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Video: CO2 processing cost: "$94-232 per ton". "According to The Economist, a single round trip flight from New York to San Fransisco produces two to th

Video: CO2 processing cost: "$94-232 per ton". "According to The Economist, a single round trip flight from New York to San Fransisco produces two to three tons of carbon dioxide per person; an American who takes no flights emits roughly 19 tons of carbon in a year." - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jp54zb/nasa-wants-to-fly-electric-planes-in-20-years https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jp54zb/nasa-wants-to-fly-... "On average, one acre of new forest can sequester about 2.5 tons of carbon annually." - http://urbanforestrynetwork.org/benefits/air%20quality.htm http://urbanforestrynetwork.org/benefits/air%20quality.htm

killlameme99 7y ago
From that "$94-232 per ton" number I was curious how much it would cost to "fix" CO2 emissions with just this tech alone. According to this [1] page I stumbled apon, there's about 3 trillion tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere. Now obviously we don't want to get rid of all of that CO2 or else we would all die, and a ton isn't quite a tonne, but roughly speaking it means it would cost on the order of 100 trillion dollars to do a "reset" on the earths CO2 levels with this technology. Of course I have no idea how long it would take, no idea how the costs may change with time, no idea what other technologies are used alongside this one to also help with CO2 emissions, and of course we're continually putting CO2 into the atmosphere so it's not at all the full cost. But I think it's neat to see a dollar number in some way. Just think, a few more orders of magnitude lower and it might almost be something we could just do. [1] https://micpohling.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/math-how-much-co2-by-weight-in-the-atmosphere/ https://micpohling.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/math-how-much-co...
- Felz 7y ago
  For context, that'd be about 1.25 years of current world GDP [1]. If we maintain a 3.6% growth rate for 100 years, the economy will be 34 times larger, so it'd take two weeks of the world's total economic output to capture all that carbon. (In the worst case scenario there'd be about twice as much carbon by then, so stretch that to a month. [2]) Of course we might not be able to smoothly convert the entire world GDP to carbon capture plants for a fortnight, and there'd be deleterious global warming effects in the meanwhile, but overall napkin math paints a pretty optimistic picture for geoengineering. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product [2] https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_600xAUTO_stretch_center-center/Fig-2.8-01_16x8_a.png https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_600xAUTO_stretch_center-c... from https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a-carbon-threshold-400ppm-and-why-it-matters https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a-carbon...

killlameme99 7y ago

From that "$94-232 per ton" number I was curious how much it would cost to "fix" CO2 emissions with just this tech alone. According to this [1] page I stumbled apon, there's about 3 trillion tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere. Now obviously we don't want to get rid of all of that CO2 or else we would all die, and a ton isn't quite a tonne, but roughly speaking it means it would cost on the order of 100 trillion dollars to do a "reset" on the earths CO2 levels with this technology. Of course I have no idea how long it would take, no idea how the costs may change with time, no idea what other technologies are used alongside this one to also help with CO2 emissions, and of course we're continually putting CO2 into the atmosphere so it's not at all the full cost. But I think it's neat to see a dollar number in some way. Just think, a few more orders of magnitude lower and it might almost be something we could just do. [1] https://micpohling.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/math-how-much-co2-by-weight-in-the-atmosphere/ https://micpohling.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/math-how-much-co...

Felz 7y ago
For context, that'd be about 1.25 years of current world GDP [1]. If we maintain a 3.6% growth rate for 100 years, the economy will be 34 times larger, so it'd take two weeks of the world's total economic output to capture all that carbon. (In the worst case scenario there'd be about twice as much carbon by then, so stretch that to a month. [2]) Of course we might not be able to smoothly convert the entire world GDP to carbon capture plants for a fortnight, and there'd be deleterious global warming effects in the meanwhile, but overall napkin math paints a pretty optimistic picture for geoengineering. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product [2] https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_600xAUTO_stretch_center-center/Fig-2.8-01_16x8_a.png https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_600xAUTO_stretch_center-c... from https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a-carbon-threshold-400ppm-and-why-it-matters https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a-carbon...

Video: CO2 processing cost: "$94-232 per ton". "According to <i>The Economist</i>, a single round trip flight from New York to San Fransisco produces two to th

Video: CO2 processing cost: "$94-232 per ton". "According to <i>The Economist</i>, a single round trip flight from New York to San Fransisco produces two to th