9 ms·

What it would take to suck more carbon dioxide out of the air than we put in

78 points by dnetesn 7y ago

aazaa 7y ago
I find it disturbing how popular science articles on climate change seem to find it unimportant to convince the reader that human CO2 emissions are causing most of the temperature increases the earth has experienced in recent years. Here's a challenge to illustrate my point. Where can I find the best popular science treatment of the specific question: How do we know with certainty that human-produced CO2 is responsible for most (or all) of the temperature increases the earth has experienced in the last 100 years? I have looked for such a treatment and found... nothing compelling. This is especially worrisome given that nebulous ideas of what caused previous ice ages and numerous interglacial periods within them. If the source of previous events that grew an ice sheet 1 mile thick over New York and then melted it completely 12,000 years ago isn't understood, then how can anyone expect smart non-experts to jump onboard the notion that we know what's causing warming in the last 100 years? This question relates directly to the article in the sense that we as a species are very good at causing unintended consequences. Sulfa and penicillin were seen as wonder drugs and started to be used everywhere prophylactically and misused. We now face the specter of planet-wide extinction events based on antibiotic resistance. Pulling vast quantities of CO2 out of the atmosphere could lead to unintended consequences on an even larger scale without a solid understanding of the system we're dealing with.
- lazyjones 7y ago
  > I have looked for such a treatment and found... nothing compelling. This is especially worrisome given that nebulous ideas of what caused previous ice ages and numerous interglacial periods within them. I'll add to this the known fact that plants and other organisms require CO2 to live and if we were to become "carbon-negative", it would be guaranteed to have an adverse effect on life on earth.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    How do you figure that? The aim is to get back to pre-industrial levels, not to keep reducing in perpetuity. Pre-industrial gives a figure we know all current species do OK with, and most seem to have been doing better with. So where's the adverse effect from reducing the ppm by 10 a year - or month (hah, unlikely), until we hit target?
    - lazyjones 7y ago
      > So where's the adverse effect from reducing the ppm by 10 a year - or month (hah, unlikely), until we hit target? Apart from reversing the recently observed greening of the planet, it will be dangerous if we have built all our infrastructure around zero/negative CO2 and are not able to stop removing CO2 just like now we don't seem to be able to limit the increase quickly enough.
- cmutel 7y ago
  This is a reasonable place to start reading, they provide both summaries and detailed explanations of the science: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/
- Someone1234 7y ago
  > How do we know with certainty that human-produced CO2 is responsible for most (or all) of the temperature increases the earth has experienced in the last 100 years? Measurements. See: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/ https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/ If you want to know facts, the science (inc. raw data) is out there in open access journals. If you don't want to believe the science ("nothing compelling"), then nothing I can link will change your mind.
  - lazyjones 7y ago
    > Measurements. See: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/.. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/.... This just documents increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1970 and theories about what effects it might have. It completely leaves out the temperature changes in the 20th century and how there were warming and cooling periods despite steady increase in CO2, which quite obviously means there are stronger mechanisms involved (if there was cooling despite CO2 increase in the 60s/70s).
    - Someone1234 7y ago
      The section "Why carbon dioxide matters" directly discusses that (the link in your quote is broken fyi). > It completely leaves out the temperature changes in the 20th century and how there were warming and cooling periods despite steady increase in CO2, which quite obviously means there are stronger mechanisms involved (if there was cooling despite CO2 increase in the 60s/70s). The second graph shows that the warming/cooling is seasonal and that the overall trend has been up, in-line with CO2 levels. I don't understand what you don't understand about the second graph (your question is confusing, aside from explaining how seasons work on earth).
      - lazyjones 7y ago
        > The second graph shows that the warming/cooling is seasonal The second graph shows no temperatures at all, it's CO2 ppm / year. > the overall trend has been up, in-line with CO2 levels. That's simply not true. If you have more than a decade of cooling with steady increase of CO2 and recently more than a decade of steady temperatures with sharp increase of CO2, it's obvious that there are other factors involved. > I don't understand what you don't understand about the second graph You should take a closer look at it.
- cf141q5325 7y ago
  The mind numbing thing to me is you wouldnt even have to believe in climate change to understand how incredibly screwed we are. We are already done for without multiple degrees of temperature increase. Climate change is just the last nail in the coffin. We are wasting non-replaceable resources at an unfathomable rate to sustain growth for growth sake. A lot of people still dont seem to understand what "finite" means. One day stuff is out. And that day is coming closer. And instead of prolonging the time we have left to search for solutions, we waste the remaining resources for growth as if there is no tomorrow. Which to be fair, there wont. All of our progress since the industrial revolution was made possible by cheap/free energy. Once we run out of everything from energy to fertilizer to metals to sand to our ecosystem and its biodiversity, there will be no slowing down, there will be collapse. Without fossil fuel based fertilizers we can say goodbye to the idea of food safety. Especially since modern fertilizers are the only thing that allows the dirt we use instead of actual soil to grow anything. And despite that we are still burning this stuff for personal transportation and having ingenious ideas like growing biofuel, of course also unsustainable in overexploitation. Because fuck yeah! Better yet, we are actually trying to replace oil in the transport and energy sectors with natural gas. The natural gas we need to not be faced with an incredible productivity decrease in food production. Its like people are straight up mad, we are talking about electric cars replacing fossil fuel to keep our transportation network running, and of course the freedom of getting to drive around in your own car. Completely ignoring how many batteries we could actually build before we run out of lithium without an real option for recycling. We were all born right in time to witness the waste of the last few hopes we have for decelerating and long term survival of human civilization on a few more years of unsustainable growth. And the best part, none of this was inevitable. And none of it is a surprise.
- OrangeMango 7y ago
  > I find it disturbing how popular science articles on climate change seem to find it unimportant to convince the reader that human CO2 emissions are causing most of the temperature increases the earth has experienced in recent years. I understand. You don't want to be convinced. Fair enough. Why not talk about the economic aspect instead? When you pay $3.00 for a gallon of gasoline, the best case scenario is that one third of that gallon is used to propel your car while the remaining two thirds ends up in the atmosphere in the form of wasted heat and emissions. Have you considered the possibility that oil companies are engaged in a disinformation campaign because they don't want people to stop paying $3.00 for $1.00 worth of movement?
farss 7y ago
My understanding is that one of the main hurdles is the physical limits of actually catching the carbon to sequester it. Even though it is historically high, it is still relatively dispersed (a few hundred parts per million). Plants are extremely efficient at utilizing carbon, but their main limitation to growth is catching enough of it from the atmosphere.
lm28469 7y ago
If you have an open fire in your living room do you put it out or do you bring a machine to purify the air ?
- nothrabannosir 7y ago
  That depends; am I a single brain with control over my actions as one conscious being and one single, holistic incentive? Or am I a Balkanised agglomeration of independent agents with incompatible short-term incentives? The carbon problem is a social one, not a technical one. This analogy focusses on the wrong aspect.
- jiofih 7y ago
  You dump the burnt remains at the bottom of the sea.
- Jommi 7y ago
  If you have had a noxious gas in your house for already quite a while, and it will soon kill you, do you reduce the toxicity of the air first, or try and figure out the source and stop it?
- phtrivier 7y ago
  What if the open fire is the main system of heating your house, that has (both by accident and a stream of unfortunate decisions) long ago been built in the middle of a perpetual blizzard ? (And where most of the occupants demand a 22°C room temperature ?) (Feel free to suggest a humane way to deal with those occupants, if you're convinced that you're furry enough not to need the open fire. On the other hand, we're having this discussion on computers connected to the Internet, which, for the sake of analogy, we might as well call "the barbecue on top of the open fire in the living room.")
ggm 7y ago
The first thing is not to give up hope. The forest planting may not abate enough to remediate but it's still worth doing for associated reasons like its effect in microclimate and wildlife. Biochar may not help much either but is still net beneficial and pyrolysis is going to be one of the paths to the feedstock we need for chemicals I would think. The absorbing concrete can be priced right and carbon taxing would drive there. Deep sea storage, olivine and other rock formation, all useful. Mainly, it's not giving up hope. Because giving up would be way, way worse. Sometimes reading these realism write-ups is not very hope inducing. Even stoics don't always give up hope. There is no better world. We have to try and make the best of all possible worlds here.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- perfunctory 7y ago
  > The first thing is not to give up hope On the other hand - "We Need Courage, Not Hope, to Face Climate Change" (https://onbeing.org/blog/kate-marvel-we-need-courage-not-hope-to-face-climate-change/ https://onbeing.org/blog/kate-marvel-we-need-courage-not-hop...)
  - perfunctory 7y ago
    Also "I am a pessimist by nature. Many people can only keep on fighting when they expect to win. I'm not like that, I always expect to lose. I fight anyway, and sometimes I win." -- Richard Stallman What I am trying to say is that even one lost all hope and thinks catastrophic climate change is already unstoppable and human civilization is going to collapse and the game is over, one can still fight. Because it's the right thing to do. Fuck hope.
    - thriwaway985 7y ago
      >quoting Stallman Yikes! I thought we cancelled that pedophile
    - chii 7y ago
jiofih 7y ago
> the time when a forest pulls down the most carbon is when it’s first growing I believe this has been disproved long ago. Trees don’t ever stop growing, and it takes carbon to grow. Recent studies show that large old trees still capture a significant amount of co2 due to their massive surface area.
- JDEW 7y ago
  Citation needed. Literally two lines later: > But decaying wood and organic material releases carbon back into the air. A climax forest is close to a steady state: The rate at which it removes carbon from the air is roughly equal to the rate at which it releases this carbon. Trees keep on growing, yes, but it’s the old, decaying material that releases CO2 back in the air again, compensating tree growth. Edit: clarity.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    Old trees tend to grow faster and consume more carbon per unit of time. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/how-old-trees-help-climate-1.4252888 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/how-old-trees-help-climate-1....
    - noselasd 7y ago
      And when they're old enough, those trees die, and does not consume co2 anymore. I think the point is that a forest reaches an equilibrium at some point. The forest has new trees growning and consuming co2, it has old trees still growing and consuming co2, it has dead trees/branches that releases co2. It's mostly at a steady state when it has matured. Still, if you planted that forest at a place where there was no forest, the co2 it has bound up in the trunks and roots is removed from the atmosphere as long as the forest stands. Which might be tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
      - 7y ago
brohoolio 7y ago
I keep thinking that carbon in the air is the just the largest game of prisoners dilemma where we likely all lose.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  In prisoners dilemma each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. This is not the world we are in.
  - _fizz_buzz_ 7y ago
    Not a game theory expert, but maybe it would be more correct to say that we are stuck in a Nash equilibrium (no player can benefit by changing strategies while the other players keep theirs unchanged).
  - scotty79 7y ago
    It's not so much that prisoners can't talk. They just can't influence eachothers decisions which kinda reminds current setup of sovereign nation states.
    - zer0tonin 7y ago
      But nation states can influence each others decisions, through diplomacy, tariffs, war...
  - yreg 7y ago
    Not in "the" prisoner dilemma, but there are versions with communication/iteration, which are just as worthwhile exploring as the original one.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- seventytwo 7y ago
  Tragedy of the commons
Mirioron 7y ago
I don't see what there is to figure out about what we should do with the carbon we sequester from the atmosphere. It seems to me that the only thing we can do is dump it into the ground (maybe as plastic?). That's where the carbon we've put into the atmosphere came from, and that is exactly where we should put it back. Planting forests, using it as fuel, using it for plastic goods, putting it into the oceans are all temporary measures. The carbon from that will enter the cycle again rather quickly. Of course this will be energy intensive. We essentially need to put the energy back into carbon that we got from burning those carbon fuels over the last two centuries. That is obviously a tremendous amount of energy. There probably is no way around this. >we will probably need to be removing about 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air each year by 2050, and double that by 2100. >They’re hoping to use these gadgets to make carbonated water for soft drinks—or create greenhouses that have lots of carbon dioxide in the air, for tastier vegetables. This sounds very exciting … until you learn that currently their method of getting carbon dioxide costs about $500 per ton. The numbers don't even look as bad as I thought they would. They at least seem achievable if we really wanted it. $500 per ton for 10 billion tons comes out at $5 trillion. The world's GDP is around $80 trillion. From a numbers perspective it seems like this is at least possible. Whether this solution will work politically is another matter though. My own suspicion is that politicking and corruption will make this a much more difficult and expensive process than it should be. This article makes the future look less bleak to me than what I hear on the news.
- galangalalgol 7y ago
  Or we could spend $1B seeding the ocean with iron sulphate to create algal blooms that reflect sunlight well. Harvest the excess salmon to balance the ecosystem, and repeat whenever we need to dump some heat. As the co2 continues to climb buffer the oceans with a cheap base to counter acidification. Which will sequester that carbon as a salt.
  - sveme 7y ago
    Oh, how I love these handwaving arguments. You don't think that a huge algal bloom in our oceans, a prime protein source for billions of people, will not have an effect on the life in the ocean? Just one of a plethora of inadvertent effects that would need to be thoroughly studied...
dr_dshiv 7y ago
If we could replace concrete and steel for pressed/processed wood in most construction, that works out well for removing sources of carbon and incentivizing sequestration.
hsnewman 7y ago
I have been talking about this with my wife, how many trees would I have to plant to alleviate the amount of carbon I put into the atmosphere up to now. Since I'm retiring soon, I hope to have a hobby that will be productive.
- gameswithgo 7y ago
  trees are only a buffer, they buy some time but don’t solve the problem
  - arvesv 7y ago
    If we cut the trees and ship them somewhere they will not decay(south pole?). And then grow new trees and do the same thing again. That should remove carbon from the carbon cycle. Is this doable and sensible?
    - OrangeMango 7y ago
      It's probably doable, but likely not sensible. If you instead use the wood as lumber for durable items (such as houses and furniture), you will drastically slow the decay rate, reduce usage of other carbon-emitting processes, and make room for new trees to grow (which is extremely carbon negative). It won't solve the problem on its own, but it would certainly help.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    What are you saying? Don't bother?
  - hsnewman 7y ago
    So the trees that grew in the Jurassic age, which were covered with soil and over millennium became coal and oil, did not sequester carbon? Using the above logic, no, because we, in the millions of years since burned it and now it's in the air? Trees may mostly buffer carbon, but they have the potential to buffer it for a really really long time.
  - mac01021 7y ago
herogreen 7y ago
I am surprised they consider putting agricultural "waste" outside the loop as a way to store CO2, because we (will) probably need it as fertilizer.
mnw21cam 7y ago
The main problem I have with some of the carbon sequestering methods like dumping waste biomass at the bottom of the sea is that that biomass is a mixture of carbon we want to sequester, and nutrients that we really want to put back into the land. Constantly removing biomass from a land area is a really effective method of turning that land into a totally useless area that doesn't grow anything any more.
- mixedmath 7y ago
  I was recently thinking about this. Farming is essentially constant repeated removal of extreme amounts of biomass from a land area. We rely heavily on fertilizers for industrial farming. What is the ultimate source of most of the nutrients that are used to produce the fertilizers? There are massive amounts of carbon, phosphorous, nitrogen, and potassium required.
  - mnw21cam 7y ago
    Farming has been described as mining soil for a good reason. Some of those nutrients, particularly phosphorus, are in short supply, until they hit a high enough price to start extracting them from seawater.
spodek 7y ago
Any business person should see the most important action immediately. If you want to make a company profitable, lowering costs is almost always essential and more effective than raising revenues. Do both, of course, but keep costs down. If you want to lower greenhouse gas concentrations, do everything, but lowering emissions is essential. The article barely mentioned it, but the most effective emissions reductions limit concentrations more than all capturing technologies combined. The number one technologies to combat environmental problems such as climate change (but also all others -- extinctions, resource depletion, plastic, mercury, etc) are the pill, IUDs, vasectomies, condoms, and the like, combined with educating everyone on family planning. People knee-jerk respond with concerns about China's policy or eugenics, but many nations have reduced birth rates non-coercively, increasing prosperity -- Thailand, Costa Rica, Iran, and more. A few generations of a global 1.5 children per woman average brings human population to sustainable levels with a reasonable level of material abundance, around 2 billion people -- for reference, the population before the Haber-Bosch process allowed us to turn oil into food. Any population more than sustainable only forestalls collapse. I'd like to say otherwise, and achieving on a global scale what a few nations did on a national scale is hard, but nature doesn't make allowances for something being hard. And we've known this for generations. At the same time, probably everyone reading these words emits beyond the IPCC recommendations per person. Combining personal action by those willing to lead and set examples with education and legislation can reduce emissions per person. As ineffective as personal action is alone, it is a necessary first step to create role models and show that living sustainably is joyful and creates community and connection, not the burden and sacrifice people erroneously fear when they think of flying less or eating less meat. On the contrary, stewardship and taking responsibility for how our behavior affects others, especially those helpless to defend themselves, such as those breathing our jet fuel exhaust, creates some of the most joy, meaning, value, and purpose, as any parent will tell you. We'll have to change our values to a steady-state economy based on increasing gross happiness and community from a growth economy based on increasing GDP. There are many examples of steady-state economies working for longer than our growth economy producing prosperous, stable communities, and one huge example of a growth economy wrecking the entire planet's biosphere, making it clear to all except economists that we have to stop growth or nature will do it for us. Bottom line: 1) Reducing emissions is by far the most effective means to avert the worst disasters, even if some are inevitable. We can do a lot more and once we start we'll love it. 2) Personal action is not enough, but it's a necessary first step. It's also called leadership. Most don't want to lead, but those willing to will be the Mandelas, MLK's, Rosa Parks, etc of the environment.
Grue3 7y ago
1. Generate large amounts of carbon-free energy 2. Use the excess energy to sequester CO2 out of the air. Now if only there was a proven technology to consistently generate lots of energy that is clean, safe and has plenty of readily available fuel...
- Accujack 7y ago
  I noticed this too. In addition to planting forests that we then harvest and convert to biochar at peak rather than letting them decay and release carbon back to the cycle, we need to use energy intensive means to capture carbon. I have seen one proposal linked on HN that suggested direct use of a nuclear reactor's energy to do it... something like that would have the necessary power (pardon the expression) to make a dent in atmospheric CO2. Essentially, we need to build machines like the ones on LV427 in the movie "Aliens"...large structures that are essentially nuclear reactors with some extra equipment to use all their energy to terraform.... Terra.
avmich 7y ago
Here is technology which, I think, is less known than it should - https://sesinnovation.com/technology/carbon_capture/ https://sesinnovation.com/technology/carbon_capture/ . And yet I think freezing out CO2 out of air can be used even wider - re-processing air from atmosphere, instead of going only after exhausts.
ecoled_ame 7y ago
Make less of the carbon producers (humans). You don't have to reproduce to be happy.

78 points by dnetesn 7y ago

I find it disturbing how popular science articles on climate change seem to find it unimportant to convince the reader that human CO2 emissions are causing most of the temperature increases the earth has experienced in recent years. Here's a challenge to illustrate my point. Where can I find the best popular science treatment of the specific question: How do we know with certainty that human-produced CO2 is responsible for most (or all) of the temperature increases the earth has experienced in the last 100 years? I have looked for such a treatment and found... nothing compelling. This is especially worrisome given that nebulous ideas of what caused previous ice ages and numerous interglacial periods within them. If the source of previous events that grew an ice sheet 1 mile thick over New York and then melted it completely 12,000 years ago isn't understood, then how can anyone expect smart non-experts to jump onboard the notion that we know what's causing warming in the last 100 years? This question relates directly to the article in the sense that we as a species are very good at causing unintended consequences. Sulfa and penicillin were seen as wonder drugs and started to be used everywhere prophylactically and misused. We now face the specter of planet-wide extinction events based on antibiotic resistance. Pulling vast quantities of CO2 out of the atmosphere could lead to unintended consequences on an even larger scale without a solid understanding of the system we're dealing with.

lazyjones 7y ago
> I have looked for such a treatment and found... nothing compelling. This is especially worrisome given that nebulous ideas of what caused previous ice ages and numerous interglacial periods within them. I'll add to this the known fact that plants and other organisms require CO2 to live and if we were to become "carbon-negative", it would be guaranteed to have an adverse effect on life on earth.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  How do you figure that? The aim is to get back to pre-industrial levels, not to keep reducing in perpetuity. Pre-industrial gives a figure we know all current species do OK with, and most seem to have been doing better with. So where's the adverse effect from reducing the ppm by 10 a year - or month (hah, unlikely), until we hit target?
  - lazyjones 7y ago
    > So where's the adverse effect from reducing the ppm by 10 a year - or month (hah, unlikely), until we hit target? Apart from reversing the recently observed greening of the planet, it will be dangerous if we have built all our infrastructure around zero/negative CO2 and are not able to stop removing CO2 just like now we don't seem to be able to limit the increase quickly enough.
cmutel 7y ago
This is a reasonable place to start reading, they provide both summaries and detailed explanations of the science: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/
Someone1234 7y ago
> How do we know with certainty that human-produced CO2 is responsible for most (or all) of the temperature increases the earth has experienced in the last 100 years? Measurements. See: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/ https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/ If you want to know facts, the science (inc. raw data) is out there in open access journals. If you don't want to believe the science ("nothing compelling"), then nothing I can link will change your mind.
- lazyjones 7y ago
  > Measurements. See: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/.. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/.... This just documents increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1970 and theories about what effects it might have. It completely leaves out the temperature changes in the 20th century and how there were warming and cooling periods despite steady increase in CO2, which quite obviously means there are stronger mechanisms involved (if there was cooling despite CO2 increase in the 60s/70s).
  - Someone1234 7y ago
    The section "Why carbon dioxide matters" directly discusses that (the link in your quote is broken fyi). > It completely leaves out the temperature changes in the 20th century and how there were warming and cooling periods despite steady increase in CO2, which quite obviously means there are stronger mechanisms involved (if there was cooling despite CO2 increase in the 60s/70s). The second graph shows that the warming/cooling is seasonal and that the overall trend has been up, in-line with CO2 levels. I don't understand what you don't understand about the second graph (your question is confusing, aside from explaining how seasons work on earth).
    - lazyjones 7y ago
      > The second graph shows that the warming/cooling is seasonal The second graph shows no temperatures at all, it's CO2 ppm / year. > the overall trend has been up, in-line with CO2 levels. That's simply not true. If you have more than a decade of cooling with steady increase of CO2 and recently more than a decade of steady temperatures with sharp increase of CO2, it's obvious that there are other factors involved. > I don't understand what you don't understand about the second graph You should take a closer look at it.
cf141q5325 7y ago
The mind numbing thing to me is you wouldnt even have to believe in climate change to understand how incredibly screwed we are. We are already done for without multiple degrees of temperature increase. Climate change is just the last nail in the coffin. We are wasting non-replaceable resources at an unfathomable rate to sustain growth for growth sake. A lot of people still dont seem to understand what "finite" means. One day stuff is out. And that day is coming closer. And instead of prolonging the time we have left to search for solutions, we waste the remaining resources for growth as if there is no tomorrow. Which to be fair, there wont. All of our progress since the industrial revolution was made possible by cheap/free energy. Once we run out of everything from energy to fertilizer to metals to sand to our ecosystem and its biodiversity, there will be no slowing down, there will be collapse. Without fossil fuel based fertilizers we can say goodbye to the idea of food safety. Especially since modern fertilizers are the only thing that allows the dirt we use instead of actual soil to grow anything. And despite that we are still burning this stuff for personal transportation and having ingenious ideas like growing biofuel, of course also unsustainable in overexploitation. Because fuck yeah! Better yet, we are actually trying to replace oil in the transport and energy sectors with natural gas. The natural gas we need to not be faced with an incredible productivity decrease in food production. Its like people are straight up mad, we are talking about electric cars replacing fossil fuel to keep our transportation network running, and of course the freedom of getting to drive around in your own car. Completely ignoring how many batteries we could actually build before we run out of lithium without an real option for recycling. We were all born right in time to witness the waste of the last few hopes we have for decelerating and long term survival of human civilization on a few more years of unsustainable growth. And the best part, none of this was inevitable. And none of it is a surprise.
OrangeMango 7y ago
> I find it disturbing how popular science articles on climate change seem to find it unimportant to convince the reader that human CO2 emissions are causing most of the temperature increases the earth has experienced in recent years. I understand. You don't want to be convinced. Fair enough. Why not talk about the economic aspect instead? When you pay $3.00 for a gallon of gasoline, the best case scenario is that one third of that gallon is used to propel your car while the remaining two thirds ends up in the atmosphere in the form of wasted heat and emissions. Have you considered the possibility that oil companies are engaged in a disinformation campaign because they don't want people to stop paying $3.00 for $1.00 worth of movement?

farss 7y ago

My understanding is that one of the main hurdles is the physical limits of actually catching the carbon to sequester it. Even though it is historically high, it is still relatively dispersed (a few hundred parts per million). Plants are extremely efficient at utilizing carbon, but their main limitation to growth is catching enough of it from the atmosphere.

lm28469 7y ago

If you have an open fire in your living room do you put it out or do you bring a machine to purify the air ?

nothrabannosir 7y ago
That depends; am I a single brain with control over my actions as one conscious being and one single, holistic incentive? Or am I a Balkanised agglomeration of independent agents with incompatible short-term incentives? The carbon problem is a social one, not a technical one. This analogy focusses on the wrong aspect.
jiofih 7y ago
You dump the burnt remains at the bottom of the sea.
Jommi 7y ago
If you have had a noxious gas in your house for already quite a while, and it will soon kill you, do you reduce the toxicity of the air first, or try and figure out the source and stop it?
phtrivier 7y ago
What if the open fire is the main system of heating your house, that has (both by accident and a stream of unfortunate decisions) long ago been built in the middle of a perpetual blizzard ? (And where most of the occupants demand a 22°C room temperature ?) (Feel free to suggest a humane way to deal with those occupants, if you're convinced that you're furry enough not to need the open fire. On the other hand, we're having this discussion on computers connected to the Internet, which, for the sake of analogy, we might as well call "the barbecue on top of the open fire in the living room.")

ggm 7y ago

The first thing is not to give up hope. The forest planting may not abate enough to remediate but it's still worth doing for associated reasons like its effect in microclimate and wildlife. Biochar may not help much either but is still net beneficial and pyrolysis is going to be one of the paths to the feedstock we need for chemicals I would think. The absorbing concrete can be priced right and carbon taxing would drive there. Deep sea storage, olivine and other rock formation, all useful. Mainly, it's not giving up hope. Because giving up would be way, way worse. Sometimes reading these realism write-ups is not very hope inducing. Even stoics don't always give up hope. There is no better world. We have to try and make the best of all possible worlds here.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
perfunctory 7y ago
> The first thing is not to give up hope On the other hand - "We Need Courage, Not Hope, to Face Climate Change" (https://onbeing.org/blog/kate-marvel-we-need-courage-not-hope-to-face-climate-change/ https://onbeing.org/blog/kate-marvel-we-need-courage-not-hop...)
- perfunctory 7y ago
  Also "I am a pessimist by nature. Many people can only keep on fighting when they expect to win. I'm not like that, I always expect to lose. I fight anyway, and sometimes I win." -- Richard Stallman What I am trying to say is that even one lost all hope and thinks catastrophic climate change is already unstoppable and human civilization is going to collapse and the game is over, one can still fight. Because it's the right thing to do. Fuck hope.
  - thriwaway985 7y ago
    >quoting Stallman Yikes! I thought we cancelled that pedophile
  - chii 7y ago

jiofih 7y ago

> the time when a forest pulls down the most carbon is when it’s first growing I believe this has been disproved long ago. Trees don’t ever stop growing, and it takes carbon to grow. Recent studies show that large old trees still capture a significant amount of co2 due to their massive surface area.

JDEW 7y ago
Citation needed. Literally two lines later: > But decaying wood and organic material releases carbon back into the air. A climax forest is close to a steady state: The rate at which it removes carbon from the air is roughly equal to the rate at which it releases this carbon. Trees keep on growing, yes, but it’s the old, decaying material that releases CO2 back in the air again, compensating tree growth. Edit: clarity.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  Old trees tend to grow faster and consume more carbon per unit of time. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/how-old-trees-help-climate-1.4252888 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/how-old-trees-help-climate-1....
  - noselasd 7y ago
    And when they're old enough, those trees die, and does not consume co2 anymore. I think the point is that a forest reaches an equilibrium at some point. The forest has new trees growning and consuming co2, it has old trees still growing and consuming co2, it has dead trees/branches that releases co2. It's mostly at a steady state when it has matured. Still, if you planted that forest at a place where there was no forest, the co2 it has bound up in the trunks and roots is removed from the atmosphere as long as the forest stands. Which might be tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
    - 7y ago

brohoolio 7y ago

I keep thinking that carbon in the air is the just the largest game of prisoners dilemma where we likely all lose.

perfunctory 7y ago
In prisoners dilemma each prisoner is in solitary confinement with no means of communicating with the other. This is not the world we are in.
- _fizz_buzz_ 7y ago
  Not a game theory expert, but maybe it would be more correct to say that we are stuck in a Nash equilibrium (no player can benefit by changing strategies while the other players keep theirs unchanged).
- scotty79 7y ago
  It's not so much that prisoners can't talk. They just can't influence eachothers decisions which kinda reminds current setup of sovereign nation states.
  - zer0tonin 7y ago
    But nation states can influence each others decisions, through diplomacy, tariffs, war...
- yreg 7y ago
  Not in "the" prisoner dilemma, but there are versions with communication/iteration, which are just as worthwhile exploring as the original one.
- deleted 7y ago
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seventytwo 7y ago
Tragedy of the commons

Mirioron 7y ago

I don't see what there is to figure out about what we should do with the carbon we sequester from the atmosphere. It seems to me that the only thing we can do is dump it into the ground (maybe as plastic?). That's where the carbon we've put into the atmosphere came from, and that is exactly where we should put it back. Planting forests, using it as fuel, using it for plastic goods, putting it into the oceans are all temporary measures. The carbon from that will enter the cycle again rather quickly. Of course this will be energy intensive. We essentially need to put the energy back into carbon that we got from burning those carbon fuels over the last two centuries. That is obviously a tremendous amount of energy. There probably is no way around this. >we will probably need to be removing about 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air each year by 2050, and double that by 2100. >They’re hoping to use these gadgets to make carbonated water for soft drinks—or create greenhouses that have lots of carbon dioxide in the air, for tastier vegetables. This sounds very exciting … until you learn that currently their method of getting carbon dioxide costs about $500 per ton. The numbers don't even look as bad as I thought they would. They at least seem achievable if we really wanted it. $500 per ton for 10 billion tons comes out at $5 trillion. The world's GDP is around $80 trillion. From a numbers perspective it seems like this is at least possible. Whether this solution will work politically is another matter though. My own suspicion is that politicking and corruption will make this a much more difficult and expensive process than it should be. This article makes the future look less bleak to me than what I hear on the news.

galangalalgol 7y ago
Or we could spend $1B seeding the ocean with iron sulphate to create algal blooms that reflect sunlight well. Harvest the excess salmon to balance the ecosystem, and repeat whenever we need to dump some heat. As the co2 continues to climb buffer the oceans with a cheap base to counter acidification. Which will sequester that carbon as a salt.
- sveme 7y ago
  Oh, how I love these handwaving arguments. You don't think that a huge algal bloom in our oceans, a prime protein source for billions of people, will not have an effect on the life in the ocean? Just one of a plethora of inadvertent effects that would need to be thoroughly studied...

dr_dshiv 7y ago

If we could replace concrete and steel for pressed/processed wood in most construction, that works out well for removing sources of carbon and incentivizing sequestration.

hsnewman 7y ago

I have been talking about this with my wife, how many trees would I have to plant to alleviate the amount of carbon I put into the atmosphere up to now. Since I'm retiring soon, I hope to have a hobby that will be productive.

gameswithgo 7y ago
trees are only a buffer, they buy some time but don’t solve the problem
- arvesv 7y ago
  If we cut the trees and ship them somewhere they will not decay(south pole?). And then grow new trees and do the same thing again. That should remove carbon from the carbon cycle. Is this doable and sensible?
  - OrangeMango 7y ago
    It's probably doable, but likely not sensible. If you instead use the wood as lumber for durable items (such as houses and furniture), you will drastically slow the decay rate, reduce usage of other carbon-emitting processes, and make room for new trees to grow (which is extremely carbon negative). It won't solve the problem on its own, but it would certainly help.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
  What are you saying? Don't bother?
- hsnewman 7y ago
  So the trees that grew in the Jurassic age, which were covered with soil and over millennium became coal and oil, did not sequester carbon? Using the above logic, no, because we, in the millions of years since burned it and now it's in the air? Trees may mostly buffer carbon, but they have the potential to buffer it for a really really long time.
- mac01021 7y ago

herogreen 7y ago

I am surprised they consider putting agricultural "waste" outside the loop as a way to store CO2, because we (will) probably need it as fertilizer.

mnw21cam 7y ago

The main problem I have with some of the carbon sequestering methods like dumping waste biomass at the bottom of the sea is that that biomass is a mixture of carbon we want to sequester, and nutrients that we really want to put back into the land. Constantly removing biomass from a land area is a really effective method of turning that land into a totally useless area that doesn't grow anything any more.

mixedmath 7y ago
I was recently thinking about this. Farming is essentially constant repeated removal of extreme amounts of biomass from a land area. We rely heavily on fertilizers for industrial farming. What is the ultimate source of most of the nutrients that are used to produce the fertilizers? There are massive amounts of carbon, phosphorous, nitrogen, and potassium required.
- mnw21cam 7y ago
  Farming has been described as mining soil for a good reason. Some of those nutrients, particularly phosphorus, are in short supply, until they hit a high enough price to start extracting them from seawater.

spodek 7y ago

Any business person should see the most important action immediately. If you want to make a company profitable, lowering costs is almost always essential and more effective than raising revenues. Do both, of course, but keep costs down. If you want to lower greenhouse gas concentrations, do everything, but lowering emissions is essential. The article barely mentioned it, but the most effective emissions reductions limit concentrations more than all capturing technologies combined. The number one technologies to combat environmental problems such as climate change (but also all others -- extinctions, resource depletion, plastic, mercury, etc) are the pill, IUDs, vasectomies, condoms, and the like, combined with educating everyone on family planning. People knee-jerk respond with concerns about China's policy or eugenics, but many nations have reduced birth rates non-coercively, increasing prosperity -- Thailand, Costa Rica, Iran, and more. A few generations of a global 1.5 children per woman average brings human population to sustainable levels with a reasonable level of material abundance, around 2 billion people -- for reference, the population before the Haber-Bosch process allowed us to turn oil into food. Any population more than sustainable only forestalls collapse. I'd like to say otherwise, and achieving on a global scale what a few nations did on a national scale is hard, but nature doesn't make allowances for something being hard. And we've known this for generations. At the same time, probably everyone reading these words emits beyond the IPCC recommendations per person. Combining personal action by those willing to lead and set examples with education and legislation can reduce emissions per person. As ineffective as personal action is alone, it is a necessary first step to create role models and show that living sustainably is joyful and creates community and connection, not the burden and sacrifice people erroneously fear when they think of flying less or eating less meat. On the contrary, stewardship and taking responsibility for how our behavior affects others, especially those helpless to defend themselves, such as those breathing our jet fuel exhaust, creates some of the most joy, meaning, value, and purpose, as any parent will tell you. We'll have to change our values to a steady-state economy based on increasing gross happiness and community from a growth economy based on increasing GDP. There are many examples of steady-state economies working for longer than our growth economy producing prosperous, stable communities, and one huge example of a growth economy wrecking the entire planet's biosphere, making it clear to all except economists that we have to stop growth or nature will do it for us. Bottom line: 1) Reducing emissions is by far the most effective means to avert the worst disasters, even if some are inevitable. We can do a lot more and once we start we'll love it. 2) Personal action is not enough, but it's a necessary first step. It's also called leadership. Most don't want to lead, but those willing to will be the Mandelas, MLK's, Rosa Parks, etc of the environment.

Grue3 7y ago

1. Generate large amounts of carbon-free energy 2. Use the excess energy to sequester CO2 out of the air. Now if only there was a proven technology to consistently generate lots of energy that is clean, safe and has plenty of readily available fuel...

Accujack 7y ago
I noticed this too. In addition to planting forests that we then harvest and convert to biochar at peak rather than letting them decay and release carbon back to the cycle, we need to use energy intensive means to capture carbon. I have seen one proposal linked on HN that suggested direct use of a nuclear reactor's energy to do it... something like that would have the necessary power (pardon the expression) to make a dent in atmospheric CO2. Essentially, we need to build machines like the ones on LV427 in the movie "Aliens"...large structures that are essentially nuclear reactors with some extra equipment to use all their energy to terraform.... Terra.

avmich 7y ago

Here is technology which, I think, is less known than it should - https://sesinnovation.com/technology/carbon_capture/ https://sesinnovation.com/technology/carbon_capture/ . And yet I think freezing out CO2 out of air can be used even wider - re-processing air from atmosphere, instead of going only after exhausts.

ecoled_ame 7y ago

Make less of the carbon producers (humans). You don't have to reproduce to be happy.