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I like to imagine CO2 in solid form (dry ice) to help visualize the scale of the problem. 1) Burning a gallon of gasoline releases almost 10 kgs of CO2 into th

by rp1 5y ago

I like to imagine CO2 in solid form (dry ice) to help visualize the scale of the problem. 1) Burning a gallon of gasoline releases almost 10 kgs of CO2 into the atmosphere. Let's say the average driving American consumes 1.5 gallons of gas a day. That's almost 15 kgs of matter to deal with every day. Imagine instead of it being released as gaseous CO2, it accumulated in your car's trunk as dry ice. After a few days, what would you do with it all? Maybe you'd throw it in your basement or your backyard. After a week or two, all free space in even a large home would be totally occupied with the waste. And this is only for personal travel done by individuals. All transportation (including the transportation of goods) is less than a 3rd of U.S. CO2 emissions. If dealing with the waste of driving on an individual level is so hard, how can we possibly hope to deal with all CO2 emissions? 2) You can also do the same thought experiment with total CO2 emissions per capita, which is currently about 15.25 metric tons per year per person in the U.S. That averages out to 41 kg of CO2 per day. How could you possibly find a way to deal with 41 kg of dry ice per day. Right now, our solution is to happily dump it into the atmosphere, which conveniently carries the CO2 away from us without us needing to worry. There really isn't a solution to this problem. It's a tragedy of the commons.

ximeng 5y ago
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2016/02/visualizing-carbon/ https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2016/02/visualizing-car... here is another visualization
ivankirigin 5y ago
I like that you're using spatial analogies because it helps drive the point home. I visualized 50B tCO2 here: https://twitter.com/ikirigin/status/1425879839886626826 https://twitter.com/ikirigin/status/1425879839886626826 While it seems enormous, it's a very small fraction of the world.
- nix23 5y ago
  Every year since ~50 years?
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  Nice graphic, but the ideal scenario would be to find a method that strips the carbon out of the CO2. We're putting about 50 Billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. However, the Atomic weight of carbon is 12 whereas the Atomic weight of Oxygen is 16, and there are 2 oxygen atoms in every CO2 molecule, so 1 ton of pure sequestered carbon is 12+16+16 = 44/12 = 3 & 2/3 tons of CO2 removed from the atmosphere. 2.27 tons of carbon compacted together makes an approximately 1 meter cube. Of course, that would mean we would have to sequester ~6 billion cubic meters (13.6 billion tons or the equivalent of 4,079 hoover dams in size, probably enough to resurface every highway and road in America 2-3 inches deep) of pure carbon every year to reach carbon neutral, and then we would need to go beyond that to begin to reverse the effects. It would literally be the largest human undertaking in the history of the planet.
jaggederest 5y ago
I like the idea of stacking up a lot of 1 meter cubes of pure carbon (graphite, or diamond!) into nice shapes. Each cube is just over 2 metric tons (2266 kg) of carbon, or the equivalent of 8 metric tons of carbon dioxide. 20 cubic kilometers per year is enough to get us back to pre-industrial levels in no time, and build some interesting monuments while we're at it. A roughly 4-kilometer tall pyramid, anyone? Low low price of ~4 trillion dollars each. 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. If we did it in Australia, we could employ the entire country twice over, and they would be the 3 new tallest mountains in Down Under (by 1,772m).
- akkartik 5y ago
  How soon would we need a fourth?!
  - jaggederest 5y ago
    Oh, sorry, I was not specific, it's three per year, every year, until we get to 250ppm CO2 in the atmosphere.
- IntrepidWorm 5y ago
  Its a wonderful image, but how do you propose sequestering the carbon? Without a powerful source of truly carbon-neutral energy, the losses incurred would simply see more carbon released downstream as a result of whatever process you choose to create such artful carbon chunks. I still really enjoy the mental image of a post-industrial society in a few thousand years sitting on a foundation of diamond bricks. :)
  - jaggederest 5y ago
    Well, that's kind of down stream of what I was talking about - I am assuming that we can get to $250 per ton of direct carbon capture and then use something like a solar CO2 reduction system with a metal catalyst to strip the O2 off. But it's "merely a matter of money" at that point. There's almost certainly some coking issues to overcome, but hey, we're already hypothetically taking on the largest industrial project of all time, roughly equivalent to all the effort spent to extract fossil fuels ever.
avalys 5y ago
Sure, but if you separate the carbon from the oxygen and return the oxygen to the atmosphere you reverse the process and you’re back to, simply, having to deal with roughly the same mass of fuel as you originally burned. Which is obviously a tractable problem since you burned it in the first place. If we had a good way to make synthetic gasoline from energy + carbon, we could have a totally carbon neutral fuel cycle where we use nuclear power to extract carbon from the air and produce synthetic gasoline.
- adrianN 5y ago
  Depending on your definition of "good" we already have ways to make liquid fuel from CO2+energy [1]. It just that you lose something like 90% of the energy from power plant to motion. Electric cars are much more efficient. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  It's monstrously inefficient to use nuclear power to create hydrocarbon fuels, truck them to petrol stations, and then burn them. "Modern gasoline engines have a maximum thermal efficiency of more than 50%,[1] but road legal cars are only about 20% to 35% when used to power a car. In other words, even when the engine is operating at its point of maximum thermal efficiency, of the total heat energy released by the gasoline consumed, about 65-80% of total power is emitted as heat without being turned into useful work, i.e. turning the crankshaft" See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency#Gasoline_(petrol)_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency#Gasoline_(pe... And the heat engine efficiency limits are only one part of the problem. Extracting the CO2 from the atmosphere also costs a lot of energy. It is more efficient and simpler to just use the existing electricity grid to charge electric vehicles. "For an electric vehicle, energy efficiency is estimated at 90%, " See https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/news-on-air/news/the-energy-efficiency-of-an-electric-car-motor/ https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/news-on-air/news/the-energy-...
  - beerandt 5y ago
    >For an electric vehicle, energy efficiency is estimated at 90% Just because you draw the system boundaries with the inefficiencies outside, doesn't make them disappear. Power generation, transmission, and distribution is on the order of 30%, before you take into account the inefficiencies of battery charging.
mempko 5y ago
It's not a tragedy of the commons but a tragedy of markets. Markets cannot factor in these externalities. It's a known fault with market systems. And carbon taxes simply won't work for many reasons (hence why oil companies are pro carbon tax). What we need is carbon rationing. Everyone gets X amount of carbon and prices of things are both in dollars and carbon rations. The rich, who use most of the carbon will have to buy from the poor who use very little. These rations will become more expensive over time until people don't get anymore. So they will only be able to buy things that are carbon neutral/carbon free.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  > And carbon taxes simply won't work for many reasons That’s a bold statement to leave unsourced.
  - pharmakom 5y ago
    It’s true that oil companies favour carbon taxes because they know they won’t ever get passed but by supporting them they can appear to care. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/01/1012138741/exxon-lobbyist-caught-on-video-talks-about-undermining-bidens-climate-push?t=1633503036921 https://www.npr.org/2021/07/01/1012138741/exxon-lobbyist-cau...
    - Semaphor 5y ago
      That’s not the statement I want a source for, it’s actually a source against what I quoted ;)
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Well, even without a spurce, they did give one very compelling piece of evidence: oil companies support this idea. Given everything we know about them, this is already strong evidence that it will be ineffective at curtailing the oil trade, which means it will be ineffective at affecting CO2.
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
piokoch 5y ago
"Burning a gallon of gasoline releases almost 10 kgs of CO2 into the atmosphere" I am not sure I understand the math here. 1 gallon of gasoline weights about 5kg, so how is that 10 kg of CO2 are released? Looks like mass will not be conserved in such a process. Am I missing something?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ethangk 5y ago
  It’s burnt with oxygen in the air to form CO2. The oxygen in the air is where the additional mass comes from
- microtonal 5y ago
  I haven't checked the math, but carbon from the fuel binds with oxygen from the air. CO2 consists of one carbon atom (12g/mol), two oxygen atoms (16g/mol). So, most of the weight comes from the oxygen from the air, rather than the fuel itself.
- nix23 5y ago
  >I am not sure I understand the math here. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=82&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=82&t=11

by rp1 5y ago

ximeng 5y ago

https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2016/02/visualizing-carbon/ https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2016/02/visualizing-car... here is another visualization

ivankirigin 5y ago

I like that you're using spatial analogies because it helps drive the point home. I visualized 50B tCO2 here: https://twitter.com/ikirigin/status/1425879839886626826 https://twitter.com/ikirigin/status/1425879839886626826 While it seems enormous, it's a very small fraction of the world.

nix23 5y ago
Every year since ~50 years?
BizarroLand 5y ago
Nice graphic, but the ideal scenario would be to find a method that strips the carbon out of the CO2. We're putting about 50 Billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. However, the Atomic weight of carbon is 12 whereas the Atomic weight of Oxygen is 16, and there are 2 oxygen atoms in every CO2 molecule, so 1 ton of pure sequestered carbon is 12+16+16 = 44/12 = 3 & 2/3 tons of CO2 removed from the atmosphere. 2.27 tons of carbon compacted together makes an approximately 1 meter cube. Of course, that would mean we would have to sequester ~6 billion cubic meters (13.6 billion tons or the equivalent of 4,079 hoover dams in size, probably enough to resurface every highway and road in America 2-3 inches deep) of pure carbon every year to reach carbon neutral, and then we would need to go beyond that to begin to reverse the effects. It would literally be the largest human undertaking in the history of the planet.

jaggederest 5y ago

I like the idea of stacking up a lot of 1 meter cubes of pure carbon (graphite, or diamond!) into nice shapes. Each cube is just over 2 metric tons (2266 kg) of carbon, or the equivalent of 8 metric tons of carbon dioxide. 20 cubic kilometers per year is enough to get us back to pre-industrial levels in no time, and build some interesting monuments while we're at it. A roughly 4-kilometer tall pyramid, anyone? Low low price of ~4 trillion dollars each. 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. If we did it in Australia, we could employ the entire country twice over, and they would be the 3 new tallest mountains in Down Under (by 1,772m).

akkartik 5y ago
How soon would we need a fourth?!
- jaggederest 5y ago
  Oh, sorry, I was not specific, it's three per year, every year, until we get to 250ppm CO2 in the atmosphere.
IntrepidWorm 5y ago
Its a wonderful image, but how do you propose sequestering the carbon? Without a powerful source of truly carbon-neutral energy, the losses incurred would simply see more carbon released downstream as a result of whatever process you choose to create such artful carbon chunks. I still really enjoy the mental image of a post-industrial society in a few thousand years sitting on a foundation of diamond bricks. :)
- jaggederest 5y ago
  Well, that's kind of down stream of what I was talking about - I am assuming that we can get to $250 per ton of direct carbon capture and then use something like a solar CO2 reduction system with a metal catalyst to strip the O2 off. But it's "merely a matter of money" at that point. There's almost certainly some coking issues to overcome, but hey, we're already hypothetically taking on the largest industrial project of all time, roughly equivalent to all the effort spent to extract fossil fuels ever.

avalys 5y ago

Sure, but if you separate the carbon from the oxygen and return the oxygen to the atmosphere you reverse the process and you’re back to, simply, having to deal with roughly the same mass of fuel as you originally burned. Which is obviously a tractable problem since you burned it in the first place. If we had a good way to make synthetic gasoline from energy + carbon, we could have a totally carbon neutral fuel cycle where we use nuclear power to extract carbon from the air and produce synthetic gasoline.

adrianN 5y ago
Depending on your definition of "good" we already have ways to make liquid fuel from CO2+energy [1]. It just that you lose something like 90% of the energy from power plant to motion. Electric cars are much more efficient. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel
kwhitefoot 5y ago
It's monstrously inefficient to use nuclear power to create hydrocarbon fuels, truck them to petrol stations, and then burn them. "Modern gasoline engines have a maximum thermal efficiency of more than 50%,[1] but road legal cars are only about 20% to 35% when used to power a car. In other words, even when the engine is operating at its point of maximum thermal efficiency, of the total heat energy released by the gasoline consumed, about 65-80% of total power is emitted as heat without being turned into useful work, i.e. turning the crankshaft" See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency#Gasoline_(petrol)_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency#Gasoline_(pe... And the heat engine efficiency limits are only one part of the problem. Extracting the CO2 from the atmosphere also costs a lot of energy. It is more efficient and simpler to just use the existing electricity grid to charge electric vehicles. "For an electric vehicle, energy efficiency is estimated at 90%, " See https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/news-on-air/news/the-energy-efficiency-of-an-electric-car-motor/ https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/news-on-air/news/the-energy-...
- beerandt 5y ago
  >For an electric vehicle, energy efficiency is estimated at 90% Just because you draw the system boundaries with the inefficiencies outside, doesn't make them disappear. Power generation, transmission, and distribution is on the order of 30%, before you take into account the inefficiencies of battery charging.

mempko 5y ago

It's not a tragedy of the commons but a tragedy of markets. Markets cannot factor in these externalities. It's a known fault with market systems. And carbon taxes simply won't work for many reasons (hence why oil companies are pro carbon tax). What we need is carbon rationing. Everyone gets X amount of carbon and prices of things are both in dollars and carbon rations. The rich, who use most of the carbon will have to buy from the poor who use very little. These rations will become more expensive over time until people don't get anymore. So they will only be able to buy things that are carbon neutral/carbon free.

Semaphor 5y ago
> And carbon taxes simply won't work for many reasons That’s a bold statement to leave unsourced.
- pharmakom 5y ago
  It’s true that oil companies favour carbon taxes because they know they won’t ever get passed but by supporting them they can appear to care. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/01/1012138741/exxon-lobbyist-caught-on-video-talks-about-undermining-bidens-climate-push?t=1633503036921 https://www.npr.org/2021/07/01/1012138741/exxon-lobbyist-cau...
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    That’s not the statement I want a source for, it’s actually a source against what I quoted ;)
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Well, even without a spurce, they did give one very compelling piece of evidence: oil companies support this idea. Given everything we know about them, this is already strong evidence that it will be ineffective at curtailing the oil trade, which means it will be ineffective at affecting CO2.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago

piokoch 5y ago

"Burning a gallon of gasoline releases almost 10 kgs of CO2 into the atmosphere" I am not sure I understand the math here. 1 gallon of gasoline weights about 5kg, so how is that 10 kg of CO2 are released? Looks like mass will not be conserved in such a process. Am I missing something?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ethangk 5y ago
It’s burnt with oxygen in the air to form CO2. The oxygen in the air is where the additional mass comes from
microtonal 5y ago
I haven't checked the math, but carbon from the fuel binds with oxygen from the air. CO2 consists of one carbon atom (12g/mol), two oxygen atoms (16g/mol). So, most of the weight comes from the oxygen from the air, rather than the fuel itself.
nix23 5y ago
>I am not sure I understand the math here. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=82&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=82&t=11