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Potential large-scale CO2 removal via enhanced rock weathering with croplands
- jokoon 6y agoI don't like those kind of projects because they sort of try to bank on the global warming problem with inventions and new things, except this doesn't work, because CO2 is just too hard to eliminate. It's the penultimate problem of industrialized capitalism: "we have a problem and we need to MAKE something new to solve this". But the problem was always the excess of industry in the first place. The solution is simple: slow down consumption everywhere and optimize the use of carbon, but it's completely against the spirit of industrial capitalism. That's why global warming can only be solved with political solutions. I believe that in the future, violence will occur to stop co2 emissions by force, while the wealthy will be able to shelter themselves away from hot places. Global warming is EXACTLY the problem of libertarian ideology. It completely dismisses the commons. Global warming is the perfect example of what happens when we accept "survival of the fittest" and social darwinism. I'm worried that rich people are okay with global warming because they are able to justify it with Malthusian arguments.
- kolinko 6y agoYou get downvoted because you provide no arguments for why it is too hard of a problem for eliminate. You also didn't provide any arguments as to why this specific approach won't work. It's similar to people closing their eyes when there's fire and screaming "we'll all die". It's your choice to believe that, but don't stand in the doors trying to prevent people from searching for a survival route.
- jokoon 6y agoUsing fear and other emotions is also a way to make people react. A lot of people cannot really absorb the science and numbers.
- realusername 6y agoThat's some moral arguments you are using here, it's all nice and well in a debate but it's not moral arguments which will help in any way the humanity to fight global warming. Yes we do need technology and we need it quickly before the problem worsen even further. Even global agreements like the Paris one are built upon having such technology, no amount of shaming and moral argument will help in achieving anything.
- perfunctory 6y agoI disagree. We've had all necessary technology all along. It's exactly the lack of moral responsibility that's holding us back. Fighting climate change is more akin to the civil rights movement than to the Manhattan project.
- realusername 6y agoYour argument is a different one already, yes we're definitely not doing much against climate change, and yes some moral responsibility to fight this global issue is badly needed. But that does not validate the pseudo-moral arguments blaming technology & industry like the one above, this is guaranteed to fail.
- RobertKerans 6y agoThere's just been a months-long Europe-wide experiment re reducing emissions which should yield some interesting data, and the early reports do seem to support what you're saying.
- steve_adams_86 6y agoI don’t disagree that we have the technology to emit less pollution simply by doing less (the moral decisions in this hypothetical), but the issue is that most (perhaps nearly all) people in the world don’t agree with your morality. This makes technologies which bypass this problem far more feasible, even if they’re further out from actually solving the problem. They might have the potential to get there, whereas morality probably doesn’t. Agriculture is a major source of pollution for example, but it’s how everyone eats. The fact that most people in the world are poor makes this problem extremely hard to solve... How do you argue morality with someone who is just trying to feed themselves? If you want them to use less fertilizer, irrigate less, ship their product shorter distances, etc for the sake of climate change, well... Good luck. Now try telling them to stop driving, or use less electricity, or...
- neilwilson 6y agoWe solved the nitrogen problem in food production with technology. We'll solve the CO2 emission problem with technology as well. I'm with Captain Kirk. I don't believe in no win situations.
- orwin 6y agoCO2 is an oxide. I barely remember my chemistry classes, but i think than without solvent, oxides need energy to be broken. And even with 70% of our planet covered with a solvent (the sea that absorb CO2), our emissions are still going through the roof. If fusion happens in less than 20 years, we may be able to absorb CO2. I'm not high on this, but with supraconductors, you never know when the next breakthrough is. However, if we manage to hit +3°C average (we are already at ~+.9°C average), the living conditions will become hotter than the Sahara for 1/2 to 2 billion people. And that's without counting wetbulb temperature that will be reached in Florida more than a dozen day a year. I know that +3° average is hard to understand but consider this. Between the last ice age, where France was basically Siberia, Scandinavia was under 3km of ice and you could make Calais/London by foot, and 1850, there was a 5°C average temperature difference. The change was over 20 000 years. Also CO2 emissions today will have an impact in 20 year (CO2 in low atmosphere does not seems to have more than marginal greenhouse effect, its high-altitude CO2 that cause our troubles). That's the political challenge: - Are the predictions for +3° around 2070 right? And i'm not talking about RPC 8.5, i'm talking about the one with constant CO2 emission btw. If they are at least right on magnitude order, will we be able capture CO2 before 2050? - Will technology be able to grab CO2 out of low atmosphere? It seems we need incredible amount of energy for that (compared to our production). So fusion it is then. Is fusion before 2080 possible? At least China is advancing faster than France so maybe? I'm not high on this, and i'm a supraconductor optimist since 2009. - Will we be able to capture increasing amount of CO2 out of our electric centrals, cars and trucks? This is what i think is the more likely. But this technology still don't exist, and we need it right now. - Are we hoping that either fusion or CO2 captation will come soon enough to limit the CO2 emissions, and... That's all? Or are we vastly investing in research? Or investing in energy/consumption economies? Do people understand what does it mean for a country to reduce its CO2 emission by 4% a year? Do politicians and economist understand, or are we still stuck with "green growth" for another decade? I will order my research once i quit my job, try to order my sources (or find more precise ones), clean my code and write a long, long post on what it really means to stop using fossile fuel, even "only" -4% a year (what we need to do to respect the 2°C Paris agreement). From what i've read in the last GIEC report, if we don't find a new technological ace right now (ten years ago even), the win solution might be hard to swallow for the western world, and even harder for those living in tropical areas. The only thing i'm really sure is that if we don't take care of the problem, the problem will take care of us.
- Mvandenbergh 6y ago>I believe that in the future, violence will occur to stop co2 emissions by force, By whom? All the most effective military forces in the world belong to the industrialised nations that are doing the emissions. Do you think Tokelau is going to land their marines in South China and Houston to shut down production?
- fennecfoxen 6y agoEcoterrorism, I’d guess is the idea. Especially since it’s attached to a mini manifesto.
- Nasrudith 6y agoThat would explain the blatant projection of claiming Maltheusianism in industrial expansion when they are the exact opposite.
- Nasrudith 6y agoWith nuclear umbrellas? Even with eco-fascist fundamentalists at the helm it is a hell no, absolutely no nuclear power even pretends to be that crazy. It might have been a viable geopolitical picture before WW2 and a useful pretense for causus beli against other industrialized powers or a sick justification for lebensraum - effectively used like eugenics as an intellectual justification for why these current travesties are moral imperatives. Now it would be even less effective than screwing for virginity. I mean screwing is capable of producing more virgins at least.
- chrisweekly 6y ago"the penultimate problem" you seem to think "penultimate" is a more grandiose way of saying "ultimate", but it's not. it means "second to last".
- war1025 6y agoWell, "ultimate" means last. So it's really a way of saying "second most important", which I think could easily have been what they were going for there.
- chrisweekly 6y agoNot really. OP made no mention of any other factor.
- FreeFull 6y agoEven if we completely stop all manmade CO2 emissions right now, there still is too much CO2 in the atmosphere already. Actually removing the CO2 from the air in some way will be necessary if we want to stop global warming from getting even worse.
- bluGill 6y agoStopping all human CO2 emissions stops global warming (on average, bad valvano you years will make it worse that year), and reverses it. Plants convert more CO2 than gets converted back by a small amount every year. You just want something that doesn't need a million years to get back to normal.
- lozenge 6y agoEven if CO2 was held constant, warming would continue for decades.
- philipkglass 6y agoIt's a problem of fossil fuel combustion [1], not capitalism. The per-capita CO2 emissions of the USSR were also above the presently sustainable level for Earth's 7.8 billion people. [1] And land use changes, larger herds of ruminant food animals, high altitude airplane contrails... But mostly fossil fuel combustion.
- samoa42 6y agopreliminary calculations suggest this has the potential to capture about 5% of current CO2 emissions if applied to 50% of worldwide farmland. (citation needed)
- sveme 6y ago80 - 180 US$ for the removal of a ton of CO2 is far more than the cost of adding a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere (in Germany, currently around 10€/ton, I believe). In principle, removing a ton of CO2 needs to be cheaper than the cost of adding a ton of CO2.
- imtringued 6y agoThe price for a CO2 certificate is around 25€ per ton. The biggest problem is that lots of emission sources are still excluded from the CO2 trade and that businesses receive a certain amount of CO2 certificates for free. https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/co2-european-emission-allowances https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/co2-european...
- jandrese 6y agoThe problem with CO2 certificates is that they aren't backed by anything. We had no priceable scalable means of removing CO2 from the atmosphere so those prices are arbitrary. If people were serious about using markets solve this problem the price of CO2 credits would reflect what it actually takes to remove that much CO2 from the atmosphere and they would be much more expensive. There would be companies forming just to get those credits and trying to undercut one another looking for more efficient ways to sequester CO2 permanently. But we can't because it would drive up the price of gas and with it everything else in the economy. People would blame other countries for cheating and the Illumiati for taking their jobs. Then politicians would lose their seats and the work they did would be reversed.
- crucialfelix 6y agoCarbon removal and prevention projects are certified. This creates a certificate which can then be sold on the market. https://www.goldstandard.org/guided-tour/project-developers#project-developers https://www.goldstandard.org/guided-tour/project-developers#... When direct removal costs are below the price of the CER then that will become the primary way that certs are produced.
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- jose_zap 6y agoThis is a project that wants to execute on this idea, but using beaches instead of croplands https://projectvesta.org/ https://projectvesta.org/
- mkl 6y agoBig previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403570
- mirimir 6y agoFYI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2448-9 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2448-9
- poma88 6y agoAnother silver bullet that will fail
- perfunctory 6y agoNot really a silver bullet. We are at the point where this is something we have to do in addition to reducing carbon emissions. This is more like an extra household duty.
- pfdietz 6y agoAn issue with this is release of nickel. The most easily weathered silicate, olivine, typically has several tenths of a percent nickel. I would want to make sure the croplands are not being progressively poisoned. I wonder if it might be possible to actively strip methane and nitrous oxide from the atmosphere, as these are powerful greenhouse gases. I have some ideas how this might be done.
- GVIrish 6y agoMethane doesn't stay in the atmosphere very long though, so greenhouse gas capture efforts would be better spent on co2.
- pfdietz 6y agoThat's first point is true, but the second point doesn't necessarily follow. Methane is a quite powerful greenhouse gas, and it could be removed by in situ destruction (as it naturally is) rather than capture.
- GVIrish 6y agoYes, but that's kinda my point. Trying to remove methane from the atmosphere probably isn't a good use of resources. Methane capture at the source like what is being done at some waste processing plants makes sense though. And changing livestock feeds to reduce methane emissions seems like a no brainer.
- pfdietz 6y agoMost methane emission is natural, so if it could be removed from the atmosphere, the potential reduction in forcing could be quite nice, above and beyond just reducing our own methane emission.
- mrfusion 6y agoIs there any research on what the ideal co2 level is? I’m on the climate change team of course but is there a risk we overshoot and bring co2 too low? I’d just say we should know what we’re aiming for. I guess plants like some amount of extra co2 so we’d think about that. Should we also have some kind of buffer between a future ice age? Don’t get me wrong, I think bring the co2 level close to zero is a viable argument too.
- GVIrish 6y agoIt's not really a mystery, we could just bring co2 levels back in line what they were at the beginning of the 20th century. Hell, even the 1950's levels of CO2 would be great. But right now the carbon capture discussions are simply trying to avert disaster. None of the potential carbon capture solutions can remove so much carbon that we'll have to worry about removing too much co2.
- jacobr1 6y ago> 1950's levels of CO2 would be great In absolute terms, but we have a lot more people now. It looks like the US is already back at 1950's levels (per-capita). https://eidclimate.org/u-s-per-capita-carbon-emissions-at-lowest-levels-since-1950-thanks-to-natural-gas/ https://eidclimate.org/u-s-per-capita-carbon-emissions-at-lo...
- aqme28 6y agoHe means 1950s level of atmospheric CO2, not emissions.
- perfunctory 6y ago> is there a risk we overshoot and bring co2 too low? I had to laugh really hard at this one. Sorry.
- Rua4yGUZ4lT1Bbv 6y agoWould you still be laughing if plants die off from lack of co2 and we stave?
- the_duke 6y agoDoes anyone know of a well written review that compares potential carbon capture methods? (with a healthy amount of references)
- ketch 6y agoMaybe not as hard-science heavy as you are looking for, but I found this article to be an approachable overview of potential methods https://www.orbuch.com/carbon-removal/ https://www.orbuch.com/carbon-removal/
- aurelwu 6y agohttps://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/28_EASAC%20Report%20on%20Negative%20Emission%20Technologies.pdf https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/28_EASAC%20R... This document from EASAC (European Academies' Science Advisory Council) is a pretty nice and well sourced overview of many (not all) different negative emission technologies/methods.
- cmutel 6y agoHere is a series of three open access reviews covering the current literature (1000s of papers): 1: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9b https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9b 2: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9f/meta https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9f/... 3: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabff4 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aabff4
- ericvanular 6y agoThere's an ongoing discussion happening around this at https://collective.energy/topic/91/rock-weathering-for-removing-atmospheric-co2-spreading-rock-dust-on-farmfields https://collective.energy/topic/91/rock-weathering-for-remov... If you're into promoting discourse on climate solutions, come join us!
- gpm 6y agoAm I missing something? I see two comments?
- jaybrendansmith 6y agoSo. US $150 per ton, so $150B per gigaton. We must ultimately remove 1,000 gigatons of CO2, but we need to start with 10/year. Using this method will cost the world $1.5 trillion per year. That seems completely within our resources. What's stopping us?
- ianai 6y agoI really wonder the same thing. I know I’m at a tail of the distribution, but I could see committing 150/mo of my own funds to sequestering co2. I’ve heard it posited that for one or another reason climate change could create a dictatorial regime one or another way. I hope humanity figures out a way to pull our collective heads out of the sand and start doing stuff before anything like a dictator kicks up...
- emteycz 6y agoTo the GP asking what's stopping us: 150 usd per month is a quarter of average wage here.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoYou're correct, but let's say the target is 1/10th of it, or $15/month, therefore affordable by many. Still, there's something that prevents us, as a society, from doing it.
- ianai 6y agoWell I’ve seen at least one crowd fund project to sequester co2. It wasn’t particularly impressive scale though iirc.
- ISL 6y agoThere are sequestration projects out there already, as well as reforestation efforts. If you want to put your $150/mo to work today, you can! One might also consider putting that $150 toward eliminating inefficiencies somewhere in the world -- subsidizing renewable power or improving fuel efficiency in some way.
- perfunctory 6y agoPrevious discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23770718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23770718