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For making a dent in global warming we'll need to have billions of tonnes of this "N-(2-ethoxyethyl)-3-morpholinopropan-1-amine (2-EEMPA)" stuff.. I wonder if

For making a dent in global warming we'll need to have billions of tonnes of this "N-(2-ethoxyethyl)-3-morpholinopropan-1-amine (2-EEMPA)" stuff.. I wonder if this won't be an environmental hazard in itself. What do we do with it after it's captured its CO2? We can't just dump that stuff in the sea. I wonder if CO2 capture does not cause more problems than it solves. Even if we magically could capture CO2 as pure carbon and let the O2 back into the air, we'd end up with enough carbon to fill all the mines we've emptied over the years. Where are we going to leave all that without making a huge environmental mess? And how do we transport all that there? And that's not even considering the energy usage and possible reagents. I think we should really reduce our energy usage instead. Every tonne of CO2 not emitted does not have to be captured, and the effects of not producing it are positive for the environment in more ways than just global warming. Of course we're already on a path for significant global warming, but I think we'll just have to deal with that as we go. I don't think we'll manage to do significant CO2 capture before the effects are irreversible anyway.

grodes 6y ago
but we must capture de one we already emitted to balance the CO2 cicle
iamthemonster 6y ago
1. The solvent in carbon capture runs in a closed loop. You typically heat it, and it releases the CO2 so you can compress it and inject it below ground. 2. You don't necessarily need a depleted natural gas reservoir to inject CO2 subsurface (though they sure are convenient) and there is plenty of room for CO2 subsurface. It also doesn't creep to the surface on any meaningful timescale. 3. How do we transport it there? Pipelines. I feel like CO2 sequestration is second only to nuclear in the amount of unfounded concerns. There's one very well founded concern directly in the article - they estimate $50 per tonne of CO2 just to capture, let alone to store. My experience on a 2009 carbon capture plant design was that approx $100 per tonne of CO2 was the lowest carbon price that would really make carbon sequestration highly attractive and widespread. I also happen to think a $100 per tonne carbon price is not such a bad idea. But it is possible that other technologies would beat carbon sequestration at that carbon price point. I don't know.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Ok closed loop sounds better, the article didn't clarify this. But the compression itself and the heating will cost significant energy too, don't forget this. But consider for a moment how much coal and oil we've been digging up since the industrial age. CO2 is much less dense once it's uncontained underground. It won't stay liquid at that pressure. In that case we'll need to have underground space of a size of many times the space that all that coal and oil took up, due to the lower density. Just pumping it there, forcing it underground in different spots etc will also cause significant ecological disruption. It's a lot of land we're going to be running pipelines to, drilling into to inject it, using heavy machinery etc. And if some of it does end up being released due to a mistake, it can have potentially deadly effects. Like what happened at Lake Nyos. Safety would really have to be guaranteed. I don't know, it just sounds like a solution that won't scale to the enormity of the climate problems, and rather more like big business wanting to monetise the problem itself (and also use it as an excuse to not reduce consumption). But anyway, if it does prove itself in trials I would change my mind on it.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    The little detail that injecting CO2 into gas and oil wells can help get more gas and oil out of them is the main reason companies are investing in this tech. If the government can be persuaded to pay for the research, all the better!
    - PaulHoule 6y ago
      In Texas you can find big pockets of CO2 undeground and pdople havd been driling holes into those and pumping the CO2 into oil wells. Thus the pipeline, injection, etc. are all developed. CO2 at 1200 psi will mix with oil very well and do wonders getting into pores, but to scale up storage there are not enough oil wells and we'd probably store in saline aquifers.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    One great idea for storage is underground basalt formations. Inject CO2, and it'll turn into limestone in under two years. It can't solve the whole problem by itself, but there's enough capacity for gigatons of CO2. There are several entities working on this. Here's a company with a small pilot project, and links to scientific papers: https://www.carbfix.com/ https://www.carbfix.com/
shoo 6y ago
I agree that avoiding emissions in the first place is preferable to trying to figure out how to undo the emissions afterwards. Mental model of emission removal scope is some giant world system maybe 1x or 2x the size of the fossil fuel industry, trying to run in reverse what we've spent the last hundred or two years doing. Carbon tax, carbon tax, carbon tax. Something significant like $250 / ton. Cannot come soon enough. Ideally a global carbon tax, failing that just between a few countries & with tariffs or sanctions or so on to penalize trading partners that don't regulate externalities of pollution.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Exactly that's what I think too. We have to do the removal much faster than we did the actual burning. And the removal will only cost us money, not fuel our economy. I just don't see this happening at significant enough scale. And the capture will have lots of environmental impact too if we do it at that massive scale. And I agree about the carbon tax. It could even pay for some of the removal. The strange thing here now in Europe is that greener alternatives like trains are taxed much higher than dirtier ones like airplanes. Because trains have VAT taxes on them, but the planes fly on kerosene that's exempt from tax and the price kept down due to international agreements. As a result trains aren't a reasonable alternative and won't be for at least the next 20 years or so (as the train network would have to be scaled up significantly which would have been happening already if it was more a better alternative to flying). It's a shame because Europe is a great place for this with lots of short-distance trips.
  - saddlerustle 6y ago
    Most european rail is given huge government subsidies too, though. Also flights in the EU already have to pay for emissions as part of the EU emissions trading scheme.
    - pantalaimon 6y ago
      At least in Germany, car subsidies (investments in road infrastructure) are significantly larger than any investments in rail infrastructure.
cryptica 6y ago
As a rule of thumb, any attempt to control things on a global scale when there are millions of unknown variables will always have unexpected drawbacks and more likely than not, the drawbacks will not be worth the benefits.
rm445 6y ago
If we could capture carbon by itself, we wouldn't bury it, we could make all kinds of stuff with it. The problem, approximately, is that you get energy from oxidising stuff, and have to put energy in to reduce it. Of course, turning solar energy plus carbon dioxide into sequestered carbon and O2 is what plants do, but evidently not enough compared to human action. I do wonder whether biological (plants, algae) action, aided by genetic modification, could do more for atmospheric CO2.
bko 6y ago
For making a dent in global warming we'll need to have billions of people reduce their energy consumption.. I wonder if this won't be a governance hazard in itself. What do we do after we create a global governance structure to reduce global emissions. We can't just tell people to stop using so much carbon. I wonder if reduction causes more problems than it solves. Even if we magically could reduce everyones consumption, how do we deal with population growth assuming humans still produce some carbon. I think we should really remove existing CO2 from the environment instead. Every ton of CO2 that can be captured and removed from the environment means some family in a poor country can enjoy the benefit of industrialization. Of course we're already on a path of significant global warning so I don't think we have a choice either way.
holoduke 6y ago
Key is to plant plans and trees. Billions of them. Our energy needs will only become bigger. Transition to renewable economy is in progress. That's good. But there is not enough focus on plants and trees.
- Klapaucius 6y ago
  For any mitigation solution, you have to ask 3 questions 1) How much does it cost 2) How much space does it require 3) How does it scale Planting trees performs excellent on (1) but terribly on (2) and (3). According to Bill Gates' recent book on the topic (where he aims as best has he can to summarize the state of knowledge as per today), you'd basically have to make a big forest of the rest of the world just to offset US emissions. In addition, it's not enough to plant trees, you have to plant trees where there wouldn't have grown any if you were not planting (i.e. making forest out of non-forest). This is going to put an additional huge strain on the need for land to feed more mouths, which is a problem that is only becoming more precarious.
  - horstmeyer 6y ago
    Yes and trees only store CO2 while they are alive. Once they die and rot, it's released back into the environment. Also monocultures with fast groing trees that ideally can be harvested come with their own problems. Planting trees is good way to do something now, but it's not going to solve the problem forever.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    You're supposed to turn the Sahara into a green forest. The obvious problem is that you would need the cooperation of those countries.
graeme 6y ago
Avoiding emissions would certainly be better. It is supremely inefficient to dig up and burn fuel now then capture it and bury it later. But current global plan is to keep doing the first part, so we’ll have to undo it. We actually already likely have too much CO2 in the atmosphere. Even if we went to zero emissions today the climate would keep warming from the accumulated CO2 and feedback effects. Takes some years for those to work through the system.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  Well, anyone can decide to run potential future capture plants, cleaning up after others (that includes the previous generations), while everyone would have to agree to reduce emissions. What looks inefficient as far as pure physics goes, might be very efficient politically. Build some solar power plants in the Sahara, use the energy to sequester carbon, pay poor countries like Niger some money for that, reduce the current migration stream to Europe by creating local green jobs - that does not sound too bad.
Aachen 6y ago
> I wonder if this won't be an environmental hazard in itself. What do we do with it after it's captured its CO2? I don't see coal being an environmental hazard and that's carbon captured in the ground. Plus you have to ask whether some risk of leaks or whatever is worse than not even trying at all. > I don't think we'll manage to do significant CO2 capture before the effects are irreversible anyway. - Without joking: not with that attitude we won't. Let's not quit before trying? - We need all solutions to develop and mature right now. If it turns out cement remains unsolved, for example, or maybe it's fertilizer that we can't find a solution for or we can't get the solution to farmers in low income countries, then having a way of removing said issue indirectly will still be helpful. - There are different degrees to overshooting. A +3°C climate (already way too hot by current estimates) is still better than a +5°C. Maybe the runaway effects at +3 make it into +5, but also, those effects take time to run their course. Anything we do to slow down, reverse, control, it all buys us time to decide what options to deploy. "We won't manage anyway, why bother" is the only wrong path to walk down. Maybe we can adapt to +4, but without tech to reduce emissions or counter a runaway effect, it won't stay at +4.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  > I don't see coal being an environmental hazard and that's carbon captured in the ground. Plus you have to ask whether some risk of leaks or whatever is worse than not even trying at all. When it's in the ground it's not, no. But when we try to take it out or put it back in it does cause significant environmental disruption. Especially open mining. > - Without joking: not with that attitude we won't. Let's not quit before trying? Because any effort and money we throw at this won't go to things that are more likely to work. The scale to make CO2 capture actually make a difference is huge. Even the thought of producing and siting all those capture factories is mindbogglingly difficult without creating even bigger problems. For example: If we have to ship all their machinery and steel from China, we're likely to emit more CO2 than they will capture in years. Like I said I'm open to being proven wrong but I don't think it will ever scale to this level.
  - earlyriser 6y ago
    It's important to throw money at this, but also to throw brains that could bring surprisingly simple ideas. Have you seen tech like https://noyalabs.com https://noyalabs.com ? There's no need to create a capture factory with their approach.
Klapaucius 6y ago
Underground saline aquifers are an excellent place to store CO2, and worldwide storage space is estimated to be orders of magnitude above what is ever going to be needed. Also, keep in mind that CO2 is not stored as a gas, but in dense phase (liquid-like), due to the high pore pressures at the depths considered (> 3000 feet), well above the CO2 critical point. At these depths, any leakage to the surface would be negligeable unless you make a really lousy job in choosing your reservoir. I agree that we should aim to reduce energy usage, but I would argue we would need to both. As often said, there is no "silver bullet" to dealing with climate change, only the possibility of a "silver buckshot", where we'll have to do many large changes at once. Even if we could transit to 100% "green energy" overnight, that alone wouldn't take care of more than less than half of current emissions. A third of emissions come from industrial processes, much of which entirely unrelated to the energy used. In a nutshell, these emissions can be reduced using CO2 capture/storage, or alternatively we could stop making things such as steel, cement or fertilizer.
qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago
"just reduce our energy usage" has been the plan for decades, and it's easier said than done. Also: "Our hardest climate problems – the ones that are both large and lack obvious solutions – are agriculture (and deforestation – its major side effect) and industry. Together these are 45% of global carbon emissions. And solutions are scarce." https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/15/how-to-decarbonize-america-and-the-world/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/15/how-to-decarbonize-america... At the very least I think carbon capture makes sense for the long tail of industrial processes where the "CO2 emission" to "cost of reinventing process" ratio starts to get less and less favorable. But even if you think we can decarbonize every last industrial process, we might as well develop carbon capture in case too much carbon gets emitted before that goal is achieved.
gameswithgo 6y ago
Yes most people do not fully grasp the scale of the problem. Any way you attack it the scale is absurd making almost all solutions crazy. Getting the co2 back and putting it somewhere, ceasing all fossil fuel use, storing enough energy for wind and solar to work, all of these are trillion dollars scale global moonshot projects. *but so its all of the energy/money/effort that goes into modern fossil fuel extraction and processing so it isn't fundamentally impossible*
watertom 6y ago
The effects are irreversible. Once the permafrost began to thaw, and that started back in the 80’s, it’s been game over. The permafrost is releasing massive amounts of CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide, in about 10 years the earth itself will be releasing as much greenhouse gasses as humans release. The entirety of the Paris agreement has been a joke, cap warming? You can’t cap the warming, you need to put the earth into a stable situation to cap the warming, but that’s not possible. The earth’s climate has a number of positive feedback loops running, positive feedback loops don’t stop until either they run out of “fuel” in this case it would be greenhouse gases as the fuel, but with the permafrost thawing it will continue to thaw and release greenhouse gases, causing more warming, causing more gases to be released. The other way to stop a positive feedback loop is a disruptive event. The climate positive feedback loop is massive so the disruptive event would also need to be massive, like a large meteor hitting the earth, or a super volcano erupting, of course both of those events would kill most life on earth, but it would stop global warming. All we can do is witness what we’ve set into motion. What I think will happen is that through the acidification of the oceans the phytoplankton population will crash. Phytoplankton is the basis for the entire marine ecosystem, when that population crash happens, the entirety of the marine food chain will collapse quickly. 40% of the world’s population relies on the ocean as their primary source of protein.
rayiner 6y ago
Reducing energy usage is just the slow path to extinction. We’ll never become a multi-planet civilization with that attitude. Also if you believe the science, reducing energy usage won’t meet targets. The developed world will have to go carbon negative over the next couple of decades to counter growing CO2 emissions in the developing world.
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  What do increases in energy efficiency and terrestrial electricity generation have to do with launching people in rockets? Or have anything to do with "extinction"?
TigeriusKirk 6y ago
>I think we should really reduce our energy usage instead. There is no viable future scenario in which mankind's energy usage decreases. It's a pipe dream, and ultimately a dangerous one. Energy use is fundamentally tied to progress to such an extent that we should always be looking for ways to increase the energy available to us. Of course the energy should be produced in as low-impact a manner as possible, but it's long past time to accept that energy usage will go up, not down.
- kenmacd 6y ago
  It seems this excludes increases in efficiencies. For example today we have lighting that uses a small fraction of the power of a couple decades ago. Plus we're nearing peak populations, after which the number of humans will be going down.
  - _jal 6y ago
    Energy efficiencies do not decrease energy use, you just get more of the cheaper thing. I agree more with the second point; the way that I'd say that is humans as a species will never self-moderate energy use.
    - samvher 6y ago
      Obligatory mention of Jevons Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
      - CharlesW 6y ago
        Thank you, I'm one of today's lucky 10,000. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
    - epistasis 6y ago
      This is false, energy efficiencies do decrease energy use, in most situations. Jevon's paradox is the exception, not the rule. For example, increasing fuel efficiency of cars does decrease energy use, because fuel cost is not the limiting factor foe most car travel. Similarly, more efficient lighting, more efficient home space heating and water heating, and better weatherization of homes, all increase energy efficiency and decrease energy use. There's only so much lighting I would ever want to use, only so much heat, only so much time I want to spend in a car. Energy efficiency is one of the most powerful tools we have to reduce pollution, because it makes all the other things easier.
derefr 6y ago
> Fill all the mines we’ve emptied over the years ...and why not do exactly that? Keep in mind, a capture solvent is something that will stably hold onto the CO2 at STP. It doesn’t need special care or treatment; the CO2 just becomes incorporated into its molecular structure, and now that complexed molecule is “what it is.” So it’s not like we’d be pumping the mines full of pressurized gas. We’d just be pouring a stable, non-reactive liquid or solid in there. Even if the mine had an earthquake, caught on fire, etc., that wouldn’t leak the CO2 back out into the world. It’s not nuclear waste. It’s rock dust.
rtkwe 6y ago
Not sure if it's the same stuff exactly or if the cost includes reprocessing but there's an amine cycle that seems to be mostly closed that's used for CO2 removal on submarines. So it's just used to separate CO2 from the rest of the output. I think that's what this sentence is talking about: > Notably, it is projected that this solvent can operate at a regeneration heat rate of 2.0 GJ per tonne CO2 for post-combustion capture Smarter Every Day did a video on it and atmosphere management on a submarine more generally which is pretty neat. The CO2 scrubbing is around 20 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Ud6mHdhlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Ud6mHdhlQ

grodes 6y ago

but we must capture de one we already emitted to balance the CO2 cicle

iamthemonster 6y ago

1. The solvent in carbon capture runs in a closed loop. You typically heat it, and it releases the CO2 so you can compress it and inject it below ground. 2. You don't necessarily need a depleted natural gas reservoir to inject CO2 subsurface (though they sure are convenient) and there is plenty of room for CO2 subsurface. It also doesn't creep to the surface on any meaningful timescale. 3. How do we transport it there? Pipelines. I feel like CO2 sequestration is second only to nuclear in the amount of unfounded concerns. There's one very well founded concern directly in the article - they estimate $50 per tonne of CO2 just to capture, let alone to store. My experience on a 2009 carbon capture plant design was that approx $100 per tonne of CO2 was the lowest carbon price that would really make carbon sequestration highly attractive and widespread. I also happen to think a $100 per tonne carbon price is not such a bad idea. But it is possible that other technologies would beat carbon sequestration at that carbon price point. I don't know.

GekkePrutser 6y ago
Ok closed loop sounds better, the article didn't clarify this. But the compression itself and the heating will cost significant energy too, don't forget this. But consider for a moment how much coal and oil we've been digging up since the industrial age. CO2 is much less dense once it's uncontained underground. It won't stay liquid at that pressure. In that case we'll need to have underground space of a size of many times the space that all that coal and oil took up, due to the lower density. Just pumping it there, forcing it underground in different spots etc will also cause significant ecological disruption. It's a lot of land we're going to be running pipelines to, drilling into to inject it, using heavy machinery etc. And if some of it does end up being released due to a mistake, it can have potentially deadly effects. Like what happened at Lake Nyos. Safety would really have to be guaranteed. I don't know, it just sounds like a solution that won't scale to the enormity of the climate problems, and rather more like big business wanting to monetise the problem itself (and also use it as an excuse to not reduce consumption). But anyway, if it does prove itself in trials I would change my mind on it.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  The little detail that injecting CO2 into gas and oil wells can help get more gas and oil out of them is the main reason companies are investing in this tech. If the government can be persuaded to pay for the research, all the better!
  - PaulHoule 6y ago
    In Texas you can find big pockets of CO2 undeground and pdople havd been driling holes into those and pumping the CO2 into oil wells. Thus the pipeline, injection, etc. are all developed. CO2 at 1200 psi will mix with oil very well and do wonders getting into pores, but to scale up storage there are not enough oil wells and we'd probably store in saline aquifers.
- DennisP 6y ago
  One great idea for storage is underground basalt formations. Inject CO2, and it'll turn into limestone in under two years. It can't solve the whole problem by itself, but there's enough capacity for gigatons of CO2. There are several entities working on this. Here's a company with a small pilot project, and links to scientific papers: https://www.carbfix.com/ https://www.carbfix.com/

shoo 6y ago

I agree that avoiding emissions in the first place is preferable to trying to figure out how to undo the emissions afterwards. Mental model of emission removal scope is some giant world system maybe 1x or 2x the size of the fossil fuel industry, trying to run in reverse what we've spent the last hundred or two years doing. Carbon tax, carbon tax, carbon tax. Something significant like $250 / ton. Cannot come soon enough. Ideally a global carbon tax, failing that just between a few countries & with tariffs or sanctions or so on to penalize trading partners that don't regulate externalities of pollution.

GekkePrutser 6y ago
Exactly that's what I think too. We have to do the removal much faster than we did the actual burning. And the removal will only cost us money, not fuel our economy. I just don't see this happening at significant enough scale. And the capture will have lots of environmental impact too if we do it at that massive scale. And I agree about the carbon tax. It could even pay for some of the removal. The strange thing here now in Europe is that greener alternatives like trains are taxed much higher than dirtier ones like airplanes. Because trains have VAT taxes on them, but the planes fly on kerosene that's exempt from tax and the price kept down due to international agreements. As a result trains aren't a reasonable alternative and won't be for at least the next 20 years or so (as the train network would have to be scaled up significantly which would have been happening already if it was more a better alternative to flying). It's a shame because Europe is a great place for this with lots of short-distance trips.
- saddlerustle 6y ago
  Most european rail is given huge government subsidies too, though. Also flights in the EU already have to pay for emissions as part of the EU emissions trading scheme.
  - pantalaimon 6y ago
    At least in Germany, car subsidies (investments in road infrastructure) are significantly larger than any investments in rail infrastructure.

cryptica 6y ago

As a rule of thumb, any attempt to control things on a global scale when there are millions of unknown variables will always have unexpected drawbacks and more likely than not, the drawbacks will not be worth the benefits.

rm445 6y ago

If we could capture carbon by itself, we wouldn't bury it, we could make all kinds of stuff with it. The problem, approximately, is that you get energy from oxidising stuff, and have to put energy in to reduce it. Of course, turning solar energy plus carbon dioxide into sequestered carbon and O2 is what plants do, but evidently not enough compared to human action. I do wonder whether biological (plants, algae) action, aided by genetic modification, could do more for atmospheric CO2.

bko 6y ago

For making a dent in global warming we'll need to have billions of people reduce their energy consumption.. I wonder if this won't be a governance hazard in itself. What do we do after we create a global governance structure to reduce global emissions. We can't just tell people to stop using so much carbon. I wonder if reduction causes more problems than it solves. Even if we magically could reduce everyones consumption, how do we deal with population growth assuming humans still produce some carbon. I think we should really remove existing CO2 from the environment instead. Every ton of CO2 that can be captured and removed from the environment means some family in a poor country can enjoy the benefit of industrialization. Of course we're already on a path of significant global warning so I don't think we have a choice either way.

holoduke 6y ago

Key is to plant plans and trees. Billions of them. Our energy needs will only become bigger. Transition to renewable economy is in progress. That's good. But there is not enough focus on plants and trees.

Klapaucius 6y ago
For any mitigation solution, you have to ask 3 questions 1) How much does it cost 2) How much space does it require 3) How does it scale Planting trees performs excellent on (1) but terribly on (2) and (3). According to Bill Gates' recent book on the topic (where he aims as best has he can to summarize the state of knowledge as per today), you'd basically have to make a big forest of the rest of the world just to offset US emissions. In addition, it's not enough to plant trees, you have to plant trees where there wouldn't have grown any if you were not planting (i.e. making forest out of non-forest). This is going to put an additional huge strain on the need for land to feed more mouths, which is a problem that is only becoming more precarious.
- horstmeyer 6y ago
  Yes and trees only store CO2 while they are alive. Once they die and rot, it's released back into the environment. Also monocultures with fast groing trees that ideally can be harvested come with their own problems. Planting trees is good way to do something now, but it's not going to solve the problem forever.
- imtringued 6y ago
  You're supposed to turn the Sahara into a green forest. The obvious problem is that you would need the cooperation of those countries.

graeme 6y ago

Avoiding emissions would certainly be better. It is supremely inefficient to dig up and burn fuel now then capture it and bury it later. But current global plan is to keep doing the first part, so we’ll have to undo it. We actually already likely have too much CO2 in the atmosphere. Even if we went to zero emissions today the climate would keep warming from the accumulated CO2 and feedback effects. Takes some years for those to work through the system.

inglor_cz 6y ago
Well, anyone can decide to run potential future capture plants, cleaning up after others (that includes the previous generations), while everyone would have to agree to reduce emissions. What looks inefficient as far as pure physics goes, might be very efficient politically. Build some solar power plants in the Sahara, use the energy to sequester carbon, pay poor countries like Niger some money for that, reduce the current migration stream to Europe by creating local green jobs - that does not sound too bad.

Aachen 6y ago

> I wonder if this won't be an environmental hazard in itself. What do we do with it after it's captured its CO2? I don't see coal being an environmental hazard and that's carbon captured in the ground. Plus you have to ask whether some risk of leaks or whatever is worse than not even trying at all. > I don't think we'll manage to do significant CO2 capture before the effects are irreversible anyway. - Without joking: not with that attitude we won't. Let's not quit before trying? - We need all solutions to develop and mature right now. If it turns out cement remains unsolved, for example, or maybe it's fertilizer that we can't find a solution for or we can't get the solution to farmers in low income countries, then having a way of removing said issue indirectly will still be helpful. - There are different degrees to overshooting. A +3°C climate (already way too hot by current estimates) is still better than a +5°C. Maybe the runaway effects at +3 make it into +5, but also, those effects take time to run their course. Anything we do to slow down, reverse, control, it all buys us time to decide what options to deploy. "We won't manage anyway, why bother" is the only wrong path to walk down. Maybe we can adapt to +4, but without tech to reduce emissions or counter a runaway effect, it won't stay at +4.

GekkePrutser 6y ago
> I don't see coal being an environmental hazard and that's carbon captured in the ground. Plus you have to ask whether some risk of leaks or whatever is worse than not even trying at all. When it's in the ground it's not, no. But when we try to take it out or put it back in it does cause significant environmental disruption. Especially open mining. > - Without joking: not with that attitude we won't. Let's not quit before trying? Because any effort and money we throw at this won't go to things that are more likely to work. The scale to make CO2 capture actually make a difference is huge. Even the thought of producing and siting all those capture factories is mindbogglingly difficult without creating even bigger problems. For example: If we have to ship all their machinery and steel from China, we're likely to emit more CO2 than they will capture in years. Like I said I'm open to being proven wrong but I don't think it will ever scale to this level.
- earlyriser 6y ago
  It's important to throw money at this, but also to throw brains that could bring surprisingly simple ideas. Have you seen tech like https://noyalabs.com https://noyalabs.com ? There's no need to create a capture factory with their approach.

Klapaucius 6y ago

Underground saline aquifers are an excellent place to store CO2, and worldwide storage space is estimated to be orders of magnitude above what is ever going to be needed. Also, keep in mind that CO2 is not stored as a gas, but in dense phase (liquid-like), due to the high pore pressures at the depths considered (> 3000 feet), well above the CO2 critical point. At these depths, any leakage to the surface would be negligeable unless you make a really lousy job in choosing your reservoir. I agree that we should aim to reduce energy usage, but I would argue we would need to both. As often said, there is no "silver bullet" to dealing with climate change, only the possibility of a "silver buckshot", where we'll have to do many large changes at once. Even if we could transit to 100% "green energy" overnight, that alone wouldn't take care of more than less than half of current emissions. A third of emissions come from industrial processes, much of which entirely unrelated to the energy used. In a nutshell, these emissions can be reduced using CO2 capture/storage, or alternatively we could stop making things such as steel, cement or fertilizer.

qPM9l3XJrF 6y ago

"just reduce our energy usage" has been the plan for decades, and it's easier said than done. Also: "Our hardest climate problems – the ones that are both large and lack obvious solutions – are agriculture (and deforestation – its major side effect) and industry. Together these are 45% of global carbon emissions. And solutions are scarce." https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/15/how-to-decarbonize-america-and-the-world/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/15/how-to-decarbonize-america... At the very least I think carbon capture makes sense for the long tail of industrial processes where the "CO2 emission" to "cost of reinventing process" ratio starts to get less and less favorable. But even if you think we can decarbonize every last industrial process, we might as well develop carbon capture in case too much carbon gets emitted before that goal is achieved.

gameswithgo 6y ago

Yes most people do not fully grasp the scale of the problem. Any way you attack it the scale is absurd making almost all solutions crazy. Getting the co2 back and putting it somewhere, ceasing all fossil fuel use, storing enough energy for wind and solar to work, all of these are trillion dollars scale global moonshot projects. *but so its all of the energy/money/effort that goes into modern fossil fuel extraction and processing so it isn't fundamentally impossible*

watertom 6y ago

The effects are irreversible. Once the permafrost began to thaw, and that started back in the 80’s, it’s been game over. The permafrost is releasing massive amounts of CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide, in about 10 years the earth itself will be releasing as much greenhouse gasses as humans release. The entirety of the Paris agreement has been a joke, cap warming? You can’t cap the warming, you need to put the earth into a stable situation to cap the warming, but that’s not possible. The earth’s climate has a number of positive feedback loops running, positive feedback loops don’t stop until either they run out of “fuel” in this case it would be greenhouse gases as the fuel, but with the permafrost thawing it will continue to thaw and release greenhouse gases, causing more warming, causing more gases to be released. The other way to stop a positive feedback loop is a disruptive event. The climate positive feedback loop is massive so the disruptive event would also need to be massive, like a large meteor hitting the earth, or a super volcano erupting, of course both of those events would kill most life on earth, but it would stop global warming. All we can do is witness what we’ve set into motion. What I think will happen is that through the acidification of the oceans the phytoplankton population will crash. Phytoplankton is the basis for the entire marine ecosystem, when that population crash happens, the entirety of the marine food chain will collapse quickly. 40% of the world’s population relies on the ocean as their primary source of protein.

rayiner 6y ago

Reducing energy usage is just the slow path to extinction. We’ll never become a multi-planet civilization with that attitude. Also if you believe the science, reducing energy usage won’t meet targets. The developed world will have to go carbon negative over the next couple of decades to counter growing CO2 emissions in the developing world.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago
What do increases in energy efficiency and terrestrial electricity generation have to do with launching people in rockets? Or have anything to do with "extinction"?

TigeriusKirk 6y ago

>I think we should really reduce our energy usage instead. There is no viable future scenario in which mankind's energy usage decreases. It's a pipe dream, and ultimately a dangerous one. Energy use is fundamentally tied to progress to such an extent that we should always be looking for ways to increase the energy available to us. Of course the energy should be produced in as low-impact a manner as possible, but it's long past time to accept that energy usage will go up, not down.

kenmacd 6y ago
It seems this excludes increases in efficiencies. For example today we have lighting that uses a small fraction of the power of a couple decades ago. Plus we're nearing peak populations, after which the number of humans will be going down.
- _jal 6y ago
  Energy efficiencies do not decrease energy use, you just get more of the cheaper thing. I agree more with the second point; the way that I'd say that is humans as a species will never self-moderate energy use.
  - samvher 6y ago
    Obligatory mention of Jevons Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
    - CharlesW 6y ago
      Thank you, I'm one of today's lucky 10,000. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
  - epistasis 6y ago
    This is false, energy efficiencies do decrease energy use, in most situations. Jevon's paradox is the exception, not the rule. For example, increasing fuel efficiency of cars does decrease energy use, because fuel cost is not the limiting factor foe most car travel. Similarly, more efficient lighting, more efficient home space heating and water heating, and better weatherization of homes, all increase energy efficiency and decrease energy use. There's only so much lighting I would ever want to use, only so much heat, only so much time I want to spend in a car. Energy efficiency is one of the most powerful tools we have to reduce pollution, because it makes all the other things easier.

derefr 6y ago

> Fill all the mines we’ve emptied over the years ...and why not do exactly that? Keep in mind, a capture solvent is something that will stably hold onto the CO2 at STP. It doesn’t need special care or treatment; the CO2 just becomes incorporated into its molecular structure, and now that complexed molecule is “what it is.” So it’s not like we’d be pumping the mines full of pressurized gas. We’d just be pouring a stable, non-reactive liquid or solid in there. Even if the mine had an earthquake, caught on fire, etc., that wouldn’t leak the CO2 back out into the world. It’s not nuclear waste. It’s rock dust.

rtkwe 6y ago

Not sure if it's the same stuff exactly or if the cost includes reprocessing but there's an amine cycle that seems to be mostly closed that's used for CO2 removal on submarines. So it's just used to separate CO2 from the rest of the output. I think that's what this sentence is talking about: > Notably, it is projected that this solvent can operate at a regeneration heat rate of 2.0 GJ per tonne CO2 for post-combustion capture Smarter Every Day did a video on it and atmosphere management on a submarine more generally which is pretty neat. The CO2 scrubbing is around 20 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Ud6mHdhlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Ud6mHdhlQ