20 ms·

Carbon removal hype is becoming a dangerous distraction

76 points by headalgorithm 5y ago

Fnoord 5y ago
> In February, oil giant Shell trumpeted a scenario in which the world pulls global warming back to 1.5 ˚C by 2100 Which was deemed not enough. Shell lost its lawsuit in May 2021; In A Landmark Case, A Dutch Court Orders Shell To Cut Its Carbon Emissions Faster [1] [1] https://text.npr.org/1000475878 https://text.npr.org/1000475878
mhandley 5y ago
The Royal Society report on greenhouse gas removal is pretty good. https://royalsociety.org/~/media/policy/projects/greenhouse-gas-removal/royal-society-greenhouse-gas-removal-report-2018.pdf https://royalsociety.org/~/media/policy/projects/greenhouse-... It's not that greenhouse gas removal cannot be done, but as the article says, it cannot distract from emissions reduction, and it's going to require a huge effort. But we probably require both emissions reduction and greenhouse gas removal.
adamsvystun 5y ago
While the title of the article is easy enough to understand, and articulates a genuine concern, the article itself is pretty incoherent. It does not establish clearly why carbon removal is not effective at slowing climate change, while assuming it isn't. It critisizes as inefficient the early investing strategy to cast a wide net and give money to potentially failing ideas. It in one place mentions that climate capture cannot "be easily scaled up" because it is "prohibitively expensive and energy intensive", while in the other part it concedes that the technology might progress in the future. The entire article is laced with emotional contempt of technology and progress, and does little to help you understand the reasons of why you should be concerned with the problem it tries to present.
- Retric 5y ago
  The technology isn’t even close to dealing with the scale of the problem, but sadly that’s not the primary issue. The US, China, India, Russia, etc are unwilling to pay for significantly accelerated reductions in CO2 emissions even when directly economically beneficial. Carbon capture isn’t free and frankly nobody is willing to pay for it.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    >> The US, China, India, Russia, etc are unwilling to pay for significantly accelerated reductions in CO2 emissions even when directly economically beneficial How is it "directly economically beneficial"?
    - spaetzleesser 5y ago
      Reduction in storm damage or wild fires for example. Once people have to flee coastal regions there will be a lot of money spent on dealing with refugees and most likely wars.
      - corty 5y ago
        Yes, but currently, attribution is hard. And the press cried "wolf!" far too often with each and every lightning storm that was a little more severe than average. So currently there is no credibility in that future cost projections.
    - Retric 5y ago
      One example is solar hot water heaters are vastly cheaper than any other low grade heat source. Integrate them with traditional hot water heaters and you get all the benefits with nearly zero downsides. Yet, the technology is almost completely ignored by incentive programs instead of say adding them or other solar heat collection to building codes.
  - ajross 5y ago
    There's a real argument to be made there at the level of federal policy, but note that the US is at or near the top of the list in per-capita wind/solar/hydro and that it dominates world battery vehicle technology and production (though not yet deployment domestically). There's a real schizophrenia problem politicly, and it's worth discussing. But really, americans are your allies here, and the US is doing a ton more help than harm.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  It isn't because of scale. Producing CO2 emissions is easy, capturing it will require an equal amount of capturing capacity. Unless we invent something that can scale up to capture 100% of current emissions (or even just 10%), reducing CO2 emissions will remain more economically viable. The other problem is of course that if we can capture co2, the producers will just ramp up production. Compare with electricity production; if production goes up, cost goes down, consumption increases (because cheaper) and they will have to ramp production up again.
unchocked 5y ago
What’s dangerous is attacking any idea that attempts to manage climate risks in light of humanity’s continuing use of carbon fuels. The anthropocene is as it is, not as it should be. Emissions reduction, carbon removal, and solar radiation management are all important tools in managing the world we’ve made. The sooner our cultural narrative expands to accept consequential responsibility, the better. (Article is better than the headline)
- bko 5y ago
  I don't understand the opposition of carbon capture. Carbon in the environment seems like a technical problem with a technical solution. What's the alternative? Try to convince every nation in the world to make their citizens poorer by forcing them to adopt more expensive energy sources and eventually forcibly limit population growth? Even the most lofty treaties and proposals admit to not being enough, so why do we persist with chasing ever more draconian controls over what people can do?
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
    >Carbon in the environment seems like a technical problem Is it? The problem isn't that there's carbon in the atmosphere but we keeping adding more even though it's making it inhabitable. Is too much alcohol in my blood a technical problem or a drinking problem. Someone drunk should stop drinking alcohol in the first place (admit that's a behavior of behavior) instead of finding ways to remove alcohol from their system.
    - chii 5y ago
      > Someone drunk should stop drinking alcohol in the first place but if removing alcohol is possible (and cheap), and the person _wants_ to be drunk, then they should be allowed to do so. Rather than saying that one should reduce their alcohol intake.
      - rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
        >removing alcohol is possible (and cheap) Just like carbon removal, removing alcohol from blood is much more difficult (and/or expensive) than to stop drinking. It's an addiction so maybe we should stop selling alcohol to drunk people who can't help but put their life at risk. If your drunk friends says "but I'll find a way to get sober", we can agree to help them with that once they stop drinking. Also, wrt to climate change: people won't want carbon but energy and we have an alternative to fossil fuels so replace them with renewable sources as much as possible and once we've done our best, finally talk about all the CO2 we failed to save. It's all about priorities because of the time carbon remains in the atmosphere and the feedback loops at play.
voisin 5y ago
No one wants to change things for them short term worse, even if this is necessary for the long term. Do it becomes a very compelling story to tell people they don’t have to change because we’ll just capture and sequester. But even if this were a feasible strategy, it would just lead to further growth in emissions to offset the capture.
swiley 5y ago
Measuring the damage and attaching a price to it is probably the easiest way to ensure everything balances out. That includes a price for Co2 removal.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  I did hear they other day they're finally increasing the cost of emission rights whilst lowering the amount of emissions in the "quota". There's probably a lot of trickery and cheating happening in that area though, like Tesla selling its emissions rights for a billion dollar because they don't have emissions themselves.
  - Armisael16 5y ago
    Tesla selling right isn’t trickery or cheating. It’s intended - it’s a way to shovel money low-carbon companies so they can develop. Tesla would be long-since bankrupt with that income stream.
    - Armisael16 5y ago
      Bleach, I come back and realize this is just shot-full of typos. Shows me for typing on my phone. Tesla selling rights long since bankrupt without that income stream.
dcolkitt 5y ago
The best strategy is to use stratospheric aerosol injections to stabilize temperatures over the next 50-100 years until carbon capture is ready to scale. The problem with carbon capture is the high energy cost. So you need a source of cheap, abundant energy. Obviously the energy source itself can’t emit carbon. That most likely looks like fusion when we finally crack it circa 2100. Until stratospheric aerosols are highly effective, dirt cheap and require very little energy. We absolutely know they work from historical volcano events. The only downside is they need to be constantly refreshed every year because they dissipate over time. So they’re a medium-term, not a long-term solution. But that buys us enough time to really get carbon capture right.
- JulianMorrison 5y ago
  Temperatures aren't the only problem. So is ocean acidification, and that depends directly on carbon dioxide.
- techdragon 5y ago
  The issue is they are a massive global project that requires the same sorts of measurement ambiguity that lets people argue over anthropogenic climate change in the first place. I’m not going to argue the physics, because you’re right about it being a good strategy for all the reasons you mentioned… but unfortunately this is a worse is better scenario. Direct methods that produce measurable byproducts that can be used to directly quantify how much CO2 has been removed, are macroeconomically speaking, going to be easier to find backers for both financially and politically. Without those backers nothing will happen with any large scale climate change mitigation efforts.
- 11235813213455 5y ago
  The best strategy is to place environment at the top priority, to breakdown capitalism and the frenesy for consumption, money, products. It's not idealism/utopism, I've been living since 10 years somewhat far from the modern lifestyle (except my laptop), I use a bike, and eat local fruits and legumes, or markets vegetables left/wasted at the end, I go to supermarket once or twice a year to buy soap bars and rice/quinoa, that's all. This guy is also a good inspiration https://www.robgreenfield.org/ https://www.robgreenfield.org/. It takes time, but it's easy to do the switch, governments/countries need to stop behaving like financial companies, we need to have public fruit trees and on the other side reduce the useless services and jobs (luxury, tourism, ..), remove intermediates, promote local food (avoid industrial collecting non-ripe fruits, and wasting ripe ones, ..), so many simple, logical things. Just reducing the use of cars will make people change their lifestyle for the better (both them and environment) That is I think the solution, not a rocket science solution that tries to find yet another industrial way to depollute one of pollutants (and probably worsen the case for others and the overall balance), just a natural solution. As soon as people have a environment footprint much lower, like mine, it's like the total population is divided by 2 or more
dsign 5y ago
It seems the only sector that can't be decarbonized radically are transport and agriculture, mostly because airplanes and freight transport. That leaves us about 30% of carbon emissions today[1]. According to those numbers, carbon capture is going to be needed, but nowhere with the same priority than clean energy. A high-priority item for the environment is simply education, since voters are pushing strongly against clean energy ("wind turbines kill birds", "nuclear plants go Chernobyl", "electric cars are expensive|auto-update like Windows and brick on you|have no turbo", "batteries are worse for the environment than fossil fuels"). [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  >It seems the only sector that can't be decarbonized radically are transport and agriculture Agriculture can significantly be decarbonized if we stop eating meat (or radically reduce consumption)[0]. It would also significantly help with biodiversity loss, which is becoming a bigger and more pressing issue than climate change. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p... [1] https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/2021-06/20210609_workshop_report_embargo_3pm_CEST_10_june_0.pdf https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/2021-06/20210609_works...
- carry_bit 5y ago
  It's not carbon emissions that are directly the problem, but rather the emission of fossil carbon into the biosphere. Hydrocarbon fuels and the like can be produced from carbon already in the biosphere.
- jtr1 5y ago
  > A high-priority item for the environment is simply education, since voters are pushing strongly against clean energy ("wind turbines kill birds", "nuclear plants go Chernobyl", "electric cars are expensive|auto-update like Windows and brick on you|have no turbo", "batteries are worse for the environment than fossil fuels"). Lack of media representation seems like a widely under-attacked problem. Look at the number adults who say they hear about climate change in the media at least once a week, the numbers are abysmal: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yc...
Unklejoe 5y ago
I always assumed carbon capture was a hard requirement for a sustainable future, as long as there are some things that can't be run off of renewables. Plus, even if the world dropped its co2 output to pre-industrial revolution levels, wouldn't we still have to capture carbon to reverse the damage already done? Or is there some natural process which will slowly bring co2 levels back to some equilibrium level?
- corty 5y ago
  CO₂ will react with certain minerals (like Olivine) over time. Also, when CO₂ is dissolved in the ocean, it will form an acid that reacts with lime. So there will be an equilibrium again, but it will take quite some time. However, especially Olivine is also thought to be useful for the same reason as above, to be used in climate control efforts: Just mine it, crush it and spread it over a large area to cheaply capture more CO₂ more quickly, and bring that equilibrium lower and sooner: https://climatecleanup.org/olivine/ https://climatecleanup.org/olivine/
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Yes, but... Under current circumstances, mining, crushing, and spreading over a large area all take power, which comes from fossil fuel. Can this (olivine) be done in a carbon-negative way, with all elements of the process accounted for?
    - corty 5y ago
      Well, of course it can. You just crush a little extra for the fuel you burnt. And an astonishing lot of mining equipment is electric anyways, so just buy "green electricity" and all is good. Just as a comparison, we do mine, crush and spread mineral-based fertilizer as a normal part of agriculture. That is of course part of the large carbon footprint of agriculture, but not a big one. So this should be doable. The question I'm rather sceptical about is the areas where one might spread the olivine. How much land it would take, and what the conditions must be. It would be nice if one could just use that olivine instead of gravel in all the parks and on footpaths and stuff.
throwaway49274 5y ago
I don’t understand why the intellectual narrative is “CO2 reduction at ANY cost… as long as we’re not wasting money on those expensive nuclear power plants”
- dfilppi 5y ago
  Using nuclear energy doesnt require the overthrow of capitalism.
sandworm101 5y ago
I'm worried that legitimate schemes are being lost in this movement to declare carbon capture as a distraction. Coal companies talking about carbon sequestration, pumping their exhaust back underground, is definitely a distraction. But some of the fuel-from-air initiatives are not. If we can use electricity to generate hydrocarbons from water and atmospheric CO2 then we can revolutionize transport without relying on batteries. Fuel made from air could be used just like any other hydrocarbon. It isn't economical yet, but that doesn't mean it is a delay tactic. Such schemes offer actual practical answers.
- nradov 5y ago
  Yes this appears to be the only practical answer for long distance marine and air transport. We're not going to be flying battery powered airliners from New York to London.
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    People are talking about hydrogen-powered aircraft. For all the effort needed to compress/liquify/store hydrogen, it has to be cheaper to make diesel out of CO2+Water.
    - pjc50 5y ago
      I keep mentioning this whenever the subject is brought up: https://www.zmescience.com/research/us-navy-synthetic-jet-fuel-seawater-0423432/ https://www.zmescience.com/research/us-navy-synthetic-jet-fu... I've no idea whether it's been production scaled yet.
      - nradov 5y ago
        It hasn't been production scaled yet but the US Navy has been at the forefront of synthetic fuels research for years. Their objective is to reduce the logistic train for a Carrier Strike Force by using power from nuclear reactors to manufacture aviation fuel on site rather than relying on tankers.
uniqueuid 5y ago
The book "The Wizard and the Prophet" (highly recommended, by Charles Mann) argues that this is essentially a battle between faith in technology to become more efficient and the nature-preserving belief that we need to reduce our footprint. The battle has been going on for centuries regarding the limits of population capacity, energy, water and food. We have broken many previously credible thresholds and managed to get to 11 billion people thanks to technology. I don't think following only one or only the other strategy is something that's possible in diverse societies. We will continue to wage this battle, with technological advances bringing breakthroughs (such as the invention of fertilizers or climate-robust seeds), but with ever starker warnings from conservators. The book helped me realize how many debates are rooted in this schism, deep down, and how fundamental it is.
- bigbillheck 5y ago
  > managed to get to 11 billion people thanks to technology. Did we get an extra 3.5 billion people when I wasn't looking?
  - uniqueuid 5y ago
    Whoops, confused actual population with the expected maximum carrying capacity in the book. Sorry.
loopz 5y ago
There are interesting research out there if one searches for it though. This one already sucks CO2 out from the atmosphere: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-07/deep-sea-mucus-larvacean https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-07/deep-sea... This fantastical sea creature helps remove planet-warming gases from the atmosphere "He and fellow researchers eventually learned that these creatures and their snot palaces play an outsize role in helping the ocean remove planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — one more part of a vast and underappreciated system that makes the ocean an unsung hero of climate change. Covering more than 70% of Earth’s surface, the ocean has absorbed more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide released by humans since the Industrial Revolution, and about 90% of the resulting heat." This one too: https://www.projectvesta.org/ https://www.projectvesta.org/ If trees just burn up, they may not be immediately useful. The tools need to be controllable and expenditure minimal. I'd be the last to recommend geo-engineering, but it may be correct humanity already started by releasing so much extra CO2 the past hundred years.

76 points by headalgorithm 5y ago

> In February, oil giant Shell trumpeted a scenario in which the world pulls global warming back to 1.5 ˚C by 2100 Which was deemed not enough. Shell lost its lawsuit in May 2021; In A Landmark Case, A Dutch Court Orders Shell To Cut Its Carbon Emissions Faster [1] [1] https://text.npr.org/1000475878 https://text.npr.org/1000475878

mhandley 5y ago

The Royal Society report on greenhouse gas removal is pretty good. https://royalsociety.org/~/media/policy/projects/greenhouse-gas-removal/royal-society-greenhouse-gas-removal-report-2018.pdf https://royalsociety.org/~/media/policy/projects/greenhouse-... It's not that greenhouse gas removal cannot be done, but as the article says, it cannot distract from emissions reduction, and it's going to require a huge effort. But we probably require both emissions reduction and greenhouse gas removal.

adamsvystun 5y ago

While the title of the article is easy enough to understand, and articulates a genuine concern, the article itself is pretty incoherent. It does not establish clearly why carbon removal is not effective at slowing climate change, while assuming it isn't. It critisizes as inefficient the early investing strategy to cast a wide net and give money to potentially failing ideas. It in one place mentions that climate capture cannot "be easily scaled up" because it is "prohibitively expensive and energy intensive", while in the other part it concedes that the technology might progress in the future. The entire article is laced with emotional contempt of technology and progress, and does little to help you understand the reasons of why you should be concerned with the problem it tries to present.

Retric 5y ago
The technology isn’t even close to dealing with the scale of the problem, but sadly that’s not the primary issue. The US, China, India, Russia, etc are unwilling to pay for significantly accelerated reductions in CO2 emissions even when directly economically beneficial. Carbon capture isn’t free and frankly nobody is willing to pay for it.
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> The US, China, India, Russia, etc are unwilling to pay for significantly accelerated reductions in CO2 emissions even when directly economically beneficial How is it "directly economically beneficial"?
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    Reduction in storm damage or wild fires for example. Once people have to flee coastal regions there will be a lot of money spent on dealing with refugees and most likely wars.
    - corty 5y ago
      Yes, but currently, attribution is hard. And the press cried "wolf!" far too often with each and every lightning storm that was a little more severe than average. So currently there is no credibility in that future cost projections.
  - Retric 5y ago
    One example is solar hot water heaters are vastly cheaper than any other low grade heat source. Integrate them with traditional hot water heaters and you get all the benefits with nearly zero downsides. Yet, the technology is almost completely ignored by incentive programs instead of say adding them or other solar heat collection to building codes.
- ajross 5y ago
  There's a real argument to be made there at the level of federal policy, but note that the US is at or near the top of the list in per-capita wind/solar/hydro and that it dominates world battery vehicle technology and production (though not yet deployment domestically). There's a real schizophrenia problem politicly, and it's worth discussing. But really, americans are your allies here, and the US is doing a ton more help than harm.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
It isn't because of scale. Producing CO2 emissions is easy, capturing it will require an equal amount of capturing capacity. Unless we invent something that can scale up to capture 100% of current emissions (or even just 10%), reducing CO2 emissions will remain more economically viable. The other problem is of course that if we can capture co2, the producers will just ramp up production. Compare with electricity production; if production goes up, cost goes down, consumption increases (because cheaper) and they will have to ramp production up again.

unchocked 5y ago

What’s dangerous is attacking any idea that attempts to manage climate risks in light of humanity’s continuing use of carbon fuels. The anthropocene is as it is, not as it should be. Emissions reduction, carbon removal, and solar radiation management are all important tools in managing the world we’ve made. The sooner our cultural narrative expands to accept consequential responsibility, the better. (Article is better than the headline)

bko 5y ago
I don't understand the opposition of carbon capture. Carbon in the environment seems like a technical problem with a technical solution. What's the alternative? Try to convince every nation in the world to make their citizens poorer by forcing them to adopt more expensive energy sources and eventually forcibly limit population growth? Even the most lofty treaties and proposals admit to not being enough, so why do we persist with chasing ever more draconian controls over what people can do?
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  >Carbon in the environment seems like a technical problem Is it? The problem isn't that there's carbon in the atmosphere but we keeping adding more even though it's making it inhabitable. Is too much alcohol in my blood a technical problem or a drinking problem. Someone drunk should stop drinking alcohol in the first place (admit that's a behavior of behavior) instead of finding ways to remove alcohol from their system.
  - chii 5y ago
    > Someone drunk should stop drinking alcohol in the first place but if removing alcohol is possible (and cheap), and the person _wants_ to be drunk, then they should be allowed to do so. Rather than saying that one should reduce their alcohol intake.
    - rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
      >removing alcohol is possible (and cheap) Just like carbon removal, removing alcohol from blood is much more difficult (and/or expensive) than to stop drinking. It's an addiction so maybe we should stop selling alcohol to drunk people who can't help but put their life at risk. If your drunk friends says "but I'll find a way to get sober", we can agree to help them with that once they stop drinking. Also, wrt to climate change: people won't want carbon but energy and we have an alternative to fossil fuels so replace them with renewable sources as much as possible and once we've done our best, finally talk about all the CO2 we failed to save. It's all about priorities because of the time carbon remains in the atmosphere and the feedback loops at play.

voisin 5y ago

No one wants to change things for them short term worse, even if this is necessary for the long term. Do it becomes a very compelling story to tell people they don’t have to change because we’ll just capture and sequester. But even if this were a feasible strategy, it would just lead to further growth in emissions to offset the capture.

swiley 5y ago

Measuring the damage and attaching a price to it is probably the easiest way to ensure everything balances out. That includes a price for Co2 removal.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I did hear they other day they're finally increasing the cost of emission rights whilst lowering the amount of emissions in the "quota". There's probably a lot of trickery and cheating happening in that area though, like Tesla selling its emissions rights for a billion dollar because they don't have emissions themselves.
- Armisael16 5y ago
  Tesla selling right isn’t trickery or cheating. It’s intended - it’s a way to shovel money low-carbon companies so they can develop. Tesla would be long-since bankrupt with that income stream.
  - Armisael16 5y ago
    Bleach, I come back and realize this is just shot-full of typos. Shows me for typing on my phone. Tesla selling rights long since bankrupt without that income stream.

dcolkitt 5y ago

The best strategy is to use stratospheric aerosol injections to stabilize temperatures over the next 50-100 years until carbon capture is ready to scale. The problem with carbon capture is the high energy cost. So you need a source of cheap, abundant energy. Obviously the energy source itself can’t emit carbon. That most likely looks like fusion when we finally crack it circa 2100. Until stratospheric aerosols are highly effective, dirt cheap and require very little energy. We absolutely know they work from historical volcano events. The only downside is they need to be constantly refreshed every year because they dissipate over time. So they’re a medium-term, not a long-term solution. But that buys us enough time to really get carbon capture right.

JulianMorrison 5y ago
Temperatures aren't the only problem. So is ocean acidification, and that depends directly on carbon dioxide.
techdragon 5y ago
The issue is they are a massive global project that requires the same sorts of measurement ambiguity that lets people argue over anthropogenic climate change in the first place. I’m not going to argue the physics, because you’re right about it being a good strategy for all the reasons you mentioned… but unfortunately this is a worse is better scenario. Direct methods that produce measurable byproducts that can be used to directly quantify how much CO2 has been removed, are macroeconomically speaking, going to be easier to find backers for both financially and politically. Without those backers nothing will happen with any large scale climate change mitigation efforts.
11235813213455 5y ago
The best strategy is to place environment at the top priority, to breakdown capitalism and the frenesy for consumption, money, products. It's not idealism/utopism, I've been living since 10 years somewhat far from the modern lifestyle (except my laptop), I use a bike, and eat local fruits and legumes, or markets vegetables left/wasted at the end, I go to supermarket once or twice a year to buy soap bars and rice/quinoa, that's all. This guy is also a good inspiration https://www.robgreenfield.org/ https://www.robgreenfield.org/. It takes time, but it's easy to do the switch, governments/countries need to stop behaving like financial companies, we need to have public fruit trees and on the other side reduce the useless services and jobs (luxury, tourism, ..), remove intermediates, promote local food (avoid industrial collecting non-ripe fruits, and wasting ripe ones, ..), so many simple, logical things. Just reducing the use of cars will make people change their lifestyle for the better (both them and environment) That is I think the solution, not a rocket science solution that tries to find yet another industrial way to depollute one of pollutants (and probably worsen the case for others and the overall balance), just a natural solution. As soon as people have a environment footprint much lower, like mine, it's like the total population is divided by 2 or more

dsign 5y ago

It seems the only sector that can't be decarbonized radically are transport and agriculture, mostly because airplanes and freight transport. That leaves us about 30% of carbon emissions today[1]. According to those numbers, carbon capture is going to be needed, but nowhere with the same priority than clean energy. A high-priority item for the environment is simply education, since voters are pushing strongly against clean energy ("wind turbines kill birds", "nuclear plants go Chernobyl", "electric cars are expensive|auto-update like Windows and brick on you|have no turbo", "batteries are worse for the environment than fossil fuels"). [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
>It seems the only sector that can't be decarbonized radically are transport and agriculture Agriculture can significantly be decarbonized if we stop eating meat (or radically reduce consumption)[0]. It would also significantly help with biodiversity loss, which is becoming a bigger and more pressing issue than climate change. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p... [1] https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/2021-06/20210609_workshop_report_embargo_3pm_CEST_10_june_0.pdf https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/2021-06/20210609_works...
carry_bit 5y ago
It's not carbon emissions that are directly the problem, but rather the emission of fossil carbon into the biosphere. Hydrocarbon fuels and the like can be produced from carbon already in the biosphere.
jtr1 5y ago
> A high-priority item for the environment is simply education, since voters are pushing strongly against clean energy ("wind turbines kill birds", "nuclear plants go Chernobyl", "electric cars are expensive|auto-update like Windows and brick on you|have no turbo", "batteries are worse for the environment than fossil fuels"). Lack of media representation seems like a widely under-attacked problem. Look at the number adults who say they hear about climate change in the media at least once a week, the numbers are abysmal: https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/yc...

Unklejoe 5y ago

I always assumed carbon capture was a hard requirement for a sustainable future, as long as there are some things that can't be run off of renewables. Plus, even if the world dropped its co2 output to pre-industrial revolution levels, wouldn't we still have to capture carbon to reverse the damage already done? Or is there some natural process which will slowly bring co2 levels back to some equilibrium level?

corty 5y ago
CO₂ will react with certain minerals (like Olivine) over time. Also, when CO₂ is dissolved in the ocean, it will form an acid that reacts with lime. So there will be an equilibrium again, but it will take quite some time. However, especially Olivine is also thought to be useful for the same reason as above, to be used in climate control efforts: Just mine it, crush it and spread it over a large area to cheaply capture more CO₂ more quickly, and bring that equilibrium lower and sooner: https://climatecleanup.org/olivine/ https://climatecleanup.org/olivine/
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  Yes, but... Under current circumstances, mining, crushing, and spreading over a large area all take power, which comes from fossil fuel. Can this (olivine) be done in a carbon-negative way, with all elements of the process accounted for?
  - corty 5y ago
    Well, of course it can. You just crush a little extra for the fuel you burnt. And an astonishing lot of mining equipment is electric anyways, so just buy "green electricity" and all is good. Just as a comparison, we do mine, crush and spread mineral-based fertilizer as a normal part of agriculture. That is of course part of the large carbon footprint of agriculture, but not a big one. So this should be doable. The question I'm rather sceptical about is the areas where one might spread the olivine. How much land it would take, and what the conditions must be. It would be nice if one could just use that olivine instead of gravel in all the parks and on footpaths and stuff.

throwaway49274 5y ago

I don’t understand why the intellectual narrative is “CO2 reduction at ANY cost… as long as we’re not wasting money on those expensive nuclear power plants”

dfilppi 5y ago
Using nuclear energy doesnt require the overthrow of capitalism.

sandworm101 5y ago

I'm worried that legitimate schemes are being lost in this movement to declare carbon capture as a distraction. Coal companies talking about carbon sequestration, pumping their exhaust back underground, is definitely a distraction. But some of the fuel-from-air initiatives are not. If we can use electricity to generate hydrocarbons from water and atmospheric CO2 then we can revolutionize transport without relying on batteries. Fuel made from air could be used just like any other hydrocarbon. It isn't economical yet, but that doesn't mean it is a delay tactic. Such schemes offer actual practical answers.

nradov 5y ago
Yes this appears to be the only practical answer for long distance marine and air transport. We're not going to be flying battery powered airliners from New York to London.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  People are talking about hydrogen-powered aircraft. For all the effort needed to compress/liquify/store hydrogen, it has to be cheaper to make diesel out of CO2+Water.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    I keep mentioning this whenever the subject is brought up: https://www.zmescience.com/research/us-navy-synthetic-jet-fuel-seawater-0423432/ https://www.zmescience.com/research/us-navy-synthetic-jet-fu... I've no idea whether it's been production scaled yet.
    - nradov 5y ago
      It hasn't been production scaled yet but the US Navy has been at the forefront of synthetic fuels research for years. Their objective is to reduce the logistic train for a Carrier Strike Force by using power from nuclear reactors to manufacture aviation fuel on site rather than relying on tankers.

uniqueuid 5y ago

The book "The Wizard and the Prophet" (highly recommended, by Charles Mann) argues that this is essentially a battle between faith in technology to become more efficient and the nature-preserving belief that we need to reduce our footprint. The battle has been going on for centuries regarding the limits of population capacity, energy, water and food. We have broken many previously credible thresholds and managed to get to 11 billion people thanks to technology. I don't think following only one or only the other strategy is something that's possible in diverse societies. We will continue to wage this battle, with technological advances bringing breakthroughs (such as the invention of fertilizers or climate-robust seeds), but with ever starker warnings from conservators. The book helped me realize how many debates are rooted in this schism, deep down, and how fundamental it is.

bigbillheck 5y ago
> managed to get to 11 billion people thanks to technology. Did we get an extra 3.5 billion people when I wasn't looking?
- uniqueuid 5y ago
  Whoops, confused actual population with the expected maximum carrying capacity in the book. Sorry.

loopz 5y ago

There are interesting research out there if one searches for it though. This one already sucks CO2 out from the atmosphere: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-07/deep-sea-mucus-larvacean https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-07/deep-sea... This fantastical sea creature helps remove planet-warming gases from the atmosphere "He and fellow researchers eventually learned that these creatures and their snot palaces play an outsize role in helping the ocean remove planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — one more part of a vast and underappreciated system that makes the ocean an unsung hero of climate change. Covering more than 70% of Earth’s surface, the ocean has absorbed more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide released by humans since the Industrial Revolution, and about 90% of the resulting heat." This one too: https://www.projectvesta.org/ https://www.projectvesta.org/ If trees just burn up, they may not be immediately useful. The tools need to be controllable and expenditure minimal. I'd be the last to recommend geo-engineering, but it may be correct humanity already started by releasing so much extra CO2 the past hundred years.