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> It's carbon neural, not carbon negative What does the headline of this thread say? > Stripping CO2 from the air and using it to produce carbon-neutral fuel
by lazyjones 9y ago
> It's carbon neural, not carbon negative
What does the headline of this thread say?
> Stripping CO2 from the air and using it to produce carbon-neutral fuel
So, where's the benefit over trees? The drawback is that the fuel doesn't have any uses other than to burn it for energy. Trees, on the other hand, just suck up increasing amounts of CO2 while they grow and they don't have to be turned into fuel.
- eloff 9y agoYou missed the headline apparently since you were commenting about the dangers of sucking too much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Clearly if it's carbon neural there's no danger of that happening. Trees are also carbon neutral since they either burn or decompose and return the carbon to the atmosphere. But over much longer timescales than fuel - so they could still be useful in combating global warming (despite what some people say.)
- hedora 9y agoIn particular, if you increase the average global biomass over time, then you’ve captured some carbon. Longer term, you can bury that biomass instead of burning it or letting it decompose. Eventually, it will turn back to oil. I guess the question is whether these new technologies are better than buying up tree farms and sending their outputs to landfills at are optimized to minimize decomposition. Edit: Tree farms are a terrible straw man. Are these technologies better than simply instituting bio-waste bins alongside recycling, and burying the bio-waste for long term carbon capture instead of composting?
- adrianN 9y agoThe benefit is that you don't need huge amounts of land, can use surplus energy in a useful way and produce something that is of immediate value.