3 ms·

My feeling that I get from reading comment sections on these things is that it will be prohibitively expensive to scale up to a size that matters and no-one wil

My feeling that I get from reading comment sections on these things is that it will be prohibitively expensive to scale up to a size that matters and no-one will want to foot the bill. That, and the idea that it's a pipe dream that is sold as an excuse not to make some really tough choices about decarbonising other things seems to be the prevailing thought about from cynical environmentalists. Personally I can only feel that those arguments make some sense but I don't understand the potential enough. Also, a more personal thought is that it seems really hard to collect such a diluted chemical from thin air?

tito 5y ago
Agreed, those 2 are common concerns carbon removal needs to address better. Working in the industry there are other concerns that seem more pressing (i.e. can we even make it work? can we grow it 2x per year for the next decade needed?). As Alan Kay says, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. Learn more about building carbon removal solutions at: http://bootup.airminers.org http://bootup.airminers.org
belorn 5y ago
Would be interesting to see a comparison between a perceived prohibitively expensive carbon-free alternative, and the use of carbon capture in order to offset the pollution of cheaper technology that is not carbon-free. Like, would a coal power plant combined with carbon capture be more economical viable than a nuclear plant?
- worldsayshi 5y ago
  > Like, would a coal power plant combined with carbon capture be more economical viable than a nuclear plant? Yeah it's an interesting line of thought but is it really possible to ask that? If you scale up one technology you will hopefully find incremental improvements that will turn that initial calculation on its head. My guess is that any such calculation would be so speculative it wouldn't give you any actionable information. So my guess is that the best we can do is try scaling up all possibilities until we have a clear winner? (Although in your example nuclear should already be scaled up enough to give us some idea.)

tito 5y ago

Agreed, those 2 are common concerns carbon removal needs to address better. Working in the industry there are other concerns that seem more pressing (i.e. can we even make it work? can we grow it 2x per year for the next decade needed?). As Alan Kay says, the best way to predict the future is to invent it. Learn more about building carbon removal solutions at: http://bootup.airminers.org http://bootup.airminers.org

belorn 5y ago

Would be interesting to see a comparison between a perceived prohibitively expensive carbon-free alternative, and the use of carbon capture in order to offset the pollution of cheaper technology that is not carbon-free. Like, would a coal power plant combined with carbon capture be more economical viable than a nuclear plant?

worldsayshi 5y ago
> Like, would a coal power plant combined with carbon capture be more economical viable than a nuclear plant? Yeah it's an interesting line of thought but is it really possible to ask that? If you scale up one technology you will hopefully find incremental improvements that will turn that initial calculation on its head. My guess is that any such calculation would be so speculative it wouldn't give you any actionable information. So my guess is that the best we can do is try scaling up all possibilities until we have a clear winner? (Although in your example nuclear should already be scaled up enough to give us some idea.)