[HN Gopher] U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 fr...
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U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 from atmosphere
Author : dane-pgp
Score : 186 points
Date : 2021-11-14 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| cletus wrote:
| I've said this repeatedly here: the world won't address climate
| change even if it's mildly inconvenient to do so, let alone the
| massive endeavours that have been proposed thus far.
|
| The solution will be economic.
|
| Want to replace fossil fuels with cleaner energy sources? It
| won't happen until those alternatives are cheaper.
|
| When energy is sufficiently cheap or the byproducts are
| sufficiently valuable, that's when carbon extraction from the
| atmosphere will make sense.
|
| I've seen some ideas for this. One is to use renewable energy to
| extract CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into gasoline. That's
| actually not that hard. It's just chemistry after all.
| Alternatives are things like graphene.
|
| There are places in the world where this could make sense. A
| given area might be remote such that building pipes of delivering
| such fuel is cost-prohibitive. Likewise, the cost of extending an
| electric grid might be too high. Or it simply may not be feasible
| because of politics.
|
| This can negate the disadvantage solar and wind have in being
| variable power output and/or simply using a hydrocarbon fuel as a
| means of storing excess energy.
|
| This would technically be carbon neutral not carbon negative but
| it'd be a start.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Want to replace fossil fuels with cleaner energy sources? It
| won't happen until those alternatives are cheaper"
|
| We are going to go extinct with that attitude - the laws on
| nature do not owe us a cheaper method of producing energy.
|
| The Moneyed classes have never given up anything willingly: the
| end of monarchy, the end of slavery and even labour laws were
| won in blood.
|
| Its likely to be the same with climate change
| PeterisP wrote:
| > The Moneyed classes have never given up anything willingly:
| the end of monarchy, the end of slavery and even labour laws
| were won in blood. Its likely to be the same with climate
| change
|
| This seems to be a very valid observation. However, it's
| worth noting that with respect to climate change, it's nto
| about some mystical "0.1%" but rather in this case the
| "moneyed classes" include the vast majority of the first
| world citizens, which (as you state) are very unlikely to
| give up their privilege willingly unless the "global south",
| who will suffer the worst parts of the climate change first,
| would win that concession through blood.
|
| However, as a counterpoint, nuclear weapons do act as a
| reasonably effective veto in conflict escalation.
| cletus wrote:
| > We are going to go extinct with that attitude
|
| I understand your point and I agree (within limits) but that
| makes it no less true. Side note: total extinction of the
| human race is incredibly unlikely at this point and certainly
| not from climate change. That's not to say that huge numbers
| of us won't die in the process.
|
| > the laws on nature do not owe us a cheaper method of
| producing energy
|
| Of course not but increasing fossil fuel costs ultimately
| make other forms of energy production economic.
|
| > The Moneyed classes have never given up anything willingly:
| the end of monarchy, the end of slavery and even labour laws
| were won in blood.
|
| I agree but that's really a whole separate topic. The
| unwillingness of the ultra-wealthy to pay for the society
| that makes their wealth possible and the legions of people
| who adamantly oppose the ultra-wealthy just being slightly
| less ultra-wealthy is a recipe for disaster.
|
| The ultimate form of wealth redistribution is war and
| revolution.
| mikesabbagh wrote:
| Maybe instead of paying 100$ for a ton of CO2 captured, add a CO2
| tax of few $ to every ton released
| exyi wrote:
| "that would hurt the economy however" ...
| throwaway69123 wrote:
| If they did this nuclear power would become cheap...
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Ok, you just killed the US steel industry and several others.
| Massive amounts of manufacturing have moved to other industries
| to avoid the tax. US economy is now significantly less
| competitive. What's the next move?
| istjohn wrote:
| Just tax imports from countries that don't have an equivalent
| carbon tax.
| grayfaced wrote:
| If it costs $100 to remove, then that should set the price. If
| you can set a reasoned price on a externality then charging
| anything less is subsidizing the pollution.
| novok wrote:
| I agree that creating an upper bound price is powerful,
| because it economically incentivizes those companies to
| figure out cheaper ways to save on that tax, like not
| emitting in the first place :p
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Why not look at it as costing $10 tax plus $90 worth of steel
| bars in terms of prevention? Or at least something that
| includes both the positive (stuff is good, jobs are good) and
| negative externalities (carbon is bad).
| Sapere_Aude wrote:
| When people only knew basic biology and physics,... CO2 is good
| for the plants, which in turn is good for everyone else and no,
| CO2 is not the evil it is being made out by these corporate
| elites that want to lower everyone else's living standards.
|
| The whole climate agenda is a farce and a money making, global
| resource control scheme.
|
| Check out https://www.iceagefarmer.com/ or one of the many other
| brilliant sites delving into the elites documents analyzing them.
|
| These people pushing this agenda couldn't care less about it all,
| look at their actions, not just at their lips moving. They don't
| want to "save the environment", it's wealth redistribution and
| deindustrialization. It's economics!
|
| They want their technocracy, which is a system that is
| totalitarian, anti-capitalist, somewhat fascist and socialist,
| with everything, even prices, based on resources not on demand or
| supply.
|
| Don't believe me, listen to the former IPCC head when he was in
| office he said it himself:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20101122162022/http://www.nzz.ch...
|
| Read Patrick M. Woods books about Technocracy as well, one of the
| foremost experts on the history of the ideology of technocracy.
|
| Oh and by the way... look at climate gate and the hockey stick
| graph controversy with Michael Mann.
|
| We had the Medieval Warming Period too, by the way, where it was
| a lot warmer than it was here. They had vinyards in the UK and
| Greenland was actually green where they even had livestock and
| farming.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Your only argument is that CO2 is good for the plants. It's a
| bit light and does not really account for the cycle of carbon
| on the planet. It's like saying, since sun is good for the
| health, fuck the ozone layer of the atmosphere haha. So now I
| am quite weary of visiting "Ice age farmer"'s personal website.
| Please get out of your information bubble, it's not too late.
|
| Btw I rather prefer my own conspiracy theory that the most
| wealthy on the planet are already old, do not care about what
| happens after they die and don't want to change anything that
| might affect profits on which rest their privileges. I don't
| any secret documents to prove it though. Just a feeling.
| Sapere_Aude wrote:
| No, of course it's not my sole argument. I have more than two
| dozens well researched books full with arguments for and
| mostly against this bunk science which is underpinning
| "climate change" and the CO2 lie.
|
| I just don't have the time to argue with internet people over
| such things, there are enough scientists out there disproving
| the silly notion CO2 or humans are is to blame for "climate
| change", a term that has been used since their "global
| warming" phrase has become a burden. All of their predictions
| were wrong over the last 100 years and their fear mongering
| is completely based on falsified data and corporate science.
|
| You don't need any "secret documents" to prove that there is
| an agenda behind it all, since they are publicly available
| and pretty easy to access from their sites and all of their
| wonderful front companies. Just start reading the UN's Agenda
| 2030 document.
|
| If you actually looked into history then you'll see that much
| of what has happened from WW1 onwards was an effort by
| wealthy people, dynasties in finance etc., to build a world
| of their liking, which gives them top down control via a lot
| of fronts.
|
| Check out who owns the world economy. It's BlackRock and
| Vanguard, the latter owning the former. Then there are a lot
| of foundations and NGO/NPOs which have their function of
| control and wealth funnelling as well, connecting finance,
| business, politics and the media.
|
| The "climate change" bullshit is for natural resource and
| social control. The carbon credits are nothing more than a
| new financial product and their green governance guidelines
| are for leverage. Nothing about it is about saving the earth
| or the environment.
|
| This is provable and not "just a feeling".
| krisrm wrote:
| I do worry about the oversight and auditing of such metrics. The
| article does refer to the problem of "I planted X trees therefore
| I removed Y carbon", when that is true only under particular
| conditions.
| AndrewThrowaway wrote:
| I guess you need to plant X trees, wait Y years for them to
| accumulate Z carbon and then bury all the trees M meters
| underground to stay there forever.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| "Forever" is over ambitious.
|
| I'd pile them up in some desert. Should last a few centuries.
| dntrkv wrote:
| Until they catch fire and release that CO2 right back into
| the atmosphere.
|
| We've seen this happen with carbon capture programs
| already.
| datameta wrote:
| A forest will only grow as a carbon sink on the century
| timescale, which is the window in which we irreversibly enter
| headlong into the anthropocene or mitigate our global
| anthopogenic effects. We don't have to plan for burying them.
| thatcat wrote:
| That's incorrect, if you look into regenerative agriculture
| you'll see that soil carbon content can be increased from 1
| to 8 percent in less than a decade. Carbon sequestration
| isn't just from biomass above the soil, it also occurs
| through carbohydrate transfer to microbes and as a result
| of the increase in microbial biomass in soils.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It's strange from an environmental "culture" standpoint (the
| treehugger epithet, "save the trees"), but to truly get a good
| carbon sink out of planted forests you then need to cut them
| down, bury them, and plant more ones.
|
| Which is basically what happens if we use wood for all our
| housing and as many consumer products as possible and chuck
| them in a landfill.
|
| But yes, lies, damn lies, and accounting is definitely a danger
| to any environmental regulation. It has been for decades, all
| the industry players know how to game the system:
|
| - no real penalties
|
| - insiders in the regulatory offices
|
| - hide large amounts of pollution from inspectors
|
| - accumulate penalties and lawsuits? Start new corp, transfer
| assets, declare bankruptcy for the old corporation
|
| - industry-wide penalties? Offload that back to the government
| (that is, society) with lobbying and rescue funds and other
| business subsidies
| nabakin wrote:
| https://archive.md/GUDlj
| ratboy666 wrote:
| Reminds me of:
|
| https://dilbert.com/strip/2019-02-12
| version_five wrote:
| At a first read, this is great, because it's apolitical. It's
| about innovation, and is positive, I.e. doing something instead
| of telling people not to do something. For once this seems like
| something a government should be doing. I'm almost suspicious I
| missed something.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Oh this is very political. You just need to follow the money.
| Basically carbon offsetting is the notion of adding carbon to
| our atmosphere by continuing to e.g. burn coal or gas and by
| offsetting that with carbon capture.
|
| The problem with that is that it is kind of expensive. To the
| point where it would be cheaper to simply stop burning stuff
| and maybe do something cleaner instead. By instead committing
| to lowering cost to 100$ per tonne, the US is basically
| announcing subsidizing the continued dumping of CO2 in our
| atmosphere by making it cheaper to green-wash that business
| with carbon offsetting. That is going to inevitably involve
| some creative bookkeeping. The net effect of that will be lots
| more carbon ending up in the atmosphere than actually captured.
| Courtesy of the US tax payer.
|
| The best way to capture carbon is to leave it in the ground.
| GOONIMMUNE wrote:
| How does "leaving it in the ground" get us back to 280 ppm?
| diordiderot wrote:
| Imagine a boat filling with water, you would want to plug
| the whole before you start bailing out water
| SECProto wrote:
| Imagine the first hole has been leaking for 200 years,
| and also getting a new hole each year. Also each hole
| grows every year. The boat is on track to be totally sunk
| in a couple decades.
|
| You probably want to start bailing immediately, also
| start plugging holes immediately. Except our technologies
| for bailing aren't practical yet (and may never be). If
| we don't plug the holes, we'll sink. If we don't start
| bailing, we'll sink. If we do both immediately, we might
| still sink but we've got a better chance.
| DantesKite wrote:
| It's not clear to me 280ppm is actually ideal, because
| below 150ppm, most plant life on Earth begins to die from
| the lack of CO2 in the atmosphere. It takes a couple
| generations for plants to adapt (which they can), but I
| don't imagine most crops and forests will survive the
| transition well.
|
| I actually think where we're at is relatively decent. We
| know what's happening, can reliably predict certain storms.
|
| Definitely don't want to go any higher, but going in the
| opposite direction for too long is entering ice age status.
|
| The goal shouldn't be to adhere to a specific number, but
| identify an acceptable range/boundary.
| dataflow wrote:
| > I actually think where we're at is relatively decent.
| We know what's happening, can reliably predict certain
| storms.
|
| You mean aside from the massive wildfires, depleting
| groundwater with droughts in so many parts of the world,
| etc.? The status quo hits the 'sweet spot' for you?
| DantesKite wrote:
| The observation I'm making is that we know what the
| bounded risks are. We don't know what the lower bounds
| (or upper bounds) might do. We've planted lots of
| vegetation that depends on the growth of CO2 levels year
| after year (to some degree). It's not clear to me that if
| it gets too low that would be a good thing.
|
| By the way, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't decrease
| the CO2 levels. We should. I'm trying to have a nuanced
| and interesting discussion about a very complex
| phenomena.
|
| Each of those problems you brought up can also be
| mitigated with proper engineering as well.
|
| Take for example how Israel effectively solved the
| drought problem. Now that's an exceptional case and it
| wouldn't be logistically feasible to expect every nation
| to dedicate so much of their GDP to such problems. I'm
| just trying to suggest there are other variables at play,
| besides moving CO2 levels up and down like a thermometer.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Those wildfires are not new, and are more a factor of
| humans over meddling (putting out every tiny fire instead
| of letting nature do it's thing). Global warming plays a
| part but it's not as if nature was without forest fires
| pre-man.
|
| Likewise droughts are just as much caused by misuse of
| water resources than they are changes in rainfall.
| California in particular has no business having cities as
| large as it does given their groundwater situation - and
| that has been before global warming accelerated.
| dataflow wrote:
| California is not the only place on earth dealing with
| severe ground depletion, droughts, or wildfires.
|
| And it's not like putting the blame somewhere else
| somehow changes the reality.
| rcxdude wrote:
| There is a substantial time lag between the concentration
| of carbon changing and the climate reaching its new
| equilibrium. Even if we stopped emitting carbon today the
| warming would continue for some time. So if you're OK
| with what it's like today then you still need to take
| some carbon out of the atmosphere to keep it like this.
| DantesKite wrote:
| Yes I agree with you.
| csee wrote:
| It obviously doesn't and they never claimed that it did.
| The point is that it's cheaper on the margin to stop
| polluting than it is to keep polluting and then clean it up
| afterwards.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I think OP meant it's apolitical in the sense that it can be
| done without any laws being passed, or summits like COP26, by
| anyone with some money.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > it's apolitical
|
| Managing access and impact on shared resources like the
| environment is political to the maximum level.
|
| > It's about innovation, and is positive
|
| Innovation is not automatically positive. The idea that
| technology can magically solve all problems is techno-optimism
| and it's a very ideological position.
|
| > is positive, I.e. doing something instead of telling people
| not to do something
|
| Telling people not to do something is not negative.
| hannob wrote:
| > At a first read, this is great, because it's apolitical.
|
| This is a strange statement to make about DAC. Once you think
| about what that means there's a lot of thorny political issues.
|
| Removing carbon from the air to store it permanently does not
| give you anything economically. Someone's going to have to have
| to pay for it. Is that people who made their wealth based on
| fossil fuels? People who emit most or who did so in the past?
| Or everyone?
|
| Don't get me wrong: I'm all in favor of supporting development
| of this tech. But there are complicated political questions to
| be answered. Framing this as "apolitical" is probably not going
| to help.
| dymk wrote:
| Side stepping the "is it political" part (which I have no
| interest in discussing- it's a tarpit)...
|
| There is an economical advantage to reducing CO2 from the
| environment. It gives you an environment that humans can
| thrive in (by way of being an environment that the current
| food chain can thrive in). It's hard to consider investing in
| the future when you think it might be apocalyptical. Easier
| if you think there is a future for humanity.
| hannob wrote:
| There is an advantage for society as a whole, but for the
| person running a single DAC machine the advantage is
| neglegible. (Which is kinda the inverse why climate
| mitigation is so hard to begin with - avoiding emissions
| doesn't give the person doing so a lot of advantage.)
| jseliger wrote:
| It's something the government is already doing, in part:
| there's a DOE DAC RFP on the street now:
| https://seliger.com/2021/11/04/grant-writers-and-climate-cha...
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Imagine that tomorrow someone came and said that they have found
| a technique to remove any arbitrary amount of carbon dioxide for
| a trivial cost. What do you think that would do to the world?
| Whoever controls that is the most powerful person in the world
| because they can literally suffocate all life on the surface.
|
| Carbon capture technology is more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
| Just convert the carbon to biomass. Just plant trees.
| dataflow wrote:
| I'm not sure if you mean this seriously but even with a miracle
| technology it's going to be hard to remove CO2 from the
| atmosphere at dangerous levels without risking serious
| repercussions to yourself.
| bobcostas55 wrote:
| You can remove CO2 extremely cheaply using olivine today, this is
| a completely fake problem.
| Supermancho wrote:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S17505...
|
| Relevant:
|
| Qualitative proposals to control atmospheric CO2 concentrations
| by spreading crushed olivine rock along the Earth's coastlines,
| thereby accelerating weathering reactions, are presently
| attracting considerable attention. This paper provides a
| critical evaluation of the concept, demonstrating
| quantitatively whether or not it can contribute significantly
| to CO2 sequestration. The feasibility of the concept depends on
| the rate of olivine dissolution, the sequestration capacity of
| the dominant reaction, and its CO2 footprint. Kinetics
| calculations show that offsetting 30% of worldwide 1990 CO2
| emissions by beach weathering means distributing of 5.0 Gt of
| olivine per year. For mean seawater temperatures of 15-25 degC,
| olivine sand (300 mm grain size) takes 700-2100 years to reach
| the necessary steady state sequestration rate and is therefore
| of little practical value. To obtain useful, steady state CO2
| uptake rates within 15-20 years requires grain sizes <10 mm.
| However, the preparation and movement of the required material
| poses major economic, infrastructural and public health
| questions. We conclude that coastal spreading of olivine is not
| a viable method of CO2 sequestration on the scale needed. The
| method certainly cannot replace CCS technologies as a means of
| controlling atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
|
| P.S. Counterpoint:
|
| This is from a preofessor in the Netherlands, 2016 He's giving
| lots of strategies, other than "Olivine all the things":
| http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/07/olivine-weathering-t...
| This is a whitepaper from that professor 2017:
| https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=...
|
| His own summarized blogpost, where he is representing the
| "Olivine Foundation": https://smartstones.nl/the-rate-of-
| olivine-weathering-an-exp...
|
| So I'm thinking this is probably a good foundation to start
| from. How long before someone can convince the US, much less
| China to olivine their fields?
|
| This is not a fake problem. It's a series of problems, but I
| concede that olivine is a good way to go.
| detaro wrote:
| > _extremely cheaply_
|
| What's that in numbers, so we can compare to the number aimed
| for here?
| bobcostas55 wrote:
| Probably <$15/ton if you do it at scale. Here's a good
| primer: https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/pc0r
| eb/an_a...
| Supermancho wrote:
| This is from a preofessor in the Netherlands, 2016 He's
| giving lots of strategies, other than "Olivine all the
| things": http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/07/olivine-
| weathering-t...
|
| This is a whitepaper from that professor 2017: https://www.
| scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=...
|
| His own summarized blogpost, where he is representing the
| "Olivine Foundation": https://smartstones.nl/the-rate-of-
| olivine-weathering-an-exp...
|
| So I'm thinking this is probably a good foundation to start
| from. How long before someone can convince the US, much
| less China to olivine their fields?
|
| This is not a fake problem. It's a series of problems. I
| have edited a previous post in the thread to concede the
| technical effectiveness of this solution.
| blue1 wrote:
| from wikipedia: "All the CO2 that is produced by burning one
| liter of oil can be sequestered by less than one liter of
| olivine."
|
| Doesn't that require a monstrous amount of olivine to obtain
| significant effects?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| We burn monstrous amount of oil, Conservation of mass.
|
| A liter of oil produces 3 kilos of CO2, density of rocks is
| 3-4 kilos per liter.
| worik wrote:
| What about compost?
|
| Surely the best place to sequester carbon is in topsoil where we
| can use if to grow food.
|
| I have not done the maths, but I do do a lot of composting myself
| and it makes me wonder as I watch my soil get deeper.
| throaway46546 wrote:
| Doesn't composting actually release greenhouse gasses?
| baron816 wrote:
| Seems to me that everything becomes much easier if we just get
| fusion right. Carbon removal would be cheap at that point,
| correct?
|
| I'd like to see governments band together and offer up a $1
| trillion prize for whomever comes up with a scalable fusion power
| plant, which would then be released to the public domain.
| exyi wrote:
| Or just put a ton of solar plants into the US deserts. it's
| super cheap now, I doubt fusion will ever be cheaper than just
| collecting whatever sun sends to us. And for carbon removal you
| don't need a stable electricity source
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I don't think fusion is coming soon enough to be part of the
| plans for Climate Change. People working on fusion reactors
| have been misleading the public about progress. They have been
| using a "Q" value (energy in versus energy out) to describe
| some internal process rather than the entire process. So when
| they say something like "67% efficiency" they really meant "1%
| efficiency."
|
| 1. https://whyy.org/segments/fusion-energy/
| TillE wrote:
| Even building boring old nuclear fission plants is far too
| slow! We need big changes now, not in 5-10 years, and
| definitely not in (really optimistically for fusion) 25+
| years.
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| Bio CCS using the ocean. Nothing else can be cheaper than letting
| nature do 99% of the work. That is if there's the will to do it.
|
| Also, Putin is mostly fine with climate change because Russia
| (and possibly Canada) will be arguably the disproportionate net
| winner in a 2.5 C world.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Wouldn't it be more efficient to remove CO2 from the sea where it
| has been accumulating as the oceans act as sinks for atmospheric
| pollutants and ocean acidification is actually more of a problem
| in the short term?
| [deleted]
| MicahKV wrote:
| Been a while since I read up on this, but I think the problem
| is the energy cost of extracting CO2 from sea water makes it a
| wash at least in terms of CO2 reduction.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| I had this thought too, an aqueous solution feels like it ought
| to be much easier to do chemistry with. But I haven't heard of
| anyone working on it.
| [deleted]
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > The Department of Energy's Carbon Negative Earthshot seeks to
| slash the cost of carbon removal to $100 a tonne by the end of
| the decade
|
| At 40 gigatonnes a year, that would be $4 trillion, which is
| about 5% of Gross World Product.[0] It's probably still cheaper
| to avoid emitting the CO2 in the first place, but that does put
| an upper bound on the cost of reaching net zero.
|
| Of course, no one wants to take a voluntary 5% pay cut, but that
| figure (if it's correct) does make it harder to argue that "we
| can't afford" to do anything about CO2 levels, or that tackling
| climate change requires us all to stop flying or heating our
| homes.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| 40 gigatonnes is just the "yearly deficit".
|
| That's just for carbon neutrality. We have put 2 teratons of
| carbon into the atmosphere since industrialization.
|
| Yes we probably don't need to remove all of that, but at least
| 1 teraton is probably a very good idea, by trees, olivine,
| seeding oceans, pumping into the ground (which I think
| eventually comes back out.
|
| This is kind of like the mainstream reporting on the budget
| deficit, which always concentrates on the YEARLY deficit (2.77
| trillion) versus 129 trillion overall.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Well reaching net zero effective emissions would be a good
| start at least, we're not even close to that yet right now.
| DanHulton wrote:
| Can you imagine only needing to take a 5% pay cut and just
| _solving_ global warming? I'd sign up in a heartbeat.
|
| We're all going to end up paying a lot more than 5%, some of us
| a _lot more._
| stupendousyappi wrote:
| That's based on two very cautious geoengineering approaches
| that have virtually no negative side effects. If governments
| were willing to consider other geoengineering approaches, I
| think that number could be driven down significantly. My
| favorite candidate is ocean-wave-based olivine weathering, as
| proposed by Project Vesta. They think that, at scale, that
| approach could get costs down to $21/ton, plus reduce ocean
| acidification more effectively too. But it's more complicated
| and could have some negative effects, such as putting a lot of
| poisonous heavy metals like nickel in the ocean. But because
| politicians hate ever having to say that they're knowingly
| causing any problem, those avenues get starved of research
| funding, as we see here. But I think that, within 50 years,
| we're probably going to find a scalable CO2 removal approach
| for less than half the target cost of this program, and that
| basically could solve global warming, but because of political
| cowardice it's discovered 30 years later than it could have
| been.
|
| Everyone wants to do emission reduction first and delay
| geoengineering as long as possible, when we should be doing the
| opposite. Even if the financial cost appears much smaller, it's
| clear now that large scale emission reduction is politically
| very expensive. Emission reduction is the clean, ideal solution
| that we don't have the ability to scalably implement yet.
| Geoengineering should be temporary quick and dirty approach we
| use to buy time, creating some problems that last decades in
| exchange for time to implement a solution for a problem that
| lasts for millennia. Assuming that cheap geoengineering
| techniques whose negative side effects are bounded in space and
| time can be found, but I think that they can.
| bobcostas55 wrote:
| 5% is still much higher than the costs of climate change for at
| least a century (at least if you believe the IPCC projections).
| dane-pgp wrote:
| I'm not sure which projections you're referring to, but
| researchers at UCL concluded:
|
| "the damage costs caused by climate change will reach $5.4
| trillion a year by 2070, and $31 trillion a year by 2200"
|
| https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/energy/news/2020/oct/cdp-
| and-...
| bobcostas55 wrote:
| I'm thinking of this projection here: https://www.ipcc.ch/s
| ite/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SR15...
|
| Which gives an estimate of 2.6% of global GDP in 2100.
|
| The one you mention seems to be in the same ballpark:
| assuming 2% growth, in 2070 global GDP will probably be
| somewhere around 220T, so 5.4/220 = 2.4%.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Thats for 1.5 degrees, a target we've already missed. We
| are now on track for over 3 degrees right now, and every
| extra degree of heating is exponentially more damaging
| than the last.
|
| Consider that -4 degrees chage had washington DC under a
| glacier thats two miles of ice, and now imagine the same
| change in the other direction.
| PeterisP wrote:
| The same report you linked (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/
| energy/sites/bartlett/files/c... page 10) includes
| interesting parts regarding e.g. climate change damage to
| agriculture like "temperate regions in Canada, US and
| Europe have positive GDP impacts whilst negative impacts
| are expected in India, other developing Asia, the Middle
| East, Central and South America." It does not go into that
| detail for the other types of damage because there it's
| just different rates of negatives, however, it's reasonable
| to assume that the regional differences there are also just
| as large.
|
| It's hard for politicians to ask a Kansas farmer for a
| large extra tax for CO2 removal if the main justification
| of it is that it eventually will prevent much larger costs
| to someone else overseas.
|
| In essence, policy decisions are made on a national level,
| mostly by people accountable to their own citizens and
| needing their approval (no matter if in democractic
| elections or needing to sustain their authoritarian power)
| - and you can't match national costs (since any decision to
| pay or invest will be national) versus global benefits of
| mitigation, you need to consider what the _local_
| consequences of doing nothing are going to be as _that_ is
| what is going to drive all the actual action and decisions
| even while the same politicians make empty talks about
| global solidarity.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| >at least if you believe the IPCC projection
|
| Maybe you shouldn't. The IPCC does good work, but their
| predictions are conservative and imperfect, and they mostly
| ignore tail risks. Up until 2012 they predicted that arctic
| summer sea ice would last until the 2050s, and now it's
| estimated to be gone by the 2030s.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _The IPCC does good work, but..._
|
| Does anyone do better projection work?
| jandrese wrote:
| More importantly, having an actual price tag on removing carbon
| from the atmosphere would allow carbon markets to finally work.
| Assuming there is enough political will to properly monitor and
| tax CO2 emissions worldwide, which is a huge ask. A lot of
| companies and countries will be tempted to lie because it will
| make their products more competitive.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Global CO2 taxes would be augmented with CO2 tariffs, imposed
| on countries that didn't impose the taxes or tariffs.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| This would be a great idea.
|
| I think it's also interesting to trace how much all of it
| come from really good, simple and forward thinking
| principles, to slowly become the state we are in now.
|
| For instance, following your idea, there will be the issue
| with countries that produce more CO2 than they can afford,
| but we can't make them pay as it would literally be a matter
| life or death to them. So they get an exception.
|
| They then become a beacon of CO2 relocation. We start to pass
| more laws to limit that trend, but the existing companies
| will be grandfathered. They then have a monopoly on the
| scheme, and also find other loopholes, progressively
| expanding the amount of CO2 they can get away with.
|
| During that time, these countries will be more and more CO2
| swamped, degrade beyond belief, and someone will be pesting
| against the demon that thought about taxing countries in the
| first place.
|
| To put my naive ideas out as well, I kinda see economic
| tricks the same way we say "don't try to solve social
| problems through technology". We should straight get the
| bigger economies to shoulder infra construction in weaker
| economies no strings attached. No loan, no debt, no nothing.
| We're all extinct anyway if we don't do it.
| PeterisP wrote:
| > "We should straight get the bigger economies to shoulder
| infra construction in weaker economies no strings attached"
|
| Who is meant by "we" in this sentence? And in what ways do
| you consider that it's plausible to "get them to shoulder
| it" in excess of whatever they freely choose to do?
|
| > We're all extinct anyway if we don't do it.
|
| Citation needed - the IPCC published worst case scenarios
| are _far_ from extinction, and especially in the countries
| which would shoulder the burden the expected damage the
| local consequences are "very bad" in the sense that a few
| percent decrease in GDP growth is an enormously large
| economic damage. It's not clear if spending 5% of GDP on
| that (or much more, if you expect them to "shoulder the
| burden" as well) would be worth it for them, since they'll
| have to invest in local mitigations anyway due to the
| already accumulated greenhouse gases.
|
| 5% of global gross product is _a lot_. For example, it 's
| more than what the world affords to spend on all kinds of
| education together. It's far more than what would cost to
| truly eliminate world hunger and most major diseases. It's
| an order of magnitude more than what the world has devoted
| for charitable purposes. It's literally the equivalent of
| mobilizing 400 million people to work only on that thing -
| if the expected bad consequences of climate change are e.g.
| 200 million displaced people, then that's very bad, but
| it's not worth to have 400 million people devote their
| lives to prevent 200 million from needing to migrate.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Cant we see this from space? Estimate the amount of co2
| coming from each country that way and send them a bill every
| year.
|
| My first thought was "that's where auditing and bureaucracy
| come in" but maybe satellites are a better way
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Is "we" the united states sending a bill to other
| countries?
| PeterisP wrote:
| We can measure the total amount, but it's rapidly mixing
| and moving so we can't reliably allocate the CO2 production
| to states from space measurements, no.
|
| Furthermore, countries only are liable for the commitments
| to which they voluntarily agree in international treaties
| or get forced to agree with credible threats of excessive
| violence.
|
| As all the climate talks have clearly shown, no one is
| going to sign a treaty which accepts the obligation to pay
| such a bill even if it could be accurately calculated; the
| world simply does not work that way.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| >4 km2 (1.5 sq mi) or smaller, 3 times per second. Looks
| like there's accuracy enough to be able to model this.
| OCO-3 is apparently observing city level CO2 levels.
|
| And the data is available (thanks NASA): https://oco2.ges
| disc.eosdis.nasa.gov/data/OCO3_DATA/OCO3_L1B...
|
| As for the human aspect, I think holding carbon trading
| countries to account when there's been a treaty signed
| and a financial incentive to do so isn't too far fetched.
|
| I also think as the world gets a bit more desperate there
| will be more motivation. I personally would like to see
| sanctions on products (like Brazilian beef) but probably
| that's dreaming.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Okay, I'm surprised by this capacity and it looks really
| nice - it does not measure _emissions_ , though, but at
| that resolution perhaps can be used to get a reasonable
| estimate of them.
|
| However, I don't consider is plausible that major carbon-
| emitting countries will simply agree to sign a treaty in
| which they will owe a lot of money to others. Currently
| there have been only some proposals where there would be
| a financial incentive to trade _increases or decreases_
| in the emissions, or to implement financial incentives
| within a nation or region, where any penalties get paid
| back to your own budget /economy, and not to third world
| countries, and even those tend to have a hard time
| passing.
|
| I simply don't consider it plausible that the nations
| will agree to any major wealth redistribution at a
| meaningful scale - they can agree to win-win solutions
| when getting some reasonable benefit or political
| consideration in return; they can agree to solutions
| where your problems get fixed and our balance is roughly
| neutral; they can agree to _some_ charity /support in
| certain cases (which usually do come with some strings
| attached) in a limited amount, but not a wealth
| distribution so large that their own citizens would feel
| it in their wallets.
|
| I also do not think that this will change as the world
| gets a bit more desperate - there is little overlap
| between the people and regions who will be the first to
| get desperate and motivated and the people whom you would
| want to convince to agree to pay.
| dymk wrote:
| CO2 is colorless, odorless, and is produced in many ways,
| not just from factories or out of tailpipes. For instance,
| would we want to bill countries with receding glaciers
| which release methane, a more powerful greenhouse gas that
| decays into CO2?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Unless the glaciers are being operated in secret,
| couldn't we just calculate their emissions and not count
| them against that country?
| mchusma wrote:
| It's highly likely that carbon removal follows similar
| economies of scale as solar too, so the costs are likely to
| continue a rapid decline.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| In _Ministry for the Future_ , governments started paying
| fossil fuel companies more money to keep the fuel in the ground
| than they could make by extracting and selling it.
|
| Only then the extraction slowed down.
|
| Maybe we can start by including the cost for sequestering the
| CO2 in the cost of the fuel?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It's probably still cheaper to avoid emitting the CO2 in the
| first place, but that does put an upper bound on the cost of
| reaching net zero.
|
| It seems hard to believe that removing CO2 from the atmosphere
| could _ever_ be less expensive than not emitting it to begin
| with. You 're working against thermodynamics.
|
| So the whole thing seems like a fraud. An excuse to keep
| emitting CO2 while claiming that you'll do something about it
| "tomorrow."
| lucb1e wrote:
| > An excuse to keep emitting CO2 while claiming that you'll
| do something about it "tomorrow."
|
| While paying the _higher_ price today to have it removed?
| That 's not much of an excuse, that's buying your way out of
| it. If people want to go that route and they pay for their
| own emissions (there, of course, is going to be the problem)
| then be my guest. If you'd rather go the typically cheaper
| route of changing the technology or lifestyle (e.g. drive
| electric or ditch the car altogether), that's also fine.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| If taken from a purely economic standpoint, yes. But once
| politics get involved, a more expensive often can feel
| "cheaper" if it gets everyone moving in the same direction or
| produces some level of agreement.
|
| Sure, in an ideal world, we would just all do the right
| thing. But that is not the world we live in.
| notahacker wrote:
| It's also hard to believe that insurance against theft could
| ever be less expensive than nobody stealing anything, but
| that doesn't imply insurance is a fraud to allow people to
| carry on stealing. We live in a world where theft and carbon
| emissions are going to happen with or without the blessing of
| the US government, so if they want to spend some money seeing
| how far they can mitigate the damage then good.
|
| I'd rather pin my hopes on technological progress than
| political magic.
| ericd wrote:
| It seems like you're assuming our current culture stays
| constant. I'm pretty sure it's going to change quite
| drastically after we have our first million+ death heat
| wave. It's going to suddenly seem a hell of a lot more
| tacky to be driving a huge Chevy Tahoe.
|
| Which is to say that things that seem impossible
| politically might suddenly become very politically
| possible.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Ironically in such a heat wave, lots of people would
| likely take shelter in their air conditioned cars.
| ericd wrote:
| A lot of the people in a lot of the places likely to have
| those don't have cars with AC.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Either way the actions people will take for
| adaptation/mitigation are often at odds with the
| "prevention" path. Similarly, building flood defences
| would be expected to require a lot of steel and concrete,
| which are energy and carbon intensive. I suppose people
| in more marginal circumstances will need to make some
| tough decisions.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The problem is that it's still political magic.
|
| Suppose it costs $1 to avoid emitting CO2 (e.g. replace gas
| car with electric car) and $10 to extract the CO2 after the
| fact. If you get the latter down to $3, you're still upside
| down. So where does the $3 come from? Presumably a
| government, but it doesn't even matter. Anyone would still
| be better off spending that money to subsidize electric
| cars or solar panels or something.
| incrudible wrote:
| > Suppose it costs X to do Y
|
| Don't. You can't predict prices like that. Consider that
| electric cars roll out of the factory having emitted more
| CO2 than the equivalent combustion vehicle. It takes a
| lot of miles to break even. If you put a price on the
| CO2, you may well figure out that combustion engines end
| up more efficient, because carbon-neutral fuel is close
| to being economical.
|
| > But then they'd still be better off spending that money
| to subsidize electric cars or solar panels or something.
|
| This is a _huge_ mistake. Don 't pick winners. You don't
| have better information than the market.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Don't. You can't predict prices like that.
|
| You can predict that not emitting CO2 will cost less than
| emitting CO2 and then recapturing it, because it's the
| second law of thermodynamics.
|
| > Consider that electric cars roll out of the factory
| having emitted more CO2 than the equivalent combustion
| vehicle. It takes a lot of miles to break even.
|
| It takes about the number of miles that the average
| person drives in a year. New cars last a lot more than a
| year. Also, the CO2 it takes to make an electric car has
| a lot to do with the fact that existing vehicles and
| power generation emit CO2, which goes away as we get more
| electric vehicles and non-carbon power generation.
|
| > If you put a price on the CO2, you may well figure out
| that combustion engines end up more efficient, because
| carbon-neutral fuel is close to being economical.
|
| So put a price on CO2. The point isn't that subsidizing
| electric cars and solar panels is the best solution to
| the problem, it's that subsidizing carbon capture is
| strictly worse.
| incrudible wrote:
| > You can predict that not emitting CO2 will cost less
| than emitting CO2 and then recapturing it, because it's
| the second law of thermodynamics.
|
| You're mixing up watts with dollars, a mistake that
| "green energy" stockpickers make all the time. Consider
| all the energy that is hitting the Sahara. It's worth
| _zero_ dollars, because it can 't economically be used -
| but what if you could capture and transport it somehow,
| you know, like in a fuel?
|
| > It takes about the number of miles that the average
| person drives in a year.
|
| That's the lowest estimate I have ever heard - do you
| have a source for that?
|
| > Also, the CO2 it takes to make an electric car has a
| lot to do with the fact that existing vehicles and power
| generation emit CO2, which goes away as we get more
| electric vehicles and non-carbon power generation.
|
| Sure, but economics of scale apply to all technologies
| and unless you let the market do its thing, you won't
| know the minima and maxima.
|
| > So put a price on CO2.
|
| Exactly.
|
| > The point isn't that subsidizing electric cars and
| solar panels is the best solution to the problem, it's
| that subsidizing carbon capture is strictly worse.
|
| You don't know that. Ideally, nothing should be
| subsidized. However, in a market where profit is sooner
| found with dog meme cryptocurrency and other harebrained
| schemes, subsidies are arguably necessary, and then you
| shouldn't put all the money into directions that have
| already been mostly explored.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > You're mixing up watts with dollars
|
| Watts cost dollars. You lose _a lot_ of watts to heat by
| converting fossil fuels to CO2 and back. Overcoming those
| losses is quite optimistic.
|
| > That's the lowest estimate I have ever heard - do you
| have a source for that?
|
| 13,500 miles, the same as the average annual miles driven
| in the US:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/when-d...
|
| > Sure, but economics of scale apply to all technologies
| and unless you let the market do its thing, you won't
| know the minima and maxima.
|
| What market? We're talking about government subsidies for
| carbon capture.
| incrudible wrote:
| > Watts cost dollars.
|
| It's not that simple. For instance, when there's too much
| electricity on the European grid because, say, wind
| energy is particularly strong that day in Germany,
| producers need to _pay_ for someone else to take that
| electricity. It has negative cost. This is rare for now,
| but it does limit the rollout of renewables.
|
| I thought the example of solar energy in the Sahara was
| rather convincing? It's a lot of untapped potential
| energy, it just needs a business case. CO2 prices can
| make that happen.
|
| > You lose a lot of watts to heat by converting fossil
| fuels to CO2 and back
|
| Again, just because it's a loss in the thermodynamic
| sense doesn't make it a loss in an economic sense. Fuel
| cells are quite efficient in the thermodynamic sense, but
| they're not economical when the whole pipeline is
| considered. That said, a technological breakthrough can
| turn that calculation around. You can't predict that, so
| you shouldn't pick winners.
|
| > Reuters Fact Checkers made an attempt at science
|
| Color me suspicious with that one. At least they're
| pointing out that other researchers arrived at far less
| impressive numbers.
|
| > What market? We're talking about government subsidies
| for carbon capture.
|
| I'm a strong proponent of CO2 prices. That said, if the
| government insists on picking winners with subsidies,
| they shouldn't narrow themselves down too much.
| IanCal wrote:
| > You can predict that not emitting CO2 will cost less
| than emitting CO2 and then recapturing it, because it's
| the second law of thermodynamics.
|
| I'm not sure that's true, in two senses.
|
| Even if the _energy_ cost is higher, the _monetary_ cost
| may be lower as emissions and capture don't need to be in
| the same place. It may be cheaper for example to just
| burn some petrol to cover long distances where there's
| less infrastructure and instead capture an equivalent
| amount of CO2 using energy from solar panels somewhere
| sunny.
|
| I'm not certain the energy cost must be higher due to
| thermodynamics. If you were taking CO2 and water and
| recombining them to get back nat gas and oxygen then
| sure. But what if you're taking the CO2 and doing
| something else with it? If I'm thinking about this right
| the bond energy in CO2 is a little lower than the overall
| energy released. Of course things come down then to
| efficiencies but I don't think there's a thermodynamics
| point here.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| > It takes about the number of miles that the average
| person drives in a year.
|
| I wish that was true. Volvo recently put out a statement
| that it takes about 70k miles to recover the initially
| higher energy input using the world average energy mix.
| Some 9 years of the average UK milage.
|
| Of course, if manufacturing is made significantly less
| CO2 intensive then the maths change.
|
| For what it's worth, even if there was no CO2 benefit I'd
| still be rooting for electric cars to succeed for various
| other reasons including noise, particulates etc.
| [deleted]
| notahacker wrote:
| Which number do you think is larger, the cost for the US
| to dictate industrialisation policy for the rest of the
| world or the cost for the US (and possibly other
| governments more interested in reducing global warming,
| if the tech is there) to offset some of their emissions?
|
| The problem isn't getting wealthy Californians to swap
| their SUV for a Tesla, it's getting poor Cubans to give
| up the only car their government will allow them to
| afford, cryptoenthusiasts to give up on Bitcoin, Saudi
| Arabia to decide it doesn't want to exploit its only
| resource and China to retire its recently constructed
| coal power plants. That doesn't just require lots of
| money, it requires magic
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Which number do you think is larger, the cost for the
| US to dictate industrialisation policy for the rest of
| the world or the cost for the US (and possibly other
| governments more interested in reducing global warming,
| if the tech is there) to offset some of their emissions?
|
| You only have to dictate policy to them if you're trying
| to get them to pay for it. If you're going to pay for it
| yourself, there is nothing at all stopping you from
| paying people in Africa or South America to buy electric
| cars. The main thing preventing this is that you would
| have to convince your taxpayers to pay to offset
| emissions in some other country. But that's the same
| problem with carbon capture, except worse, because you
| would need more dollars to offset the same amount of CO2.
| tsol wrote:
| >there is nothing at all stopping you from paying people
| in Africa or South America to buy electric cars
|
| I can think of tons of problems with this.
|
| It requires more scarce than resources like lithium to
| make cars.
|
| You can be scammed by people selling the car and using
| that money to buy a house and a cheap commission engine.
| You don't have the issue with carbon capture.
|
| Your likely to face much more political pushback for
| subsidizing others carbon use. "Let's make our country
| carbon neutral" can resonate with people as it's cleaning
| up _after ourselves_. That 's much easier to convince
| people to do.
|
| Can Africa and South America even use them? Is it
| reasonable for them, do they have the infrastructure? I
| know in some countries electricity can be scarce-- and
| power companies turn off the supply at night.
|
| It's cheaper to scrub carbon, than it is to fix the
| societal and economic issues across the globe required to
| make passing out electric vehicles work
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It requires more scarce than resources like lithium to
| make cars.
|
| What do you think it takes to capture carbon?
|
| > You can be scammed by people selling the car and using
| that money to buy a house and a cheap commission engine.
|
| How is that a profitable scam? Anybody else could buy the
| same car with the same subsidy. You can't resell it for
| more than you paid.
|
| > Your likely to face much more political pushback for
| subsidizing others carbon use. "Let's make our country
| carbon neutral" can resonate with people as it's cleaning
| up _after ourselves_.
|
| The only reason to do this is if you've already done
| that. Otherwise it would make more sense to spend the
| money subsidizing replacement of fossil fuels in your own
| country first.
|
| > Can Africa and South America even use them? Is it
| reasonable for them, do they have the infrastructure? I
| know in some countries electricity can be scarce-- and
| power companies turn off the supply at night.
|
| Solar panels and electric cars go together like hand and
| glove. The car doesn't care what part of the day you
| charge it, so you charge it when the sun is shining. And
| you don't need a functioning power grid to install cheap
| solar on your own house/business.
| tsol wrote:
| >What do you think it takes to capture carbon?
|
| I'm not familiar with how exactly carbon capture
| technology works to be honest, but I believe it involves
| taking advantage of chemistry to separate carbon from
| air. I don't see how lithium would factor into this as
| there isn't any absolute need for batteries, as there are
| with electric cars. Carbon capture at the point of
| production(ie in factories themselves) could be hooked up
| to the grid and still have a high rate of capture
|
| >Solar panels and electric cars go together like hand and
| glove. The car doesn't care what part of the day you
| charge it, so you charge it when the sun is shining. And
| you don't need a functioning power grid to install cheap
| solar on your own house/business.
|
| Enough to charge a car? That's not a simple setup, that
| takes a serious set up. That effectively increases the
| cost of running an electric car by a significant margin.
|
| >The only reason to do this is if you've already done
| that. Otherwise it would make more sense to spend the
| money subsidizing replacement of fossil fuels in your own
| country first.
|
| I don't disagree with that. It's the simplest way to
| start, and represents the most benefit for the taxpayers
| paying for it.
| notahacker wrote:
| > How is that a profitable scam? Anybody else could buy
| the same car with the same subsidy.
|
| What's the subsidy level? Because people earning a few
| dollars a day aren't paying much more for your subsidised
| Tesla than they paid for their 30 year old car with an
| ICE. And if you start subsidising new EVs to the extent
| that your giving them away for less than $1k, your scheme
| might actually be worse for the environment (Production
| costs are a significant fraction of the carbon footprint
| of a car, especially if it isn't used very much, and
| directly or indirectly the subsidy makes brand new cars
| cheap for a lot of people in developed countries that
| don't need them...)
|
| The more you consider the logistics of such a scheme, the
| more carbon capture makes sense, and not because I'm
| averse to the idea of subsidies for EVs or solar
| manufacture
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You don't have to subsidize against the alternative of a
| 10+ year old car from the US or Europe if you stop
| selling ICE cars in the US and Europe, because in ten
| years the ten year old cars will all be electric too.
|
| So the subsidy is only the amount required to make a new
| electric car cheaper than a new gasoline car, for the
| people breaking into the middle class who can now afford
| that. That's the same as it is in the US, isn't very
| much, and is declining as batteries get cheaper. It may
| be soon that it won't even be necessary.
| notahacker wrote:
| Have you ever _been_ to the developing world?
|
| Battered old cars are worth more than a year's average
| per capita income in much of the world. They're not
| throwing away recently manufactured US/European/Japanese
| cars before 2050 just because their country's 0.1% now
| find subsidised Teslas more financially attractive than
| Fords or Mercedes. Actually, they probably won't find
| subsidised Teslas more appealing than Fords or Mercedes
| if they drive long distances, because it's a lot easy to
| find a roadside shack with gasoline than EV hookups.
|
| There are already production EVs cheaper than any US
| manufactured car made in China, but it isn't going to
| make much of a dent in the residual demand for the
| billion ICE cars, trucks vans already in existence in
| places where people buy second hand and maintain forever.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you would have to convince your taxpayers to pay to
| offset emissions in some other country_
|
| I strangely think the rich world would be more
| comfortable building carbon capture infrastructure at
| home than clean energy offshore. The jobs are domestic.
| And you aren't handing a productive asset to another
| country.
|
| Hell, find it with an import tax on polluting countries
| and we don't even have to pay for most of it.
| notahacker wrote:
| Don't think it's even a strange thought; the US has been
| always much happier with industrial policy than welfare.
| "NASA, but for your climate" is a much easier political
| sell than "let's give foreigners [almost] free luxury
| goods".
|
| And if you don't want people in the developing world to
| simply sell the brand new Teslas you've swapped for their
| 30 year old bangers, you're also going to have to build
| out a charging infrastructure, ensure that new power
| stations built to handle the increased electricity demand
| are renewable, and shut down people's routes to simply
| buying new ICE cars manufactured in other countries and
| pocketing the difference between that and the cost of the
| Tesla. Even assuming that politics doesn't exist and the
| world will do exactly what the US wants if they spend
| enough money. the cost of offset doesn't seem quite so
| expensive after all...
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The solution to that is to subsidize production of the
| alternative products in your own country for export. Then
| subsidized US-made solar panels and electric cars would
| be cheaper for people in Africa and South America than
| burning coal, but you get all the US jobs etc.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _subsidized US-made solar panels and electric cars
| would be cheaper for people in Africa and South America
| than burning coal, but you get all the US jobs etc._
|
| You're still giving productive infrastructure to foreign
| countries. A Nazi doormat could get elected running to
| redirect those panels and subsidies for domestic use.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| If you haven't already replaced all of your own fossil
| fuels, redirecting them to domestic use is fine. If you
| have, they would have to fight all the people who want to
| keep their jobs making products for export.
| neaanopri wrote:
| Us first. The carbon footprint of a US citizen is very
| high. We can shame others when it gets below average
| incrudible wrote:
| > We can shame others when it gets below average
|
| This may come as a shock to some, but pretty much nobody
| outside the US cares what people from the US think about
| them.
| notahacker wrote:
| US emissions are ludicrously high per capita but
| shrinking. The rest of the world's are higher overall and
| growing.
|
| I'm not sure the mentality that it'd be rude to consider
| tackling the latter problem unless and until US per
| capita emissions drop below the global average is going
| to help the planet.
| ratboy666 wrote:
| "Carbon footprint".
|
| Ok -- Empty out the North.
|
| http://www.mappedplanet.com/karten/klima/januar_temp-
| na.png
|
| How about it? I get to move to Memphis, where I no longer
| need to heat my dwelling in the Winter.
|
| https://www.chatelaine.com/home-decor/environment-eco-
| home-h...
|
| I pay 11.3 cents per k/w for electricy
|
| https://www.torontohydro.com/for-home/rates
|
| Natural gas costs 4.71 US/MMBtu
|
| https://www.torontohydro.com/for-home/rates
|
| Now
|
| 1 MMBTU = 293.07107 kWh
|
| So with ALL of this, electricity is 7 times more
| expensive than natural gas.
|
| Now, it costs $125 or so per month to heat a house here -
| Using electricity, that would be $875. Per month.
|
| https://www.torontohydro.com/about-us/company-overview
|
| Only 6.3% Natural Gas.
|
| In a nutshell, _I_ can 't afford it. That's ok, I can
| just to Memphis for my retirement.
| DennisP wrote:
| Bear in mind that (a) you're just pulling it from the
| atmosphere and burying it, not splitting the C from O2 so you
| can use it as fuel again, and (b) there are applications like
| long-haul jets and cement production where eliminating
| emissions isn't that easy.
|
| To put some numbers on (a), David MacKay's book has some
| numbers[1]:
|
| > The laws of physics say that the energy required must be at
| least 0.2 kWh per kg of CO2....
|
| > Lackner told me in June 2008 that, in a dry climate, the
| concentration cost has been reduced to about 0.18-0.37 kWh of
| low-grade heat per kg CO2. The compression cost is 0.11 kWh
| per kg. Thus Lackner's total cost is 0.48 kWh or less per kg.
|
| Burning a kilogram of coal generates 8 kWh[2] and 2.42 kg
| CO2[3]. So that's 8 kWh generated, requiring 1.16 kWh to pull
| 2.42 kg CO2 back out out of the atmosphere.
|
| So about 15% of the energy obtained by putting carbon in the
| atmosphere is needed to remove it.
|
| [1] https://www.withouthotair.com/c31/page_244.shtml)
|
| [2] https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/coal-equivalent/
|
| [3] https://360energy.net/how-does-using-energy-create-
| carbon-em...
| guiriduro wrote:
| > there are applications like long-haul jets and cement
| production where eliminating emissions isn't that easy.
|
| I disagree, there's an easy solution to eliminating those
| emissions: have zero long-haul jets and zero cement
| production. Before this gets (inevitably) downvoted, the
| more interesting question is why do we need either, what
| alternatives are there, how fundamentally we're willing to
| question our biases and expectations over what counts as a
| necessity. If saving our environment is an overriding
| priority, then the extent of the compromises we have to
| make can be made clearer.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's not actually easy to ban long-haul travel. It's
| technologically simple, which is probably the angle you
| are looking from, but politically very difficult.
| jjk166 wrote:
| This would be a lot more insightful if we hadn't already
| spent decades and billions of dollars looking for greener
| alternatives only to find that they don't exist.
| q1w2 wrote:
| I don't see how we're going to use CO2 as energy again.
| It's not like the original hydrocarbons we dug up.
| DennisP wrote:
| Right, which is why mostly the idea is to just bury the
| CO2.
|
| However, if you do want to make fuel from it, say for
| airliners, then it's totally possible, you just have to
| add hydrogen, and more energy than you'll get from
| burning the fuel. E.g. the Sabatier process to make
| methane.
| summerlight wrote:
| The point is that upfront investment cost of developing
| industry specific carbon neutral solution doesn't have
| uniform ROI and can be (either economically or politically)
| quite expensive or sometime infeasible. This is an extremely
| long tail problem and we do need a more general solution
| applicable even after we exhausted all the low hanging
| fruits. This is what "upper bound" means in the parent post.
| So in the ideal scenario, it's more like we eliminate 80% of
| low hanging emission sources, significant reduce 15% of them
| and negate the rest with carbon removal to achieve carbon
| neutrality.
|
| In addition to this, removing historical accumulated carbon
| is also pretty important. The expected cumulative damage at
| the point of 2050 will be catastrophic even in the most
| optimistic projection.
| Tanjreeve wrote:
| With the way capitalism works there'll be a lot more takers
| to solve a harder but more measurable problem that someone
| will pay them for (remove the CO2 we'll pay by the ton) than
| there will be to solve a less measurable problem (prevent CO2
| being released generally). Perverse incentives for sure but
| within the existing parameters likely more effective.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| It could never be less expensive in the same way a a sled
| will continue to slide forever on a frictionless surface:
| theoretically.
|
| Material limitations, and technical limitations may make it
| cheaper practically.
|
| As an example, let's look at rockets. Which is cheaper,
| removing the CO2 after release, or developing switching
| technologies, for instance, to using O2 and H. Well, for
| certain applications, where the energy density and logistics
| of the fuel matter, pulling the CO2 out afterwards makes more
| sense.
|
| Now, yes, that is a small example, but my point is just to
| show thermodynamic efficiency doesn't translate directly to
| cost effectiveness for all applications.
| pharke wrote:
| Depends on what the dollar cost of not burning fossil fuels
| turns out to be. I think being able to close the carbon loop
| is extremely important, there will inevitably be use cases
| where burning fossil fuels is the superior or only option.
| Rocket launches immediately jump to mind and are looking to
| be an area that will continue to experience explosive growth
| throughout the next century. We had better have a viable
| option for capturing those emissions along with the long tail
| of emissions generated during an orderly transition away from
| burning fossil fuels.
| WalterBright wrote:
| That's why banning is a bad solution. Tax it. Then when
| it's really needed, paying the tax is worth it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Rocket fuel isn't gasoline, it's hydrazine. It's not pumped
| out of the ground, it's synthetic.
|
| This is a good lesson for the carbon capture economics.
|
| We know how to make synthetic fuels and biofuels. As a
| general rule, making them costs around the same as carbon
| capture. "Grow some plants or something" is actually one of
| the most efficient known methods of carbon capture.
|
| Biofuels cost more than pumping crude out of the ground.
| They also cost more, in most cases, than electric cars. So
| if you don't care about CO2 then fossil fuels win over
| biofuels because they're cheaper and if you do care about
| CO2 then electric cars win over biofuels because they're
| cheaper. Basically nobody uses biofuels unless they're
| subsidized. But we know how to do it; we just also know of
| something better to use in 98% of cases.
|
| Then you have the other 2% of cases. Like aircraft.
| Existing batteries are too heavy for aircraft and we don't
| know if or how long it'll be before we have sufficient
| ones. But we could use biofuels for that. Put a carbon tax
| on fossil fuels and that's what might happen, because for a
| plane that might be the most cost effective alternative.
|
| So you say hey, maybe it'd be better to keep using fossil
| fuels in planes and then use carbon capture. If carbon
| capture has a cost similar to biofuels, that could be
| competitive. But it's not. Because biofuels produce fuel.
| With carbon capture you still have to pay to buy petroleum.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Hydrazine is not used very much as a rocket fuel. It's
| expensive, toxic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, flammable (not
| escaping that though), and explosive. It also has a
| freezing point too high to be used in space (MMH,
| monomethyl hydrazine, is used in spacecraft with NTO as
| the oxidizer.)
|
| The best fuels for the first stage of launchers are
| hydrocarbons, due to their low cost and good density. And
| the first stage is where most of the propellant in a
| launcher is consumed. The cost of propellant becomes
| increasingly important as the cost of the launcher is
| reduced; for SpaceX it is very important. The use of
| cheap propellants also allows more testing of their
| engines.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| There isn't _a_ single rocket fuel.
|
| Some launch systems fly on hypergols (hydrazine is one of
| them; it is not used in the West anymore as a main fuel,
| being too toxic), some burn hydrogen with oxygen, some
| burn kerosene (RP-1), a new system is coming online that
| actually uses methane (Starship).
|
| And these were just the liquid propellants. There are
| also solid fuel rockets.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Are you implying that any of those isn't or couldn't be
| produced synthetically or as a biofuel?
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| That assumes a uniform cost for energy spent, which is not an
| assumption that holds true.
|
| The type of energy and even when it's spent is non-uniform
| (think about the Texas gas debacle).
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Thermodynamics is about entropy AND enthalpy. A stationary
| algae bloom using otherwise unused sunlight can be a lot
| cheaper than trying to fly a heavy battery along with 300
| passengers. Earth is also full of natural alkaline minerals
| that can be used as cements or for soil enrichment while
| naturally absorbing acidic carbon dioxide. Direct consumption
| of electricity for carbon capture is not necessarily the main
| solution, but fine for when renewable or nuclear energy would
| be otherwise wasted.
| gspr wrote:
| In some sense it's just using the entire atmosphere as a
| battery. Burn fossile fuels where it's the only reasonable
| option (currently), such as for planes, then spend energy
| to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere elsewhere.
| frazbin wrote:
| In a very literal sense, we have been using the
| atmosphere as half of a battery since forever--
| combustion on earth uses atmospheric oxygen as as an
| electron acceptor.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > A stationary algae bloom using otherwise unused sunlight
| can be a lot cheaper than trying to fly a heavy battery
| along with 300 passengers.
|
| The alternative isn't just trying to fit a heavy battery
| into a plane, it's to scoop the algae up and use it to make
| carbon-neutral biofuels to run the plane.
|
| > Earth is also full of natural alkaline minerals that can
| be used as cements or for soil enrichment while naturally
| absorbing acidic carbon dioxide.
|
| Then you're trading the thermodynamic problem for an
| economic one. You have to mine all of that stuff up, do
| chemistry on it, lose the economic value of the minerals in
| their existing form and end up with an incredible volume of
| industrial waste you have to pay to dispose of.
|
| It doesn't violate the laws of physics for that to be
| cheaper, but it's still pretty unlikely. Remember that the
| alternative doesn't have to cover the full cost of
| generating electricity from non-carbon sources, only the
| difference in cost between that and burning coal. That's
| pretty close to zero, if not negative, as it is, and that's
| without a carbon tax.
| scottcodie wrote:
| It's easier than that, simply make carbon neutral transit
| cheap and carbon intensive transit expensive then the
| market will innovate. It's just no country wants to take
| a hit on their economy to force the transition to happen.
| mcny wrote:
| >> It's easier than that, simply make carbon neutral
| transit cheap and carbon intensive transit expensive then
| the market will innovate. It's just no country wants to
| take a hit on their economy to force the transition to
| happen.
|
| I am completely with you. We aren't even able/willing to
| remove all existing subsidies/tax breaks for coal. We
| know what we need to do. We can't wait for developing
| nations to freeze/starve to death before we cut subsidies
| on our own coal and gas industry.
|
| Even people at Brookings (which I'd call right wing)
| can't support subsidies and tax breaks for coal and gas:
|
| >> To lead global subsidy reforms, the United States will
| have to strengthen these commitments by actively
| dismantling its own substantial production subsidies. The
| Environmental and Energy Study Institute reported that
| direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry totaled $20
| billion per year, with 80% going toward oil and gas. In
| addition, from 2019 to 2023, tax subsidies are expected
| to reduce federal revenue by around $11.5 billion.
| Considering that production subsidies grew 28% between
| 2017 and 2019, the United States will be under a lot of
| scrutiny from other countries wanting to see evidence of
| reform before making their own commitments.
|
| >> This is a challenging task for the United States
| because production subsidies are embedded in the tax code
| and promote fossil fuels in a variety of ways. For
| example, producers can deduct a fixed percentage of gross
| revenue instead of their actual costs as capital
| expenses, deduct exploration and development costs,
| amortize geological and geophysical expenditures, and
| benefit from accelerated depreciation of natural gas
| infrastructure. Oil and gas companies are also permitted
| to use the Last In, First Out (LIFO) accounting method to
| sell their most recent and expensive reserves first,
| thereby reducing the value of their inventory. Other
| incentives include foreign tax credits and energy
| production credits.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/research/reforming-global-
| fossil-f...
|
| If we can't even remove direct subsidies and tax breaks
| (including accounting hijinks) from our domestic coal and
| gas industry, what moral authority do we have to ask
| other (less affluent) countries to reduce their
| subsidies?
| frazbin wrote:
| This is totally true, awesome, and under appreciated. Check
| out project vesta. Basically there's an infinite amount of
| magnesium silicate minerals, and they weather to absorb co2
| and release magnesium. You get some iron for free, but no
| heavies or toxics.. You can put it in the soil too, which
| is great because fe and esp mg are being depleted in soils.
| You can dump it in the ocean and raise PH while also
| mobilizing calcium. It's a win win win win win win.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| If efficiency was ever a concern we wouldn't be burning
| fossil fuels in the first place. A gasoline engine only
| extracts a small portion of the energy in the gasoline, most
| of the energy gets wasted as heat.
| dools wrote:
| I think the idea is that you do both
| lumost wrote:
| There are many biological and geological processes that
| remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Many of which could be sped
| up.
|
| Carbon removal need not involve mega facilities running co2
| scrubbers.
| opportune wrote:
| Renewables don't all have steady load, so it could be an
| alternative to batteries/hydro batteries. Use natural gas
| peakers when renewables don't produce enough, use excess
| renewable power to remove CO2 from the air when they are
| producing more than you need. Basically it's using the
| atmosphere as a reverse-battery
| pfdietz wrote:
| The alternative there is to do pre-combustion CO2 capture
| on the methane, storing hydrogen (or hydrogen + nitrogen)
| for use in the peaking turbines.
|
| Another possibility is to store CO2 underground, and when
| "charging" use a solid oxide electrolyzer to turn it to
| carbon. When discharging, it would be run as a SOFC and
| produce CO2, which would be cooled and stored again. I
| believe Noon Energy is looking into schemes like this.
| incrudible wrote:
| > It seems hard to believe that removing CO2 from the
| atmosphere could ever be less expensive than not emitting it
| to begin with.
|
| This is the "get rich by saving money" fallacy. Imagine all
| the CO2 of a century of industrial development had not been
| emitted. We'd be enjoying a life without man-made climate
| change, but also without any of the amenities of modern life.
|
| Consider that air-to-fuel companies are pretty close to
| profitability with just a modest increase in carbon taxes.
| Consider also that countries like Germany spent _a lot_ of
| money on transitioning to renewables, with very little to
| show for it. Once you picked the low-hanging fruit, there are
| no more "savings" to be had without drastically cutting down
| on production. At that point, you might as well turn some of
| that production into sequestration.
|
| > So the whole thing seems like a fraud.
|
| I get the same feeling with electric cars, solar panels and
| wind turbines. Why? Because these have all rolled out on
| account of lavish subsidies, not because the market decided
| they are the most efficient solution. Just put a price on CO2
| and watch the market figure that one out. Results may be not
| what you expect.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > Imagine all the CO2 of a century of industrial
| development but also without any of the amenities of modern
| life.
|
| Most people on earth still live in conditions that are
| nowhere near the kind of development you are likely
| enjoying. They are also those who will feel the effects of
| man-made climate change most.
|
| That is why this argument falls flat. We didn't buy this
| kind of living standard with some future self-inflicted
| suffering: your amenities of modern life are bought with
| the suffering of others.
|
| But the deal is done and over. Now a debt is owed.
| incrudible wrote:
| I get that, but what are the implications? Consider that
| the vast majority of CO2 emissions today are coming from
| the countries that are still developing to that standard
| we enjoy. We have no right to ask _them_ to cut down.
| Therefore, we have _no choice_ but to invest into
| sequestration, because that 's the only way to pay down
| that "debt".
| to11mtm wrote:
| As an alternative, would it be worth it to help
| developing countries build green solutions now, maybe the
| economies of scale will help offset some of the short-
| term cost?
|
| You're right that it's not right to force still
| developing countries to halt their progress. I just
| wonder if there's a way to help them develop in a way
| that is better long-term.
| incrudible wrote:
| Absolutely, technology that scales out to the rest of the
| world is the only hope to actually make a substantial
| difference. That includes sequestration, renewables, but
| also nuclear fission and (hopefully) fusion.
|
| Unfortunately, most of the activism seems to revolve
| around "us sinners" needing to abstain from our
| indulgences.
| sharp11 wrote:
| There is a moral hazard here, but the reality is that we've
| passed the point where emissions reductions alone can get us
| where we want to be. We will need both reductions and
| removal.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| It's more plausible to me when you think about centralization
| vs decentralization.
|
| Sure, it would clearly be cheaper to emit less if the
| emissions were mostly coming from a small number of
| controlled facilities. But when the sources are millions of
| tailpipes and smokestacks across the globe, it's at least
| plausible that a centralized, new recapture solution would be
| cheaper than decreasing emissions in millions of old places.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Given how fast electrification of transportation is
| occurring, I think those "millions of tailpipes" may go
| down sooner than you think.
| redisman wrote:
| In rich western pockets like Norway and SF Bay sure.
| Globally though your median car owner can in no way
| afford to replace their car with a new one
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Sure, for now. But pretty much all of Europe, large parts
| of the US, much of China have plans to ban gas vehicles
| in the near future (< 15 years). Once that happens most
| of the rest of the world will follow quickly because
| there will be just less supply chain support for gas
| vehicles, and what remains will quickly become a
| diminishing fraction of the total.
|
| I definitely see this happening _much_ faster than any
| attempts at atmospheric capture would even make a tiny
| dent.
| redisman wrote:
| I'm definitely in the strategy bucket of let's do
| everything and hope it's enough
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Removing CO2 is _far_ more doable, because you don 't have to
| convince/force 7 billion people to do something.
|
| Anyone with the right equipment can just _do_ it, without
| asking permission, just like CO2 emitters can.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You don't need permission to pay people to install wind
| turbines either. What you need is money. And if you have
| money, and a dollar spent installing wind turbines goes
| further than a dollar spent extracting CO2, why are you
| going to spend it on the inefficient thing?
| p1mrx wrote:
| A wind turbine is only profitable if you can physically
| connect it to someone who needs energy while the wind is
| blowing. That will get harder as more are built.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| At which point the most economically efficient thing
| becomes to install batteries or hydro or nuclear. It
| still isn't carbon capture, is it?
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Because at some point you have enough electricity.
| perfunctory wrote:
| > because you don't have to convince/force 7 billion people
| to do something.
|
| Well, at least you'll have to convince them to pay $100 per
| tonne captured.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| Maybe not. Imagine what a rhinoceros is worth to someone
| in an Africa. It's (hypothetically making up numbers
| here) a car or a house or food for a year.
|
| For the right person in the US the cost of keeping that
| rhino alive in their backyard (or safe from poachers in a
| reserve in Africa) is much much more but both not an
| inconceivable amount to pay and not an undesirable one.
|
| The best part CO2 capture is that motivated resourced
| people could in theory act without the worlds
| cooperation. People who aren't motivated and/or resourced
| could choose to not act and the problem could still get
| solved.
|
| Currently the only way to achieve that kind of effect is
| to help under-resourced people to act by giving them
| resources. I would suggest that for a lot of reasons this
| is a very tricky solution.
| perfunctory wrote:
| For every resourced person motivated to capture co2 there
| will be another resourced person motivated to release it.
| Do we really want to find out who is gonna win the race.
| No matter how you spin it, we won't solve the emissions
| problem without politics.
| MaxGanzII wrote:
| CO2 is not the only factor driving ecological damage and
| indeed, the mass extinction event currently in progress.
|
| There are simply too many humans for the way in which we as
| a species currently behave.
|
| Either we need single parent families, globally, for a few
| generations, to get numbers down to a sustainable level,
| _or_ , we have to convince/force 7 billion people to accept
| and adhere to major changes in how they live their lives.
|
| CO2 is a basically easy problem, compared to this, if it is
| possible to take the route of geo-engineering, because, as
| you say, it's not necessary to change how people behave;
| but I think no matter what, there _is_ a need to change how
| people behave, or billions die from famine and economic
| failure, induced by ecological collapse.
|
| I don't think people will change (indeed, there will be
| large numbers of people vocally against change), I think
| Governments will at best effectively do nothing "(we're
| building lots of renewable! but we're also building lots of
| gas at the same time!"), or more likely make things worse
| ("we'll phase out coal by 2070"), so my expectation is
| human suffering on a scale never seen before in all human
| history.
|
| Humans are kakapo; we're over-reproducing, having as they
| did no meaningful natural predators to keep us in check,
| and sooner or later, that leads to ecological collapse.
|
| (The kakapo went through several cycles of this and evolved
| to reproduce very, very slowly, and so came into balance
| with their environment, and then were very nearly almost
| completely wiped out when humans arrived.)
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Dude, its not the 50s, most of the world is under
| replacement rate of reproduction. The problem now is
| largely the opposite, shortage of young minds to invent
| carbon free energy grids and young hands to build them.
| You can cut human population by half and still have a
| problem of excessive carbon emissions or transition to
| carbon free economy and have net zero per capita
| emission.
|
| Also I don't want humanity to be almost completely wiped
| out.
| convolvatron wrote:
| if young minds are really the limiting factor - maybe we
| could be doing a better job with education.
| MaxGanzII wrote:
| I may be wrong, but I think the world population is
| growing more quickly than you portray, and will be for
| some decades yet, and we _currently_ have far too many
| people for how we conduct ourselves as a species.
|
| I may also be wrong to think it, but I would expect if
| you halved the world population, assuming it was done
| equally across the world, you would indeed halve human
| carbon emissions; half as many people, half as many
| homes, cars, power stations, etc.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Based on current trajectories, the world's population is
| not going to double again (or even increase by 50%), it
| will level off at about 10 billion and at that point
| perhaps start to shrink. It's possible this level is not
| sustainable with an acceptable standard of living, but
| it's not obvious and it certainly isn't inevitable that
| humanity will reproduce out of control.
| MaxGanzII wrote:
| I would say though that this _is_ what I 'm arguing.
|
| The planet can't cope _now_ - the environment is falling
| apart right now, already - and the mid-range estimate
| there 's another two or three billion people to come over
| the next few decades.
|
| There are estimates in excess of this, there are
| estimates lower. Estimates which have population declines
| see slow declines only.
|
| I've not seen any real understanding of _why_ the
| fertility rate is dropping, particularly in first world
| countries. That 's a concern; what happens if the factors
| causing this to happen are transient?
|
| That's part of why the estimates are only estimates, of
| course.
| civilized wrote:
| If we're going to talk insanely expensive moonshots, maybe
| the US should install and maintain free point-of-emission
| carbon capture for anyone anywhere in the world who wants
| it, and put the technology behind it in the public domain
| for anyone who doesn't want it from us.
|
| Point of emission capture is at least technologically
| feasible.
| pkdpic wrote:
| Kind of like how some cities / states already subsidize
| solar panels / heat pumps / electric appliances etc.
|
| But even more like how some organizations (like
| PurpleAir, maybe thats the only one though?) will get you
| connected with the hardware necessary to be a part of
| their air quality monitoring network.
|
| Except this is a way more interesting idea for a lot of
| reasons.
| Factorium wrote:
| As soon as you add that requirement to coal power plants,
| they become immediately uneconomic to build _or_ operate.
| They are already borderline due to the fall in cost of
| renewables.
|
| With a meagre Carbon Tax of $15/tonne, coal costs double
| in the US.
|
| There's nothing that can be done to fix coal power apart
| from just shutting it all down.
| civilized wrote:
| It would be great to do sane carbon policy, but politics
| is the limiting factor at the moment. Carbon capture is
| one of the few universally popular solutions.
| [deleted]
| chillwaves wrote:
| Isn't that the whole appeal of our economic system? To
| root out these inefficiencies?
|
| If it is not economically feasible to run a coal plant if
| they do not externalize the pollution cost, how is that
| my problem? And if the demand justifies it, the cost for
| coal-generated electricity will go up.
|
| It's a matter of priorities and resource allocation.
|
| Why do we allow coal operators to enrich themselves at
| the cost of everyone else?
| stanleydrew wrote:
| > If it is not economically feasible to run a coal plant
| if they do not externalize the pollution cost, how is
| that my problem?
|
| Well it's your problem because they currently do
| externalize the pollution cost, and the status quo is
| difficult to overcome.
|
| > Why do we allow coal operators to enrich themselves at
| the cost of everyone else?
|
| Great question, but the rough answer is that a lot of
| people don't believe (or don't want to believe) that the
| cost to everyone else is meaningful.
| [deleted]
| p1mrx wrote:
| Let's suppose that I can buy an inexpensive carbon
| capture box and attach it to my gas furnace exhaust.
| Where does all the carbon physically go?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I think the economies of scale are such that it needs to
| be large installations that regular people can only
| donate money to. Or do volonteer work, I guess.
|
| The carbon goes down a hole in the ground, somewhere with
| the right geology. You can think of it as a gas well run
| in reverse.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| It comes back out as charcoal which you can throw back in
| the furnace for the ultimate perpetual energy machine.
| scatters wrote:
| It all comes down to the cost of energy. If the current
| improvements in renewable energy are sustained, or if the
| promise of fusion comes to pass, or even a considerable
| improvement in the economics of fission, then yes it could
| make sense to emit carbon dioxide now and recapture it later.
| ithkuil wrote:
| Money and energy are not the same thing.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I tend to agree, at least from the point of view that _even
| if we continue to burn_ fossil fuels that it would be _much_
| cheaper to require CO2 removal where it is produced, and thus
| in extremely high concentrations, than trying to waft it out
| of the atmosphere where it 's only 400 ppm.
|
| Electrification of transportation would also make this much
| easier, because instead of having billions of little fossil
| fuel burners all over the planet, you could concentrate that
| burning to just power plants. At that point there would be a
| lot fewer places where it would be difficult to sequester
| carbon (e.g. planes, large ocean vessels).
| civilized wrote:
| Capturing it at the point of emission seems like it should be
| the priority. Way, way easier to get it at that point. But
| that would make fossil fuels more expensive, and we can't
| have that right?
|
| Maybe we should just massively subsidize point of emission
| carbon capture for fossil fuels. We need it for some use
| cases that renewables don't work for anyway (yet).
| adam_arthur wrote:
| I suspect the public would be on board with these type of
| policies if the cost to the poor and middle class were
| subsidized.
|
| Any legislation that increases cost of energy will impact
| poorest the most, but for some reason cost of energy to the
| poor is not brought up much in climate discussions.
|
| And of course China is the biggest emitter by far, so
| something special needs to be done there. Likely first
| world countries would have to subsidize third world country
| energy costs.
| Sankozi wrote:
| If you had process that only needs electricity then you run
| it only when power is cheap (usually when renewables are
| producing it).
|
| Depending on efficiency this could be better solution than
| energy storage (instead storing energy you pull CO2 and then
| burn it later if energy is needed).
| [deleted]
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Carbon capture techniques do not necessarily allow you to
| easily burn the captured carbon again. For example,
| consider a process where calcium oxide is used to capture
| CO2, converting it to calcium carbonate (that's how masonry
| mortars work). You can't convert calcium carbonate to
| energy.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| While it may impact GDP, it may not impact productive output.
| Less stuff will be consumed for the same output. There will be
| impacts on how money is shuffled around; fossil fuel profits
| flow from fossil fuel share holders to CCS companies, fossil
| fuel workers will be displaced by CCS industry workers.
|
| As renewables come online at cost parity, they will displace
| fossil fuel usage. That will cause a dramatic decline in fossil
| fuel price as oversupply becomes a constant problem. So people
| buying fossil fuel will be spending less for the same result.
|
| Now, one might make the following observation; we've taken
| fossil fuel profits away and consumed them immediately rather
| then re-investing them (what capital owners typically do). This
| means less investment and thus growth. Frankly, I find the
| hypothesis not so compelling. There is little evidence that
| capital is the bottleneck in Capex spending. My view is the
| world suffers from too few good ideas chased by even fewer
| people/organizations and under the constraints of bumbling
| governments.
|
| GDP issue aside, at 100$/ton this only adds 1$/gallon to the
| price of gas and 0.50$/therm to the price of natural gas.
| That's definitely absorbable by the declines that will happen
| from oversupply.
| oopsyDoodl wrote:
| I'm a vacuum this makes sense.
|
| When the right has folks who held power in the White House
| talking about wanting a religious theology to take over, you
| can be sure you don't live in a vacuum.
|
| Too many people are against your vision, either explicitly,
| or implicitly given their ignorance, to take it as a given.
| gruez wrote:
| >While it may impact GDP, it may not impact productive
| output. Less stuff will be consumed for the same output.
|
| I think you got the first sentence flipped? GDP will stay the
| same, but actual productive output (eg. stuff being produced)
| will go down.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Lol "5% pay cut". Classic ivory tower, wealthy first-world
| thinking. 4 trillion dollars is $500 per person on earth, which
| is more than the annual wages for a significant percentage.
| Energy cost increases put vastly more of the burden on low-
| income individuals due to the demand inelasticity of heat,
| fuel, light.
| unilynx wrote:
| But GP didn't say it had to be distributed evenly, but
| referred to a 5% of GDP expense. That's 5% of income, whether
| it's $1000 or $100000.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Of course it won't be distributed evenly, that is the
| point. Just like always, energy cost increases harm poor
| people the most.
|
| If you are in USA, has the government absorbed the increase
| in energy prices? Of course not. It costs everyone more to
| pay their heating bill or buy gasoline than just a year
| ago. Wealthy people can afford it. Poor people cannot. And
| the energy spikes also contribute to the huge inflation in
| food and everyday goods, once again hurting poor people the
| most.
|
| That's the most basic of examples. Reality hits in many
| ways. Poor people generally have to travel much further to
| work every day. No matter whether they take public or
| private transportation, when fuel costs go up, maintenance
| drops... routes get cancelled, cars break down, tolls go
| up, whatever.
|
| Or employment goes away entirely. Are mines, factories,
| construction projects still profitable when energy costs
| spike? Some yes, some no.
| mvanaltvorst wrote:
| This sounds great, but how likely is it that the US will manage
| to reach 100$/GT?
| chippiewill wrote:
| Early estimates were at $600/ton, getting under $100/ton
| doesn't sound completely implausible.
| diego wrote:
| They are different problems. You can stop filling the tub, but
| the water in the tub isn't going to evaporate in time. You
| still have to drain it. It's not either/or.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| You still have the problem that this is a textbook Public
| Good1, and a textbook Collective Action Problem2.
|
| As in, if someone pays $1B to decarbonize, the entire world
| benefits from it. So everyone is incentivised to make someone
| else pay for it.
|
| Empirically, things like these tend to be very underfunded.
|
| 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics) 2
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
| mike_hock wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| If their pie-in-the-sky $100 comes through, that is.
| guilhas wrote:
| This looks like they finally found how to tax the oxygen
| rayiner wrote:
| Carbon recapture is essential for humanitarian purposes.
| Countries like China, India, and Bangladesh, won't forgo
| industrialization to go to net zero CO2 emissions. I'm from
| Bangladesh and there's just zero political will to do that.
| Maintaining the 6-7% annual GDP growth is literally what the
| legitimacy of the government is built upon. So it's imperative
| for the developed world to build the technology to recapture that
| carbon.
| mynegation wrote:
| It is ironic as Bangladesh is going to be one of the countries
| hardest hit by rising sea levels and climate change.
| alltakendamned wrote:
| Can someone point me to an explanation how CO2 is removed from
| the atmosphere ?
|
| What's the process and what happens to it ?
| abathur wrote:
| When these come up, I like to note that we likely also have to
| think about how to unwind the organizations that will build up
| around these practices.
|
| Unless every removal op is a vertically integrated loss center in
| govt or large emitters, there will inevitably be people in the
| chain whose livelihoods or profits or stockholders benefit from
| keeping the spigot on (both of money for removal, and of
| emissions that necessitate it).
|
| This is all assuming invention and improvement don't bootstrap
| easily scalable straightforwardly profitable removal practices.
|
| Thinking ahead about this means a chance at putting up guardrails
| before there is an established lobby to push back.
| tschellenbach wrote:
| Without a price on carbon emissions all these measures seem
| unlikely to really change things.
| timmg wrote:
| I thought a recent study showed the most effective/cheap method
| of reducing CO2 was very simple: plant a lot of trees.
|
| Like, really.
| dntrkv wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/us/wildfires-carbon-offse...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Its impossible to olant enoughbtrees to offset our impact.
|
| Which ofcourse doesn't stio various governments from doing fuck
| all, when they have vacant land they could have reforested
| oblak wrote:
| Ah, but how would certain entities make tons of money with
| trees? They wouldn't. And that's why we've been hearing about
| this nonsense for well over a decade now. It's about making
| money while pretending they're doing something.
| phtrivier wrote:
| As other commenters pointed out, the other trickiest problem
| (beyond feasibility and energy requirement) of CO2 removal is
| that it's not clear who would be paying for them, since you
| want to sequester the CO2 and not use it. So in the end, it
| will be either a voluntary deal, or paid by the taxpayers as
| part of the maintenance of the infrastructure that is earth.
| Do people make money out of road and bridge maintenance ?
|
| At some point, you might argue that planting trees can make
| you more money if something edible grows on them (or under
| them)
| oblak wrote:
| Trickiest problem? Not clear who's going to pay for all
| this? The people are going to pay for all of it and then
| some. That's the entire point of this operation.
|
| As for the second part of your post: are you playing
| devil's advocate here? Planting trees, sustainable
| agriculture - that's not great way to generate fantastic
| profit at everyone's expense. It's not going to happen any
| time soon. Sorry for being a nihilistic prick but surely
| you're not that naive.
|
| We need some kind of agrarian Elon Musk to shake things up
| while making profit.
| hannob wrote:
| Yeah, except that study was so bad that the publication that
| published it later published four replies by other groups of
| scientists pointing out all the flaws of it: https://www.the-
| scientist.com/news-opinion/researchers-find-...
| Kapura wrote:
| Anything to avoid changing the status quo to reduce emissions.
| Honestly embarrassing.
| brutusborn wrote:
| How do you expect humanity to get to pre-industrial revolution
| carbon dioxide levels without atmospheric extraction?
| angio wrote:
| The US could halve their emissions and still emit at the same
| level of an industrialized country like France. A good
| starting point is to invest more in nuclear energy.
| GaryTang wrote:
| Logically extrapolated, mass genocide is usually the
| alternative to technological innovation. Most of us agree one
| is better than the other -- The rest look the other way. (Ex.
| The Chinese on Uighurs)
| brutusborn wrote:
| I'd much prefer if we kept that as plan B.
| the8472 wrote:
| It is the default option through inaction.
| GaryTang wrote:
| Inaction is only the default option in totalitarian
| societies.
| the8472 wrote:
| Uh, no? Business as usual scenarios are the default
| option (tautologically) and will lead to lots of dead
| bodies in the future. Anything else requires large-scale
| coordination to change course.
| GaryTang wrote:
| New businesses emerge everyday, many call themselves
| _startups_.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| There is no way to fix this problem without carbon removal,
| even if emissions go to zero today.
| exyi wrote:
| yea, but just reducing the emissions ASAP does not seem to a
| big priority for many states at the moment
| missedthecue wrote:
| The costs are too high, and therefore the electorate is
| unwilling.
| Proven wrote:
| Socialist morons... But whatever - the idea is find excuses to
| increase deficitary spending and create shovel-ready jobs.
|
| > "We have already poisoned the atmosphere, we have to repair and
| heal the Earth and the only way to do that is to remove carbon
| dioxide permanently,"
|
| Is she insane?
|
| But not to worry - the US government will go bankrupt long before
| they manage to kill off flora.
| epmatsw wrote:
| Are there any public companies actually working on this? The last
| time I looked it seemed like the answer was "Chevron, kinda", but
| that doesn't seem like the right spirit.
| m3at wrote:
| Carbon capture certainly has some appeal, though it seems far
| from clearly being a net positive yet.
|
| Notably questionable IMO is the sequestration when used to simply
| pump more oil, so taxes end up subsidizing fuel extraction. Oil
| giants are some of the biggest DAC investors, along with airlines
| [1][2].
|
| [1] https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2021/03/the-direct-
| air-...
|
| [2] https://www.wired.com/story/is-it-time-for-an-emergency-
| roll...
| xyst wrote:
| Impose a tax on O&G industry, remove all of their subsidies, and
| earmark the collected tax towards CO2 removal and other climate
| change reversal methods. Could get to the $100 per tonne in a
| fraction of a time.
| missedthecue wrote:
| A tax on the O&G industry is a tax on consumers. Demand for
| energy is largely inelastic, so costs are easy to pass on. Gas
| prices at only $3.50 are already sending Joe Biden's approval
| ratings through the floor. Sending gas prices past $5 or more
| means a reactionary panel of candidates get elected next cycle,
| which is counter-productive.
| orf wrote:
| I always forget US gas prices are dollars per _gallon_.
| According to Google prices are currently less than a dollar a
| _litre_ , in Europe the median seems to be about 1.8 dollars
| per litre (4.5 litres in a gallon). In the UK it is about 7.5
| dollars per gallon.
|
| The USA seems addicted to cheap fuel. That addiction needs to
| end sometime, and if you collectively cry about prices
| raising to less than the levels the rest of the world deals
| with just fine it doesn't give much hope for the future.
| lg wrote:
| Consider the american built environment since WW2, gas at
| 7.50/gal would simply make many people's daily lives
| unaffordable, and the most impacted people have the largest
| clout politically due to the rural bias at every level of
| our government. We would happily commit climate suicide
| first.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| When we are going to start taxing coal manufactured products
| (like e.g. Bitcoin) correctly? There should already be a huge tax
| on, for example, Chinese made steel that imported both iron ore
| and coal from Australia by ship to be smelted in the mainland...
|
| Until we make capitalism work for climate it will work against
| it.
| missedthecue wrote:
| What's the difference between smelting the steel in Australia
| and shipping it to China, vs shipping the coal to China and
| smelting the steel on location? I don't think there is any
| material difference there.
| exyi wrote:
| Then both should be equally carbon-taxed when sold in EU/US,
| that would actually incentivize figuring out how to do these
| processes in low-carbon way (or, how to lie about the
| emissions)
| exyi wrote:
| It's easier to convince the public that the climate problem is
| being worked on with this Carbon Removal and Storage. If it
| turns out not to work that great, it's most likely somebody
| else's problem 5-10 years from now.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Removal of CO2 at such grand scale and speed will probably affect
| ecosystems drastically and cause violent disasters
| dane-pgp wrote:
| If the aim is to reach "net zero", then the ecosystem will have
| the same amount of CO2 in year N as in year N-1. That doesn't
| seem like a drastic situation (except that the level we stop at
| will already be well outside the recent historic average).
|
| After reaching a steady state, we can then consider how much we
| want to continue scaling up the CO2 removal process, and for
| how long we want to run it at "net negative" levels. Whatever
| rate we choose should cause fewer violent disasters than the
| process of extracting and emitting the carbon did in the first
| place.
| hourislate wrote:
| Just convert everything to solar, wind, hydro and nuclear, the
| earth will heal itself. No new taxes, departments, bureaucracies,
| crooks and additional burdens on the tax payer who will foot the
| cleanup bill while corporations keep on keeping on.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Electricity production is only 25% of GHG emissions.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| How will the former happen without the latter
| perfunctory wrote:
| I always felt that trying to remove co2 out of the atmosphere
| without decarbonizing energy production is like trying to build a
| perpetuum mobile.
| thriftwy wrote:
| How much does a solar shade cost?
| bob229 wrote:
| Lol good luck. We are a moronic doomed species. Good riddance to
| us
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