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I don't mean to be a wet blanket (I imagine the prize will be a net good) but I want to talk into the void about something I've been befuddled by... I feel lik
by abathur 5y ago
I don't mean to be a wet blanket (I imagine the prize will be a net good) but I want to talk into the void about something I've been befuddled by...
I feel like I see/hear a lot of uncritical faith in (techno|market|competition)-solutions, with little discussion of what Nth-order effects may travel with those approaches. Just some scattered thoughts:
- The best case for progress is probably technology that leads to profitable unsubsidized capture, but incremental technological progress may give the industry that springs up around it profit motives to overshoot.
- Profitable capture would, if fossil-fuel producers get in on the action themselves, shift their break-even points around somewhat.
- Even if this operates at a loss and depends on public funding, if the work is done by private industry and not the public sector, a few decades of capture may avert/blunt the crisis but leave us with yet another powerful lobby. It'll likely be flush with good-will and hard to regulate, let alone wind down once it has served its use.
- As @knodi123 puts it: "I can not-pump 100M of oil in my own back yard. And you wouldn't believe the rate I can not pump it at!" If all of the operators depend on subsidy, there will be a decent incentive towards graft/corruption/fraud. There'll have to be some amount of administrative overhead going to verifying what is captured, that it isn't double-counted, that it actually gets sequestered, and so on. A deepening crisis could mean more of this money sloshing around and less will to build the compliance mechanisms that ensure it accomplishes the goal. Rampant graft could be enough to sink the program.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sauwan 5y agoWith the exception of the last item, these are all problems I would love to have considering our current situation. Graft and administrative burden is a real concern, though, although I don't think it should stop us from trying.
- abathur 5y agoFor sure. I don't see these as comprehensive, nor as reasons not to try (nor even think it'd be possible to stop others from trying them). But I worry that this path is already the one we're disposed to fail/default into, and that a rose-tinted view of it will only make it easier for other opportunities slip through our fingers while gobs of smart people focus on the technological half of the moon-shot. Put another way, the degree of optimism I hear on these approaches smells like the kind of hubris that causes people to lose races they think they've won.
- Dylan16807 5y agoThere shouldn't be subsidies anywhere near producers. The emissions end should be handled entirely via taxes.
- abathur 5y agoThis comment makes me think you may reading me differently than I intend, though I'm not sure which bit you're responding to. Perhaps my use of the word "operators"? In any case, I do not intend to suggest any subsidy to fossil fuel producers, here. When I say operators, I mean the operators of capture operations. The only context in which I intentionally point to producers is around the possibility that they might also become capture operators if it was profitable.
- Dylan16807 5y agoYou quoted someone talking about not-pumping oil as part of your line about subsidies. That's on the production side.
- abathur 5y agoYes. @knodi123 is joking about fraud. I am talking about fraud.
- Dylan16807 5y agoAnd I'm saying that kind of fraud shouldn't be a worry, because there shouldn't be any money at all for reducing/preventing production.
- jaggederest 5y agoIt's easy to provide proof of capture. 2266 kilo one-cubic-meter cubes of carbon, by the billions. Preferably stacked into interesting and eye-pleasing shapes. Casually building pyramids out of the ~57 cubic kilometers of carbon blocks would be pretty neat. three 4 kilometer tall square based pyramids would do it. They would also be the largest structures ever built by humanity by an order of magnitude.