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Physically it will require more energy to extract carbon from the air later. But "cost" is a funny, human construct. We just don't know how much it will cost, b

Physically it will require more energy to extract carbon from the air later. But "cost" is a funny, human construct. We just don't know how much it will cost, because we don't have carbon capture at scale yet. As with everything in economics this is just guessing about the future.

throwaway894345 5y ago
Right, but we shouldn’t recklessly pollute on the basis that we don’t know for certain that it will bite us in the ass later. Banking on technological advancements so we don’t have to reform our energy sector and make our various manufacturing and shipping networks efficient is pretty foolish.
Jeff_Brown 5y ago
That's not all economists do! We also guess about the past and present.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  Self awareness is a good thing to have!
lozenge 5y ago
Thermodynamics gives a good idea. You need to pull a huge amount of air through your machine to get some carbon out of it. "At present there are no proven technologies capable of large-scale air capture of CO2. It has been suggested that, with strong research and development support and industrial scale pilot projects sustained over decades, costs as low as ∼$500/tC may be achievable [226]. Thermodynamic constraints [227] suggest that this cost estimate may be low. An assessment by the American Physical Society [228] argues that the lowest currently achievable cost, using existing approaches, is much greater ($600/tCO2 or $2200/tC)." https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0081648#s6 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...