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> There are two main types of geoengineering. The first is removing carbon from the environment to restore pre-Industrial levels. While carbon removal is necess

by avmich 3y ago

> There are two main types of geoengineering. The first is removing carbon from the environment to restore pre-Industrial levels. While carbon removal is necessary, it will take over a century to remove and sequester the carbon already present in the atmosphere and oceans. We're on an engineering (among other things) forum, and it's surprising that technological solutions to the global climate problem aren't discussed enough. This statement illustrates another problem - "space" technologists assume that carbon cleaning would take "over a century", while some "carbon-cleaning" technologists assume space-related solutions will take too long. And in this thread there's also an opinion that, since we don't know much about global cooling, we should redouble our efforts elsewhere. On the other hands, we seem to need all of that. We try political solutions, and they work - too bad so far, even though they do show some progress. We start talking about technological approaches - like, take a billionaire and a tech program, make an analysis (it's a sticky part) and then actually try to do something (aerosols? ocean seeding? pulverized minerals which react with CO2? space shadow? direct carbon capture from atmosphere?). We shouldn't tie our hands to the point of inaction, because inaction is also costly. And yes, we need more traditional approaches too - pressure on politicians, economical means of stick and carrot to get the intended results, green energy approaches - but in addition, not instead, since so far we're badly lagging.

rgmerk 3y ago
While the cheapest CO2 sequestration sinks are limited in capacity, there seems to be enough alternatives that could be scaled up to virtually any required capacity. Furthermore, direct air capture doesn’t appear to require anything else that isn’t abundant - and the absorption materials and catalysts can be recycled indefinitely. I’m not sure I’ll live to see it but my belief is that in the latter half of the 21st century we’ll see direct air capture deployed on a truly astonishing scale.
- avmich 3y ago
  It's annoying that there seems to be rather promising technological approaches, which don't even require a lot of political will - and yet we don't seem to see them applied at a needed scale, or getting there. A close approach seems to be taken by Terraform Industries - in a sense of scale. Just like Elon Musk repeats that SpaceX doesn't build rockets as much as it buildы a proper rocket industry, Casey Handmer at https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/04/11/climate-tech-checklist/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/04/11/climate-tech-c... demonstrates good attention to scale. A BOTE calculations showed that if we have a billion m^3/s of air cleaned from CO2, we'd reduce CO2 in atmosphere twice as fast as we're adding CO2 there. A unit which handles 1 m3/s - given rather simple goal - doesn't look too expensive, and Earth already has a billion personal automobiles, so technically speaking we should be able to have some progress. We need to pay enough attention to the urgency of the situation, the solutions should really scale.
- pipodeclown 3y ago
  Sure but looking at the energy requirements of those systems it doesn't really start to make sense to deploy before you've seriously decorbanised your energy supply, which comes back to OP's remark. Why discuss these types of systems when we should be focusing on decorbanisation?
  - avmich 3y ago
    > Why discuss these types of systems when we should be focusing on decorbanisation? We should, but we don't do enough of that. So let's put efforts where they bring results - even if they'd theoretically bring more results elsewhere, in practice they don't. In reality we do try to prevent atmosphere pollution from happening, we just don't do enough of it. Some others of us, who're not involved in this process may have better chances with other, less efficient for now but still useful approaches.

by avmich 3y ago

rgmerk 3y ago

While the cheapest CO2 sequestration sinks are limited in capacity, there seems to be enough alternatives that could be scaled up to virtually any required capacity. Furthermore, direct air capture doesn’t appear to require anything else that isn’t abundant - and the absorption materials and catalysts can be recycled indefinitely. I’m not sure I’ll live to see it but my belief is that in the latter half of the 21st century we’ll see direct air capture deployed on a truly astonishing scale.

avmich 3y ago
It's annoying that there seems to be rather promising technological approaches, which don't even require a lot of political will - and yet we don't seem to see them applied at a needed scale, or getting there. A close approach seems to be taken by Terraform Industries - in a sense of scale. Just like Elon Musk repeats that SpaceX doesn't build rockets as much as it buildы a proper rocket industry, Casey Handmer at https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/04/11/climate-tech-checklist/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/04/11/climate-tech-c... demonstrates good attention to scale. A BOTE calculations showed that if we have a billion m^3/s of air cleaned from CO2, we'd reduce CO2 in atmosphere twice as fast as we're adding CO2 there. A unit which handles 1 m3/s - given rather simple goal - doesn't look too expensive, and Earth already has a billion personal automobiles, so technically speaking we should be able to have some progress. We need to pay enough attention to the urgency of the situation, the solutions should really scale.
pipodeclown 3y ago
Sure but looking at the energy requirements of those systems it doesn't really start to make sense to deploy before you've seriously decorbanised your energy supply, which comes back to OP's remark. Why discuss these types of systems when we should be focusing on decorbanisation?
- avmich 3y ago
  > Why discuss these types of systems when we should be focusing on decorbanisation? We should, but we don't do enough of that. So let's put efforts where they bring results - even if they'd theoretically bring more results elsewhere, in practice they don't. In reality we do try to prevent atmosphere pollution from happening, we just don't do enough of it. Some others of us, who're not involved in this process may have better chances with other, less efficient for now but still useful approaches.