[HN Gopher] How can we stop the CO2 that plants store from leaki...
___________________________________________________________________
How can we stop the CO2 that plants store from leaking back into
the air?
Author : rbanffy
Score : 46 points
Date : 2023-04-18 15:40 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| Etrnl_President wrote:
| [dead]
| ravenstine wrote:
| Given $2 trillion, is it a better idea to spend it on developing
| nuclear energy, or to grow a bunch of plants to then be
| dehydrated and wrapped in plastic?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Both. They do different things.
|
| Nuclear provides non-carbon-emitting base load for situations
| where we don't have enough batteries to ride out
| dunkelflaute[0] and we haven't hit peak uranium yet. Biomass
| carbon sequestration buries carbon that we liberated into the
| air back into the ground.
|
| In order to deal with the problems we caused, we both need to
| stop causing the problem and fix the damage we did.
|
| [0] German word for "dark wind lull", i.e. no sun and the wind
| ain't blowing.
| Maursault wrote:
| No. We've already been developing nuclear energy for 72 years.
| We know everything there is to know about it, and more
| development is unlikely to yield anything new, which is why
| nuclear development effectively stopped well over a decade ago.
| What is maddening is that had we spent a tenth of that
| investment towards solar development, we wouldn't even be
| talking about nuclear anymore, and the only reason we didn't
| was because some military wonk vastly overestimated the need
| for fuel for bombs. But the bottom line is until someone
| somehow makes nuclear energy profitable, there's no point in
| talking about it.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Full paper:
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4305125
|
| Seems better than BECCS, but otherwise not as good as other
| options.
| ericb wrote:
| My understanding is that most cardboard is from trees sustainably
| grown as a crop, rather than chopping down forests. If that's the
| case, should we think about _not_ recycling cardboard, and
| instead bury more cardboard-carbon to cycle it back into the
| ground?
| ph0rque wrote:
| Cardboard mulching is a great way to minimize the weeds in your
| garden! It does break down in a few years, but at least some
| (or most of it) gets sequestered into the ground.
| sudhirj wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what happens when you dump wood in the deep
| ocean? Does the wood breakdown and does the carbon come back up
| as CO2 in the atmosphere?
| ccooffee wrote:
| Wood takes a very long time to saturate enough to properly
| sink. A partially-floating log in the ocean is sometimes called
| a "deadhead" log (supposedly named because the bobbing motion
| of the lighter end of the log resembles a human head, but this
| feels apocryphal). I cannot find reliable sources for how long
| it takes for a log to fully saturate with seawater before
| sinking below the surface. Some sailors have reported seeing
| the "same" deadhead for over a decade. (While the deadhead is
| still at- or close-to-the-surface, it is a major hazard for
| boats. Deadheads have been known to punch through boat keels
| and destroy propellers and other equipment.)
|
| After the logs become fully submerged and settle, I do not
| believe that they decompose rapidly, but (again) cannot find
| reliable sources. The state of Florida has a licensed program
| for "Deadhead Logging"[0], but much of the content I've found
| about that program is specific to river ecosystems, not oceans.
|
| A 2020 article entitled "First evidence of microbial wood
| degradation in the coastal waters of the Antarctic"[1] offers a
| few nice quotes:
|
| > Wood submerged in saline and oxygenated marine waters
| worldwide is efficiently degraded by crustaceans and molluscs.
|
| > Our results establish that there is ongoing wood degradation
| also in the Antarctic, albeit at a vastly reduced rate compared
| to warmer environments. Historical shipwrecks resting on the
| seafloor are most likely still in good condition, although
| surface details such as wood carvings, tool marks, and paint
| slowly disintegrate due to microbial decay.
|
| [0] https://floridadep.gov/water/submerged-lands-
| environmental-r...
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-68613-y
| EngManagerIsMe wrote:
| Wood in the ocean will float for a long time, _eventually_
| sinking and storing that carbon. It will be broken down over a
| very long span, and the CO2 will enter the hydrocycle and
| _eventually_ be released as a gas. Probably on the order of
| millennia.
|
| That said, it's not clear what impact smothering the ocean
| floor would have in the habitats there, nor how we would get
| the wood to sink reasonably rapidly and _stay_ sunk -- we don
| 't want massive logs floating back up and hitting ships.
|
| I (personally) believe we are better served by heating the wood
| in an oxygen free environment (pyrolysis). This produces a
| charcoal like substance and energy, we can bury the biochar or
| use it as a soil amendment to achieve the same result (hundreds
| to thousands of years of sequestration) and get energy out of
| the process.
| notorandit wrote:
| If you burn polysaccharides, you are leaking CO2 back to the air.
| This includes wood, paper and straw. If you burn vegetal fats
| (oils) you are leaking CO2 back to the air.
|
| So, stop burning stuff.
| exabrial wrote:
| Use it as a building material is probably the most effective way.
| The mass of a tree is nearly 100% from the air, not the soil.
|
| If we could create a carbon capture machine that turned CO2 in
| cinder blocks using the energy from a nuclear reactor, we'd
| really be set.
|
| just my $0.02
| thereisnospork wrote:
| >If we could create a carbon capture machine that turned CO2 in
| cinder blocks using the energy from a nuclear reactor, we'd
| really be set.
|
| Technically easy, economically and politically difficult.
| Ultimately I'd suspect it would need to be done at such a
| massive scale where the overhead of running a nuclear plant
| safely becomes minimal relative to the underlying costs to
| mine/refine uranium.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Carbon fiber or diamond would be the best options. Most other
| materials would require a counter-ion, e.g. calcium carbonate
| Ca2+(CO3-)2
| cwkoss wrote:
| Hempcrete is super cool, kind of a modernized cob with better
| moisture tolerance and it's fireproof
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Imagine a gigantic "oil derrick" out at sea that instead of
| pumping oil out of the ground dragged it out of the air.
| Gigantic filters, MEA beds, regeneration loops, Sabatier,
| Fischer-Tropsch, all arranged around a nuclear reactor 100x the
| power of today's largest. The output is a variety of
| hydrocarbon fuels, and it's all overseen by a proper bond
| villain because the spice must flow.
|
| I want to see this movie.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Similar to Panchaea from the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Exactly -- but funded with a straightforward profit motive,
| not charity / policy / illuminati.
| vkou wrote:
| If it were profitable to build a machine to turn air into
| gasoline, I'd buy gasoline, burn it, and run that machine
| for free infinite money.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Why buy and burn the gasoline?
|
| I think you are reaching for an "if it were easy, someone
| would have done it" argument, which is trivially true in
| the short term but not very informative in the long term
| because we get better and better at doing things that are
| not easy. Profitability is a function of execution,
| feedstock prices, scale, cost of capital, etc. So far
| air-to-fuel hasn't been profitable, even in contexts that
| help reduce profitability concerns (e.g. Air-to-Fuel on
| aircraft carriers), so there is clearly a long road
| between this "movie" and reality. However, variables
| vary. If the nuclear industry gets back in gear, air-to-
| fuel gets de-risked on smaller emissions-capture
| projects, and we see advances in construction and
| chemical engineering, who knows?
| vkou wrote:
| Presumably this machine would work better if I were
| feeding CO2 straight into it, rather than have it suck it
| out of the 420 ppm air.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| The profit motive can't exist without policy (for
| example, the policy of not letting thugs take everything
| you have)
| xattt wrote:
| > nuclear reactor 100x the power of today's largest
|
| You would need some sort of a Navy to guard this against
| sabotage.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| That's what the Bond villain is for. They come with
| henchmen.
| [deleted]
| Anon4Now wrote:
| My movie fantasy is to create canals into the Sahara, and use
| solar-powered water desalination plants to irrigate and re-
| forest the desert.
| verdverm wrote:
| Fun fact, the Sahara cycles between desert and grasslands
| on N,000 year cycles.
|
| https://today.tamu.edu/2016/11/29/6000-years-ago-the-
| sahara-...
|
| Not sure there is evidence it was a forest, so wouldn't
| really be a "re-forestation"
| jl6 wrote:
| It takes a substantial amount of time to condense and process
| CO2 from the air into droplets of synthetic fuel. It would be
| an unnecessarily slow dripping mechanism.
| xorcist wrote:
| It would be horribly inefficient compared to nearly every
| other use of that energy imaginable.
|
| The movie might still be good but not because of the plot.
| But hey, it worked for The Matrix.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yes, that's why I described it as a movie.
|
| We have a lot of high-carbon energy substitution to do
| before DCC makes sense anywhere, let alone in the middle of
| an ocean, but before people trash DCC too hard I wanted to
| gently remind everyone that 1: industrial processes work
| better at scale, and 2: nature gives us magic rocks
| containing obscene amounts of low-carbon energy, so
| "inefficient" isn't necessarily a condemnation once we get
| past the energy substitution phase of decarbonization. I
| applaud the people working to de-risk the technology today
| so that when the time is right it can get off the ground.
| than3 wrote:
| I like the idea of converting it to fuel, make it a business
| model to pull it out of the environment.
|
| https://news.stanford.edu/2022/02/09/turning-carbon-dioxide-...
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Build. More. Houses.
|
| Subsidize the lumber industry if you have to.
|
| Also, update building requirements to favor sturdier materials.
| Most homes in the US are made of pine 2x4s that get obliterated
| by minor tornadoes. The homes of my great grandparents and beyond
| are all made of cypress 4x4s and 2x6s and higher. They've been
| hit dead on with tornadoes and terrible hurricanes and the worst
| that's ever happened to them is some missing shingles. When I was
| a child in the 70s and early 80s, you would find all sorts of old
| abandoned sharecropper homes lining River Road that were made of
| cypress with corrugated aluminum exteriors. The rich would buy
| these homes up, one by one, strip them of their exteriors and
| take the frames for use in their new homes. Why? Because it's
| cheaper than buying the new stuff, and clearly the materials are
| sturdy.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Bury it in the ground before decomposition, not that hard.
| Reason077 wrote:
| This is Tl;Dr for the article ^^
| EngManagerIsMe wrote:
| Probably worth considering pyrolysis before burying it. By
| heating the wood and baking it into char you get a few nice
| benefits:
|
| * You produce biochar, which is almost pure carbon, and
| therefore you are only sequestering the weight/volume of the
| carbon, not all the water and other stuff.
|
| * Biochar can be used as a soil amendment to improve microbial
| cultures and store carbon for hundreds or thousands of years
|
| * You can produce energy in the form of heat or wood gas
|
| * You can produce wood vinegar, which may have some
| agricultural or industrial uses
|
| I think there's a nascent industry in converting biomass into
| biochar and sequestering it, but it would be very interesting
| to see it done with forestland more generally.
| euroderf wrote:
| I've tried to read up on biochar but actually no treatment
| was as clear as yours.
|
| Where's a good place to read up on it with an eye to
| practical applications ?
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| This is really fascinating, is biochar notably different
| from, say, charcoal? Or is it a trendier name for what we've
| already got?
|
| I've looked at pyrolysis for home sustainability and have yet
| to find a good set of resources for it outside making
| charcoal.
| silverthorn wrote:
| > I think there's a nascent industry in converting biomass
| into biochar and sequestering it
|
| To expand on that, biochar seems to be the majority of carbon
| removal delivered commercially to date:
|
| https://www.cdr.fyi/
|
| Of course the entire CDR industry is nascent.
|
| Bio-oil via pyrolysis is another option. Charm Industrial is
| trying to scale that up.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| "People underestimate what you can do with engineering."
|
| That seems optimistic. If that's the case, why is it that we
| still regularly have engineering debacles and failures? Whether
| it be software, or rockets, or dams, it's not a magic "we can
| solve anything with engineering and enough money." Engineering is
| amazing, but it's not magic and engineering mistakes and
| oversights are a regular occurrence in every field.
|
| And this:
|
| "To pay for this, the people who sell you the gasoline will have
| to be billed an extra 53 cents. And of course, it'll appear at
| the pump. That would amount to around $2 trillion, which sounds
| like an awful lot of money. But the GNP of the world is about
| $100 trillion. So it will set the world economy back by 2
| percent."
|
| This is elitism on an absurd level. Does he have any idea, how
| much just "reducing the world economy by 2 percent" would
| actually do? He's casually talking about the livelihoods of
| millions as though they are expendable. And 53 cents? I mean, in
| Silicon Valley it sounds great. But considering the median US
| income is only $31,000 (not joking); that's a cruel tax. Also,
| that would be worldwide, and I think it goes without saying that
| 53 cents a gallon in China or India added to the pump is a non-
| starter.
| nanidin wrote:
| The price of gas has been higher than the price of gas today +
| 53 cents, so from an absolute price perspective it doesn't seem
| unreasonable.
| DeRock wrote:
| The alternative is an unknown tail risk of unmitigated climate
| change. The decision isn't "98 or 100% GDP", its take a hit
| now, or increase risk of ecosystem collapse in the future.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| The problem with chasing tail risks is that there are an
| awful lot of them and our track record at picking the
| important ones is rather poor.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > unmitigated climate change
|
| So we'll do this to counter an unknown tail risk. I would
| argue, in my mind, that technology and AI is moving way too
| fast, and the current solutions to the climate issue are not
| feasible politically. People don't care. A more optimistic
| approach would be to wait and see what technology can bring
| us in the next 20 years or so to solve the problem instead of
| trying to rush today's inadequate solutions to market.
| Imagine if we had begun trying to solve the climate crisis in
| a radical manner 20 years ago, back when we had Windows XP,
| ludicrously expensive and shorter lasting solar panels, no
| practical large lithium-ion batteries, etc. It would be
| impossible. I think it's about as equally impossible today
| for what we'll have in the future.
| wpietri wrote:
| Why do you think solar panels and batteries and computers
| improved so much over the last 20 years? I'm pretty sure it
| wasn't because people said, "This stuff isn't very good, so
| let's not buy any of it and just wait for 20 years to see
| if it gets better."
| explorer83 wrote:
| I call this "hope" and I consider myself "hopeful".
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Median US income for full time workers is actually $56,287.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yes, but not everyone is a full-time worker, so that's not a
| correction to a claim about the median income of all
| Americans.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| No, it's not a correction. It's additional information that
| makes it clearer what a full time worker is likely to be
| on.
| m1kal wrote:
| Build a bridge out of her!
| _ph_ wrote:
| Turning wood into charcoal would be a way. That doesn't decay
| easily when burried.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| I don't know if you were intentionally joking or not - but I
| find the though of putting coal back into the ground hilarious!
|
| Like, maybe that's how it got there in the first place. Our
| ancestors cut down trees for fuel, caused global warming and
| came up with this great idea to sequester it as coal under the
| ground. They save the environment, but end up living in caves
| and huts. 6000 years later we come around, dig up the coal,
| burn it, cause global warming, and then... decide to sequester
| it back in the ground as coal again. EDIT: It remains to be
| seen whether we will also end up living in caves and huts
| (again)
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Charcoal and coal are not the same. Charcoal has an immense
| surface area per unit volume (950 to 2000 m2/g) and is pure
| carbon. That surface area makes charcoal great at absorption.
| Populating charcoal with nutrients and life then adding it to
| soil permanently improves soil fertility by increasing the
| nutrient holding capacity, cation exchange capacity, and
| available microorganism living space.
|
| Gardeners call inoculated charcoal biochar. Historical
| examples of human created charcoal rich soils are terra preta
| and African dark earths. Terra preta and African dark earths
| have highly elevated levels of black carbon (up to 9%) and
| have remained fertile for at least 400 years. We don't know
| if these charcoal enriched soils were intentionally made or
| if they were just community middens. But, these charcoal
| enriched soils are undoubtedly more fertile than the
| surrounding soil.
|
| Skill Cult has a great playlist about charcoal and how it can
| be used in agriculture.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL60FnyEY-
| eJAfBgRAHKXj...
| skymast wrote:
| Why would we want to?
| EngManagerIsMe wrote:
| Trees gather up a ton (sometimes many tons) of carbon during
| their lives. When they die and begin to decompose, fungi and
| bacteria return most of that carbon back into the atmosphere as
| CO2.
|
| If we could find a way to prevent that, then those trees could
| be used as machines to pull CO2 out of the air and store it,
| preventing it from being a greenhouse gas.
| wyldberry wrote:
| And what of the effects on the rest of the cycle of life that
| rely on the fungi and bacteria decomposing the tree?
| EngManagerIsMe wrote:
| Interestingly, many forest stands are actually
| overpopulated with trees. Removal of organic matter helps
| the existing trees grow taller and more healthy, improves
| the habitat for other species and animals, and can result
| in a more biodiverse, healthier forest less vulnerable to
| parasites and invasives. It can also reduce the severity of
| forest fires.
|
| Source: I manage forestland in the PNW for the purpose of
| habitat restoration, and was surprised to learn how
| removing tree mass from a system can actually improve the
| overall health and biomass of a system.
| throwmeawaaay wrote:
| Nobody is suggesting doing this to every tree.
| ericmay wrote:
| We don't need more features "engineering", we need subtractive
| solutions. There's a lot of money to be made in wrapping trees in
| some new contraption, not so much money to be made in building
| sidewalks and getting people out of their CO2 producing cars.
| Obviously we can do both at once, but we need a lot more thought
| leadership aimed at subtractive solutions.
| blueplanet200 wrote:
| We need it all. Even if we're carbon neutral the CO2 is still
| in the air. We need a way to remove it. This is especially
| obvious given how long it's going to take to even get to carbon
| neutral.
|
| Can we stop with "we don't need solutions like THIS, we need
| this other solution." We're going head first into a climate
| crisis. We need all solutions here.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Not all "solutions" are equal. Some are a waste of resources
| and inefficient for their supposed results.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > We need it all.
|
| No, we don't. Right now we need to cut the 90% of the problem
| that is caused by the same 3 things.
|
| If you have some solution for a small part of the remaining
| 10% that is profitable or neutral, go for it.If you are
| arguing for research, so we can do it later, also, great. But
| if you want to divert attention from 90% of the problem just
| so you can improve your favorite 0.01%, just go sit in a
| corner somewhere until you get reasonable.
| jonas21 wrote:
| How is building sidewalks a subtractive solution? Every mile of
| new concrete sidewalk emits about as much CO2 as driving a
| million miles. In some urban areas, you'll eventually make up
| for that. In places where people are not going to walk much
| anyway, probably not.
|
| The most expedient way of "getting people out of their CO2
| producing cars" is to focus on the "CO2 producing" part, i.e.
|
| 1. Get people into electric cars, which even on the current
| grid cuts your CO2 emissions by over half due to better
| efficiency, and
|
| 2. Convert the electric grid to 100% clean energy.
|
| And it turns out there's a lot of money to be made in doing
| this too.
| ericmay wrote:
| You know we have to build roads for the cars to drive on
| right? Wonder what the C02 emissions for a mile of new
| highway is. You're also not accounting for the construction,
| transportation, maintenance, and other CO2-producing
| activities for cars - none of which are necessary for
| walking. Nevermind the other benefits like attacking obesity
| and deaths due to car crashes.
|
| > 1. Get people into electric cars, which even on the current
| grid cuts your CO2 emissions by over half due to better
| efficiency, then
|
| > 2. Convert the electric grid to 100% clean energy.
|
| These both need to happen, yes. Cars _existing_ is fine, just
| need to reduce usage for daily activities by 90% or so and
| also convert most of the grid to clean energy.
| revscat wrote:
| > Cars existing is just fine
|
| I disagree with this sentiment. I hate cars, and what they
| have done to society. They are demonstrably and objectively
| _not_ "fine". They are the primary destructive force in
| society, and can and should die. Quickly.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I don't know about _the_ primary destructive force, but
| on the whole I agree. A good start would be for the US to
| stop subsidizing fuel so that overly complex supply
| chains are more expensive to operate. Also, some kind of
| last-mile delivery system would be good: I die a little
| every time I take my 2000 lb car over the hill to get a 2
| lb burrito.
| redeeman wrote:
| > I die a little every time I take my 2000 lb car over
| the hill to get a 2 lb burrito.
|
| so.... dont? :)
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I usually don't. I went carless for a decade (not easy
| where I live). But sometimes I didn't plan ahead enough
| to cook at home, and my wife comes home exhausted. I just
| don't have the spine to demand that she bike a few miles
| for her dinner, nor do I want to bring her something
| cold. People with kids are in a similar situation.
|
| You can be a purist if you want, but you'll never
| convince anybody if you can't meet them where they're at.
| Philorandroid wrote:
| > They are the primary destructive force in society
|
| What a deranged belief to hold. Rationalizing that cars
| of all things are the root cause of all of society's ills
| is reductionist and lazy, equally so as to believe that
| simply removing them would cure those ills.
| eMSF wrote:
| >They are demonstrably and objectively not "fine"
|
| Aka "my opinions are the objective viewpoint".
|
| >They are the primary destructive force in society
|
| Hyperbolic nonsense.
|
| Today's mobile society with cars is better than anything
| else that has ever existed.
| notJim wrote:
| I disagree on the absolutism in this. Cars can take you
| places that not many people want to go, and whenever you
| want, which is one of the coolest things a person can do.
| You're never going to build transit to all of these
| places, and it's too far to walk or bike. Used in this
| way, cars increase human freedom which is one of the most
| important values for humans to pursue.
|
| The real problem with cars is that we use them for
| everything. It makes zero sense for us to use cars in
| dense in cities, or between popular locales, or for short
| distances. We could probably eliminate more than 90% of
| car usage. But trying to eliminate cars period is too
| far.
| ericmay wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment, but I'm not sure we'll get
| many people on board with "ban all cars".
|
| But we probably can get many people on board with
| something like, own only one car and stop wasting money
| on new highways and items like that.
|
| I think people can understand a world where they are
| walking to the grocery store and their car is for some
| random trip to the lake (one that ideally takes a bit
| longer with just two lane road and such). I'm not sure
| they'll be able to understand a world where cars don't
| even exist.
| goatlover wrote:
| Strong disagree. Cars are great for freedom of movement.
| I like having a car and being able to go wherever I want,
| whenever I want. Good public transportation is fine, so
| is cycling, electric scooters and walking paths. But I
| still want my car, and I suspect so do a majority of
| people. I'll never support banning cars. And just because
| you hate them doesn't mean you're right.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > You know we have to build roads for the cars to drive on
| right? Wonder what the C02 emissions for a mile of new
| highway is.
|
| Then after that factor in _parking lots_! Sometimes I think
| more solutions need to involve "reforest parking lots". In
| some areas that alone would do far more for walkability
| than adding sidewalks. Parking lots build heat deserts that
| radiate heat back up to pedestrians (sometimes alarmingly
| so), but trees add pleasant shades and cool and hydrate the
| air around them. Add a bunch more trees and other foliage
| to existing parking lots and a lot of currently
| inhospitable suburbs would become a lot more hospitable to
| pedestrian travel.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Certainly that could be the answer for some or part of
| them, but we should also be looking at building housing
| on top of them as well. Heat discourages people from
| walking but so does the distance between destinations.
|
| This may seem counter to the goal of reducing emissions,
| but if it means there's less low-density development at
| the fringes (which involves a lot more roadway, etc per
| person) then it's really not.
|
| Of course, it's not either/or - there's plenty of
| underutilized land devoted to parking, we can do both!
| rolldat777 wrote:
| Reproduced your calculation on the 1 million miles, it's
| surprising but checks out. Then consider how many miles of
| road we have already made and how much we continue to make to
| support large vehicles on them. You could designate half of
| them as car-free and induce alternative transportation if you
| really wanted to. OTOH, a new electric vehicle costs roughly
| 250k miles worth of driving to produce, without considering
| electricity generation.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| But even CO2 producing cars, have you ever heard of a gas-
| powered leaf blower or chainsaw? Even though efficiency has
| improved, in 2016 California reported that just 1 hour of a
| gas-powered leaf blower was the equivalent of taking a Camry
| from LA to Denver.
|
| You aren't going to motivate people to be better for the
| environment (by, say, buying a more expensive 40MPG vehicle
| instead of a 35MPG one), when it can so easily be wiped away
| by a guy just leaving a tool on for a few minutes more. Same
| situation with banning straws - nobody cares about the 1.6
| billion masks in the ocean now (literally).
| roarcher wrote:
| > Even though efficiency has improved, in 2016 California
| reported that just 1 hour of a gas-powered leaf blower was
| the equivalent of taking a Camry from LA to Denver.
|
| That cannot possibly be true. That's a 16 hour drive
| through 1000 miles of mountainous terrain, requiring
| multiple tanks of gas, vs an hour of a small two-stroke
| engine spinning a little turbine.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| According to the California Air Resources Board (CARB),
| it's true (except for CO2).
|
| https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/fact-sheets/sore-small-
| engi...
|
| @roarcher: They still emit lots of CO2 due to decreased
| efficiency, but the numbers aren't compared (so I'm not
| sure what they are), which I apologize for as I got CO2
| confused with the other several gases being compared.
| [deleted]
| roarcher wrote:
| > except for CO2
|
| Considering this entire thread is only about CO2, not air
| quality, perhaps that would have been worth mentioning in
| your original comment.
| aksss wrote:
| A leaf blower is about 11 lbs of CO2 per hour of use.[1]
|
| A car produces about a pound per mile. Let's say that is
| +- 30% depending on variables of trip.
|
| [1] https://www.quietcleanpdx.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/11/Gas...
| roarcher wrote:
| "per hour" vs "per mile" is an odd comparison. A car
| probably travels 60 miles in that hour.
| sbaiddn wrote:
| Or 5 in LA
| [deleted]
| jonas21 wrote:
| Can you cite your source on the leaf blower thing? I'm
| guessing they're talking about air quality, not CO2
| emissions. Obviously, nobody's feeding their leaf blower 40
| gallons of gas per hour.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| https://cleantechnica.com/2021/10/13/its-time-to-ban-gas-
| pow...
|
| Air Quality, yes; but I will admit CO2 is not compared.
| [deleted]
| function_seven wrote:
| To determine CO2, you can just look at the amount of fuel
| consumed. That'll get you close enough.
|
| A leaf-blower running for one hour will burn roughly 1/2
| gal. of fuel. A 40mpg car going from LA to Denver will
| burn about 25 gallons of fuel.
|
| That car trip will generate around 50 times as much CO2
| as the blower
| sbaiddn wrote:
| Pretty darn close! It should be well within 90% of the
| right answer. For a car probably about 99.9%
| sbaiddn wrote:
| _NOT CO2 emissions_
|
| Its worse in volatile organics, particulates and NOx.
| Mostly volatile organics due to the two stroke cycle.
|
| But not because a chainsaw is particularly bad, but because
| a Camry is exceptionally good.
|
| Why is the Camry good? Because it has a four stroke, fuel
| injected, computer controlled engine and $300 of catalysts
| breaking everything down. The smoke of the Camry's
| emissions is water condensing out.
| danans wrote:
| > The smoke of the Camry's emissions is water condensing
| out.
|
| Not just water. A lot of CO, CO2, particulates and NOx
| are also emitted, especially at lower engine
| temperatures.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02
| 697...
| calt wrote:
| > 1 hour of a gas-powered leaf blower was the equivalent of
| taking a Camry from LA to Denver
|
| Maybe in terms of particulate pollution, but in terms of
| CO2 that's absolutely unimaginable.
| throwawayf37jg wrote:
| NOx might be the bulk of it.
| sbaiddn wrote:
| Naw, volatile organics.
|
| Compression ratio isn't great on these things since half
| the time the gas is terrible -> no pressure, no NOx
|
| But they are two stroke so a little but of gas and oil
| leak out on every stroke.
| hannob wrote:
| > Even though efficiency has improved, in 2016 California
| reported that just 1 hour of a gas-powered leaf blower was
| the equivalent of taking a Camry from LA to Denver.
|
| That sounds like nonsense.
|
| (FWIW I support banning gas-powered leaf blowers. But your
| claim is still bogus.)
| sbaiddn wrote:
| It is bogus, because the OP talks about "efficiency"
| therefore implying CO2 emissions (since energy is the
| product of making CO2). The OP has confounded the CO2
| emissions and volatiles.
|
| Where leaf blowers' emission fall apart is volatile
| organics.
|
| Why do you support banning gas powered landscaping
| equipment? In cities like LA, sure. But how are utilities
| going to maintain brush around remote power lines without
| gas powered equipment?
| [deleted]
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Electric cars emit a lot more than 0g/CO2 per mile, even in a
| perfect world. We need to get people out of car dependent
| suburbia, and it's going to be painful for a lot of
| Americans.
| Symmetry wrote:
| In a perfect world, why would electric cars be emitting any
| CO2? A carbon neutral electrical production is clearly
| possible right now with enough investment and we're moving
| in that direction now because it's profitable. Carbon
| neutral steel is currently expensive but people are working
| on that. Likewise with the cement and other materials going
| into the roads. The big impediment I see is that the
| plastic that goes into a car isn't easy to replace and will
| decay after the car breaks down, but if we create it via
| direct air capture and synthesis that doesn't prevent a
| carbon neutral car. So what do you see as preventing us
| from getting to carbon neutral cars?
| Tade0 wrote:
| I see this mentioned a lot, but is there any plan?
| paulcole wrote:
| No, because people fundamentally don't want to do this.
|
| The plan exists now. Downsize your lifestyle drastically
| and move closer to the downtown of a major-ish city.
|
| But you suggest that to anyone and it's a litany of
| excuses for why this just won't work for them. The truth
| is that either they can't or they won't. And for the vast
| majority of people it's just that they won't.
| diordiderot wrote:
| > Downsize your lifestyle
|
| Or just actually pay what it costs instead of having it
| subsidised by uncle sam.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| Most walkable cities in the United States are super
| fucking expensive, see https://www.walkscore.com/cities-
| and-neighborhoods/ . I live in #1, and it's $1000 a sqft
| / $11000 a sqm.
| ericmay wrote:
| That's because of scarcity. We don't build those anymore.
| We only build car-dependent American style suburban areas
| where walking and things to walk to are not permitted.
| That's 100% the only reason "walkable" places are so
| expensive.
| goatlover wrote:
| There's also only so much real-estate available fro major
| downtowns, and the prices will skyrocket if you could get
| "everyone" to want to move there.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| More like zoning laws, I was shocked at the density drop
| between "residential/office tower" to "single family
| houses" in most of the US cities. Local governments are
| also super worried about mixed use for some reason, they
| really don't want a corner store so people won't drive in
| the hood.
|
| Even in walkable cities, the local government are idiots,
| see the San Francisco zoning map, all the good stuff
| exists for historical reasons, not because of masterful
| planning: https://sfplanning.org/sites/default/files/reso
| urces/2019-02...
| ericmay wrote:
| In Columbus where I live there are over 200 acres of
| surface parking lots alone. There is plenty of space for
| housing. The article is probably paywalled but sometimes
| Reader View works -> https://www.bizjournals.com/columbus
| /news/2023/03/16/lots-an...
| WorldMaker wrote:
| But that's a solvable problem. It's a chicken-and-egg
| problem, certainly, but if more people want to live in
| walkable "major downtowns", we could just, you know,
| build more walkable "major downtowns", not just inflate
| the prices of ones we already have. There's nothing
| really stopping us from building more cities or at least
| planning more suburban/exurban neighborhoods to be
| independently walkable and with enough amenities to be
| city-like other than status quo momentum and what remains
| of the current "American suburban dream" of single family
| detached homes and cars over public transportation and
| walking.
| digging wrote:
| > No, because people fundamentally don't want to do this.
|
| This is untrue, because
|
| > The plan exists now. Downsize your lifestyle
| drastically and move closer to the downtown of a major-
| ish city.
|
| this is untrue.
|
| The problem isn't a lack of alternatives, the problem is
| the auto industry lobbying to make alternatives illegal
| and spending billions to make people believe alternatives
| don't exist.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
| ericmay wrote:
| Yea - also idk why people keep thinking you need to
| downsize your lifestyle drastically _or_ at all. I live
| in a decent-sized metro area in a 2500 square foot
| detached home in an urban neighborhood. It 's perfectly
| normal and fine. People have cars, but they also walk and
| bike to a lot of places. There are restaurants and shops
| nearby to walk to. There are lots of young parents with
| kids and a school nearby too.
|
| Unfortunately people equate good urban planning with this
| weird dystopian view of a 400sqft apartment and clothes
| hung out to dry and getting stabbed to death on the
| street instead of how Americans built in the late 1800s
| and early 1900s with small businesses, restaurants
| nearby, parks for everyone to enjoy getting out and
| gettin some sunshine, and other amenities.
|
| "But it's expensive" - yes because we are market-locked
| into building nothing like this so scarcity drives up the
| prices.
| than3 wrote:
| The lithium needed for those electric cars far exceeds the
| same strategic resources currently on the planet afaik,
| electric cars won't work as a viable alternative.
| [deleted]
| EGreg wrote:
| Why does building sidewalks need to take up so much CO2?
|
| And why can't we use other forms of energy to power these
| machines w electricity?
| bloppe wrote:
| The chemical process of producing cement involves heating
| calcium carbonate to get lime and CO2. Most of the
| emissions are from this chemical process, not from
| transportation or operating machinery, although those
| usually also contribute quite a bit of CO2
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Why use cement and not cut stones, which live centuries?
| giantg2 wrote:
| To be fair, they said new sidewalks, not necessarily concrete
| ones. There are some alternative materials out there. One
| major hurtle to using them is that the vast majority of
| places still require concrete in their codes.
| coxmichael wrote:
| Roads were often made of wood blocks, so maybe that's an
| option here too?
| nomel wrote:
| > Obviously we can do both at once
|
| Who is this "we" [1]?
|
| 1. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57018837
| golemotron wrote:
| We already have a subtractive solution. Birth rate in the
| industrialized world has plummeted and the demographic wave
| initiated by industrializaton has crested. We can expect carbon
| emissions for the next several hundred years to peak soon.
|
| In other words, the problem is solved. Any gargantuan efforts
| that we apply now are just about trying to get there a decade
| or two faster. Given the history of worldwide coordination
| attempts, it's not clear that it is possible or worth it.
| pg314 wrote:
| The problem is far from solved. It's not enough that carbon
| emissions will peak soon. They need to come down fast. And we
| do not have a decade or two.
| xienze wrote:
| > Birth rate in the industrialized world has plummeted and
| the demographic wave initiated by industrializaton has
| crested. We can expect carbon emissions for the next several
| hundred years to peak soon.
|
| Except population is exploding in Asia and Africa and western
| nations are intent on importing as many of those people as
| possible.
|
| What's baffling to me is how much overlap there is between
| the "we need to reduce CO2 emissions", "having children is
| selfish", and "we need more immigration" crowds. One of these
| things is not like the other.
| digging wrote:
| This is wrong on a lot of levels. Primarily:
|
| 1. Every nation with a declining birth rate is shitting their
| pants about it and trying to raise the birth rate. It is seen
| as an existential crisis to _not_ grow in population.
|
| 2. Birth rates have already been dropping for decades and
| carbon emissions are continuing to climb because we keep
| finding new ways to spend money on creating carbon emissions.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Growing trees and turning them into long-life products such as
| houses, rather than burning them for fuel, is also a good
| solution. The carbon gets locked away for at least the lifetime
| of the building.
|
| We could also adapt building design so that some portion of the
| steel and concrete used in traditional construction could instead
| use wood-derived materials. This would help a lot since steel and
| concrete are both very carbon intensive. Steel production alone
| accounts for 8% of ALL global carbon emissions!
| undersuit wrote:
| Even shorter life products like wooden furniture should be
| preferable to plastic alternatives. Especially with the
| disposable way we treat the plastic products, at least if we're
| throwing away wood furniture we're not pumping up oil to make
| it first.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| throwing away wood products creates methane release from
| landfills. Those wood products need to be ground up and
| placed deep underground.
| undersuit wrote:
| Throwing away the plastic products is just a longer process
| of decomposition, but I agree that wood products should be
| disposed of properly.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Many landfills these days will capture the methane and sell
| it, at least in the developed world. So it can displace new
| methane entering the biosphere from wells.
| nigrioid wrote:
| [flagged]
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| For context:
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/feb/01/climate-...
| nigrioid wrote:
| Haven't you ever noticed how every Guardian article is based
| on fear to keep you thinking exactly what they want?
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| You don't provide references to what you're talking about
| and then you get upset when someone else provides a source
| with an explanation you don't like?
| nigrioid wrote:
| Sorry if that gave you the impression I was upset. I do
| think it's a little rich to consider the Guardian a
| "source" though.
|
| All I'm trying to say is that the predominant type of
| person on this website is pretty smart and should know
| better. The "tinfoil hat conspiracy nut" stereotype has
| been incredibly effective at dissuading people from
| trying to peek behind the curtain. I understand that it's
| a tough pill to swallow, but it's a pretty serious
| situation that we're on the verge of dismantling and
| effectively criminalizing energy infrastructure that has
| taken decades and decades to build based on completely
| bogus propaganda.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| I don't know about you, but the "bogus propaganda"
| matches both my personal observations, as well as my
| peeks behind the curtain. If you say you're not a
| conspiracy nut, then you're simply mistaken. (On two
| counts. Out of 3 randomly sampled Guardian front page
| articles, only one appeals to fear.)
| IntelMiner wrote:
| http://aries.mq.edu.au/images/Copenhagen-Pett.jpg
|
| "But what if it's a big hoax and we create a better world
| for nothing?"
| nanidin wrote:
| According to my back of the envelope calculation, we would need
| to sequester about 272,000 trees to offset the training of one
| LLM like GPT4.
| metacritic12 wrote:
| What about one very large containership from asia to the USA?
| nanidin wrote:
| If you use 40g per km as commented here, it comes out to
| about 1 tree. Something seems off.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > How much co2 is produced from container ship?
|
| > However, ships emit only between 10 to 40 grams of carbon
| dioxide per kilometer. The carbon footprint of airplanes is
| 20 to 30 times more than ships.
|
| https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/carbon-
| ecol....
|
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201.
| ..
| oliwary wrote:
| A while ago I calculated that a 1km sided cube of wood would be
| the equivalent of 12 years of global co2 emissions (with a
| caveat that this was a very back of napkin kind of
| calculation). This is, of course, a massive cube, but smaller
| than I expected.
| rambojohnson wrote:
| yes let's reverse engineer plants instead of cutting down on co2
| emissions and weening this country's dependency on cars. complete
| backwoods solutionizing.
| musha68k wrote:
| Destroy fewer and regrow more natural habitats? Why not help the
| natural cycle first and foremost?
|
| Growth mindset for the biosphere is where it's at.
| evandijk70 wrote:
| That would not replace the burned fossil fuels though.
| armatav wrote:
| It'll only set the economy back 2%.
|
| Why are we trying to stop the plants from doing this exactly? The
| ever-impending apocalypse?
| 1attice wrote:
| Maybe don't clear the rainforests? Just a thought.
| self_awareness wrote:
| This is our biggest CO2 problem. Dying trees. Not tankers,
| factories powered up 24/7, market in the "cheaper to produce than
| to repair" mode. We need to fix the plants!
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