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What you described can be the path to fast action on climate change. Only a few more steps are required: * Cover every rooftop, every parking lot, every deser

What you described can be the path to fast action on climate change. Only a few more steps are required: * Cover every rooftop, every parking lot, every desert with solar panels as much as we can. Cover every windy plain with wind turbines. Take all the excess power and instead of building expensive batteries, use it to power this CO2 -> synthetic liquid fuel process. * Carbon tax on any "fossil" fuel sources (anything from the ground). Make it expensive so the synthetic fuel is competitive. There's other ways too (like requiring X% mix of carbon neutral synthetic fuel, just like they do now with ethanol). Slowly increase the percent over time. * All the old infrastructure (existing cars, gas power plants, ships, trains, buses, airplanes, etc.) becomes more and more carbon neutral as the fuel becomes more synthetic. Even with the most optimistic EV car adoption projections, there will still be millions of gas cars out there. Other old carbon fuel based infrastructure (such as power plants) are hard to replace because solar/wind are not steady sources of power. This path addressees the weaknesses of solar/wind (how to store excess energy) and how to quickly transition existing infrastructure to carbon neutral.

anthropodie 6y ago
> cover every rooftop .. What about the carbon we add doing this? I mean manufacturing, transport and all such indirect sources of carbon.
- CyanBird 6y ago
  > What about the carbon we add doing this? That's why OP is talking of decarbonificating the oil production itself, so as things start to decarbinify they will continue accelerating on that road as other processes become more decarbonized The entire aluminum production on Iceland for example is already decarbonized
- bit_logic 6y ago
  Everything currently requires fossil fuel sourced energy to create it. So the question is, over the expected lifespan of the object, will it create more energy than was required to produce it? Solar panels expected lifespan is about 30 years. Installation, transport, etc. are all a fixed initial carbon cost. Studies and analysis have already been done (google search for studies from NREL) and the initial carbon cost payback is about 3-4 years of a typical 30 year solar panel lifespan. So 27 years of effectively carbon negative power generation. But also consider the downstream effects. Once you have a carbon negative power source like solar in place, the carbon cost to create other things drops as well (since they use less and less power from fossil fuel sourced power).
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Solar panels expected lifespan is about 30 years. Nearer 20, due to numerous degredation pathways. Meaning that one possible avenue to reduced impact would be an extended-life PV (or other solar) array. It's a ccomplex prtoblem, and one for which present financial methods (NPV, future vaalie discounting) work strongly against.
arrosenberg 6y ago
Instead of destroying all of our deserts and creating a transmission problem, we could probably just swap in a few dozens nukes to backstop renewables. That addresses the shortcomings of wind and solar and provides plenty of overprovisioning for carbon capture without the poor land use.
- triceratops 6y ago
  Why not do both, just to be safe? We can get solar and wind going immediately so let's get started on that stat, while we work on permitting and design for new nuclear. It doesn't have to be either or.
throwaway5752 6y ago
This is pretty much what Al Gore et al. proposed 20+ years ago. The historical lessons are more interesting than the technical ones, and everyone should be aware of those so they understand the fight they are fighting.
firebaze 6y ago
> Cover every rooftop, every parking lot, every desert with solar panels as much as we can. Cover every windy plain with wind turbines You'd extract quite a significant amount of energy from the weather system, assuming we'd globally and optimally achieve this. What could be the consequences? Winds could locally diminish, thermal convection could be reduced, lots of effects could happen we don't understand yet. In which way would this interact with local climate? Would this cause local temperatures to rise? Just pointing out potential unintended consequences this could have without offering a solution. My takeaway from past good ideas (automobile, chemistry, electricity, globalization, ...) is that there is at least one _big_ unintended consequence of action. I'd rather try to reduce our environmental and thermal footprint altogether by reducing our energy consumption, trying to keep up the standard of living people are used to. Just my opinion, but the uprising of populist parties suggests we should not overdo good intentions. Also, if a radical approach like the proposed one would fail, populist parties would exploit that failure to the fullest amount possible.
- jbotz 6y ago
  I think in the big picture the effects you are talking about are really small in the same way that the heat dissipation of all our energy use (from whatever energy sources) is negligible relative to daily incoming/outgoing solar radiation. Greenhouse gases affect these much larger energy flows (which is our problem right now), but the energy "produced" or "used" (i.e. transformed into entropy) by civilization barely even registers on that scale, and that's what you're talking about when you say "energy extracted from the weather system". Of course if we keep doubling the size of our economy (and thus energy use) every 25 years, then we will start having to worry about the heat dissipated by it all in a couple of hundred years even if all of it comes from perfectly green fusion reactors!
missosoup 6y ago
> Cover every rooftop, every parking lot 'renewables' are not a viable option for the energy requirements of large scale carbon capture. It's a massive rollout of nuclear (ideally fusion but fission is good enough), or nothing. The political unwillingness of western nations to roll out nuclear power is one of the biggest obstacles to realistically tackling climate change on timelines where it matters.
sbierwagen 6y ago
>Cover every rooftop, every parking lot, every desert with solar panels as much as we can. Cover every windy plain with wind turbines. Take all the excess power and instead of building expensive batteries, use it to power this CO2 -> synthetic liquid fuel process. This makes our current infrastructure carbon-neutral, yes. But that doesn't solve global warming? Atmospheric CO2 levels are already too high. We're at 413ppm, and we need to go back to 350ppm. Doing that requires carbon sequestration, which by definition makes no useful product. The scale of the problem is thus: every kilogram of coal that has ever been dug up needs to be unburnt and buried, and every barrel of oil ever pumped out of the ground needs to be put back. That's the only way you can get to 350 ppm.
- firebaze 6y ago
  Adding to your points, CO2 is also consumed by biological and geological processes (plants, algae, absorption in water etc.). Expanding on this, we could support the natural CO2 reducing mechanisms by for example stopping deforestation and supporting local tree planting initiatives. I'm not sure it is helpful to support the narrative we're all lost already - we won't ever put all our produced CO2 back into earth. We should give a positive spin on the potential ways out from my point of view. At least I didn't ever hear someone object against planting trees :) I know this wouldn't be enough to keep up with CO2 emissions, but it definitely wouldn't hurt and it could give momentum to environmental protection initiatives.
  - aaomidi 6y ago
    We NEED carbon capture that's fast and efficient. Potentially biologically modified algea or something can speed this up too.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Engineer bogs. Per unit area, wetlands sequester more carbon than any other terrestrial habitat. Some ocean habitats maay do better. Constructed freshwater or saltwater bogs might be the most effective way forward. Existing and novel wetlands. Side effects are interesting to contemplate.
hutzlibu 6y ago
"Cover every rooftop, every parking lot, every desert with solar panels as much as we can" Some context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File:Fullneed.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File:Fullneed.... Theoretically, only a very small area of dessert land would need to be covered with solar panels.

anthropodie 6y ago

> cover every rooftop .. What about the carbon we add doing this? I mean manufacturing, transport and all such indirect sources of carbon.

CyanBird 6y ago
> What about the carbon we add doing this? That's why OP is talking of decarbonificating the oil production itself, so as things start to decarbinify they will continue accelerating on that road as other processes become more decarbonized The entire aluminum production on Iceland for example is already decarbonized
bit_logic 6y ago
Everything currently requires fossil fuel sourced energy to create it. So the question is, over the expected lifespan of the object, will it create more energy than was required to produce it? Solar panels expected lifespan is about 30 years. Installation, transport, etc. are all a fixed initial carbon cost. Studies and analysis have already been done (google search for studies from NREL) and the initial carbon cost payback is about 3-4 years of a typical 30 year solar panel lifespan. So 27 years of effectively carbon negative power generation. But also consider the downstream effects. Once you have a carbon negative power source like solar in place, the carbon cost to create other things drops as well (since they use less and less power from fossil fuel sourced power).
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Solar panels expected lifespan is about 30 years. Nearer 20, due to numerous degredation pathways. Meaning that one possible avenue to reduced impact would be an extended-life PV (or other solar) array. It's a ccomplex prtoblem, and one for which present financial methods (NPV, future vaalie discounting) work strongly against.

arrosenberg 6y ago

Instead of destroying all of our deserts and creating a transmission problem, we could probably just swap in a few dozens nukes to backstop renewables. That addresses the shortcomings of wind and solar and provides plenty of overprovisioning for carbon capture without the poor land use.

triceratops 6y ago
Why not do both, just to be safe? We can get solar and wind going immediately so let's get started on that stat, while we work on permitting and design for new nuclear. It doesn't have to be either or.

throwaway5752 6y ago

This is pretty much what Al Gore et al. proposed 20+ years ago. The historical lessons are more interesting than the technical ones, and everyone should be aware of those so they understand the fight they are fighting.

firebaze 6y ago

> Cover every rooftop, every parking lot, every desert with solar panels as much as we can. Cover every windy plain with wind turbines You'd extract quite a significant amount of energy from the weather system, assuming we'd globally and optimally achieve this. What could be the consequences? Winds could locally diminish, thermal convection could be reduced, lots of effects could happen we don't understand yet. In which way would this interact with local climate? Would this cause local temperatures to rise? Just pointing out potential unintended consequences this could have without offering a solution. My takeaway from past good ideas (automobile, chemistry, electricity, globalization, ...) is that there is at least one _big_ unintended consequence of action. I'd rather try to reduce our environmental and thermal footprint altogether by reducing our energy consumption, trying to keep up the standard of living people are used to. Just my opinion, but the uprising of populist parties suggests we should not overdo good intentions. Also, if a radical approach like the proposed one would fail, populist parties would exploit that failure to the fullest amount possible.

jbotz 6y ago
I think in the big picture the effects you are talking about are really small in the same way that the heat dissipation of all our energy use (from whatever energy sources) is negligible relative to daily incoming/outgoing solar radiation. Greenhouse gases affect these much larger energy flows (which is our problem right now), but the energy "produced" or "used" (i.e. transformed into entropy) by civilization barely even registers on that scale, and that's what you're talking about when you say "energy extracted from the weather system". Of course if we keep doubling the size of our economy (and thus energy use) every 25 years, then we will start having to worry about the heat dissipated by it all in a couple of hundred years even if all of it comes from perfectly green fusion reactors!

missosoup 6y ago

> Cover every rooftop, every parking lot 'renewables' are not a viable option for the energy requirements of large scale carbon capture. It's a massive rollout of nuclear (ideally fusion but fission is good enough), or nothing. The political unwillingness of western nations to roll out nuclear power is one of the biggest obstacles to realistically tackling climate change on timelines where it matters.

sbierwagen 6y ago

>Cover every rooftop, every parking lot, every desert with solar panels as much as we can. Cover every windy plain with wind turbines. Take all the excess power and instead of building expensive batteries, use it to power this CO2 -> synthetic liquid fuel process. This makes our current infrastructure carbon-neutral, yes. But that doesn't solve global warming? Atmospheric CO2 levels are already too high. We're at 413ppm, and we need to go back to 350ppm. Doing that requires carbon sequestration, which by definition makes no useful product. The scale of the problem is thus: every kilogram of coal that has ever been dug up needs to be unburnt and buried, and every barrel of oil ever pumped out of the ground needs to be put back. That's the only way you can get to 350 ppm.

firebaze 6y ago
Adding to your points, CO2 is also consumed by biological and geological processes (plants, algae, absorption in water etc.). Expanding on this, we could support the natural CO2 reducing mechanisms by for example stopping deforestation and supporting local tree planting initiatives. I'm not sure it is helpful to support the narrative we're all lost already - we won't ever put all our produced CO2 back into earth. We should give a positive spin on the potential ways out from my point of view. At least I didn't ever hear someone object against planting trees :) I know this wouldn't be enough to keep up with CO2 emissions, but it definitely wouldn't hurt and it could give momentum to environmental protection initiatives.
- aaomidi 6y ago
  We NEED carbon capture that's fast and efficient. Potentially biologically modified algea or something can speed this up too.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Engineer bogs. Per unit area, wetlands sequester more carbon than any other terrestrial habitat. Some ocean habitats maay do better. Constructed freshwater or saltwater bogs might be the most effective way forward. Existing and novel wetlands. Side effects are interesting to contemplate.

hutzlibu 6y ago

"Cover every rooftop, every parking lot, every desert with solar panels as much as we can" Some context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File:Fullneed.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File:Fullneed.... Theoretically, only a very small area of dessert land would need to be covered with solar panels.