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I challenge you to actually do the napkin math here, rather than continue to state your claim that it achieves "nearly no results" without anything quantifying

I challenge you to actually do the napkin math here, rather than continue to state your claim that it achieves "nearly no results" without anything quantifying what that means. You might actually be right, but I don't really find your arguments persuasive at all. Regarding sucking all of the atmosphere through a machine, it is unclear why that is either impossible or necessary for this to be useful.

Alupis 4y ago
> Regarding sucking all of the atmosphere through a machine, it is unclear why that is either impossible or necessary for this to be useful. The only atmosphere being cleaned is that which passes through the machine. It's like a hepa filter for your house. Place the filter in a clean room, and it'll still work, but it'll take an exceedingly long period of time to circulate all the air in your home. The real-world atmosphere isn't stagnant like that in your home either... with currents and what-not, meaning this machine needs to be all over the globe to make meaningful impact. > I challenge you to actually do the napkin math here, rather than continue to state your claim that it achieves "nearly no results" without anything quantifying what that means. Others in this thread have already done so. But here it goes again: Total estimated global CO2 emissions (according to the article) are 36,000,000,000 tons per year. This machine is advertised to extract 36,000 tons per year (which likely means less since this is clearly a puff piece, but we'll use this number anyway). This is 1/1,000,000th of global CO2 emissions - meaning we'd need 1,000,000 more identical machines to achieve CO2 neutrality - which assumes zero net increase in emissions over whatever period of time it takes to manufacture and install all of these machines (which isn't reality). We don't know the emission cost of producing these machines - but it certainly isn't zero. We also don't know the emission cost of the energy being produced to power these things (which even with geo-thermal, is not zero either). We also don't know how large the footprint of these machines are - but given the rendering they do look to be huge. Lastly, we still don't know if it's a good idea to just deposit possibly billions of tons of carbon into the earth every year anyway, making this contraption more of a fantasy than something productive.
- datadata 4y ago
  > The only atmosphere being cleaned is that which passes through the machine. This is like saying that the only gasoline that is consumed is that which is burned up in a car. 1) A car can still be useful without consuming all gasoline in the world. This machine could be economically viable given carbon credit structures as well, it doesn't have to scale to solve the problem on its own, it just has to be efficient enough to be worth building (I'm not claiming that it meets this criteria). 2) Clearly we could actually use up the majority of gasoline on earth, there is no reason why scaling something that much is impossible. > with currents and what-not, meaning this machine needs to be all over the globe to make meaningful impact. Are you really saying this is an obstacle-- that if we wanted to make 1 million of these machines we would be unable to distribute them, and that furthermore we would completely clean the co2 from the atmosphere over a single country before the currents and what-not would bring in more co2 for the machines to consume? If this is true, then why do we care about co2 emissions in other countries currently? > We don't know the emission cost of producing these machines - but it certainly isn't zero. We also don't know the emission cost of the energy being produced to power these things (which even with geo-thermal, is not zero either). I agree that we need to know this and the other factors and that they are larger than zero, but it is critically important to know the actual values, or at least a rough estimate. How are you so confident whether it would work or not without knowing them, or even giving an estimate and doing the napkin math?
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    > This is like saying that the only gasoline that is consumed is that which is burned up in a car. 1) A car can still be useful without consuming all gasoline in the world. Cars burning gasoline is a side effect. This machine cleaning the atmosphere is its entire purpose.

Alupis 4y ago

> Regarding sucking all of the atmosphere through a machine, it is unclear why that is either impossible or necessary for this to be useful. The only atmosphere being cleaned is that which passes through the machine. It's like a hepa filter for your house. Place the filter in a clean room, and it'll still work, but it'll take an exceedingly long period of time to circulate all the air in your home. The real-world atmosphere isn't stagnant like that in your home either... with currents and what-not, meaning this machine needs to be all over the globe to make meaningful impact. > I challenge you to actually do the napkin math here, rather than continue to state your claim that it achieves "nearly no results" without anything quantifying what that means. Others in this thread have already done so. But here it goes again: Total estimated global CO2 emissions (according to the article) are 36,000,000,000 tons per year. This machine is advertised to extract 36,000 tons per year (which likely means less since this is clearly a puff piece, but we'll use this number anyway). This is 1/1,000,000th of global CO2 emissions - meaning we'd need 1,000,000 more identical machines to achieve CO2 neutrality - which assumes zero net increase in emissions over whatever period of time it takes to manufacture and install all of these machines (which isn't reality). We don't know the emission cost of producing these machines - but it certainly isn't zero. We also don't know the emission cost of the energy being produced to power these things (which even with geo-thermal, is not zero either). We also don't know how large the footprint of these machines are - but given the rendering they do look to be huge. Lastly, we still don't know if it's a good idea to just deposit possibly billions of tons of carbon into the earth every year anyway, making this contraption more of a fantasy than something productive.

datadata 4y ago
> The only atmosphere being cleaned is that which passes through the machine. This is like saying that the only gasoline that is consumed is that which is burned up in a car. 1) A car can still be useful without consuming all gasoline in the world. This machine could be economically viable given carbon credit structures as well, it doesn't have to scale to solve the problem on its own, it just has to be efficient enough to be worth building (I'm not claiming that it meets this criteria). 2) Clearly we could actually use up the majority of gasoline on earth, there is no reason why scaling something that much is impossible. > with currents and what-not, meaning this machine needs to be all over the globe to make meaningful impact. Are you really saying this is an obstacle-- that if we wanted to make 1 million of these machines we would be unable to distribute them, and that furthermore we would completely clean the co2 from the atmosphere over a single country before the currents and what-not would bring in more co2 for the machines to consume? If this is true, then why do we care about co2 emissions in other countries currently? > We don't know the emission cost of producing these machines - but it certainly isn't zero. We also don't know the emission cost of the energy being produced to power these things (which even with geo-thermal, is not zero either). I agree that we need to know this and the other factors and that they are larger than zero, but it is critically important to know the actual values, or at least a rough estimate. How are you so confident whether it would work or not without knowing them, or even giving an estimate and doing the napkin math?
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > This is like saying that the only gasoline that is consumed is that which is burned up in a car. 1) A car can still be useful without consuming all gasoline in the world. Cars burning gasoline is a side effect. This machine cleaning the atmosphere is its entire purpose.