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Some progress on CO2 sequestration technologies

60 points by jseliger 7y ago

hpoe 7y ago
Seems to me that tech is going to be much better at solving this problem than the government. After all relying on the government to force the changes necessary hasn't panned out for the past 20 years. Maybe after all that time we can start looking to other means to help address the issue rather keeping trying to alter it with legislation, but hey maybe the government will suddenly magically get its act together and things will work out. Of course even if the entire USA went carbon nuetral tomorrow it wouldn't do much because the biggest contributer to CO2 emissions right now is China at almost 2x what the US producing. So maybe looking into technology to reduce the problem is the way to go.
- hannob 7y ago
  I don't think you understand the problem. Almost every climate scientist will tell you that we'll need negative emission technologies in addition to reducing emissions. They're not a replacement. (Which is actually the main problem with all these technologies... even reporting about them makes people think they can skip the hard part...)
  - axaxs 7y ago
    Honest question, as I'm not well read on the subject, but why? If, say, enough of these were deployed to have a total negative balance, is that not enough?
    - the8472 7y ago
      Actively sucking carbon out of the air is always going to be more expensive than not emitting it in the first place due to several factors, one of them having to build dedicated infrastructure for it on top of the energy production infrastructure you have to build whether it's fossil or renewable. So if you have a limited pot of money to do something about climate change then exclusively relying on sequestration gives you less overall reduction.
      - thereisnospork 7y ago
        That's not strictly true: Airplanes, for instance, 'have' to emit CO2 via combustion of fossil fuels: any attempt to eliminate CO2 at the source is going to be impossible to expensive. The atmosphere has the wonderful property of being self mixing, so Texas wind and solar driven capture can offset PA natural gas[1] if that is how the economics shake out. A critique about the article: Their 'moral hazard' is a joke. CO2 is fungible. Emitting 10 tonnes and sequestering 10 tons is the same as emitting none. If the former improves people's lives (airplanes, cars, power, etc.) the decision is a no-brainer. [1] hypothetically beneficial due to variability in sun/wind in addition to geographic limitations. Power has to always be on, CO2 sequestration doesn't have to be.
        the8472 7y ago
        > Airplanes, for instance, 'have' to emit CO2 via combustion of fossil fuels: Batteries may be out due to weight. Hydrogen on the other hand has a higher specific energy than gasoline > Emitting 10 tonnes and sequestering 10 tons is the same as emitting none. Emitting 10 tonnes of CO2 and not sequestering will improve people's lives today even more since they don't have to pay the cost immediately. The moral hazard is being lazy because theoretically someone in the future might pull off heroic efforts to save the planet.
        thereisnospork 7y ago
        > Emitting 10 tonnes of CO2 and not sequestering will improve people's lives today even more since they don't have to pay the cost immediately. The moral hazard is being lazy because theoretically someone in the future might pull off heroic efforts to save the planet. Exactly. To restate, not emitting CO2 will make people's lives worse[1] but most of the environmental proposals I see don't seem to realize the sheer unreasonableness of their propositions which generally boil down to 'you' need to suffer (in concrete ways, e.g. a gas tax, not farming a rain forest, etc.) for the (vague) benefit of other people. [1] Given the current state of technology. re. putting the cart in front of the horse, I agree, but if air-CO2 sequestration does hit 150$/tonne as (optimistically) projected that works out to be a few bucks per gallon of gas: The economist in me says the optimal solution is to tack that on to every gallon sold (and ear mark it).
    - KoenDG 7y ago
      It's like having a broken tap that's gushing water onto the floor. And the best solution people are willing to come up with is putting a million tiny containers in place to catch all the water before we get flooded. The problem with this method is immediately apparent: we're going to run out of space and also there's no way to be sure we're catching it in all the right places. Simply fixing the tap so it doesn't spill water anymore is a much better solution.
    - toufka 7y ago
      Nope. Not enough. We don’t just need to get to negative flux, we’ve already put too much CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to actively reduce it - fast. And then once we get back to a baseline, then keep it there. https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.technologyreview.com/p/pub/legacy/graphitix900.jpg https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.technologyreview.com/p/pub/le...
    - hannob 7y ago
      It is already doubtful that enough of this can be built to meet the needs of optimistic emission reduction scenarios. Thinking you could "do business as usual" and compensate that with carbon removal tech is about as plausible as colonizing mars as an alternative to earth. There's been a recent study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10842-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10842-5 Like, even matching what the optimistic climate models require (that all depend on rapid emission reductions) requires "more than half of today's energy production".
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Energy consumption is increasing, year on year. A warming climate will add more consumption, and sequestration technologies will require significant additional energy - to run, and to manufacture. Ignoring the sheer massive scale of kit that would need to be produced, installed and run to achieve a total negative balance by sequestration, how many years or decades would that take ramping up? Besides, if people believe there's a magic techie "fix" being rolled out, good reason to carry on chasing their developing country to USA levels of energy use, unsustainably. Forget EVs, insulation etc. Take every cheapest option - just as we always did. With that model you might never finish ramping up. To empty the pool, first turn the taps off. We need carbon neutral industry and generation. We need negative to bring CO2 ppm back to pre-industrial levels, or even 1950 levels, to stop the year on year of oppressive summers and wildfires, and leave a little ice at the poles.
  - godelski 7y ago
    > every climate scientist will tell you that we'll need negative emission technologies > even reporting about them makes people think they can skip the hard part It also gives many hope. There's a lot of doom and gloom about global warming and climate change. We hear a lot about how we are past the point of no return. But in reality reducing emissions and employing sequestration technologies would make that untrue. It would mean we CAN get back to where we need to be. I don't buy this whole argument about sequestration just encourages use of dirty energy. Consumers have very little choice and when they do being green has been in vogue for quite some time. I don't think sequestration is going to undo that thinking and popularity. Especially if we keep talking about the importance of both.
    - tunesmith 7y ago
      Reducing emissions and employing sequestration technologies wouldn't solve it unless both were at a sufficient level, and that sufficient level is the hard part. It sounds almost impossible to me.
      - godelski 7y ago
        Almost impossible. But not impossible. This is the realm where science and innovation thrives. Yes, there's lots of failure, but that's part of it. It won't be easy, but it'll definitely be worth it.
- KoenDG 7y ago
  >Seems to me that tech is going to be much better at solving this problem than the government. Whatever "the solution" in the end may be, we can all play our part. Individual, company or government. Personally, I feel it's both wrong and harmful to play up feelings of "government should leave things to tech". That was never at play, in terms of working out a solution. >Maybe after all that time we can start looking to other means to help address the issue rather keeping trying to alter it with legislation The issue isn't being altered. Are you perhaps trying to say you think it's bad that the governments regulate what companies can do on their territory? It makes perfect sense to fine companies that come onto the territory you own and are responsible for, when those companies pollute said territory. Fining indeed doesn't solve the problem directly. It does offer a chance for reflection and study on the side of the companies. The problem isn't that the government is trying to protect its territory and its people. The problem is that companies continue harming the environment despite the knowledge that this eventually kills people, animal and plant life. What you're saying sounds a lot like the rethoric of "Don't fine us because we're not going to listen anyway". Which is downright evil. >Of course even if the entire USA went carbon nuetral tomorrow it wouldn't do much because the biggest contributer to CO2 emissions right now is China at almost 2x what the US producing. Respectfully, that is complete and utter bullshit. The impact would be gigantic. It's not because there's still more to fix, that this means one action won't fix anything. That's absurd. Also, the idea of "going carbon neutral tomorrow" is a strawman. A total exaggeration meant to portray the plans of one side as impossible. While those are not actually the plans to begin with. Your entire post feels like anti-government propaganda.
  - hpoe 7y ago
    I apologise if it came off that way I wasn't trying to government bash or anything like that. But we've spent the last 20 years or so trying to use a legaslative solution to produce results but that is seeming to be in large part ineffective as the issue is appearing to be exactrebated rather than shrinking. But we need action now in order to help ameloriate the effects. If the political route has failed to produce results then it seems to me that we need to try a different avenue than what has not been working. In this case leaving it to invention and innovation to help address the problem. It might not solve the problem on its own, but it won't be hurting it either and maybe it will lead to breakthroughs that do solve the problem. I meant my last paragraph not as a critique of current carbon reduction efforts but rather to show that all the United States legaslative power in the world isn't going to solve the CO2 problem by itself as China is producing twice as much and increasing emissions whereas the US is shrinking emissions. After all this isn't a US only issue this is a world wide issue and although we should do all that lies within our power we should also be cognizant of the fact the US isn't the only nation on Earth and other countries should also be considered in this global climate change issue.
- yongjik 7y ago
  I'm not sure I follow. Sequestering carbon doesn't make money in itself. Someone else has to pay them. And since it helps everybody and nobody in particular, people have to be convinced (or forced) to pay even though it doesn't personally benefit them. If we can't even trust the government to tax high-emission industry, who's going to fund CO2 sequestration? Social media?
  - pxi 7y ago
    It can come from defence and foreign aid budgets since these interests are directly aligned.
- godelski 7y ago
  > Seems to me that tech is going to be much better at solving this problem than the government. And who do you think is paying for the research (it isn't just Gates) and going to pay for them to be built? There is no incentive for a private company to build them unless there are carbon taxes that outweigh the cost of these. Do you think people will just build them out of the goodness of their hearts (I'll give you that some definitely will be, but not enough). > but hey maybe the government will suddenly magically get its act together and things will work out. And that's why we need to keep pushing. Because this tech won't be developed by itself. It won't be built by itself. There's many ways that can be done, but I honestly don't see one without government involvement (and it doesn't have to just be the US. Other countries who have their act together can build these and do global good).
- 7952 7y ago
  There is unwillingness to accept sacrifice, and that limits what government will do. I think that we should have spent more time pursuading people of the moral importance of defeating climate change. Dry arguments about science are not effective enough. Of course government intervention is absolutely necessary. Without guaranteed payments it would have been impossible for large scale renewables to start up. The government created the market. And that volume of construction has reduced costs. Also, China has built more solar and wind power than anyone. And they have an active nuclear program. And their per-capita CO2 emissions are about half that of the USA.
- est31 7y ago
  > Seems to me that tech is going to be much better at solving this problem than the government. After all relying on the government to force the changes necessary hasn't panned out for the past 20 years. Governments are the most powerful entities on this planet. 22 million people have government jobs in the US, which is 7% of the population. The money spent by the US government in 2019 (including states and local governments) amounts to 7.6 trillion USD [1]. This is 38% of the GDP [2]. If you just focus on the impact that all of the government's office buildings, cars, airplanes, etc. have, you get a huge opportunity for improvements. And of course the government doesn't just don't have influence on its direct business, it can also pass laws to incentivize or even force everyone in the country to become more energy saving. This is nothing that any other company can do. I understand your frustration that there is little success in getting US congress in particular to pass effective laws that fight climate change, but one shouldn't underestimate the power that the US government holds. Tech is having a hard time when the government is funding oil companies. [1]: https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total [2]: GDP is about 20 billion. I'm not an economist, not sure how comparable the two numbers are.
jmpman 7y ago
Trying to convert these abstract $ per ton numbers into something more concrete... 1 gallon of gasoline produces 20lbs of CO2. 1 Ton of CO2 sequestration costs $150 (there’s a range in the article but that’s a good target). If we had to pay a tax on each gallon of gas for this sequestration, it would be $1.50/gallon. That’s a little steep, and would have a serious impact to the short term economy. $0.50/gallon is likely more palatable.
- the8472 7y ago
  > it would be $1.50/gallon That translates to 0.35€/L, which wouldn't even be half of the taxes already levied on gasoline in many european countries. If it were phased in over time it would hopefully be another incentive for the uptake of electric cars.
- gizmo686 7y ago
  According to Wikipedia [0]. fuel taxes on the order of $6/gallon exist in some countries. I don't feel like working through all the countries to normalize the units; but the US tax is comically low by comparison. In many countries, your estimated cost is far below what they already pas in gas-specific taxes (although some of that tax might be for non CO2 issues) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#Tax_rates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#Tax_rates
- thatfrenchguy 7y ago
  We should probably just tax at $1.5 a gallon right now just to get the demand down ;-). There’s a reason why cars consume less in continental Europe and that’s not just because people there are smarter.
- mikeash 7y ago
  Another way to look at it: burning a gallon of gasoline does damage which costs $1.50 to fix, but we allow gasoline buyers to pass that cost on to the rest of the world rather than making them pay for their own mess.
- FrojoS 7y ago
  I assume this is the CO2 content of one gallon but not the CO2 footprint of producing the fuel and getting it into the tank.
thatfrenchguy 7y ago
Or we could focus on emitting less CO2. Those articles make CO2 séquestration seem like a saver bu themselves, but they won’t be useful if we don’t get our actual emissions to close-to-zero.
- walkingolof 7y ago
  Its not an either or proposition anymore, that ship has sailed, we need quickly to lower the CO2 emissions, yes, but we should also think about sequestration in all forms, trees etc.
- nickparker 7y ago
  Agreed. I also don't like this article mixing gigatons and millions of tons. Feels like preying on people who don't get SI units... "136 million tons of capacity by 2040" is 0.136 gigatons, 1/400th of our current emissions. This technology will help us handle the very last, most difficult to decarbonize parts of our industrial civilization. It's nowhere near effective enough to do anything more than that.
  - tunesmith 7y ago
    Our world current emissions are 54 gigatons / year? Yikes. I thought we were at 35-40, my numbers must be out of date. edit: still can't find evidence for >50. Latest numbers I see are 37.1 from 2018. Can you link a source?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rayiner 7y ago
  That ship sailed long ago. India, China, and Africa are going to blow out the remaining carbon budget regardless of what America and Europe do to reduce emissions.
- godelski 7y ago
  We need to get our emissions to zero. But we can't control other countries (though we need to put pressure). The us isn't even a third of global emissions. So while making the US carbon neutral, we aren't even close to solving the problem. We HAVE to be negative. There's another big reason to be negative as well. Even if total global emissions went to 0 (ZERO!) the planet would still warm. There's a feedback loop. We've warmed enough that we are melting a lot of ice that contains carbon, which gets released into the ocean and atmosphere. We have no choice but to go negative, and we need to encourage as many other countries to do so as well.
tcbawo 7y ago
I had an idea once to create a credit card where a configurable percentage of spending went towards carbon offsetting. The goal would be reduction in personal carbon footprint and eventually going negative. This would require both measurement of carbon-producing activities based on spending (eg. gasoline), but also a cost-effective means of carbon sequestration. Not my field of expertise, but taking advantage of people's desire to do good w/o expending energy seems like it would be the way to go.
- pier25 7y ago
  So like a self imposed carbon tax?
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    There are already lots of services that do this, and some that can be tied to specific purchases like airline flights (just Google "purchase carbon offsets"), but that said I really like the parent's idea of automatically tying it to a credit card. Don't know if this exists already.
  - tcbawo 7y ago
    That was the thought, yeah. I was thinking of something like Mint for the environment, paired with an optional credit card so you can contribute as you go vs. get a 'bill' afterwards
    - smadge 7y ago
      An actual carbon tax is necessary, though. The game theory/economics of a voluntary “tax” don’t work out.
      - tcbawo 7y ago
        Sure, I don't think it's an either-or proposition. However, I think there is a sizable population of people that aren't interested in waiting around until a government policy would be enacted. The purpose would be to inform/educate people on their carbon footprint, to build a community around reducing their carbon footprint, and give a large group of people an opportunity to contribute in a small way that would hopefully have large aggregate results.
lucb1e 7y ago
I looked into this two days ago and decided to get a subscription with https://climeworks.com https://climeworks.com for a part of my CO2. It's the only thing I can do until the bus that I drive to work with becomes electric, planes for business trip start to fly electrically, there is 100% renewable power, etc. I'm making all the right choices available to me today (such as renewable power at home, recycling, etc.), but even so, many tonnes of CO2 are produced for me every year. I can't just shrug and do nothing. It's quite expensive, and all of those CO2 sequestration companies (including Climeworks) sound pretty prototype-y. Climeworks is the one with a consumer product and clearly states that they already remove CO2 from the atmosphere today. This is what I got back from sales when I asked if my money will be for R&D that might, one day, remove the CO2, or if it would support operational costs of a machine running today: > you will receive we state the amount of carbon dioxide that has been removed in your name. No one else can put a claim to that amount. [...] we run the machines most of the time anyway [but] proving that there is a market for our services (such as CDR for individuals) makes it easier for us to broaden the application of our technology. So that gives me a reasonable confidence, but I'll still spread out my CO2 compensation a little in case part of it turns out to be badly spent. And trees have more advantages than just producing rock, even if we'd need much more surface area and water to maintain those trees than to sequester CO2 into rock.
- pier25 7y ago
  Thanks, I just subscribed.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ajross 7y ago
> Over a year, the equipment can capture 4,000 tons of CO2 Not to be glib, and I'm no agronomy expert, but a quick google tells me that's about equivalent to a square mile of hay field. Seems like if you were serious about this problem and wanted an economical solution, buying a farm and burying the output would be more effective than throwing money at startups like this. Articles like this are always written from a tone of "If ONLY there was some way to economically extract and concentrate carbon from the atmosphere", by journalists who then go home and tend the heirloom snap peas in their raised beds without a sense of irony. Plants do this. It's literally what makes them plants. Now... maybe there's a stronger economic argument for technologies like this, but if there is it's not filtering into the press hits. I remain suspicious.
- godelski 7y ago
  I'm not sure what your argument is. That since the technology isn't fully developed we shouldn't fund development? This is akin to saying (in the early 1900's) "Planes can only fly short distances, are very expensive, and can't carry any serious loads. It would just be better to put this money into trucking."
  - new_realist 7y ago
    To this day, airplanes carry a tiny fraction of the world’s freight. Trucking, rails and ships won.
  - ajross 7y ago
    It's more "Planes are new and unproven and if you want to ship cargo on them I'm going to want to see numbers". In fact this did eventually work, but not until FedEx came along half a century later using surplus early generation jets that no one was imagining in the early part of the century. Someone who threw a ton of venture cash at "Air Freight Ltd." in 1913 or whatever would have lost their shirt. Back to the point: I'm not saying this won't work. I'm saying that there are firm limits to how well it MUST work just to be better than technology that was proven out five millenia ago. That's a really high bar, and it needs numbers and not press hits.
aurelwu 7y ago
Does anyone know if there is anyone researching on CH4 (Methane) sequestration? While it's concentration is vastly lower than CO2 (around 1.6ppm vs >400 ppm CO2) it still has roughly a quarter of the impact of the atmospheric CO2. It has a rather short half-life (8-12 years) in the atmosphere yet the concentration is still is rising, even at an increased rate recently with no definite explanation (might be wetlands emitting it at a higher rate, might be melting permafrost soil in the arctic, might be a result of fracking). I don't think it is commercially viable to do it but it might become a sheer necessity if we run into some positive feedback loops so having at least some basic research going on in that field might not hurt.
- neural_thing 7y ago
  I've only seen capture at the point of production for methane. See Lanzatech, for example.
  - aurelwu 7y ago
    had trouble finding much on their homepage but : https://www.lanzatech.com/2013/09/20/lanzatech-awarded-4-million-grant-from-arpa-e-to-transform-waste-methane-resources-into-low-carbon-fuels-and-chemicals/ https://www.lanzatech.com/2013/09/20/lanzatech-awarded-4-mil... has at least some more information about it, thanks for the hint :-)
- konschubert 7y ago
  Maybe there are techniques to shorten its half-life?
  - danieltillett 7y ago
    I think it has been suggested lasers can work, don't know how realistic this is.
m0zg 7y ago
TBH I think engineering solutions (fusion, carbon sequestration, perhaps also genetic engineering) are the only viable paths forward. Quite obviously we won't be able to do anything through political or regulatory means without ruining the economy and forcing people to adopt a much lower standard of living (no cows or Hawaii vacations, no stuff from abroad, no cars, no plastics, etc, etc). What I don't get is why fusion research is so underfunded. Let's make it a "going to the moon" or "manhattan project" kind of thing and let's get it done in 10 years. Get all the smartest people under one roof and let them have at it, without any funding constraints. $100B/yr oughtta do it. This will completely upend the world, and solve a lot of the problems we have. With clean, essentially unlimited energy, there's a lot you can do. The US doesn't even have to pay for all of it by itself. I'm sure industrialized countries will all be glad to chip in proportionally to their GDP for a world-saving project of this kind.
- effie 7y ago
  Apart from the obvious reasons governments don't want to put "us military spending" amount of money into fusion research (very expensive, unclear benefits, potentially changing global economy, hurting oil companies), it is also not clear that putting more money at the problem would help. Look at the mess ITER has been organizationally. It hardly seems putting more people in that project would help.
  - m0zg 7y ago
    Pretty sure it would. After all there are multiple precedents: at least three "unlimited budget" attempts at changing the world worked fine: WW2, Manhattan Project, Apollo program. The first ended the British imperial ambitions and established the US as the undisputed world leader, the second did the same in the nuclear arms race, and the third repeated the feat in space. This doesn't have to be super complicated like ITER.
WalterBright 7y ago
Just plant trees.
tathougies 7y ago
Easiest progress: $200 tax credit for every tree or plant you plant on your property and keep for x number of years. Bonus money if its from one of the species with the best carbon offsetting potential. Even more bonus money if it produces food for your family. Lets end the ugly lawns and get some actual use out of the suburban landscape. This is an especially great tax for America because while costs of enforcement would be high in many countries. Americans are unusually honest.
tunesmith 7y ago
I don't understand how climate researchers can seriously have concerns about sequestration technologies distracting us from the efforts to limit emissions. It seems an argument that is easily dispensed with, with a bit of simple math. Right now it seems like even if we max out both efforts, we'd still have to be lucky to get there. I have a question about these various carbon-buying efforts. Whether it's climeworks, or buying carbon offsets, or signing up for a service with your power company... do these things scale? I mean, here in Portland I think you can sign up with PGE for having 100% of your electricity come from renewable sources, but I think that only 40% of their power comes from renewable. So really probably only 40% of their customers can sign up. As it is, not enough people have signed up, so they can still say so, but big picture, you're still really only getting 40%. And that's just the electrical part of our carbon footprint, which isn't the whole picture. Same with the carbon-offset buying sites. I mean, they don't really work past a point, right? Like if every citizen in the world signs up, it implies we'd have the entire problem solved. But we wouldn't really, don't they all have upper limits? So how much do they actually scale? 50%, 10%, 1%?
- acdha 7y ago
  > I don't understand how climate researchers can seriously have concerns about sequestration technologies distracting us from the efforts to limit emissions. It seems an argument that is easily dispensed with, with a bit of simple math. The people who need convincing aren’t there due to math: it’s become a political loyalty test for Republicans in the U.S. and some other groups internationally, for many people accepting that climate change is real means major changes in their lifestyle and business, and there’s a huge industry supporting fake experts, think tanks, etc. pitching the message that you don’t need to do anything. In that light, it’s not unreasonable to worry that people will use it to push the “no need to sacrifice now, new technology will fix everything” message, not unlike the people hoping we can avoid making simple infrastructure fixes because self-driving cars will solve everything real soon now.
ryanmarsh 7y ago
What if we just planted more trees?
- tunesmith 7y ago
  A tree sequesters a ton of CO2 over its 40 year lifespan. US Citizens have a 20-ton footprint per year. So... plant 20 trees this year, and in 40 years they will have paid for this year's footprint.
- ritchiey 7y ago
  Even better, plant trees, cut them down, build things out of them and grow more.
AtlasBarfed 7y ago
Pet peeve: everyone does math with CURRENT emissions rate. Um, we have over a century of backlog emissions we need to deal with too. The only thing I last heard that was economical/promising was olivine, is that turning into a dead end? Pumping CO2 into the ground sounds like it works great on paper, but I think we're fooling ourselves that it won't reenter the atmosphere. Iron fertilization in the ocean might help acidification, but not atmospheric. Tree planting might help but the trees die and decay eventually, and we need to sacrifice grazing land for that.
- stefco_ 7y ago
  > Pumping CO2 into the ground sounds like it works great on paper, but I think we're fooling ourselves that it won't reenter the atmosphere. Sequestration alone shouldn't be the solution, but if we can find a thermodynamically feasible way to store CO2 for at least thousands of years while getting away from new CO2 emission, it won't matter that the solution isn't fully permanent. Some proposed solutions are expected to be stable on long enough timescales that the CO2 can (under proper geologic conditions) turn into rock. Other solutions rely on keeping it in oxygen-poor environments where it won't oxidize (which is what happened with carbon that became fossil fuels in the first place; clearly that carbon was not permanently sequestered, since we're burning it now!). As long as it's thermodynamically feasible to store carbon (read: our net carbon emission goes down and it doesn't cost too much in alternative energy sources), a relatively short (on geological timescales at least) storage solution is more than sufficient (again, as long as it's coupled with critically necessary reductions in new CO2 emission). [edit] There are, to be clear, many geological formations that are more than stable enough to store volatile materials on longer timescales than are necessary (look at how effectively salt domes trap oil through a combination of buoyancy and impermeability of certain types of rock). The deep, possibly inescapable problem is the thermodynamic difficulty of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere (where its concentration is low, and hence extraction is inefficient) vs. the relative ease of releasing energy from highly-concentrated carbon stores like fossil fuels. It's like trying to unmix your cream from your coffee; it's just much much easier to avoid pouring the cream in in the first place. As others have mentioned, we can rely on the fact that nature already gives us cheap distributed solar farms with built in sequestration abilities (also known as "plants"); non-biological methods don't come with the built in solar energy converter, and so we need to consider the harrowing reality of thermodynamics when trying to make them scalable.
zachsherman 7y ago
Just jumping in to echo the obvious uhh trees literally already exist

60 points by jseliger 7y ago

hpoe 7y ago

Seems to me that tech is going to be much better at solving this problem than the government. After all relying on the government to force the changes necessary hasn't panned out for the past 20 years. Maybe after all that time we can start looking to other means to help address the issue rather keeping trying to alter it with legislation, but hey maybe the government will suddenly magically get its act together and things will work out. Of course even if the entire USA went carbon nuetral tomorrow it wouldn't do much because the biggest contributer to CO2 emissions right now is China at almost 2x what the US producing. So maybe looking into technology to reduce the problem is the way to go.

hannob 7y ago
I don't think you understand the problem. Almost every climate scientist will tell you that we'll need negative emission technologies in addition to reducing emissions. They're not a replacement. (Which is actually the main problem with all these technologies... even reporting about them makes people think they can skip the hard part...)
- axaxs 7y ago
  Honest question, as I'm not well read on the subject, but why? If, say, enough of these were deployed to have a total negative balance, is that not enough?
  - the8472 7y ago
    Actively sucking carbon out of the air is always going to be more expensive than not emitting it in the first place due to several factors, one of them having to build dedicated infrastructure for it on top of the energy production infrastructure you have to build whether it's fossil or renewable. So if you have a limited pot of money to do something about climate change then exclusively relying on sequestration gives you less overall reduction.
    - thereisnospork 7y ago
      That's not strictly true: Airplanes, for instance, 'have' to emit CO2 via combustion of fossil fuels: any attempt to eliminate CO2 at the source is going to be impossible to expensive. The atmosphere has the wonderful property of being self mixing, so Texas wind and solar driven capture can offset PA natural gas[1] if that is how the economics shake out. A critique about the article: Their 'moral hazard' is a joke. CO2 is fungible. Emitting 10 tonnes and sequestering 10 tons is the same as emitting none. If the former improves people's lives (airplanes, cars, power, etc.) the decision is a no-brainer. [1] hypothetically beneficial due to variability in sun/wind in addition to geographic limitations. Power has to always be on, CO2 sequestration doesn't have to be.
      - the8472 7y ago
        > Airplanes, for instance, 'have' to emit CO2 via combustion of fossil fuels: Batteries may be out due to weight. Hydrogen on the other hand has a higher specific energy than gasoline > Emitting 10 tonnes and sequestering 10 tons is the same as emitting none. Emitting 10 tonnes of CO2 and not sequestering will improve people's lives today even more since they don't have to pay the cost immediately. The moral hazard is being lazy because theoretically someone in the future might pull off heroic efforts to save the planet.
        thereisnospork 7y ago
        > Emitting 10 tonnes of CO2 and not sequestering will improve people's lives today even more since they don't have to pay the cost immediately. The moral hazard is being lazy because theoretically someone in the future might pull off heroic efforts to save the planet. Exactly. To restate, not emitting CO2 will make people's lives worse[1] but most of the environmental proposals I see don't seem to realize the sheer unreasonableness of their propositions which generally boil down to 'you' need to suffer (in concrete ways, e.g. a gas tax, not farming a rain forest, etc.) for the (vague) benefit of other people. [1] Given the current state of technology. re. putting the cart in front of the horse, I agree, but if air-CO2 sequestration does hit 150$/tonne as (optimistically) projected that works out to be a few bucks per gallon of gas: The economist in me says the optimal solution is to tack that on to every gallon sold (and ear mark it).
  - KoenDG 7y ago
    It's like having a broken tap that's gushing water onto the floor. And the best solution people are willing to come up with is putting a million tiny containers in place to catch all the water before we get flooded. The problem with this method is immediately apparent: we're going to run out of space and also there's no way to be sure we're catching it in all the right places. Simply fixing the tap so it doesn't spill water anymore is a much better solution.
  - toufka 7y ago
    Nope. Not enough. We don’t just need to get to negative flux, we’ve already put too much CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to actively reduce it - fast. And then once we get back to a baseline, then keep it there. https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.technologyreview.com/p/pub/legacy/graphitix900.jpg https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.technologyreview.com/p/pub/le...
  - hannob 7y ago
    It is already doubtful that enough of this can be built to meet the needs of optimistic emission reduction scenarios. Thinking you could "do business as usual" and compensate that with carbon removal tech is about as plausible as colonizing mars as an alternative to earth. There's been a recent study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10842-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10842-5 Like, even matching what the optimistic climate models require (that all depend on rapid emission reductions) requires "more than half of today's energy production".
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Energy consumption is increasing, year on year. A warming climate will add more consumption, and sequestration technologies will require significant additional energy - to run, and to manufacture. Ignoring the sheer massive scale of kit that would need to be produced, installed and run to achieve a total negative balance by sequestration, how many years or decades would that take ramping up? Besides, if people believe there's a magic techie "fix" being rolled out, good reason to carry on chasing their developing country to USA levels of energy use, unsustainably. Forget EVs, insulation etc. Take every cheapest option - just as we always did. With that model you might never finish ramping up. To empty the pool, first turn the taps off. We need carbon neutral industry and generation. We need negative to bring CO2 ppm back to pre-industrial levels, or even 1950 levels, to stop the year on year of oppressive summers and wildfires, and leave a little ice at the poles.
- godelski 7y ago
  > every climate scientist will tell you that we'll need negative emission technologies > even reporting about them makes people think they can skip the hard part It also gives many hope. There's a lot of doom and gloom about global warming and climate change. We hear a lot about how we are past the point of no return. But in reality reducing emissions and employing sequestration technologies would make that untrue. It would mean we CAN get back to where we need to be. I don't buy this whole argument about sequestration just encourages use of dirty energy. Consumers have very little choice and when they do being green has been in vogue for quite some time. I don't think sequestration is going to undo that thinking and popularity. Especially if we keep talking about the importance of both.
  - tunesmith 7y ago
    Reducing emissions and employing sequestration technologies wouldn't solve it unless both were at a sufficient level, and that sufficient level is the hard part. It sounds almost impossible to me.
    - godelski 7y ago
      Almost impossible. But not impossible. This is the realm where science and innovation thrives. Yes, there's lots of failure, but that's part of it. It won't be easy, but it'll definitely be worth it.
KoenDG 7y ago
>Seems to me that tech is going to be much better at solving this problem than the government. Whatever "the solution" in the end may be, we can all play our part. Individual, company or government. Personally, I feel it's both wrong and harmful to play up feelings of "government should leave things to tech". That was never at play, in terms of working out a solution. >Maybe after all that time we can start looking to other means to help address the issue rather keeping trying to alter it with legislation The issue isn't being altered. Are you perhaps trying to say you think it's bad that the governments regulate what companies can do on their territory? It makes perfect sense to fine companies that come onto the territory you own and are responsible for, when those companies pollute said territory. Fining indeed doesn't solve the problem directly. It does offer a chance for reflection and study on the side of the companies. The problem isn't that the government is trying to protect its territory and its people. The problem is that companies continue harming the environment despite the knowledge that this eventually kills people, animal and plant life. What you're saying sounds a lot like the rethoric of "Don't fine us because we're not going to listen anyway". Which is downright evil. >Of course even if the entire USA went carbon nuetral tomorrow it wouldn't do much because the biggest contributer to CO2 emissions right now is China at almost 2x what the US producing. Respectfully, that is complete and utter bullshit. The impact would be gigantic. It's not because there's still more to fix, that this means one action won't fix anything. That's absurd. Also, the idea of "going carbon neutral tomorrow" is a strawman. A total exaggeration meant to portray the plans of one side as impossible. While those are not actually the plans to begin with. Your entire post feels like anti-government propaganda.
- hpoe 7y ago
  I apologise if it came off that way I wasn't trying to government bash or anything like that. But we've spent the last 20 years or so trying to use a legaslative solution to produce results but that is seeming to be in large part ineffective as the issue is appearing to be exactrebated rather than shrinking. But we need action now in order to help ameloriate the effects. If the political route has failed to produce results then it seems to me that we need to try a different avenue than what has not been working. In this case leaving it to invention and innovation to help address the problem. It might not solve the problem on its own, but it won't be hurting it either and maybe it will lead to breakthroughs that do solve the problem. I meant my last paragraph not as a critique of current carbon reduction efforts but rather to show that all the United States legaslative power in the world isn't going to solve the CO2 problem by itself as China is producing twice as much and increasing emissions whereas the US is shrinking emissions. After all this isn't a US only issue this is a world wide issue and although we should do all that lies within our power we should also be cognizant of the fact the US isn't the only nation on Earth and other countries should also be considered in this global climate change issue.
yongjik 7y ago
I'm not sure I follow. Sequestering carbon doesn't make money in itself. Someone else has to pay them. And since it helps everybody and nobody in particular, people have to be convinced (or forced) to pay even though it doesn't personally benefit them. If we can't even trust the government to tax high-emission industry, who's going to fund CO2 sequestration? Social media?
- pxi 7y ago
  It can come from defence and foreign aid budgets since these interests are directly aligned.
godelski 7y ago
> Seems to me that tech is going to be much better at solving this problem than the government. And who do you think is paying for the research (it isn't just Gates) and going to pay for them to be built? There is no incentive for a private company to build them unless there are carbon taxes that outweigh the cost of these. Do you think people will just build them out of the goodness of their hearts (I'll give you that some definitely will be, but not enough). > but hey maybe the government will suddenly magically get its act together and things will work out. And that's why we need to keep pushing. Because this tech won't be developed by itself. It won't be built by itself. There's many ways that can be done, but I honestly don't see one without government involvement (and it doesn't have to just be the US. Other countries who have their act together can build these and do global good).
7952 7y ago
There is unwillingness to accept sacrifice, and that limits what government will do. I think that we should have spent more time pursuading people of the moral importance of defeating climate change. Dry arguments about science are not effective enough. Of course government intervention is absolutely necessary. Without guaranteed payments it would have been impossible for large scale renewables to start up. The government created the market. And that volume of construction has reduced costs. Also, China has built more solar and wind power than anyone. And they have an active nuclear program. And their per-capita CO2 emissions are about half that of the USA.
est31 7y ago
> Seems to me that tech is going to be much better at solving this problem than the government. After all relying on the government to force the changes necessary hasn't panned out for the past 20 years. Governments are the most powerful entities on this planet. 22 million people have government jobs in the US, which is 7% of the population. The money spent by the US government in 2019 (including states and local governments) amounts to 7.6 trillion USD [1]. This is 38% of the GDP [2]. If you just focus on the impact that all of the government's office buildings, cars, airplanes, etc. have, you get a huge opportunity for improvements. And of course the government doesn't just don't have influence on its direct business, it can also pass laws to incentivize or even force everyone in the country to become more energy saving. This is nothing that any other company can do. I understand your frustration that there is little success in getting US congress in particular to pass effective laws that fight climate change, but one shouldn't underestimate the power that the US government holds. Tech is having a hard time when the government is funding oil companies. [1]: https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total [2]: GDP is about 20 billion. I'm not an economist, not sure how comparable the two numbers are.

jmpman 7y ago

Trying to convert these abstract $ per ton numbers into something more concrete... 1 gallon of gasoline produces 20lbs of CO2. 1 Ton of CO2 sequestration costs $150 (there’s a range in the article but that’s a good target). If we had to pay a tax on each gallon of gas for this sequestration, it would be $1.50/gallon. That’s a little steep, and would have a serious impact to the short term economy. $0.50/gallon is likely more palatable.

the8472 7y ago
> it would be $1.50/gallon That translates to 0.35€/L, which wouldn't even be half of the taxes already levied on gasoline in many european countries. If it were phased in over time it would hopefully be another incentive for the uptake of electric cars.
gizmo686 7y ago
According to Wikipedia [0]. fuel taxes on the order of $6/gallon exist in some countries. I don't feel like working through all the countries to normalize the units; but the US tax is comically low by comparison. In many countries, your estimated cost is far below what they already pas in gas-specific taxes (although some of that tax might be for non CO2 issues) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#Tax_rates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#Tax_rates
thatfrenchguy 7y ago
We should probably just tax at $1.5 a gallon right now just to get the demand down ;-). There’s a reason why cars consume less in continental Europe and that’s not just because people there are smarter.
mikeash 7y ago
Another way to look at it: burning a gallon of gasoline does damage which costs $1.50 to fix, but we allow gasoline buyers to pass that cost on to the rest of the world rather than making them pay for their own mess.
FrojoS 7y ago
I assume this is the CO2 content of one gallon but not the CO2 footprint of producing the fuel and getting it into the tank.

thatfrenchguy 7y ago

Or we could focus on emitting less CO2. Those articles make CO2 séquestration seem like a saver bu themselves, but they won’t be useful if we don’t get our actual emissions to close-to-zero.

walkingolof 7y ago
Its not an either or proposition anymore, that ship has sailed, we need quickly to lower the CO2 emissions, yes, but we should also think about sequestration in all forms, trees etc.
nickparker 7y ago
Agreed. I also don't like this article mixing gigatons and millions of tons. Feels like preying on people who don't get SI units... "136 million tons of capacity by 2040" is 0.136 gigatons, 1/400th of our current emissions. This technology will help us handle the very last, most difficult to decarbonize parts of our industrial civilization. It's nowhere near effective enough to do anything more than that.
- tunesmith 7y ago
  Our world current emissions are 54 gigatons / year? Yikes. I thought we were at 35-40, my numbers must be out of date. edit: still can't find evidence for >50. Latest numbers I see are 37.1 from 2018. Can you link a source?
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rayiner 7y ago
That ship sailed long ago. India, China, and Africa are going to blow out the remaining carbon budget regardless of what America and Europe do to reduce emissions.
godelski 7y ago
We need to get our emissions to zero. But we can't control other countries (though we need to put pressure). The us isn't even a third of global emissions. So while making the US carbon neutral, we aren't even close to solving the problem. We HAVE to be negative. There's another big reason to be negative as well. Even if total global emissions went to 0 (ZERO!) the planet would still warm. There's a feedback loop. We've warmed enough that we are melting a lot of ice that contains carbon, which gets released into the ocean and atmosphere. We have no choice but to go negative, and we need to encourage as many other countries to do so as well.

tcbawo 7y ago

I had an idea once to create a credit card where a configurable percentage of spending went towards carbon offsetting. The goal would be reduction in personal carbon footprint and eventually going negative. This would require both measurement of carbon-producing activities based on spending (eg. gasoline), but also a cost-effective means of carbon sequestration. Not my field of expertise, but taking advantage of people's desire to do good w/o expending energy seems like it would be the way to go.

pier25 7y ago
So like a self imposed carbon tax?
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  There are already lots of services that do this, and some that can be tied to specific purchases like airline flights (just Google "purchase carbon offsets"), but that said I really like the parent's idea of automatically tying it to a credit card. Don't know if this exists already.
- tcbawo 7y ago
  That was the thought, yeah. I was thinking of something like Mint for the environment, paired with an optional credit card so you can contribute as you go vs. get a 'bill' afterwards
  - smadge 7y ago
    An actual carbon tax is necessary, though. The game theory/economics of a voluntary “tax” don’t work out.
    - tcbawo 7y ago
      Sure, I don't think it's an either-or proposition. However, I think there is a sizable population of people that aren't interested in waiting around until a government policy would be enacted. The purpose would be to inform/educate people on their carbon footprint, to build a community around reducing their carbon footprint, and give a large group of people an opportunity to contribute in a small way that would hopefully have large aggregate results.

lucb1e 7y ago

I looked into this two days ago and decided to get a subscription with https://climeworks.com https://climeworks.com for a part of my CO2. It's the only thing I can do until the bus that I drive to work with becomes electric, planes for business trip start to fly electrically, there is 100% renewable power, etc. I'm making all the right choices available to me today (such as renewable power at home, recycling, etc.), but even so, many tonnes of CO2 are produced for me every year. I can't just shrug and do nothing. It's quite expensive, and all of those CO2 sequestration companies (including Climeworks) sound pretty prototype-y. Climeworks is the one with a consumer product and clearly states that they already remove CO2 from the atmosphere today. This is what I got back from sales when I asked if my money will be for R&D that might, one day, remove the CO2, or if it would support operational costs of a machine running today: > you will receive we state the amount of carbon dioxide that has been removed in your name. No one else can put a claim to that amount. [...] we run the machines most of the time anyway [but] proving that there is a market for our services (such as CDR for individuals) makes it easier for us to broaden the application of our technology. So that gives me a reasonable confidence, but I'll still spread out my CO2 compensation a little in case part of it turns out to be badly spent. And trees have more advantages than just producing rock, even if we'd need much more surface area and water to maintain those trees than to sequester CO2 into rock.

pier25 7y ago
Thanks, I just subscribed.
deleted 7y ago
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ajross 7y ago

> Over a year, the equipment can capture 4,000 tons of CO2 Not to be glib, and I'm no agronomy expert, but a quick google tells me that's about equivalent to a square mile of hay field. Seems like if you were serious about this problem and wanted an economical solution, buying a farm and burying the output would be more effective than throwing money at startups like this. Articles like this are always written from a tone of "If ONLY there was some way to economically extract and concentrate carbon from the atmosphere", by journalists who then go home and tend the heirloom snap peas in their raised beds without a sense of irony. Plants do this. It's literally what makes them plants. Now... maybe there's a stronger economic argument for technologies like this, but if there is it's not filtering into the press hits. I remain suspicious.

godelski 7y ago
I'm not sure what your argument is. That since the technology isn't fully developed we shouldn't fund development? This is akin to saying (in the early 1900's) "Planes can only fly short distances, are very expensive, and can't carry any serious loads. It would just be better to put this money into trucking."
- new_realist 7y ago
  To this day, airplanes carry a tiny fraction of the world’s freight. Trucking, rails and ships won.
- ajross 7y ago
  It's more "Planes are new and unproven and if you want to ship cargo on them I'm going to want to see numbers". In fact this did eventually work, but not until FedEx came along half a century later using surplus early generation jets that no one was imagining in the early part of the century. Someone who threw a ton of venture cash at "Air Freight Ltd." in 1913 or whatever would have lost their shirt. Back to the point: I'm not saying this won't work. I'm saying that there are firm limits to how well it MUST work just to be better than technology that was proven out five millenia ago. That's a really high bar, and it needs numbers and not press hits.

aurelwu 7y ago

Does anyone know if there is anyone researching on CH4 (Methane) sequestration? While it's concentration is vastly lower than CO2 (around 1.6ppm vs >400 ppm CO2) it still has roughly a quarter of the impact of the atmospheric CO2. It has a rather short half-life (8-12 years) in the atmosphere yet the concentration is still is rising, even at an increased rate recently with no definite explanation (might be wetlands emitting it at a higher rate, might be melting permafrost soil in the arctic, might be a result of fracking). I don't think it is commercially viable to do it but it might become a sheer necessity if we run into some positive feedback loops so having at least some basic research going on in that field might not hurt.

neural_thing 7y ago
I've only seen capture at the point of production for methane. See Lanzatech, for example.
- aurelwu 7y ago
  had trouble finding much on their homepage but : https://www.lanzatech.com/2013/09/20/lanzatech-awarded-4-million-grant-from-arpa-e-to-transform-waste-methane-resources-into-low-carbon-fuels-and-chemicals/ https://www.lanzatech.com/2013/09/20/lanzatech-awarded-4-mil... has at least some more information about it, thanks for the hint :-)
konschubert 7y ago
Maybe there are techniques to shorten its half-life?
- danieltillett 7y ago
  I think it has been suggested lasers can work, don't know how realistic this is.

m0zg 7y ago

TBH I think engineering solutions (fusion, carbon sequestration, perhaps also genetic engineering) are the only viable paths forward. Quite obviously we won't be able to do anything through political or regulatory means without ruining the economy and forcing people to adopt a much lower standard of living (no cows or Hawaii vacations, no stuff from abroad, no cars, no plastics, etc, etc). What I don't get is why fusion research is so underfunded. Let's make it a "going to the moon" or "manhattan project" kind of thing and let's get it done in 10 years. Get all the smartest people under one roof and let them have at it, without any funding constraints. $100B/yr oughtta do it. This will completely upend the world, and solve a lot of the problems we have. With clean, essentially unlimited energy, there's a lot you can do. The US doesn't even have to pay for all of it by itself. I'm sure industrialized countries will all be glad to chip in proportionally to their GDP for a world-saving project of this kind.

effie 7y ago
Apart from the obvious reasons governments don't want to put "us military spending" amount of money into fusion research (very expensive, unclear benefits, potentially changing global economy, hurting oil companies), it is also not clear that putting more money at the problem would help. Look at the mess ITER has been organizationally. It hardly seems putting more people in that project would help.
- m0zg 7y ago
  Pretty sure it would. After all there are multiple precedents: at least three "unlimited budget" attempts at changing the world worked fine: WW2, Manhattan Project, Apollo program. The first ended the British imperial ambitions and established the US as the undisputed world leader, the second did the same in the nuclear arms race, and the third repeated the feat in space. This doesn't have to be super complicated like ITER.

WalterBright 7y ago

Just plant trees.

tathougies 7y ago

Easiest progress: $200 tax credit for every tree or plant you plant on your property and keep for x number of years. Bonus money if its from one of the species with the best carbon offsetting potential. Even more bonus money if it produces food for your family. Lets end the ugly lawns and get some actual use out of the suburban landscape. This is an especially great tax for America because while costs of enforcement would be high in many countries. Americans are unusually honest.

tunesmith 7y ago

I don't understand how climate researchers can seriously have concerns about sequestration technologies distracting us from the efforts to limit emissions. It seems an argument that is easily dispensed with, with a bit of simple math. Right now it seems like even if we max out both efforts, we'd still have to be lucky to get there. I have a question about these various carbon-buying efforts. Whether it's climeworks, or buying carbon offsets, or signing up for a service with your power company... do these things scale? I mean, here in Portland I think you can sign up with PGE for having 100% of your electricity come from renewable sources, but I think that only 40% of their power comes from renewable. So really probably only 40% of their customers can sign up. As it is, not enough people have signed up, so they can still say so, but big picture, you're still really only getting 40%. And that's just the electrical part of our carbon footprint, which isn't the whole picture. Same with the carbon-offset buying sites. I mean, they don't really work past a point, right? Like if every citizen in the world signs up, it implies we'd have the entire problem solved. But we wouldn't really, don't they all have upper limits? So how much do they actually scale? 50%, 10%, 1%?

acdha 7y ago
> I don't understand how climate researchers can seriously have concerns about sequestration technologies distracting us from the efforts to limit emissions. It seems an argument that is easily dispensed with, with a bit of simple math. The people who need convincing aren’t there due to math: it’s become a political loyalty test for Republicans in the U.S. and some other groups internationally, for many people accepting that climate change is real means major changes in their lifestyle and business, and there’s a huge industry supporting fake experts, think tanks, etc. pitching the message that you don’t need to do anything. In that light, it’s not unreasonable to worry that people will use it to push the “no need to sacrifice now, new technology will fix everything” message, not unlike the people hoping we can avoid making simple infrastructure fixes because self-driving cars will solve everything real soon now.

ryanmarsh 7y ago

What if we just planted more trees?

tunesmith 7y ago
A tree sequesters a ton of CO2 over its 40 year lifespan. US Citizens have a 20-ton footprint per year. So... plant 20 trees this year, and in 40 years they will have paid for this year's footprint.
ritchiey 7y ago
Even better, plant trees, cut them down, build things out of them and grow more.

AtlasBarfed 7y ago

Pet peeve: everyone does math with CURRENT emissions rate. Um, we have over a century of backlog emissions we need to deal with too. The only thing I last heard that was economical/promising was olivine, is that turning into a dead end? Pumping CO2 into the ground sounds like it works great on paper, but I think we're fooling ourselves that it won't reenter the atmosphere. Iron fertilization in the ocean might help acidification, but not atmospheric. Tree planting might help but the trees die and decay eventually, and we need to sacrifice grazing land for that.

stefco_ 7y ago
> Pumping CO2 into the ground sounds like it works great on paper, but I think we're fooling ourselves that it won't reenter the atmosphere. Sequestration alone shouldn't be the solution, but if we can find a thermodynamically feasible way to store CO2 for at least thousands of years while getting away from new CO2 emission, it won't matter that the solution isn't fully permanent. Some proposed solutions are expected to be stable on long enough timescales that the CO2 can (under proper geologic conditions) turn into rock. Other solutions rely on keeping it in oxygen-poor environments where it won't oxidize (which is what happened with carbon that became fossil fuels in the first place; clearly that carbon was not permanently sequestered, since we're burning it now!). As long as it's thermodynamically feasible to store carbon (read: our net carbon emission goes down and it doesn't cost too much in alternative energy sources), a relatively short (on geological timescales at least) storage solution is more than sufficient (again, as long as it's coupled with critically necessary reductions in new CO2 emission). [edit] There are, to be clear, many geological formations that are more than stable enough to store volatile materials on longer timescales than are necessary (look at how effectively salt domes trap oil through a combination of buoyancy and impermeability of certain types of rock). The deep, possibly inescapable problem is the thermodynamic difficulty of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere (where its concentration is low, and hence extraction is inefficient) vs. the relative ease of releasing energy from highly-concentrated carbon stores like fossil fuels. It's like trying to unmix your cream from your coffee; it's just much much easier to avoid pouring the cream in in the first place. As others have mentioned, we can rely on the fact that nature already gives us cheap distributed solar farms with built in sequestration abilities (also known as "plants"); non-biological methods don't come with the built in solar energy converter, and so we need to consider the harrowing reality of thermodynamics when trying to make them scalable.

zachsherman 7y ago

Just jumping in to echo the obvious uhh trees literally already exist