do some math. Let's consider natural gas. According to
| the US government [1], natural gas produced 1.358x10^12 kWh of
| power and 5.6x10^8 metric tons of CO2 so 1 metric ton of CO2
| equates to ~2400 kWh of produced power.
|
| This post suggests the energy cost is ~230kWh/ton.
|
| This is an important sanity check because it means that (capital
| costs aside) and if it scales you could technically remain carbon
| neutral for a net output of energy.
|
| While this is of course only in a lab and they mention "battery"
| one should remain skeptical (since pretty much every battery
| "breakthrough" is nothing more than marketing for research
| funding).
|
| This may be in the paper but in this summary I didn't see
| anything about how the CO2 needs to be delivered. Does it need to
| be in a relatively pure form? What sort of preprocessing is
| required?
|
| As for the capital costs, it's hard to say anything concrete here
| other than if silver and Gallium are catalysts, they're both
| relatively cheap at that scale (Gallium seems to be <$250/kg
| according to some quick Googling). Catalysts tend to have a
| lifespan so those aren't one-time costs generally but still.
|
| It's also not clear how much of each material is required.
|
| Not to be a broken record on HN, but I've often said--and I'll
| repeat here--that I don't believe altruism will solve greenhouse
| gas emissions and global warming: it'll only be solved when it
| becomes economic to do so.
|
| Another way of putting that is when the cost of carbon capture
| and/or non-greenhouse gas emitting energy sources is profitable,
| that's when you'll see change.
|
| [1]: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11
| adrian_b wrote:
| "how the CO2 needs to be delivered":
|
| The experiments described in the paper have used pure CO2. The
| conversion process is unlikely to work directly with air,
| because it decomposes CO2 into solid carbon partially oxidated
| and dioxygen.
|
| If one of the products of the catalyzed reaction, i.e. oxygen
| from the air, would be present in a much larger concentration
| than the input substance (CO2), like in the air, the conversion
| reaction will either stop completely or it will be at least
| slowed down a lot.
|
| So besides the costs for the energy and for renewing the silver
| and gallium from time to time and also for the organic solvents
| that might also need to be replaced from time to time, the cost
| of separating CO2 from the air must be added.
|
| Nevertheless, it might still eventually be cheaper than
| alternative methods, as most of them also need to first
| separate the CO2 from the air.
|
| In any case, much more research is needed to scale this from
| experiments in minute quantities to industrial dimensions.
| cletus wrote:
| A big issue with renewable energy, particularly solar and
| wind, is that the power output is variable and an electric
| grid needs a base load to operate.
|
| Now I firmly believe the future here is ultimately space-
| based solar power collectors. I've seen estimates that a
| panel in space around Earth can generate ~7 times the power
| it can on Earth. This is a deep topic but generating power in
| space for use on Earth isn't as crazy as it may sound.
|
| Anyway, another potential application is to use variable
| power output for useful purposes on-site. For example, you
| can extract CO2 directly from the atmosphere and with simply
| chemistry you can make gasoline from that. This is currently
| cost-prohibitive so no one does it.
|
| At some point this may become economic, in which case the
| variable power output won't be an issue. You're now only
| interested in the total output. You also don't lose power
| from transmission or require the capital cost of transmission
| lines.
|
| Perhaps CO2 capture is another potential such application.
| Either the CO2 could be processed on site with a process like
| this and the byproducts (pure carbon and oxygen) can be sold.
| laserbeam wrote:
| > space-based solar power
|
| Cute, but very much off topic. Lets have that discussion on
| an article about energy generation, not about carbon
| capture.
| GordonS wrote:
| > I've seen estimates that a panel in space around Earth
| can generate ~7 times the power it can on Earth
|
| How do you get that power back down to Earth where it can
| be used?
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Presumably, laser beams to heat terrestrial mountains of
| salt. What could possibly go wrong?
|
| /jk
|
| Seriously, I'm curious about this too.
|
| Edit: a quick search shows I was close:
| https://earthsky.org/earth/space-based-solar-energy-
| power-ge...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If you want to place solar panels in a hostile and
| distant environment to triple their efficiency, we have
| the Sahara Desert for that.
|
| That article does not mention inefficiency of space that
| microwave transmission, it is going to wreck that 7x
| advantage.
|
| Also lifting a solar panel from Earth will cost more
| energy than it will ever generate You have to have cities
| and factories in space before any solar collector could
| even be considered.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "I've seen estimates that a panel in space around Earth can
| generate ~7 times the power it can on Earth"
|
| Contrast it with the fact that that panel is 1,000x more
| expensive, and thats a net loss. We are constrained by
| capital cost, not lack of sunlight or anything else.
|
| Also consider transmission losses, orbital solar collectors
| must convert that power into microwaves, which are made of
| photons, then they must be converted back into electrons on
| earth. That inefficiency is compounded by atmospheric water
| absorbing microwaves. (you are heating clouds) You have
| destroyed that 7x advantage.
|
| If you can place a panel in orbit and deliver power to
| Earth, then you can put a million panels in Sahara Desert
| and relay that power anywhere on Earth. Solar panels are
| made of sand, we are not short on sand. If we covered 1% of
| uninhabitable deserts in panels, thay would produce more
| power than we could use, and it would be reliable.
| kortex wrote:
| It's possible this might work with de-oxygenated air. As long
| as the nitrogen does not react with the generated oxygen and
| release NOx, this could be done with an adsorption process,
| which is a lot cheaper and less energy than full air
| separation.
|
| Even then, NOx can be mitigated. This process is fascinating
| in that unlike most "breakthroughs" this has a semblance of a
| chance of scaling.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Preconcentration of CO2 from air makes a lot of sense as you
| can then do various types of industrial chemistry on a pure
| CO2 stream at greater efficiency. From here you can go
| towards either methane and long-chain fuel hydrocarbons
| (Sabatier, modified Fischer-Tropsch, etc) or, as in this
| paper, towards solid carbon forms.
|
| Making something like graphite from pure CO2 has certain
| advantages as well (easier to get purity) and graphite
| electrodes are used in scrap steel recycling and other
| industries.
|
| For comparison, see the ISS use of Sabatier reaction and some
| issues they had with catalyst poisoning:
|
| https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140002591
|
| This indicates that power plant emissions, typically
| contaminated with sulfur / arsenic / mercury / nitrogen etc.
| , at about 10% CO2 as I recall, would be a very poor option
| relative to direct air capture.
|
| As far as scaling, even existing systems (see ISS) could be
| scaled fairly rapidly and would be able to produce enough
| fuel for specialized uses, i.e. plausibly supplying SpaceX /
| ULA/ etc. rocket launches as a first step, then moving to
| supply airports with jet fuel for long-distance travel at a
| much larger scale.
| credit_guy wrote:
| > This is an important sanity check
|
| You have a bug somewhere, I'm not sure where.
|
| Roughly speaking the heat of combustion is proportional to the
| number of atoms of oxygen in the molecules coming out of the
| reaction.
|
| So CH4 + 2 O2 = CO2 + 2 H20
|
| If you hypothetically split CH4 first, you get
|
| CH4 + 2 O2 = (C + 2 H2) + 2 O2 = (C + O2) + (2 H2 + O2) = CO2 +
| 2H20
|
| The first reaction is endothermic, but it absorbs much less
| heat than the heat produced by the second part of the reaction.
|
| So, you can roughly say that the energy coming from burning CH4
| comes half from burning the Carbon and half from burning the
| Hydrogen.
|
| Now, if you can make the reverse reaction CO2 -> C + O2 with
| 100% efficiency, then sure, you get to economically burn CH4
| with zero emissions. But if that reaction has only 50%
| efficiency, then all your (energetic) profit has been wiped
| out.
|
| The article doesn't say what efficiency this envisioned
| reaction has, but I'd be mightily surprised if it were 50%.
|
| Much better to not burn the Carbon to begin with. That is what
| methane pyrolysis [1] tries to do.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis#Methane_pyrolysis_fo...
| nkingsy wrote:
| The article clearly states a claimed 92% efficiency.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Good point. But there are two problems with that claim.
|
| One is about an order a magnitude, the other about a sign.
|
| The first one: if you burn 1kg of pure Carbon, you get 3.67
| kg of CO2 and 32.8 MegaJoules [1], which is the same as
| 32800 kJ or, 32800/3600 kWh. That's 9.11 kWh for each 3.67
| kg of CO2, or 2.4848 kWh/kg. That's quite close to 2500
| kWh/ton.
|
| They are claiming it takes them 230 kWh/ton to reverse this
| reaction. You can see this is an order of magnitude wrong.
| Let's say they meant to say 2300 kWh/ton. If you divide
| that by 2500 kWh/ton you get exactly 92% that they claim.
|
| But here's the second mistake: you need to put more, not
| less energy to split CO2, otherwise you'd get energy for
| free. 2300 kWh/ton is simply impossible. You need to use
| more than that, and actually more than 2500 kWh/ton if you
| don't want to violate the first principle of
| thermodynamics.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_of_combustion#Heat_o
| f_com...
| sacred_numbers wrote:
| Maybe the researchers meant 230 Kwh above the reaction
| energy of pure carbon and oxygen. That makes the math
| check out, since 2,485/(2485+230)=91.5%, which could be
| rounded up to 92%. It would also square up with the
| estimated costs of $100/ton, since industrial electricity
| prices can go as low as 0.03 to 0.04 USD.
|
| I wish I could read the source to verify, but
| unfortunately it's behind an academic publisher paywall.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > They are claiming it takes them 230 kWh/ton to reverse
| this reaction.
|
| I don't think that's a claim in the article. If the
| carbon product was pure in the sense it could be burned
| again then it wouldn't work out. But that's not claimed.
| It's not reduced to carbon!
| photochemsyn wrote:
| These carbon capture and conversion technologies are far more
| promising as a means of feeding atmospheric carbon dioxide
| into industrial 'aerochemicals' (to replace petrochemicals)
| and materials, than as a means of mitigating fossil fuel
| combustion CO2 emissions.
|
| Obtaining a pure stream of CO2 concentrated from 400 ppm
| atmospheric sources is the optional approach for industrial
| chemistry processes (and requires significant upfront energy
| investment), but from here one can go almost anywhere, to
| methane or jet fuel or graphite electrodes or carbon fiber
| building materials or synthetic dyes.
|
| However, it's unlikely these technologies will have much
| effect on reducing atmospheric CO2 levels. They simply
| eliminate the need for natural gas / petroleum / coal as raw
| materials for synthesis of necessary products.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| >I'll repeat here--that I don't believe altruism will solve
| greenhouse gas emissions and global warming: it'll only be
| solved when it becomes economic to do so.
|
| Completely agree. We need governments to ensure externalities
| (both positive and negative) are reflected in market pricing so
| that economic forces can operate efficiently.
|
| Implication: there must be a debt to pay for past and present
| GHG output. It should not be punitive. But it should be clear
| and predictable.
| coryrc wrote:
| > there must be a debt to pay for past ... GHG output
|
| A debt which should be paid by past users, not current users
| who merely share the same country.
| adrianN wrote:
| If step 1 in your climate plan is "resurrect the dead since
| the industrial revolution started", I doubt it will be very
| successful. Or am I misunderstanding you?
| mcdonje wrote:
| So, a robust carbon tax.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| That is the way.
|
| It is however politically impossible in most places.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| A carbon tax is essentially going to hit the average person
| hard. Moreover, the average person has a lot of driving
| they have to do, tax or not. And plenty of rich people
| could ignore the tax and keep driving.
|
| And the political impact would be angry people ready to
| listen climate deniers.
|
| What's needed is a plan to eventually give everyone an
| electric car or some choice, any choice, that lets them do
| their daily business with much lower carbon consumption.
| Maybe taxes can change the behavior of industrial users but
| for consumers, this is totally daft solution.
| imtringued wrote:
| The average person is also getting hit hard by high
| energy prices for fossil fuels regardless of tax rate.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Yes, average person gets hit by rising energy prices.
| Some portion of average people (especially small business
| owners) support demagogue who artificially lowers these
| at heavy costs. Rinse and repeat.
| Maarten88 wrote:
| > A carbon tax is essentially going to hit the average
| person hard.
|
| I think that is just an excuse to not make changes that
| are necessary. Saying that something will hit the
| poor/average person/working family is an argument about
| wealth/cost distribution, which is separate from the
| actual problem.
|
| When we, as humanity, have the natural resources, the
| technology and the labor required to do something that is
| objectively necessary, the only thing that can stand in
| the way is cost/wealth distribution: who gets to pay the
| bill.
|
| So when objectively necessary changes do not happen, the
| only possible reason for that is that maintaining
| wealth/power are more important than suffering the
| consequences of not implementing the change.
| dcow wrote:
| Furthermore, it's not one dimensional. Society would
| respond to a carbon tax. Maybe if your manager or
| director really really needs a team/department on site,
| the company would foot the bill to have you as a carbon
| consuming commuter. We would all adjust behavior in
| response to the tax. Things that obviously are bad for
| the environment are now obviously bad for your wallet and
| need to be justified. At least there aren't that many
| wealthy people so if they want to pay the tax and fly
| around in jets, so be it.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _I think that is just an excuse to not make changes that
| are necessary._
|
| It's not excuse, it's a reason. It's not even the poor
| that will push back here on gas taxes but the somewhat
| well-off but not wealthy. These are the kind of people I
| don't have cultural sympathy with but if you just say
| tell them "oh, you're going to be paying a whole bunch
| for that pickup", you may find you don't get to say that
| after next election.
|
| _When we, as humanity, have the natural resources, the
| technology and the labor required to do something that is
| objectively necessary, the only thing that can stand in
| the way is cost /wealth distribution: who gets to pay the
| bill._
|
| The US has a massively unequal distribution of wealth
| currently. A plan to get the poor to for this problem
| will fail 'cause they don't actually have money.
| IncRnd wrote:
| That is economic today for people who rent out the credits
| that arise by purchasing land then not harvesting the
| trees. That is economic today for people who claim carbon
| credits for purchasing new equipment, where the old was at
| EOL anyway. And so on. The existence of brokers for carbon
| credit sales should tell you something. For real economic
| viability that isn't scam-based, something based in reality
| is needed.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| You're talking about carbon credits, not a carbon tax.
| IncRnd wrote:
| I read that wrong. Thanks!
| anonporridge wrote:
| I've noticed a trend of people trying to suggest we
| already have a carbon tax via carbon credits.
|
| I'm not sure if they're just confused, or trying to sow
| misinformation.
| IncRnd wrote:
| You're inventing things out of whole cloth. I simply
| misread.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| It's remarkable how effectively the fossil fuel industry has
| gotten progressive environmentalists to believe that we can
| solve this problem without carbon tax.
|
| The moment you mention how a carbon tax works (that it's a
| _market_ mechanism) progressives recoil. When evangelizing to
| progressives, I try to focus on "making polluters pay for the
| damage they are doing" (as opposed to making taxpayers bail
| us out) since they are more likely to be persuaded by appeals
| to fairness rather than efficacy.
|
| Similarly, conservatives recoil at "tax" nomenclature, so
| when evangelizing to the , I refer to it as "carbon pricing"
| and emphasize the economic efficiency argument.
|
| In either case, we have a long way to go, politically.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The "polluters" are you and I. We buy the cars, we buy the
| other things, we use electricity and gas and oil in our
| homes and cars.
|
| We, the consumers, will ultimately pay any carbon taxes.
| Which may be appropriate, but let's not be unrealistic
| about who will be paying.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Not all of it. Some of the tax will have to be eaten by
| the producers since the market will not tolerate just any
| price. Then also the tax will make less polluting
| alternatives more viable and thus likely reducing their
| price in the long run.
|
| And of course, we the public consumers will also benefit
| the most from making our industries greener and cleaner.
| malermeister wrote:
| > We buy the cars
|
| Speak for yourself. I haven't owned a car in my life and
| don't plan to change that.
| bagels wrote:
| I'd be willing to bet many of your daily activities
| (eating, using the internet, etc.) involve burning
| hydrocarbons. It's pervasive.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| Ok, but you certainly pollute in other ways.
| eecc wrote:
| Sure, just not that way anyway.
|
| Try again.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Prices aren't determined by costs.
| [deleted]
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Who would pay that debt for past emissions, and what price
| should they pay?
| c1sc0 wrote:
| Boomers. Everything they own.
| [deleted]
| coldtea wrote:
| Let's tax at 50% every private property of a few million.
| That would do it.
| jtms wrote:
| Nothing, forward is the only direction to move if we want
| to have any hope of survival. If we mire ourselves in
| economic finger pointing we will end up doing nothing about
| the actual problem
| smitty1e wrote:
| I'm not sure, but there is little more terrifying short of
| a nuclear accident than the idea of faceless people in an
| office somewhere deciding who gets a pass and who gets
| crushed for sins uncommitted by them.
|
| In short: you hint at tryanny.
| rtpg wrote:
| Perhaps society as a whole should just try to solve these
| problems.
|
| This is the tarpit of market-based solutions: debating
| endlessly about who bears costs, instead of just doing
| collective things collectively. And if you do have markets,
| every middleman and their dog will demand their slice of
| the pie.
| voakbasda wrote:
| The only way to get everyone to participate in a solution
| will be regulation. The last thing that I want is the
| government regulating this market. We will end up with
| another cartel like the oil industry.
| malermeister wrote:
| So what do you suggest then? We do nothing and slowly
| walk towards our demise?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Probably this, yet. When the problem is real, people will
| find real solutions. Or not, but it's not happening now
| anyway. Are you driving less? Have you stopped eating
| beef?
| malermeister wrote:
| When the problem is "real", it will be too late for
| solutions. We need to do something right now. Besides,
| I'd argue the problem is starting to be "real" right now.
| California, Australia, Siberia and Greece were on fire
| this year, Germany had historic floods and the East Coast
| keeps getting devastated by hurricanes.
|
| I also disagree with the tactic of shifting
| responsibility to the individual to avoid doing anything
| where it actually matters. My individual contributions to
| climate change are negligible, this is a collective
| issue. We need to get industry and corporations in check
| and the only way we can do that is with heavy regulation.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| We are on fire every year. Gross mismanagement has made
| it worse.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| You're not wrong, but I'm being realistic about human
| nature. People are not going support heavy regulations
| that make their lives more difficult and expensive, if
| they are working 5 or 6 days a week to pay bills and
| support a family. Some theoretical problem 20 years from
| now is not high on their list of concerns.
| dcow wrote:
| Are wildfires a result of climate change? I though they
| just happened naturally and since we stopped doing
| controlled burns have gotten worse. I'm not disagreeing
| with your general point, there are plenty of signs we
| should be acting now. I'm just always surprised when
| wildfires get linked to climate change.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I think the point is the regions that already had them
| get them worse, and some regions that didn't have them
| now get them.
|
| What global warming does is destabilise the equilibrium
| we had in the global climate system, and one of the
| outcomes of that is more extreme weather. That means for
| example longer and drier droughts which obviously
| contributes to wildfire risk.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Do we need something like... Business, corporations can't do
| one thing: not making money. If they don't and can't pay taxes
| they go bankrupt and can't operate anymore.
|
| Can we have a carbon bankrupt ? If a company can't prove they
| are not emitting CO2 or getting CO2 out of the atmosphere then
| they are not allowed to operate anymore ?
|
| I know it's nickelodeonsimplistic but can't carbon emissions be
| considered more important than money when deciding to allow
| companies to operate ?
| hexane360 wrote:
| The news reporting on this article has been a little
| misleading. First, the main goal of this is _not_ to reduce CO2
| into carbon, but simply to sequester CO2. The "carbonaceous
| sheets" that are produced are "graphene oxide", which is less
| oxidized than CO2 but still highly oxygenated. So the energy
| required is much less than what would be needed to reduce CO2
| completely. But yeah, you won't be able to burn the end
| product.
| mah4k4l wrote:
| Ok makes a hell of a lot more sense now. Thanks for pointing
| that out.
| amelius wrote:
| How much energy does it cost to simply heat CO2 to the point
| where it breaks into its constituents?
| theropost wrote:
| Also keep in mind the limited supply/uses of Gallium at the
| moment, it tends to be a biproduct from other mining
| activities. If suddenly there were a large and scaled demand
| for this material, then I am quite sure we would see a huge
| spike in price in the near/medium term, and future price would
| depend on the new demand, and capabilities to get sufficient
| supply. $250/kg is pretty cheap at the moment;
| 5faulker wrote:
| It's the same story of business and innovation as usual. And
| what about the pollution raw materials can cause....
| lisper wrote:
| > it'll only be solved when it becomes economic to do so.
|
| That's true, but the economics are being badly skewed by not
| properly accounting for the externalities of emissions. If this
| were done (e.g. a global carbon tax) the situation would change
| dramatically.
|
| If you are a young person reading this I would seriously
| consider making this a litmus test for any politician you are
| considering voting for, and urging your peers to do the same.
| Otherwise your generation is in for a (literally!) a world of
| hurt.
| fredgrott wrote:
| They stated it operates at room temp so I am assuming that one
| could in fact pipe in CO2 from factory stacks once some
| processing of cooling the CO2 from the factory stacks has been
| implemented.
|
| Give you an idea. Gen plant burning natural gas produces CO2,
| use some of gen electric to cool the emitted CO2 down then mine
| the result battery artifacts
| api wrote:
| To those who think it sounds impossible, remember that methane
| is CH4 and a good amount of the energy released is attributable
| to those hydrogens getting together with oxygen. So you are
| basically subtracting the yield from carbon.
|
| Wouldn't it be a lot better though to somehow turn CH4 into
| hydrogen and carbon, bury the carbon or use it for uses that
| don't end up in the atmosphere, and burn the hydrogen alone or
| use it in fuel cells? Fuel cells might get you to pretty good
| energy yields.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Not to be a broken record on HN, but I 've often said--and
| I'll repeat here--that I don't believe altruism will solve
| greenhouse gas emissions and global warming: it'll only be
| solved when it becomes economic to do so._
|
| The term "economic" can mean a lot of things. Solar and Wind
| can be cost-effect replacements for many uses of fossil fuel.
| With some regulations and transformation of daily surplus
| energy to other forms, you could get an economy with energy
| costs similar to the present and low carbon usage. So if
| "economic" just means, idk, works in an economy, then it's
| essentially not an important barrier (except the state should
| finance it's efforts with a graduated income tax and not a
| visibly-punishing measures like carbon or at-the-pump taxes,
| instead just making some things eventually prohibited but
| cushioning the blow for those poor or industries want to
| preserve).
|
| But if by "economic", you mean the economy has to just do what
| it "wants" with no intervention at all, well we'll not only
| suffer the disasters of global warming but also unbridled
| pollution.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Gallium cannot be produced at scale because it does not form
| concentrated ores in nature. It cannot be usefully mined
| directly. The only reason it is relatively inexpensive is that
| there is limited demand for the minuscule quantities that are
| currently produced.
|
| Gallium is currently supplied by reprocessing the waste from
| other convenient metal ores to extract the traces of gallium.
| Even if we maximized gallium extraction from these waste
| streams, we are talking about a few thousand tons of gallium
| per year. We produce more _gold_ every year than there is
| practically available gallium.
|
| Unfortunately this is the story with many proposed solutions to
| carbon capture. Many things are possible as a prototype which
| are completely infeasible at the industrial scales required to
| make a dent in atmospheric carbon because the resources don't
| exist to run chemistry at that scale.
| evgen wrote:
| > The only reason [Gallium] is relatively inexpensive is that
| there is limited demand for the minuscule quantities that are
| currently produced.
|
| It is possible that we might be able to find more if we
| actively start looking for it? This would not be the first
| time that what was once a waste product becomes valuable once
| we know how to use it. Regarding gallium itself, its presence
| as basically waste product in bauxite ore suggests we can
| increase production (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar
| ticle/abs/pii/S03014...) and there may be other sources if we
| start searching.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Gallium is found everywhere, it doesn't make sense to
| actively search for it because it doesn't concentrate
| anywhere. _That 's the whole problem._ There is little that
| distinguishes bauxite ore from my backyard in terms of the
| amount of gallium that can be extracted.
|
| The advantage of extracting it from certain ore waste
| streams is two-fold even though they don't contain much
| gallium. First, the chemical processing cost varies with
| the chemistry of the rocks you extract the gallium from,
| and certain types of ore waste such as bauxite, zinc, etc
| are cheaper to deal with. Second, these rocks have already
| been dug out of the ground as part of a mining operation,
| which is much cheaper than strip mining an arbitrary place
| to extract the same trace quantities of gallium -- you get
| to free-ride on the extraction costs of the primary mineral
| someone already paid for. If it doesn't matter where you
| dig, then all you can really optimize for is the processing
| cost of where someone _already_ dug.
|
| It would make no sense to increase bauxite production for
| the purpose of gallium production. Extracting gallium from
| bauxite is only economical to the extent that there is
| healthy demand for the aluminum produced from that bauxite.
| This is common in mining operations -- a secondary mineral
| that cannot be economically mined by itself becomes
| profitably extractable from the same ore if and only if the
| primary mineral is sufficiently profitable. Many less
| common metals are produced solely via secondary extraction
| because they cannot be profitably mined directly even when
| they concentrate.
| bitwize wrote:
| Yeah, basically there's only one solution to the CO2 problem
| that's also the solution with the least political will to
| push it through: deindustrialization.
|
| Everything else relies on miracles and/or unobtainium.
| exporectomy wrote:
| The implication of that is that we should accept climate
| change, is that what you're saying? Deindustrialization
| would probably be worse than climate change so it's likely
| not an option. In case you want deindustrialization, can
| you estimate it consequences in terms of deaths caused or
| some other important metric so we can compare it to climate
| change?
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I think we could do the following; local seasonal food
| farmed as naturally as possible. It's likely to still use
| some carbon, but doing this would massively reduce what's
| used today.
|
| Tax meat production heavily.
|
| Tax air travel heavily and these taxes should increase
| exponentially per journey per person.
|
| Stop shipping goods half way around the world... make the
| things you need locally.
|
| Improve the grid and invest in plans for heating using
| electricity.
|
| Build hundreds of small nuclear plants.
|
| I think that's net zero roughly but it's not possible
| politically even though it's a feasible solution to the
| problem.
| lovecg wrote:
| Surely that's what they were saying about world hunger and
| how depopulation is the only solution before the invention
| of the Haber process?
| pxi wrote:
| The market based approach has a limited shelf life. Once we get
| cooking in the CO2 500ppm+ range, things will become
| increasingly desperate. Then a military based approach will
| start to look attractive. I can't see mankind undertaking
| various geo-engineering activities before first putting out
| fires with firepower.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _don 't believe altruism will solve greenhouse gas emissions
| and global warming: it'll only be solved when it becomes
| economic to do so._
|
| You've listed altruism and economics, but may have discounted
| self-interest-- not financial, but survival. Young adults
| especially are both at an age where they can expect to feel
| some especially nasty impacts of climate change, and at a point
| in their career where they can begin making decisions
| accordingly.
|
| The generations above that have family, children, etc, and that
| too is at least a mix of self interest and , I supposed, a form
| of altruism directed towards your family.
|
| It's not easy for us to think in such timelines and abstract
| outcomes, but we're making progress in that direction.
|
| I'm not saying self-interest in terms of self preservation will
| be _the_ key factor here either, just that it not just about a
| sort of mechanical economic optimization point. At some tipping
| point, economic w / technological advances will converge with
| self preservation. I guess the question is whether or not that
| will happen soon enough to really matter. Economics may be the
| dominant factor now, but the worse things get, the less that
| economics will matter in making decisions, the more that self
| preservation will become dominant.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Global climate change is not something one person or family
| can affect, so I don't understand what form of self-interest
| driven action could impact it.
|
| BTW, the "economic" solution consists of making it in
| everyone's self interest to work against CO2 emissions.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I think environmental issues are the classic tragedy of the
| commons. The first to put aside environmental issues in favor
| of riches will have a disproportionate advantage with a
| proportionate impact. One country burning gas gets cheap fuel
| to expand their industries but only has a marginal increase
| in future global warming and (the worst part) almost no
| impact on today's temperature.
|
| We need more than altruism, which is local sacrifice. We need
| global enforcement and agreement and, I agree with GP,
| incentive.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| This also assumes pure CO2 input. That's perhaps possible if
| you are collecting CO2 fresh off an engine or similar process.
|
| However if you are talking about CO2 already in the air, you
| have a MASSIVE amount of energy required to
| separate/concentrate the CO2 FIRST.
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| Preprint of the paper is available in other parts of this post,
| but it does say this:
|
| > The solid co-contributor of silver-gallium rods ensures a
| cyclic sustainable process
|
| Unsure if this means the gallium is consumed or not during the
| process.
| sabujp wrote:
| does the semiconductor industry not use large quantities of
| GaAs? Has the industry replaced its use with something else?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium_arsenide
| punnerud wrote:
| The cost of 230kWh is around EUR30 in Norway (lower during the
| summer), the CO2 quota price is around EUR60/ton.
|
| Norway is now building pipes to pump CO2 down to the old oil
| wells.
|
| Seems like it starting to get economically profitable to grab
| CO2 from the air and sell the quota?
| londons_explore wrote:
| > Norway is now building pipes to pump CO2 down to the old
| oil wells.
|
| You should know that injecting old oil wells with CO2 helps
| them produce more oil. The CO2 becomes carbonic acid under
| pressure, which then dissolves pores in the rock wider,
| allowing more oil and gas to escape.
|
| Also, it looks pretty doubtful that CO2 will stay in gas
| wells for a long time. Eventually it'll find some fissure and
| due to the acidity any crack will be eroded wider till all
| the CO2 comes out like a fizzy drink.
|
| But don't worry. Oil and gas companies will happily collect
| government subsidies for pumping CO2 underground to get more
| oil out to sell, in the knowledge that when the gas escapes
| in a few decades they can act all surprised...
| ericd wrote:
| Yeah, it's been branded "enhanced oil recovery", and iirc
| it's currently the most economically rewarding use for CO2.
| HPsquared wrote:
| That's interesting, I'd always thought it was more the CO2
| acting as a solvent to flush out the oil. Is there any
| reading material on this?
| punnerud wrote:
| https://www.equinor.com/en/magazine/carbon-capture-and-
| stora...
| lrem wrote:
| Note that EUR30 is obtained with pure CO2 as input. What's
| the cost of going from air to that? Or even from exhaust to
| that?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Most developed nations produce circa 10 tons of CO2 per
| person. Assume EUR100 to cover capital costs and
| inefficiency.
|
| At ~EUR1000 per person we could easilly afford to go CO2
| neutral. It's just a question of will
| andi999 wrote:
| So reducing petrol demand (let's say by switching to electric
| cars) might reduce the economic incentives of carbon capture
| significantly, interesting thought.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The economics of a natural carbon market will never work out.
| There is simply too much carbon available for too low of a
| price.
|
| The carbon capture market NEEDS to have public
| funding/intervention to make it profitable.
|
| Now, carbon capture will be important if we want to have a
| chance of undoing atmospheric CO2, but IMO, while now it the
| time to invest in research it's not the time to deploy. More
| public/government funds need to be pushed towards limiting
| CO2 output and eliminating sources of CO2.
|
| The notion of carbon capture is much the same as having urine
| capture in a swimming pool. There is no way it won't cost
| more energy to remove than it produced when released.
| seventhtiger wrote:
| Urine capture would work great if it's attached to every
| person.
|
| Even with renewable energy and electric transportation, if
| we could keep using oil but not produce CO2, then we
| should. Cheap energy is lifting humanity out of poverty.
| adrianN wrote:
| You're assuming that the carbon capture process is
| cheaper than the shrinking price advantage of fossil
| fuels over renewables.
| seventhtiger wrote:
| I'm not. I'm just leaving room for an equilibrium that
| includes oil.
|
| I don't believe we'll be able to take cheap sources of
| power offline without affecting the bottom line for the
| developing world. Poor countries can't make the choice to
| regulate themselves into worse conditions.
|
| Centralizing carbon capture at power plants can be cost
| effective. The tech is almost within reach. It will
| vastly increase the amount of available energy in the
| world.
| cletus wrote:
| Electrifying vehicles at a mass scale actually has a lot of
| problems, not the least of which is does the grid support the
| ability to transmit that much power. In many places it does
| not.
|
| That aside, electrifying vehicles doesn't necessarily reduce
| emissions significantly. It may simply shift the emissions
| from individual vehicles to the power plant that produces the
| power that charges the cars.
|
| Now this is nearly always a net positive: large-scale fossil-
| fuel burning power generation is pretty much always more
| efficient (even accounting for transmission power loss) but
| the point is that emissions don't go to zero.
|
| Another interesting thought: the price of gasoline acts as a
| barrier to vehicle usage to some degree. As in, knowing you
| have to spend $50 to fill up the tank affects your behaviour
| to varying degrees. Well with electric vehicles depending on
| where you live that marginal cost might be <$5 per tank-
| equivalent of range.
|
| I wonder if that means that with a fully electrified vehicle
| fleet, people will end up driving more because of the lower
| marginal costs.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > people will end up driving more because of the lower
| marginal costs.
|
| I suspect places will have to move to either London-style
| congestion charges or milage-based road taxes to offset
| this. With an admittedly big loss of privacy, you could
| even price at the level of individual roads and put Uber-
| style surge pricing on the roads themselves.
|
| Another possibility is that the "markets in everything"
| self-driving companies win and cars become a capital asset
| that can work itself. No reason to drive your car around
| uselessly if you can rent it out instead, and _in theory_
| this could result in fewer cars. However I 'm skeptical.
| dooferlad wrote:
| Grid stress in the first world isn't a big problem since
| electric vehicles can charge when the grid is under less
| pressure. The demand curve over a day has a reasonably
| predictable shape and EV charging can often be done when
| wholesale prices are low. Of course we will need to
| increase capacity, but that can be done over time.
|
| Fossil power to generate electricity that then powers your
| car is less carbon intensive than just using an internal
| combustion engine. The overhead of getting oil out of the
| ground, refining it and transporting it is big. You then
| lose lots of energy as heat as you run your engine.
| chipsa wrote:
| Average US driver goes 13.5kmi/year. This is about 36mi/
| day. Most cars will get 2-4 mi/kWh, so this is about
| 12kWh/day. Average charging of like 8 hours gives about 1.5
| kW over night. This isn't nothing, but it's a bunch less
| than people think about. I was regularly driving off of
| what a standard 120v socket would supply. (Not right now,
| because I can no longer charge overnight, due to a recall)
|
| Also grid power can become more green if more green sources
| come online, but your gas powered car will always be gas
| powered.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I remember when EVs where a pointless toy for rich people
| to flaunt their wealth, now they're causing problems by
| letting poor people drive more. That's some remarkble
| progress they've made while still somehow remaining vaguely
| problematic.
| halaahmed wrote:
| I get how you could use this to take solar energy and pull CO2
| out of the air, but the article mentions using it in cars, which
| makes no sense. You're going to use more energy than you get from
| burning gas to then capture the carbon?
| mah4k4l wrote:
| So you can separate it to oxygen and carbon at a 92% efficiency
| for EUR30 max or something? If you could now burn the newly
| donned carbon again and maybe enhance the burning with the
| harvested oxygen then how much is that worth as energy produced
| monetarily? Maybe not the eternal mover but just saying this
| might just be how this will play out in real life in the end
| (once again).
| mikewarot wrote:
| How can they capture 92% of the CO2 generated by burning coal for
| less energy created by burning it, creating steam, running the
| steam through a turbine which then runs a generator, through a
| switching yard, and out to the world? The Carnot limit is far
| less than half, and yet this can get most of the Carbon back,
| with a balance of almost half of the energy? I did the math on
| this in the thread about this last week, and it seems like over-
| unity, a big red flag.
|
| The need for the worlds supply of gallium and a lot of silver and
| other chemicals signals more red flags.
|
| HN Story 8 days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873458
|
| My response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28874831
| colechristensen wrote:
| The carbon output isn't pure carbon, but carbon oxides. Some of
| the oxygen is stripped from CO2 and the result is carbon-oxygen
| solids which are apparently industrially useful.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| The problem is that if you turn around and use those carbon
| materials in industry, then you really haven't captured the
| carbon at all. All that would accomplish is playing an
| emissions shell game, allowing fossil fuel consumers to shift
| the emissions to someone else.
|
| For carbon capture to be useful from a climate perspective,
| we have to actually lock away the consumed carbon somewhere
| where it can't enter the fast carbon cycle.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Depends on what you do with the thing when you're done with
| it. Dumping it in a landfill after a decade would indeed by
| carbon capture.
| anoncow wrote:
| Will this result in an increase in O2 levels? If yes, what risk
| does that bring?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| O2 levels are currently decreasing. In a thousand years we will
| run out
| jjcon wrote:
| Try >1 billion years from now
| nominatronic wrote:
| Giant predatory dragonflies the size of seagulls, if the fossil
| record is anything to go by.
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101029132924.h...
| IshKebab wrote:
| Not an issue. The oxygen release is just oxygen that was
| already in the atmosphere before it was used to burn oil.
|
| Even if that weren't the case, the atmosphere is 21% oxygen and
| 0.04% CO2.
| steeve wrote:
| This is great. That said, to put things into perspective, the CO2
| surplus we have to offset is 20 _giga_ tonnes of CO2 _every
| year_.
| beders wrote:
| If we would charge the fossil fuel industry for the cost of
| destroying the environment, the millions of lives lost due to
| pollution, it would become infeasible to pump or mine more stuff
| out of the ground.
|
| We don't need technological solutions, we need political
| solutions. Now
| vixen99 wrote:
| No, you and I kept up the demand on the fossil fuel industry
| without which it would not exist and all of us went along with
| it and now you want _them_ to pay for your and my indulgence.
| How sweetly ironic! It 's never our fault, is it?
| malermeister wrote:
| This is a classic case of victim blaming. You and I didn't
| "keep up demand" because we wanted to, we "kept up demand"
| because it was the only option available to heat our homes.
|
| It's not our fault the industry didn't provide us with
| alternatives.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Whether you blame the fossil fuel industry or not, they
| don't have the cure to their destruction in their back
| pocket or something.
|
| Even if you seized all the stocks and bonds of the fossil
| fuel industry, you wouldn't have the money required to
| solve this problem and you wouldn't have a plan to solve
| the problem.
|
| _It 's not our fault the industry didn't provide us with
| alternatives._
|
| It's not really the job of a given industry to provide
| alternatives. That job, in a modern democratic society,
| devolves to the state. The US state certainly failed there
| and was corrupted by private industry (auto and petroleum
| certainly). But the only way out is the state stepping up
| and moreover, the state stepping up with statist solutions
| - building things (public transit), requiring things
| (electric cars), prohibiting things (CO2 generating
| production processes) and requiring things (Non-CO2
| generating things and possibly/eventually sequestering).
| Honestly, I'd see anyone thinking taxes or credits could be
| the solution as part of the problem.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Well, well, well...
|
| The political solution were nuclear plants in the 70's. They
| were damned by the Ecologists (at least in Europe). We are
| reaping what we sowed.
|
| Where do you want the energy to come from?
| adrianN wrote:
| Not building more nuclear in the seventies probably was a bad
| decision. But today it is not at all clear that nuclear is
| the cheapest solution for carbon-free energy. Neither is it
| clear whether we can scale nuclear quickly enough.
| [deleted]
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