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I'm highly sceptical regarding ALL CO2 removal schemes that don't operate directly at a CO2 source, because I see absolutely NO WAY how they could ever be made

I'm highly sceptical regarding ALL CO2 removal schemes that don't operate directly at a CO2 source, because I see absolutely NO WAY how they could ever be made cost effective: CO2 concentration in air is less than 1g/m^3, meaning that you would have to pump like 10000 m^3 of air through your apparatus just to remove the CO2 from a single car travelling ~100km. And this assumes 100% extraction efficiency which is not realistic at all. So any climate plan that relies on large-scale CO2 removal from atmospheric air is probably a complete SCAM. Also compare the cost difference between reducing emissions at the source by electrifying a vehicle with the effort required of extracting the CO2 from the air-- it is COMPLETELY obvious to me that even spending a dollar on CO2 removal is absolute LUNACY until all the cheap and easy options of reducing emissions have been exhausted.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
whatshisface 3y ago
Trees don't pump the air through their leaves, they let CO2 diffuse and blow in the wind.
- oh_sigh 3y ago
  Sure, but the amount of CO2 absorbed by a tree is measured in grams per day, which isn't really enough to even realistically offset the devices own carbon footprint, let alone start tackling other co2 sources.
zamfi 3y ago
Look, I think direct air capture (DAC) is as much “not the solution” as the next guy, but this kind of black-and-white thinking has no place in climate change mitigation. Right now, DAC costs about $250-500/ton. The average passenger vehicle in the US emits 4.6 tons of CO2/year. You say it’s not cost-effective but you could literally charge every passenger vehicle user in the US $1-2000/year and use it for capture and eliminate the single largest source. That is the same order of magnitude as vehicle registration fees (though of course you’d want to make such a tax progressive, etc.), at least in California. More importantly, DAC provides a major price signal for the cost of carbon emissions: if it costs $250/ton to get CO2 out of the atmosphere, it starts to make more sense to charge emitters $250/ton in advance to remove it — and if we implemented such a system, the market would likely respond very quickly with rapid reductions in carbon emissions. Oil and gas companies think it’s the solution? Great, they can pay $250/ton for it. Instead we’re selling everyone individual shame about what are really societal decisions, telling them not to drive as much, be too cold/hot at home, and eat less beef — while letting producers largely off the hook. That’s the real lunacy here.
- chinchilla2020 3y ago
  > this kind of black-and-white thinking has no place in climate change mitigation. This is not black-and-white thinking. He is pointing out that infeasible miracle cures are not the solution. We need to focus on realistic possibilities, not Elon-Musk jesustech.
  - zamfi 3y ago
    No one thinks infeasible miracle cures are the solution, so he's doing much more than "pointing that out": he's making an argument about the infeasibility of carbon capture. In particular, he's saying it's impossible to capture enough carbon at scale in a cost-effective manner, so therefore we should not even be looking at this option until we've exhausted the alternatives. But he's wrong: it's not impossible, it's merely expensive, and anyway we should be pursuing all possible remedies in parallel, not dismissing something as infeasible because someone's armchair analysis makes it look like a scam to them. What we need are people trying both likely and unlikely solutions, not knee-jerk gatekeeping from randoms on the internet.
    - fuzzfactor 3y ago
      There will be better physical, chemical, environmental, cost, and overall economic advantages resulting from efforts at source reduction than air capture. This will always be what matters when resources need to be deployed most efficiently for abatement. When you do the math, unless resources become unlimited, source capture is the better use of limited infrastructure. It's really kinda-sorta completely impossible to fool Mother Nature on things like this. The problem is not enough effort is going into source removal since the responsible source would be the only one that would be facing the added cost above what they are doing now. With remote air capture the much less efficient and costly process can be spread among huge numbers of different but smaller payers whether they know it or not. If that makes significant progress occur sooner that should make DAC be good to go forward with in the short term, but eventually people will be able to do the math at scale and most will say WTF were we spinning our wheels so long for?
- 3y ago
andrewmutz 3y ago
> So any climate plan that relies on large-scale CO2 removal from atmospheric air is probably a complete SCAM. The "scam" language is interesting to me. I often run into people who seem to think that advocates of carbon capture technology are somehow being intellectually dishonest and are not serious about climate change. In fact I think there are a lot of people who are interested in carbon capture tech who just keep an open mind about it. Not all scientific advances are obvious early on. I think we should avoid assuming that people who are promoting carbon capture research are speaking in bad faith. There are lots of people who genuinely believe the tech may mature to a point it is useful to the fight against climate change. Just because the fossil fuel industry promotes it doesnt mean that everyone who promotes it is a shill for the fossil fuel industry.
- myrmidon 3y ago
  I'd not go so far and blame everyone involved in carbon capture tech; more specifically I thank that it CAN make sense if you're able to capture at the source (much higher concentration => less efficiency problems). But I absolutely blame journalists and spokespersons that peddle this as some kind of viable technology when it's ABSOLUTELY not; this is similar to fusion tech, where people (sometimes deliberately!) create the impression that the technology could "solve" climate change and is just around the corner. But in both cases no instance I've seen so far passes even a rudimentary smell test. If you have a novel method to catch CO2 from the air or are able to run your tokamak for 90s longer than that is awesome and interesting, but DONT run around and pretend to be heralding a scientific revolution in mainstream media (where both average reader and writer have an understanding of the subject and economics behind that is comparable with a average housecat). I ABSOLUTELY blame people for doing that, and I consider it quite harmful because it creates the impression that there are some kinds of tech-based avenues out of climate change that never really existed at all, and this can even negatively impact decisions from policymakers.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

whatshisface 3y ago

Trees don't pump the air through their leaves, they let CO2 diffuse and blow in the wind.

oh_sigh 3y ago
Sure, but the amount of CO2 absorbed by a tree is measured in grams per day, which isn't really enough to even realistically offset the devices own carbon footprint, let alone start tackling other co2 sources.

zamfi 3y ago

Look, I think direct air capture (DAC) is as much “not the solution” as the next guy, but this kind of black-and-white thinking has no place in climate change mitigation. Right now, DAC costs about $250-500/ton. The average passenger vehicle in the US emits 4.6 tons of CO2/year. You say it’s not cost-effective but you could literally charge every passenger vehicle user in the US $1-2000/year and use it for capture and eliminate the single largest source. That is the same order of magnitude as vehicle registration fees (though of course you’d want to make such a tax progressive, etc.), at least in California. More importantly, DAC provides a major price signal for the cost of carbon emissions: if it costs $250/ton to get CO2 out of the atmosphere, it starts to make more sense to charge emitters $250/ton in advance to remove it — and if we implemented such a system, the market would likely respond very quickly with rapid reductions in carbon emissions. Oil and gas companies think it’s the solution? Great, they can pay $250/ton for it. Instead we’re selling everyone individual shame about what are really societal decisions, telling them not to drive as much, be too cold/hot at home, and eat less beef — while letting producers largely off the hook. That’s the real lunacy here.

chinchilla2020 3y ago
> this kind of black-and-white thinking has no place in climate change mitigation. This is not black-and-white thinking. He is pointing out that infeasible miracle cures are not the solution. We need to focus on realistic possibilities, not Elon-Musk jesustech.
- zamfi 3y ago
  No one thinks infeasible miracle cures are the solution, so he's doing much more than "pointing that out": he's making an argument about the infeasibility of carbon capture. In particular, he's saying it's impossible to capture enough carbon at scale in a cost-effective manner, so therefore we should not even be looking at this option until we've exhausted the alternatives. But he's wrong: it's not impossible, it's merely expensive, and anyway we should be pursuing all possible remedies in parallel, not dismissing something as infeasible because someone's armchair analysis makes it look like a scam to them. What we need are people trying both likely and unlikely solutions, not knee-jerk gatekeeping from randoms on the internet.
  - fuzzfactor 3y ago
    There will be better physical, chemical, environmental, cost, and overall economic advantages resulting from efforts at source reduction than air capture. This will always be what matters when resources need to be deployed most efficiently for abatement. When you do the math, unless resources become unlimited, source capture is the better use of limited infrastructure. It's really kinda-sorta completely impossible to fool Mother Nature on things like this. The problem is not enough effort is going into source removal since the responsible source would be the only one that would be facing the added cost above what they are doing now. With remote air capture the much less efficient and costly process can be spread among huge numbers of different but smaller payers whether they know it or not. If that makes significant progress occur sooner that should make DAC be good to go forward with in the short term, but eventually people will be able to do the math at scale and most will say WTF were we spinning our wheels so long for?
3y ago

andrewmutz 3y ago

> So any climate plan that relies on large-scale CO2 removal from atmospheric air is probably a complete SCAM. The "scam" language is interesting to me. I often run into people who seem to think that advocates of carbon capture technology are somehow being intellectually dishonest and are not serious about climate change. In fact I think there are a lot of people who are interested in carbon capture tech who just keep an open mind about it. Not all scientific advances are obvious early on. I think we should avoid assuming that people who are promoting carbon capture research are speaking in bad faith. There are lots of people who genuinely believe the tech may mature to a point it is useful to the fight against climate change. Just because the fossil fuel industry promotes it doesnt mean that everyone who promotes it is a shill for the fossil fuel industry.

myrmidon 3y ago
I'd not go so far and blame everyone involved in carbon capture tech; more specifically I thank that it CAN make sense if you're able to capture at the source (much higher concentration => less efficiency problems). But I absolutely blame journalists and spokespersons that peddle this as some kind of viable technology when it's ABSOLUTELY not; this is similar to fusion tech, where people (sometimes deliberately!) create the impression that the technology could "solve" climate change and is just around the corner. But in both cases no instance I've seen so far passes even a rudimentary smell test. If you have a novel method to catch CO2 from the air or are able to run your tokamak for 90s longer than that is awesome and interesting, but DONT run around and pretend to be heralding a scientific revolution in mainstream media (where both average reader and writer have an understanding of the subject and economics behind that is comparable with a average housecat). I ABSOLUTELY blame people for doing that, and I consider it quite harmful because it creates the impression that there are some kinds of tech-based avenues out of climate change that never really existed at all, and this can even negatively impact decisions from policymakers.