[HN Gopher] Georgia Tech, Meta create open dataset to advance so...
___________________________________________________________________
Georgia Tech, Meta create open dataset to advance solutions for
carbon capture
Author : ohjeez
Score : 161 points
Date : 2024-05-03 01:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (news.gatech.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.gatech.edu)
| dweinus wrote:
| Cool, but carbon capture from the air is at best a tiny fraction
| of the solutions we need. Right now our time is better spent on
| emissions reduction.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00953-x
| malux85 wrote:
| Both, in parallel, theres enough humans and resources to work
| on both
| atoav wrote:
| I would generally agree with that statement. However in this
| case I disagree.
|
| Why? Because I think carbon capture sells the idea that with
| the right technology we could just continue doing what we are
| doing. It is the equivalent of an obese person stuffing food
| in their mouth and telling you fat can always be surgically
| removed. Yeah sure it can, to some degree, but you _do_ see
| how that doesn 't fix the problem? Do you see how them saying
| that might in fact be _worse_ than them saying nothing?
|
| So in my mind carbon capture is something that we should work
| on _if_ we are capable of the realization that the role it
| will play in fixing the problem is utterly insignificant. If
| you think it is the solution, carbon capture sells a false
| hope and prolongs the struggle -- and at least where I am
| from proponents of carbon capture are the people who
| definitely don 't want to reduce their CO2 output.
|
| Pointing at some future technology instead of doing something
| now is actively harmful. And I am not sure the actual
| positive effect of such technology would outweigh the
| negative effect it has as an excuse to justify not doing what
| is necessary now.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Because I think carbon capture sells the idea that with
| the right technology we could just continue doing what we
| are doing. It is the equivalent of an obese person stuffing
| food in their mouth and telling you fat can always be
| surgically removed. Yeah sure it can, to some degree, but
| you do see how that doesn't fix the problem? Do you see how
| them saying that might in fact be worse than them saying
| nothing?
|
| What you're overlooking is that _we will keep doing
| whatever we're doing_ , for the same reason telling people
| to diet and exercise isn't doing jack shit for the obesity
| crisis. We need Ozempic for the climate. Because the only
| alternative is 4C of warming.
| Teever wrote:
| If that's the case maybe we as a species should die? Or
| at least enough of the species that we change our
| behaviour for good?
|
| It's unfortunate that the ecosystem has to suffer.
| tticvs wrote:
| "The future looks somewhat difficult, better give up and
| go extinct"
|
| Fortunately natural selection will remove this mindset
| eventually.
|
| It's unfortunate that the species has to suffer it in the
| meantime.
| Teever wrote:
| I never suggested that we should give up.
|
| It may just be that this group of people isn't up to the
| challenge and, like you said, natural selection is
| necessary to produce a group that is up to the challenge.
|
| Unfortunately that selection may come too late and much
| of the ecosystem may suffer for it.
| tticvs wrote:
| > maybe we as a species should die?
|
| Sounds a lot like giving up to me.
|
| Wishing for human extinction makes you an enemy of all
| mankind btw
| Teever wrote:
| No no no,
|
| I'm saying that objectively maybe we should all die.
|
| From a subjective perspective I'm going to keep fighting
| to the detriment of all the others around to the very
| bitter end and take down as many of them as I can, just
| like the real enemy of life that I am.
| atoav wrote:
| Yeah, that would be very soothing would it? But every
| prediction by every scientist I read says that even if we
| did wonders with that technology and it works way better
| than expected and is way cheaper than expected it is too
| little too late.
|
| So either we change our way or we deive ourself into
| climate extinction. Since profits and geostrategic
| advantage seem to be more important than the survival of
| the human race it will be the latter. And someone
| somewhere in 2050 will start the alibi-CO2-capture
| machine, that was built by a tiny fraction of the oil
| money from this year.
|
| If this comes across as cynical that might be, because it
| is. Trusting on carbon capture technology despite the
| presence of evidence1 that it won't do shit is something
| we cannot afford. Don't get me wrong, we should still
| research and fund it. But you don't want to be that
| politician that wants to keep no speed limits on highways
| "because future carbon capture technology will solve
| this".
|
| No, future carbon capture technology won't solve this, it
| will solve a tiny fraction of this. Pretending that it
| will do more creates false hope and a distorted
| perception.
|
| 1 see IPCC report: : "Even if realized at its full
| potential, CCS will only account for about 2.4% of the
| world's carbon mitigation by 2030"
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Here's the problem with analogies
|
| > you do see how that doesn't fix the problem
|
| It literally does fix the problem.
| atoav wrote:
| Analogies always require you to read them favourably or
| they fall appart. According to the IPCC report carbon
| capture at best would be able to reduce 2.4 percent of
| the global emissions by 2030. So to stay with our
| analogy, that would be like cutting the fat on a small
| part of your body and taking that as an excuse to eat on.
|
| Unless we talk unicorn-pie-in-the-sky-fantasy-technology
| that can suck all carbon out off the air on the snip of a
| finger, any technology has to be measured within the
| bounds of its possibilities and not in fantasyland.
| cactusfrog wrote:
| Should carbon capture should be worked in secret because
| mentioning it delivers false hope?
| exyi wrote:
| If we have enough resources dedicated to this problem, why
| are we still burning coal/gas for power on sunny days? I'm
| definitely not against researching carbon capture, but it
| currently isn't the "the solution the planet desperately
| needs"
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| The resources going into carbon capture aren't the same
| resources going into renewable? The scale is also
| completely different.
|
| Bloomberg says global investment in carbon capture in 2022
| was like $6.4 billion (https://about.bnef.com/blog/carbon-
| capture-investment-hits-r...).
|
| Bloomberg also says that global renewable investment in the
| first 6 months of 2023 was $358 billion
| (https://about.bnef.com/blog/renewable-energy-investment-
| hits...)
|
| Conversion of all carbon capture investment into more solar
| or wind capacity would not significantly move the needle on
| rate of renewable growth.
|
| Effectively all carbon capture investment right now is
| basically in the pilot phase. Governments are sinking money
| into carbon capture for a broad range of reasons, including
| cynical (as a smokescreen to protect fossil fuel
| industries) to optimistic (we can start investing in the
| next step of net-zero since renewable trajectories look
| good) to being realistic hedges (they see the challenges in
| achieving net zero in certain fields like aviation,
| shipping, construction, and believe that carbon capture is
| what is necessary to achieve net-zero).
| lordswork wrote:
| If we have fixed resources, how should they be allocated?
|
| I'd argue for every million dollars towards reaching net zero
| emissions, we should maybe spend 1 dollar towards carbon
| capture, where we scale that investment up as we approach net
| zero emissions.
| enriquto wrote:
| Carbon capture is obviously inconsequential; but it would seem
| that even emissions reduction is a useless endeavor, wouldn't
| it? All extracted carbon will be eventually burned. Burning it
| sooner or later it's not such a big deal. What we need to do,
| for a start, is to close the damn oil wells! Just stop
| unearthing millions of years worth of captured carbon and
| putting them back into the biosphere.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > All extracted carbon will be eventually burned.
|
| Extraction operates on supply and demand. When people stop
| demanding it, they'll stop digging it out of the ground.
|
| There are two ways to achieve this: 1) You make burning it
| more expensive (carbon tax). 2) You make alternatives to
| burning it cheaper.
|
| You can do both at once. In fact you want to, because the
| first one gives the second one economies of scale and the
| second one reduces the economic impact of the first one.
|
| Preventing extraction is pointless because it has the same
| effect as the first one except that instead of the money
| being collected as a tax that could be refunded to the
| population as a tax credit, it goes to the people who are
| still doing the remaining extraction. We could, however, stop
| _subsidizing_ extraction.
| exyi wrote:
| > Preventing extraction is pointless because it has the
| same effect as the first one
|
| Yes, but it might raise oil prices, effectively making the
| carbon tax apply globally. Unless OPEC just compensates by
| increasing production. IMHO carbon tax indeed better tool
| for EU/US, given that most of oil production out of "our"
| control
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > might raise oil prices, effectively making the carbon
| tax apply globally
|
| that statement upon examination does not pass scrutiny
| for weaslewords
| sgu999 wrote:
| > There are two ways to achieve this: 1) You make burning
| it more expensive (carbon tax). 2) You make alternatives to
| burning it cheaper.
|
| A market that relies solely on prices as an incentive is
| unlikely to be the right tool for what's at stake. What
| would be the price of the natural habitat of the last wild
| elephants? A billion dollars? Let's hope Elon doesn't feel
| like building a gigafactory right there.
| chpatrick wrote:
| There's always going to be a market with prices whether
| you like it or not. The only thing you can do is ensuring
| that the prices reflect the amount of damage to the
| environment.
| sgu999 wrote:
| You can have a market without relying solely on it,
| that's what we do for many things already. Driving
| everything through a market is quite a recent
| development. So no, it's not "the only you can do".
| chpatrick wrote:
| I'm saying some form of market is inevitable, the best
| you can do is try to control it.
| janalsncm wrote:
| His calculations are based off present day capabilities. The
| point of R&D is to create new capabilities. Solar also used to
| be a lot more expensive than it is today.
| curtisf wrote:
| No, it will _never_ be feasible to collect and transport any
| meaningful amount of carbon out of the atmosphere.
|
| We emit 35 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year.
|
| That is more than 7x the amount of cement made each year (4.5
| billion tons). More than 8x the amount of food that's made
| each year (about 4 billion tons). About 17x the amount of
| steel made each year (2 billion tons). About 60x the amount
| of plastic made each year (about 0.5 billion tons).
|
| But carbon is completely worthless. We can't build a
| logistics pipeline dedicated solely to moving a worthless
| substance that is larger than the rest of human logistics
| combined.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The only plausible result would be something along the
| lines of a photosynthesis hack to produce synthetic wood at
| a faster rate than natural processes, which would then have
| a market value because you could make boxes and couches and
| houses out of it.
|
| But then you could also use it as a renewable fuel and we'd
| be calling it biofuels instead of carbon capture.
| user_7832 wrote:
| That's a very good point: commercializing the products of
| CO2 capture. I wonder if bio-engineering photosynthesis
| to speed it up is moderately feasible.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >No, it will _never_ be feasible to collect and transport
| any meaningful amount of carbon out of the atmosphere.
|
| This is obviously utterly false, given how much CO2 has
| been absorbed each year by current gen CO2 absorption
| technology.
|
| >But carbon is completely worthless.
|
| Current Gen carbon absorbers turn CO2 into some of the most
| useful materials on earth, like food, building materials
| and raw materials for oils and plastics. _Much_ of the
| current world logistics is already dedicated to
| transporting their products.
| sn9 wrote:
| It's literally a business model to do so.
|
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/01/09/terraform-
| indu...
| oulipo wrote:
| Perhaps, yet today we have certainties (we know how to remove
| a big chunk of emissions by using politics, laws and
| economical incentives), and "bets" (science might help us
| remove carbon efficiently, or might not)
|
| We need a balance between the two, as they are both important
|
| But we shouldn't be "mere techno-optimists", we should also
| get behind true political, social and economical solutions to
| lowering our emissions, and fast
| llm_trw wrote:
| We have put enough CO2 in the atmosphere to melt the icecaps.
|
| The only thing worth doing now is converting everything to
| nuclear so we can scrub CO2 out of the atmosphere before
| industrial society becomes impossible.
|
| In short: even if we get the most fervent dreams of de-growth
| and live like cavewomen starting tomorrow we've still got a
| million years of global warming before we're back to pre-
| industrial levels.
| greenthrow wrote:
| Nuclear is way too slow and carbon intensive. Solar and wind
| with battery storage make way more sense from every rational
| angle. They are cheaper, they are faster, they have less
| embedded carbon, they have far less tosk, etc. Nuclear has
| been getting hyped and pushed hard by big money interests but
| the truth is its time has come and gone abd it no longer
| makes any aense.
| llm_trw wrote:
| I've been hearing this for 20 years and I'll be hearing it
| until we die from global warming. The only thing that wind
| and solar have done is make the grid more unstable and make
| a lot of money for speculators on the power market.
|
| There is a reason why every country which has reduced
| nuclear power has increased its green house gas emissions.
| hackerlight wrote:
| Getting rid of nuclear is stupid but so is adding new
| nuclear. Firmed renewables with lithium ion batteries and
| pumped hydro makes the most financial sense since the
| 2020s, especially in the US which has less seasonal solar
| resources than Europe.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Again, I've been hearing that for 20 years and I'll be
| hearing it for 40 years until global warming knocks the
| internet off.
| hackerlight wrote:
| Sorry but you're stuck in the past and have failed to
| update with new information. Pull up a graph of
| renewables levelized cost of electricity, and lithium ion
| grid scale storage cost per kWh, over the last 20 years,
| and note change. Renewables are contributing massively
| today, look at ERCOT or CAISO today. CAISO has about 15
| GWh of storage deployed already and will deploy more
| soon. It's not theoretical. And this contribution of
| renewable to the grid will grow exponentially as costs
| keep declining and funding keeps increasing. You were
| absolutely correct 20 years ago where renewables used to
| be more expensive and grid scale storage didn't exist,
| but costs have changed.
| llm_trw wrote:
| I'm sure I'll be getting told the same thing in 20 years.
|
| But please, tell me why the laws of thermodynamics don't
| apply to renewables.
| hashmush wrote:
| Because Earth is not an isolated system.
| greenthrow wrote:
| You are choosing to completely ignore reality. Many
| entire countries are moving to entirely renewable. My
| home and EVs are powered almost entirely by our home
| solar and batteries, and I live in _Michigan._
|
| We would be powered 100% by solar but our laws here allow
| the utility to limit the size of our system.
| padjo wrote:
| I'd love to know how it's possible to supply peak demand
| in the UK on a still day in January purely from
| renewables and storage. Especially if you consider that
| demand is also going to have to increase massively to
| decarbonise heating, transport etc
| hackerlight wrote:
| Europe is more challenging than US due to lower average
| solar irradiance per sqm combined with more seasonal
| variability in solar availability. Probably overbuilding
| wind in diversified locations since the correlation drops
| off with the square of distance I believe. Denmark's grid
| would be a template of what to expect. Transmissions with
| neighbors would help a lot given the decorrelation.
| chopin wrote:
| AFAIK Denmark has the highest electricity prices in
| Europe. I wouldn't take Denmark as template.
| Retric wrote:
| The short answer is trivially, but the longer answer is
| renewables include hydro and biomass not just wind both
| of which inherently provide long term storage. Having
| excess solar or wind on Monday means you curtail biomass
| and hydro for Tuesday. Excess power on Monday through
| Friday and you have a great deal ready to ramp op over
| the weekend. 0.01% edge cases don't need to have anything
| special just as long as the general case is oversupply.
|
| At the same time Solar is always going to produce some
| power and the more excess generation you have to charge
| batteries and curtail hydro etc the higher that minimum
| worst case generation becomes.
|
| Net result is you don't need to build some huge battery
| bank to store energy from sunny days in the summer, you
| just 'over build' cheap generation and eventually you
| have no need for seasonal storage.
| greenthrow wrote:
| Solar still generates power on cold days. But also, wind
| and hydro work great even on cold days. And of couse,
| storage. C'mon. This is a solved issue. "Renewables don't
| work because it's cold/dark/etc." has been answered for
| decades.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > but so is adding new nuclear
|
| Are you talking about the typical nuclear plant which is
| often bespoke, or also considering modular reactor units
| which have (finally!) seen recent development?
|
| > lithium ion batteries... makes the most financial sense
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong but li-ion is still cost
| prohibitive for large scale energy storage on the grid.
| Things like V2G etc can help but those are owned by the
| drivers/consumers and not the state/electricity corps.
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is the thing about nuclear: the promise of "cheap"
| power has been made since the 1960s, but very rarely
| delivered on, and it is not coming down yet, while
| everyone can see the massive cost collapse for renewables
| that has already happened and more reasonably project it
| into the future.
|
| Modular units are firmly in the "I'll believe it when I
| see it, meanwhile keep the renewables building as fast as
| possible" category.
|
| (also, everyone has forgotten about proliferation. The
| fighting around Zhaprozhia did remind a few people about
| the security risks, though)
| user_7832 wrote:
| > This is the thing about nuclear: the promise of "cheap"
| power has been made since the 1960s, but very rarely
| delivered on, and it is not coming down yet, while
| everyone can see the massive cost collapse for renewables
| that has already happened and more reasonably project it
| into the future.
|
| Part of this is because of how absolutely f-ed up
| research in fission has been over the decades.
|
| There is this graph if you can find it showing how much
| money was estimated to be spent on R&D, vs how much was
| actually spent. Basically by the 1980s or 90s, if
| investments were made, nuclear would've been _much_
| cheaper today. There 's a bunch of things more, but it's
| not that nuclear is inherently expensive more than the
| fact that you need to spend money first to save it.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Storage is at the point in the S-curve where it goes from
| nowhere to everywhere in just a couple of years.
|
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/batteries-smash-more-records-
| as-...
| Retric wrote:
| Modular reactor units only cover the least expensive part
| of nuclear power plants. They still need fuel enrichment,
| cooling towers, turbines, complex plumbing, containment
| buildings, huge workforces, security perimeters, spent
| fuel pools, dry casks, etc.
|
| People play on the words 'reactor' but modular reactors
| themselves don't actually solve any pressing issues and
| at least currently just cost more.
| cableshaft wrote:
| It's a pretty large world. I'm okay with some entities
| putting time into making nuclear cheaper and more viable
| and adding a few new plants to add to our general power
| grid resilience. I think that could be worthwhile.
|
| But yeah, the people who are trying to claim that nuclear
| is the only viable renewable energy solution to climate
| change haven't been paying attention to renewable energy
| advances in the past 10-15 years, and/or have been
| ignoring the massive budget and time overruns pretty much
| all nuclear plants have had in the past couple of
| decades, especially in developed nations that are trying
| to make sure they're built in a safe way.
| Retric wrote:
| In just 2023 China added 216 GW of solar capacity which
| directly offset ~500 TWh of coal power per year and
| absolutely dwarfing the rate not just China but the
| entire world is bring Nuclear power plants online per
| year.
|
| Wind and solar have significantly reduced carbon
| emissions across most western countries. Nuclear doesn't
| scale well due to capacity factor falling with daily and
| seasonal changes in demand. France sitting next to non
| nuclear Germany can have lots of nuclear but that's
| little different that some US states having more nuclear
| while connected to other states with less. What matters
| is the overall grid not arbitrary map locations.
|
| Storing or curtailing wind/solar simply costs less than
| nuclear at 50% capacity factor, so that's the only way to
| make real progress.
| mapt wrote:
| You've been hearing it for 50 years, and the project has
| been going on that long with regular improvements in cost
| and output.
|
| Every country is different, but wind and solar have
| scaled from practically nothing ("proving viability") 20
| years ago to a majority of new installs 10 years ago to a
| significant chunk of all generation now.
|
| Wiping out already-built nuclear power is like junking
| your car two months into a 96-month loan because you
| don't like the gas bill. Just... why? Sunk costs have
| generated nearly-free returns. You're still going to pay
| those costs, in dollars and in CO2, whether you run a
| nuclear reaction or not. The worst-plausible-case-
| scenario meltdown has been substantially mitigated with
| the extant designs, and some of the new designs that are
| probably never getting built would be difficult to melt
| down even if you attempted it.
|
| Shutting down existing plants as Germany did is a very
| different proposition than scaling up a nuclear buildout
| in 2024. Renewables and various grid improvements are
| just way cheaper and more justifiable in the short term,
| and have none of the baggage attached, and have none of
| the need for state support attached. It would take a
| gargantuan effort right now to mass-produce reactors
| cheaply enough that they could even begin to compete with
| renewables.
| verelo wrote:
| Tell that to Alberta. Obsessed with rewriting this truth and
| positioning efforts to reverse the damage that's been done in
| the search of short term profits.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yep. Wind turbines are ugly and can't be built in scenic
| areas... but I spent my childhood in the foothills there
| canoe camping with my parents looking at clearcuts,
| cutlines, oil and gas installations _everywhere_. And "oil
| wells in a farm field with the mountains in the background"
| is a cliche photo/painting/emblem of Alberta since forever,
| because y'know, somehow an oil well installation is "nice"
| but a wind turbine is not.
|
| Somehow natural gas flares and pulp mills are okay set
| against a scenic mountain valley, but a wind turbine is a
| blight.
|
| These people are broken in the head.
|
| (I live in Ontario these days, but right now in a hotel in
| Jasper after a day of spring skiing... it's painful to come
| back to this province sometimes.)
| verelo wrote:
| My neighbour is also from the foothills and lives in
| Ontario now. One of my favourite people, something about
| the foothills...
|
| Yeah it's sad, and that's an amazing point you make. It's
| funny when i hear people complain about carbon tax,
| particularly from Alberta. You know what cuts the tax?
| Remove the carbon from the price of a kWh. But no, let's
| burn coal and gas and have one of the highest carbon per
| kWh in the country and just complain instead.
|
| Alberta: 778g / kWh BC: 38.1g MB: 25.7g ON: 49.9
|
| SK is just as bad as Alberta, and the territories but
| that's mostly because of where they source their energy
| due to their remote location, not some political
| decision.
|
| https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-
| change/services...
| sgu999 wrote:
| > The only thing worth doing now is
|
| Even if we were to not use a single drop of oil tomorrow and
| start putting nuclear powered fans to capture CO2 everywhere,
| the biodiversity would still be collapsing. Climate change is
| only a portion the problem of the destabilisation of our
| environment as a whole.
|
| When need to reduce our energy consumption and our footprint
| on the environment. That means roughly less cars, smaller
| homes, less concrete, less meat, less gadgets and the very
| low-tech "more trees". "AI for Y" is just a distraction...
| tticvs wrote:
| However it is not possible to support the human population
| without industrial society and its corresponding energy
| use.
| schiffern wrote:
| " _It is not possible to support the Rome city population
| without the empire and its corresponding technologies and
| institutions._ "
|
| Same argument, but perhaps you now imagine a slightly
| different outcome.
|
| The piece that "gives way" is (of course, as any
| historian or anthropologist will attest) that the
| population size...... _fluctuates_. Generally the process
| isn 't too too fun for people who find themselves in
| those populations.
| RayVR wrote:
| I can only assume you are living in a mud hut, with no
| personal transportation, and you walked to a public library
| to use their computer so you could make this comment.
|
| Everyone wants to talk about reducing other people's
| consumption.
| Teever wrote:
| Can I ask you a question?
|
| Out of all the countless times you've surely seen this
| particular argument play out on the internet, have you
| ever seen it go somewhere productive?
|
| "Yet you participate in society, curious!" is not a
| productive response to the suggestion "We should improve
| society somewhat"
|
| Either we do this voluntarily and as orderly as possible,
| or it just happens for us. Your response seems to
| indicate a complete unawareness of the impending
| situation our species is going to be facing.
| hollerith wrote:
| It is fair to point out that people in the third world
| that already live on "less cars, smaller homes, less
| concrete, less meat, less gadgets and more trees" choose
| to ramp up their consumption of those things as soon as
| they can afford to. The Chinese for example probably have
| more cars per capita than the US did when its GDP per
| capita was what China's is now -- and mopeds and
| motorcycles (and bicycles if my hours spent watching
| Youtube videos of urban outdoor environments in China are
| any indication) are _banned_ in the Tier 1 cities: to
| travel on the roads, you have to have a car or ride a bus
| -- and the privately-owned cars vastly outnumber the
| buses just like in any US city.
|
| And the Chinese eat many times more meat than they used
| to.
|
| It is fair to point those things out because it is
| evidence that living on "less cars, smaller homes, less
| concrete, less meat, less gadgets and more trees" really
| sucks and that it is possible for us to overdo our
| response to climate change and ocean acidification.
| sgu999 wrote:
| "less" doesn't mean "none", it's not hard to find plenty
| of evidence of better living standards without car
| dependency or smaller average houses compared to the US
| for instance. Active mobility is good for your health, so
| is a moderated consumption of meat. Lots of benefits to
| organizing society better while respecting the finiteness
| of all our resources.
|
| It's always the same rhetoric with your kind, you pretend
| to fight for the poor, when all you really want is
| freedom to keep on grabbing as much as possible for
| yourselves.
| Teever wrote:
| Fairness doesn't matter.
|
| What does matter is that we make our best effort to
| mitigate the impending disaster to the human race and the
| ecosystem.
| llm_trw wrote:
| A modest proposal.
|
| Instead trying to keep the third world poor why don't we
| just nuke them?
|
| This has the triple benefit of:
|
| 1). Reducing the total population.
|
| 2). Reducing CO2 production of the survivors.
|
| 3). Starting a nuclear winter.
|
| It's just unethical to do anything else when faced with
| the impending disaster to the human race and the
| ecosystem.
| sgu999 wrote:
| You'd be better off nuking the rich, they are the ones
| who are actually producing the bulk of the CO2.
|
| The debate on degrowth isn't whether a Somalian family
| should have access to a decent home, healthcare,
| clothing, enough food etc. The answer is a very obvious
| yes.
|
| The debate is whether a middle class American family
| really should own 2 trucks, live in a 200sqm house and
| eat that much meat. But you _always_ make it about the
| poor.
| tticvs wrote:
| > Either we do this voluntarily and as orderly as
| possible, or it just happens for us. Your response seems
| to indicate a complete unawareness of the impending
| situation our species is going to be facing.
|
| I think it's a pretty natural reaction against the
| relentless push of this false choice by people who cannot
| imagine a third way that actually makes life better.
|
| Your response seems to indicate a complete unawareness
| that there are other options besides enforced poverty.
| llm_trw wrote:
| >Either we do this voluntarily and as orderly as
| possible, or it just happens for us. Your response seems
| to indicate a complete unawareness of the impending
| situation our species is going to be facing.
|
| Or we use the fact we can still run an industrial society
| to build CO2 scrubbers using nuclear energy to power
| them, keeping our improving our living standards while
| fixing our mistakes.
| Teever wrote:
| Have you run the numbers on that?
|
| It's quite likely to be a far better use of those
| resources to invest them in tree planting initiatives if
| your goal is to sequester carbon.
|
| But if you want to satiate your techno-lust a
| technological solution to some of our climate problems
| may lie in the form of space based optical systems that
| reduce the amount of sunlight from falling on glaciers
| and the poles.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Trees release carbon when they die.
|
| The only solution is to green deserts, which you need
| nuclear power for water desalination to do.
| schiffern wrote:
| > Trees release carbon when they die.
|
| This simply opens a "hole" for new trees to grow up
| around them. It's not that any one tree holds carbon
| forever, it's that an acre of forest in dynamic
| equilibrium holds a lot more stored carbon.
|
| When people suggest planting trees, the process isn't
| one-and-done. It's actually _re-afforestation_ , where
| the land is permanently forested. Otherwise yes, if you
| cut down all the trees and then also prevent anything
| from growing back in its place, then of course you're
| undoing future benefits.
|
| There is also 'mild' re-afforestation, where you simply
| increase the equilibrium amount of stored biomass in a
| landscape. You can plant 20-40 trees per acre in
| agricultural landscapes (this actually improves crop
| yield if you choose the right species, search for
| "farmer's trees"), or re-green suburbs that have lost
| their vegetation cover over time.
|
| These projects are less stark than _Atacama-desert-to-
| Amazon-rainforest_ , so many folks will neglect the
| possibility entirely and therefore conclude that "the
| _only_ solution is to green _deserts_. " :-\
|
| --
|
| It's also probably related to cultural biases that view
| deserts as useless, worthless, and most important
| _uninhabitable_ spaces. However if you actually try to
| green a desert, you 'll suddenly find lots of terribly
| inconvenient "desert people" actually do live there, and
| oppose you destroying their home and displacing them. See
| the real reason behind building "The Line" in Saudi
| Arabia.
| globalnode wrote:
| they wont give up on carbon capture fantasies because it means
| they can keep making buckets of money on free hydrocarbons...
| gumby wrote:
| If the bathtub is overflowing you need to fix the broken tap
| _and_ mop up the water that has already spilled.
|
| Yes, if you are the only person in the house, prioritize the
| tap, but if someone else is working the leak, grab a mop right
| away!
| Shrezzing wrote:
| For the metaphor to reflect reality, the oil & gas industry
| is walking around the house breaking more taps, while saying
| that they'll get round to inventing a mop in the next few
| years.
| darby_eight wrote:
| This metaphor would work a lot better if the tap were
| overflowing with cash.
| graemep wrote:
| > and mop up the water that has already spilled.
|
| Not if the spilled water is running down the drain.
|
| If we stopped our CO2 emissions and nothing else changed CO2
| levels in the atmosphere would start falling immediately as
| photosynthesis would capture carbon faster than natural
| sources emit it.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| They're doing that, too. Everything Georgia Tech is working on
| with respect to climate: https://climatesolutions.gatech.edu/
|
| Go the tab for the subsection on transportation and you'll see
| they're working on ways to reduce emissions, too. They also
| provide the dashboard and tracker app for the Drawdown Georgia
| initiative, which was co-drafted by Georgia Tech and aims to
| eventually get to net zero emissions in the state.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Strong disagreement!
|
| Carbon capture is the _only_ way to get back to pre industrial
| CO2 levels!
|
| Even if/when we emit zero CO2, the elevated levels would remain
| for many centuries!
| lordswork wrote:
| We need both, but reaching zero emissions is far more urgent
| and cost effective (by many orders of magnitude) right now.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the problem with carbon capture is that carbon capture with a
| grid that is over 10% fossil fuel is net negative. it's like
| fixing a broken tap by pointing a firehoze at it.
| darby_eight wrote:
| What happens if we can't find a carbon capture method that
| works efficiently and at scale? We need about a million
| better plans than that to maintain any sense of sanity.
| constantcrying wrote:
| We already have carbon capture technology, which _is_
| deployed at mass scale and transforms carbon into some of
| the most useful resources on earth, like food, building
| materials, raw materials for fuels and plastics and much,
| much more. Given that this technology already is deployed
| over enormous stretches of the earth and that it actively
| benefits in its productivity from elevated levels of CO2
| why not further that technology?
|
| CO2 isn't some poison in the atmosphere, it needs to be
| there. The one thing under control of humans is what
| percentage of Carbon is in the atmosphere or bound in
| different forms.
|
| The problem isn't too much CO2 in the atmosphere, it is
| that the amount of CO2 there can't be reabsorbed at a self
| regulating rate.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Carbon capture is so dumb. Just do the effective things like
| building out massive renewable energy generation like in China
| and India, phase out coal and oil, improve/install heat pumps,
| top down changes to phase out the use of plastic and reuse more
| containers like milk, soda etc like we did in the past, make
| nuclear plants, come up with cheap, safe lab grown meat etc.
| yfw wrote:
| Lab grown meats are a boondoggle and will never happen at
| scale. https://josepheverettwil.substack.com/p/lab-meat-
| is-18-trill...
| jabl wrote:
| Apparently the meat industry thinks otherwise, hence they're
| trying to push their poodles to outlaw it. With some success
| even: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68947766
| benzible wrote:
| See https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-
| at-sca... for a thorough exploration of why lab grown meat
| will never happen...
|
| > Humbird likened the process of researching the report to
| encountering an impenetrable "Wall of No"--his term for the
| barriers in thermodynamics, cell metabolism, bioreactor
| design, ingredient costs, facility construction, and other
| factors that will need to be overcome before cultivated
| protein can be produced cheaply enough to displace
| traditional meat.
|
| > "And it's a fractal no," he told me. "You see the big no,
| but every big no is made up of a hundred little nos."
| llm_trw wrote:
| I'm happy that they are wasting their money then.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's growing cells, you can bet your ass it's going to happen
| sooner or later. It's also definitely going to be cheaper
| than raising a whole cow by a mile.
| yfw wrote:
| Bet. $100 if in 5 years you can get a lab grown steak in
| the supermarket for cheaper than cow steak.
|
| Growing tissues with vasculature is vastly different from
| cell cultures
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It doesn't necessarily need to have vasculature for a lot
| of cases. Sausages, nuggets, bologna, any kind of
| processed meat like product.
|
| For steaks, the timeline is definitely longer than 5
| years.
| llm_trw wrote:
| Bet. $10,000 you won't be able to buy one for the same
| cost as a regular stake.
|
| I'm happy to put my real name and money in an escrow
| account to the first person who wants to take the bet
| against me.
| coldpie wrote:
| Five years is pretty aggressive, but I feel like 10-20 is
| realistic. Just in time for those fusion plants to be
| coming online ;)
|
| > in the supermarket for cheaper than cow steak
|
| OK, but only if we agree to include subsidies and
| externalized costs in the price.
| yfw wrote:
| How many failed carbon capture projects do we need to make a
| point?
|
| https://ieefa.org/resources/carbon-capture-crux-lessons-lear...
| blendo wrote:
| "running quantum chemistry computations on the inputs provided by
| the Georgia Tech team. These calculations used about 400 million
| CPU hours"
|
| Not sure bragging about high energy consumption helps their
| argument as much as they think.
| smt88 wrote:
| I'm happier to see these CPU-hours go to a boondoggle climate
| project than to ChatGPT writing people's emails for them.
| 0xDEADFED5 wrote:
| comments on carbon capture are short-sighted, imo. this is a
| method using SOA technology to accelerate research into metal-
| organic frameworks. this is pretty cool science even if carbon
| capture never turns out to be feasible.
| cactusfrog wrote:
| Yeah. One application that I've heard is retrofitting indoor
| animal farms to capture methane and reduce methane emissions.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Cool. I see what you did there.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Really surprised to see so much cynicism about this. Discovering
| a chemical which can facilitate the reversal of climate change is
| vastly more useful than almost everything else those
| supercomputers would've been used for.
| sa-code wrote:
| I would also like to add that adopting instead of having your
| own baby is the most effective way to save the planet
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| I've never even heard this mentioned as an environmental
| choice. It strikes me as very strange that this would be the
| _most effective_ choice we can make -- do you have some
| sources?
| photonthug wrote:
| If you're receptive to any kind of argument about reducing
| consumption, then how could you ignore an argument about
| reducing consumers?
|
| People that want others to do things like avoid plastic
| straws but themselves have 2.5 unadopted kids per household
| are obviously being somewhat hypocritical
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It is clearly possible to operate at the level of zero
| carbon emissions. People did it for thousands of years
| before the industrial revolution and modern technology
| runs just fine on renewable or nuclear energy.
|
| Since the emissions per person can be zero, any level of
| emissions reduction can be achieved with any number of
| people, you just need more emissions reductions per
| person when you have more people. "We should have both
| more emissions reductions and more people" is thereby an
| entirely consistent position.
|
| More than that, emissions reductions generally require
| R&D and have some economic cost, but an aging population
| is economically weaker and has fewer resources to spare.
| Meanwhile older people who aren't going to live much
| longer and have no descendants have less incentive to
| care about what happens in the future and spend those
| scarce resources on things like emissions reductions.
| People having more kids avoids that death spiral.
|
| Also, I mean, who are we trying to save the world _for_?
| agent008t wrote:
| Can the whole supply chain of modern technology operate
| with zero carbon emissions?
| zekrioca wrote:
| Not entirely, but a considerable portion can. However,
| the modern supply chain has to be fully tracked down
| first, to uncover exactly where most emissions are coming
| from, and then focus on understanding how to decarbonise
| those sectors as much as possible.
| photonthug wrote:
| It sounds like you're in favor of change via top down
| regulations, so you're not arguing for bottom up
| reduction of consumption. My point is, people who _do_
| argue for reducing consumption _must_ consider the fact
| that consumption hinges on consumers, so either they
| should adopt or they have rejected their own premises
|
| I personally take the view that policing individual
| consumption is meaningless, but I still notice the
| doublethink required for those that have that view to
| rationalize their choices to _not_ adopt.
|
| > who are we saving the world for?
|
| The future, regardless of whether those people are
| genetically derived from our selves. Having your own
| children is often viewed as a selfless act, which is
| weird, because if you do that when you could adopt an
| orphan, and if we're being honest, then it's one of the
| most selfish things you can do.
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| > My point is, people who do argue for reducing
| consumption must consider the fact that consumption
| hinges on consumers, so either they should adopt or they
| have rejected their own premises
|
| This argument is absurd and naive. Mass murder and your
| suicide would also reduce consumers. Clearly there are
| other factors to consider over and above the raw numbers,
| many of which are cultural and subjective.
| photonthug wrote:
| Don't put words in my mouth. I'm pretty much in favor of
| do no harm, which certainly excludes advocating or
| enacting murder or suicide.
|
| Do no harm also means, if you think consumption is
| harmful then you do need to avoid opting into creating
| maybe 50-100 Years of extra consumption per child just
| for the satisfaction of knowing your genes will be doing
| the consumption.
|
| Are there ever acceptable cultural or subjective reasons
| to excuse "rules for thee but not for me"?
| leononame wrote:
| Adopting is a multi-year, sometimes decade-long process
| where you have to fill out lots of paperwork before
| you're even considered. It's no wonder that it's not most
| people's choice. That stuff can really grind you down
| jabradoodle wrote:
| Avoiding single use items that pollute the environment
| for hundreds or thousands of years is rational whether
| you want children or not.
|
| Of course using a plastic straw isn't what got us into
| this mess and small individual choices like that won't
| save us.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Not really, it's probably going fully vegetarian and stopping
| cattle farming but we all know we're not going to do that.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| Meat production takes like 15%. This would just reverse
| global warming.
| smt88 wrote:
| By this logic, a far better thing to do for the environment
| is to increase access to birth control and abortions.
|
| Raising a child costs hundreds of thousands or millions.
| Preventing an accidental pregnancy can cost under a dollar.
| esalman wrote:
| You probably need to study birth control in context of the
| collapsing economies of countries like Japan, Korea and
| China
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| Are you insinuating that accidental and unwanted
| pregnancies would help their plight?
| esalman wrote:
| I'm saying that having less children is not necessarily
| good for the environment.
| smt88 wrote:
| Why?
| smt88 wrote:
| How are those countries' collapsing economies harming the
| environment?
|
| Also why would I want to fix an economy using unwanted
| children?
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| That kind of thing is often said, but it doesn't make much
| sense to me.
|
| Preserving the planet is valuable insofar as there are people
| to enjoy it. Without people to experience it, it wouldn't
| matter much. Without any sentient being to experience it, it
| would matter (in my view) zero.
|
| Thus, creating new people to experience it is necessary, if
| preserving the planet is going to be worth it at all.
|
| Of course, one can argue that there are too many people and
| we need to make less, but I think there are lots of lifestyle
| changes that need to be made before something so radical even
| makes sense. I.e., don't think people should make less kids
| so that the ones that do get made can live in a suburb and
| drive a car everyday. That's getting the priorities totally
| wrong.
| mym1990 wrote:
| There is something to be said for leaving things in a good
| way without the expectation of anyone coming after you to
| enjoy it. There is still some order to the world and the
| universe without humans, to think that we are the center of
| it all is certainly one kind of philosophy, but not the
| only one.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| Realistically the lowest carbon emissions would be to just
| die
| monktastic1 wrote:
| Why not nuking the whole planet, so that nobody is left? Or
| maybe you want some people remaining to enjoy it, in which
| case why not your progeny instead of others?
|
| I find this whole line of thought fraught. Some assumption
| somewhere went wrong.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| One thing I worry about is that some chemical like this would
| be mass deployed without serious vetting of safety and long
| term effects. I agree it could be really useful. But it also
| seems like we only regulate harmful chemicals decades later
| once their true impact is obvious.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Carbon capture is not for what people think it is. It is for
| enhanced oil recovery.
|
| Out of the 27 commercially operational CCS projects worldwide, 21
| inject carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs to force out petroleum:
| https://www.landclimate.org/what-is-happening-with-carbon-ca...
|
| While renewables capture an inexhaustible source of energy (Sun),
| fossil fuels rely on an inexhaustible source of money for them:
| subsidies. Fossil fuel companies can't survive without the
| hundreds of billions of subsidies every year[1]. They can capture
| more subsides for 'carbon capture', using the captured carbon to
| extract more oil.
|
| Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil:
| https://www.semafor.com/article/07/21/2023/exxon-carbon-denb...
|
| [1]Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Reached $7 Trillion in 2022, an
| All-Time High: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-
| subsidies-2022
| elil17 wrote:
| This is how carbon capture is being used currently. However, I
| it's absolutely not the goal of legislation that funds carbon
| capture research - research that was lobbied for by
| environmental groups (not that big oil didn't lobby for it
| too). It's also not the goal of people I know who are working
| on carbon capture technology research. The goal is to reduce
| global atmospheric carbon levels. The problem is that doing
| that isn't technically or economically feasible at the moment.
|
| If we could make carbon capture cheaper and more efficient (and
| that's a big if - it may not be possible, which is why research
| is needed), carbon could be permanently sequestered.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| A ton of {coal,petroleum,natural gas} emits {2.6,2.75,3.2}
| tons of CO2. 8.5 billion tons of coal burnt every year. 4000
| billion cubic meters of Natural gas/year (~3000 billion tons
| - gemini), Global oil production is 4.5 billion metric
| tons/year.
|
| I don't see a reason to subsidize fossil fuels, release all
| this carbon, and then subsidize fossil fuels companies even
| more to capture something thats measured in parts per
| million.
|
| And all this to waste 67% to 75% of energy. See Rejected
| energy: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/20
| 23-10/U...
|
| We'd be better off not burning fossil fuels, we have the
| technology today. People are ok spending billions on carbon
| capture. But are against subsidizing EVs, ICE cars emit 1 ton
| of CO2 for every 2500 miles, every car emits 5 tons CO2/year.
| For a lifetime of 20 years, thats 100 tons of CO2. Why not
| fund EVs as carbon capture? Or is the only path forward to
| give money to fossil fuel companies?
|
| Twenty-seven DAC plants have been commissioned to date
| worldwide, capturing almost 0.01 Mt CO2/year[1]. Thats the
| equivalent of 2000 EVs.
|
| [1]https://www.iea.org/energy-system/carbon-capture-
| utilisation...
| Gud wrote:
| Electric Vehicles is a pretty broad subject. What
| absolutely must be well developed is the public transport,
| take Switzerland as an example.
|
| Naturally, personal transports should be electrical, but
| even more important is to get people on trains.
|
| The numbers don't lie
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Switzerland has 600 vehicles/1000 people, US has 900.
| Sure, its lower, but not significantly lower. US is 238
| times larger and people live/commute farther. Public
| transit is better, but it won't work everywhere because
| of entrenched interests and strong resistance. It takes
| decades to do minor infrastructure projects, it will take
| centuries for US to have public transit that can work.
| Whats even better is walking/biking with no need of
| public transit infrastructure. While that hopefully,
| eventually happens, it is much easier to stop buying new
| gas cars. Nobody is saying sell your gas car rightaway
| and buy EVs. There are people buying new gas cars today,
| which will pollute and emit CO2 for the next 20 years.
| Instead of buying a gas car, why not buy an EV? And if
| you must have a gas car (which is understandable, it may
| not work for your specific use case), buy a used car.
| After all, whats the big difference between a 2023 ICE
| car vs 2024.
| cactusfrog wrote:
| Gas separation has many applications.
|
| If Google developed an AI model for cancer detection in MRI
| scans, you wouldn't claim that "AI is not for what people think
| it is for" because Google also uses AI models for advertising.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'd love if things weren't so badly presented. Most of the
| subsidies are "implicit" - i.e. a tax break (not a real
| subsidy, just a funny money change) or a price cap (also not a
| subsidy, I believe). Without that, the actual subsidies were
| $1.5tn globally in 2022. I don't know how that's counted, but
| clearly the main reason fossil fuels are available, and people
| buy them despite high taxation on them, is that they're
| incredibly useful, and not because there's evil subsidisation
| of an otherwise-dying industry.
| henry2023 wrote:
| Tax breaks have a very real impact on the proliferation of
| technology and deployment of capital. I agree they are useful
| and the demand goes accordingly but why subsidize something
| that we as civilization want to move away from?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| They can have an impact, just as not punching someone in
| the face can have a positive impact on them. I just
| wouldn't call it a subsidy when you're not taking someone's
| money.
| henry2023 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure you'd pay close to 85k for a 100k tax
| break on your income tax.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I would, but I still wouldn't call a tax break a subsidy,
| for the aforementioned reason.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Regulations / taxes have an impact. The proliferation of
| SUVs has entire to do with regulation.
|
| It's easier to meet emission standards for a "light
| truck" (actual category of a SUV) so car manufacturers
| are pumping out vehicles with a similar size / front
| grill angle / etc so that the vehicle is under that
| category. You might argue that people have a preference
| for SUVs over Sedans but also note how similar all the
| SUVs appear; the appearance is part of the light truck
| designation so even if consumer preference drove a larger
| car design, the regulation has driven its appearance.
|
| ---
|
| That said, I think an additional gas tax that rose
| annually with the proceeds rebated on your tax return is
| one of the easy + effective solutions I've heard about.
| Doesn't apply repressively because at the end of the year
| they get the higher costs rebated but at the time of sale
| pushes people to buy non-petroleum alternatives as it's
| cheaper. Probably easier to just rebated it equally
| amoungst tax filers as opposed to a rebate and industrial
| use is going to dwarf consumer use so you'll personally
| still end out ahead.
| Teever wrote:
| What would $1.5tn PER YEAR subsidies in renewables look like?
|
| What would $1.5tn PER YEAR subsidies in renewables and a
| reduction of $1.5tn PER YEAR subisdies in O&G at the same
| time look like?
|
| Think of these subsidies like compound interest, $1.5
| trillion here, $15 trillion there.... it starts to add up.
| thelastgallon wrote:
| To add to this excellent point, fossil fuels have enjoyed
| subsidies for ~100 years. Imagine the cumulative total of
| the money compounded!
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Imagine the cumulative total of the money compounded!
|
| I mean, this is a crazy line of thinking. Without fossil
| fuels, what's considered valuable would still be "work
| life balance is slightly less time manually working on
| the farm" and "goods are the best stuff we can buy from
| people crafting the stuff within a 3 mile radius" and
| "education is what we can learn from the smartest person
| in the village".
|
| If you want now but without fossil fuels, you have to use
| fossil fuels hard enough to invent the thing that
| replaces them.
| schiffern wrote:
| >clearly the main reason fossil fuels are available, and
| people buy them despite high taxation on them, is that
| they're incredibly useful, and not because there's evil
| subsidisation
|
| Laser-focusing down to only the "main" reason and ignoring
| all else will (as expected) miss the forest for the trees.
|
| Subsidies still do cause people to consume more fossil fuels
| than they would otherwise, so the policy is encouraging
| pollution (AKA health injuries and deaths that industry
| shirks accountability for) rather than disincentivizing it.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Those are all capturing CO2 from the waste gas stream at
| fossil-fueled power plants, so it's not really relevant to
| direct air capture of CO2 from the atmosphere.
|
| One big problem with using fossil fuel exhaust as the input
| stream for productive chemistry is that there are lots of fuel
| contaminants - sulfur, etc. - that poison further chemical
| reactions on the CO2 stream, and stripping out the contaminants
| is just too expensive. While atmospheric CO2 has a big
| concentration step, it has the great benefit of not having that
| issue.
| karaterobot wrote:
| What is bad about injecting carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs?
| Is it just that it is benefiting bad companies directly, and
| _only_ helping the planet as a side effect? The use of
| petroleum is not going away on the same timeline we need carbon
| to be removed from the atmosphere. We 'll keep drilling for it
| regardless of whether carbon is sequestered as a side effect...
| so let's bury that carbon! I won't let my dislike of oil
| companies stand in the way of supporting the advancement of the
| technology.
| tticvs wrote:
| > While renewables capture an inexhaustible source of energy
| (Sun)
|
| Fortunately that solar panels require no resources to create,
| require no maintenance, and take no subsidies to maintain as an
| industry!
| kfrzcode wrote:
| It would be supremely excellent if these companies embraced the
| Hedera Hashgraph as a truly sustainable, net-zero (or net-
| negative) approach to their carbon capture tokenization efforts:
|
| https://hedera.com/learning/sustainability
| freddealmeida wrote:
| Trees are great for carbon capture.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| They take up a lot of space at scale though.
| salynchnew wrote:
| Most tree planting efforts fail, as they ignore a lot of
| implementation/maintenance details and result in lots of dead
| trees.
|
| Mass tree planting is like doing a massive, massive
| migration. You can't just stick seedlings in the ground
| arbitrarily and expect a stand of trees to sustain itself
| 'cause "nature"... the successful processes like the Miyawaki
| method require planning, community investment, sustained work
| for ~5 years, etc.
|
| https://daily.jstor.org/the-miyawaki-method-a-better-way-
| to-...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Planting is just the first step as I see it.
|
| After the trees have grown, you need to harvest them and -
| somehow - make sure they don't rot and return the CO2 to
| the atmosphere.
|
| Finding space for that is what I mean by "take up space at
| scale".
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This is about developing metal-organic materials that absorb CO2
| under one set of conditions and release it under a different set
| of conditions. The whole goal here is to generate a stream of
| 100% pure CO2 starting with ~400 ppm CO2 - meaning if you want 1
| liter of pure CO2 at room temperature and pressure, you need to
| process a minimum of 2500 liters of air - and likely quite a bit
| more as you are not going to be 100% efficient.
|
| Making this work is all about minimizing the energy (and thus
| economic) cost of this first step. Then you need to reduce (add
| hydrogen and remove oxygen) the CO2 and start building other
| products - methanol, long-chain hydrocarbons, etc. (that's
| shipping and jet/rocket fuel, respectively). But why stop there?
| If you want long-term stable materials, converting the CO2 into
| carbon fiber is a good option - more sci-fi is a diamond
| endpoint, which takes a lot of energy, but has many uses.
|
| This will have minimal effect on atmospheric CO2 unless fossil
| fuel extraction and combustion is eliminated from the energy mix
| - but it does point to how human civilization can do material and
| fuel production without having to mine carbon from the earth or
| cut down forests. In the long run, this is the only plausible
| option.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| In terms of CCS, we're probably better off reducing emissions AND
| capping methane emissions (MethaneSAT just launched). IIRC, CCS
| needs to be around 4% of the solution.
| araes wrote:
| No comment on the CO2 uses, just seems like something's going on
| with Meta / FB lately. Who releases a framework/demo where you
| click the "Download ODAC23 Data" [1] or "Try ODAC ML Models" [2]
| links and get "404 - page not found"? Georgia Tech? They're
| supposedly 3rd worldwide in Business Analytics. Releasing a press
| release with 404's everywhere's not great "analytics".
|
| [1] https://github.com/Open-Catalyst-
| Project/ocp/blob/main/DATAS...
|
| [2] https://github.com/Open-Catalyst-
| Project/ocp/blob/main/MODEL...
|
| Did somebody even look at this stuff before writing their press
| release? It's not like it's much link following to click "The
| project, named OpenDAC" and then find out it's all a bunch of
| dead links.
| idrathernot wrote:
| Let's just ban all manufacturing, commerce and transportation in
| western countries while we all try to breathe less. That's the
| only way win the war on carbon.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I find that it's usually folly to speak in absolutes, but in this
| case I feel confident in stating:
|
| The only carbon capture which will ever scale as well as we need
| it to scale, is carbon capture which creates carbon-based
| products cheaper than current fossil-fuel methods.
|
| There is a company working on that, there should be a dozen.
|
| Terraform Industries:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39922006
|
| Interviews with CEO:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39923611
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-05-04 23:02 UTC)