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In the last few months I have read a few articles on hackernews about converting carbon dioxide into usable fuel. My hope for the future is that we come up with

In the last few months I have read a few articles on hackernews about converting carbon dioxide into usable fuel. My hope for the future is that we come up with a way to capture and convert carbon dioxide even if doing so requires electricity as this would make renewables cheaper and stop more carbon output.

intended 9y ago
So be forewarned - spending more energy to clean the system is just adding more heat to the system. Any solution must somehow be a net negative in the long and medium term - and must also not have complex unpredictable knock on effects. To give you an idea of how often mankind tries this - before the internet there was a time where london's dogs were so Onerous they felt that it would be a good idea to pour oil over the water. Hindsight is of course 20/20, my point being that healthy scepticism and a high bar for evidence are the watchwords.
- Beltiras 9y ago
  The one-time energy cost of removal might offset the constant cost of having the CO2 in the atmosphere. It's dependant on the energy cost of removal of course.
  - intended 9y ago
    Right, but a one time energy cost of removal? Our environment built itself out of eons of incremental changes using self replicating systems using the entirety of habitable surface area. I think its extremely unlikely that there will be a single one time way of removing carbon from the air (I'd bet on it). So we will be left with constant and continuous systems cleaning the air. Instead of not mucking it up in the first place. ---- You should also consider that the moment people start selling Geo engineering, they will also sell permission to keep doing what we are doing. So the solution seems to be to spend more on cleaning the air, and allowing us to pollute it further at the same time. In such a scenario I see things going MORE wrong, with unanticipated effects going on to create more damage.
    - Beltiras 9y ago
      There are sequestration methods today like storing CO2 in rocks: https://www.or.is/english/carbfix-project https://www.or.is/english/carbfix-project
      - ericd 9y ago
        Can we do it at the enormous scale we'd need to in order to offset the enormous amount of oil, coal, and gas we've burnt, though?
        Beltiras 9y ago
        I have no insight into it. For sure it is easier to not burn the carbon instead of having to filter it from the atmosphere.
- bazzargh 9y ago
  there was a time where london's dogs were so Onerous they felt that it would be a good idea to pour oil over the water Have been wondering about this sentence since I read it, it seems there must be multiple typos in it for it to make sense...eg "London's docks were so odorous..." (makes a kind of sense, during the Great Stink chemicals were dumped in the sewers to reduce the smell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink ... not oil I think though?). Is that the incident you meant?
  - intended 9y ago
    oh dear. I meant Fog.
- DennisP 9y ago
  The warming effect of CO2 is far greater than the waste heat from our energy usage. Nobody is proposing cleanup methods that would require orders of magnitude more energy than civilization currently uses.
mirimir 9y ago
That's what plants do, using energy from sunlight. Unfortunately, they aren't very efficient at it. So capturing enough CO2 to make a difference would require too much arable land. Which we need to grow food and stuff. And to let the broader ecosystem do its thing. I'm sure that we could come up with CO2-capture devices that are far more efficient than plants.[0] But the thing is, plants make copies of themselves ;) 0) https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13237 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13237
collyw 9y ago
But converting it to "useful fuel" just means that the fuel will be burned and converted back to CO2, no?
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  Yes. If the electricity source does not emit any (why would you ever do this with an emitting source?), you get to use liquid fuels in a carbon neutral way. If you convert it into plastics, it's eventually a bunch of CO2 captured into a landfill.

intended 9y ago

So be forewarned - spending more energy to clean the system is just adding more heat to the system. Any solution must somehow be a net negative in the long and medium term - and must also not have complex unpredictable knock on effects. To give you an idea of how often mankind tries this - before the internet there was a time where london's dogs were so Onerous they felt that it would be a good idea to pour oil over the water. Hindsight is of course 20/20, my point being that healthy scepticism and a high bar for evidence are the watchwords.

Beltiras 9y ago
The one-time energy cost of removal might offset the constant cost of having the CO2 in the atmosphere. It's dependant on the energy cost of removal of course.
- intended 9y ago
  Right, but a one time energy cost of removal? Our environment built itself out of eons of incremental changes using self replicating systems using the entirety of habitable surface area. I think its extremely unlikely that there will be a single one time way of removing carbon from the air (I'd bet on it). So we will be left with constant and continuous systems cleaning the air. Instead of not mucking it up in the first place. ---- You should also consider that the moment people start selling Geo engineering, they will also sell permission to keep doing what we are doing. So the solution seems to be to spend more on cleaning the air, and allowing us to pollute it further at the same time. In such a scenario I see things going MORE wrong, with unanticipated effects going on to create more damage.
  - Beltiras 9y ago
    There are sequestration methods today like storing CO2 in rocks: https://www.or.is/english/carbfix-project https://www.or.is/english/carbfix-project
    - ericd 9y ago
      Can we do it at the enormous scale we'd need to in order to offset the enormous amount of oil, coal, and gas we've burnt, though?
      - Beltiras 9y ago
        I have no insight into it. For sure it is easier to not burn the carbon instead of having to filter it from the atmosphere.
bazzargh 9y ago
there was a time where london's dogs were so Onerous they felt that it would be a good idea to pour oil over the water Have been wondering about this sentence since I read it, it seems there must be multiple typos in it for it to make sense...eg "London's docks were so odorous..." (makes a kind of sense, during the Great Stink chemicals were dumped in the sewers to reduce the smell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stink ... not oil I think though?). Is that the incident you meant?
- intended 9y ago
  oh dear. I meant Fog.
DennisP 9y ago
The warming effect of CO2 is far greater than the waste heat from our energy usage. Nobody is proposing cleanup methods that would require orders of magnitude more energy than civilization currently uses.

mirimir 9y ago

That's what plants do, using energy from sunlight. Unfortunately, they aren't very efficient at it. So capturing enough CO2 to make a difference would require too much arable land. Which we need to grow food and stuff. And to let the broader ecosystem do its thing. I'm sure that we could come up with CO2-capture devices that are far more efficient than plants.[0] But the thing is, plants make copies of themselves ;) 0) https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13237 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13237

collyw 9y ago

But converting it to "useful fuel" just means that the fuel will be burned and converted back to CO2, no?

marcosdumay 9y ago
Yes. If the electricity source does not emit any (why would you ever do this with an emitting source?), you get to use liquid fuels in a carbon neutral way. If you convert it into plastics, it's eventually a bunch of CO2 captured into a landfill.