7 ms·

Ok, I was all ready to attack this as simply another dodge in the unceasing dodges every industry (& corporation, especially) has ever used to "externalize 'cos

Ok, I was all ready to attack this as simply another dodge in the unceasing dodges every industry (& corporation, especially) has ever used to "externalize 'costs'".* But, this involves funding development and use of an actual technology to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Not familiar w/ the company or details in that space at the moment, but I am aware of the basic principles** apparently being used here. So, this seems somewhat more than the usual lip service, which is good to see. * Along the lines of wonderous marketing phrases like "responsible corporate citizens" (or "stewardship") ... to replace actual concern for your community, one of the "efficiencies" brought to us by 'professionalizing' business management in the form of "MBAs" / burying real lives and consequences in Microsoft(R) Excel(TM) "spreadsheets" ** Punintentional ... bit oblique, but, some might enjoy

KennyBlanken 3y ago
> But, this involves funding development and use of an actual technology to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere. And how is that better than putting the money toward solar panels or other renewable energy sources?
- rcxdude 3y ago
  The first thing to understand is that money at this stage is mostly investment: the goal is to develop the technology and try to scale it up, not to just offset the carbon in the short term (in much the same way as investment in solar was not just to generate electricity but to enable economies of scale to actually get it to be a serious contender for replacing fossil fuels). Why is such technology important to invest in? Two main reasons: firstly it could very well be the most economical means to make certain carbon-emitting processes carbon neutral, for cases where there is not currently a good means to eliminate the carbon emissions. Think aircraft emissions, for example. Secondly, even if we completely eliminate net carbon emissions, global warming will still continue for a fair few decades, as the climate takes a long time to actually reach equilibrium. If we want to avoid that equilibrium being too hot, we will need to remove carbon from the atmosphere. And while planting trees is generally a good thing, it's not really a feasible way to actually remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to make much of a dent (only growing new forests generally removes much carbon: mature forests are mostly carbon neutral, and the carbon capture process is slow). Technology like this, if it can be scaled and use renewable energy, has a chance of being able to make this difference (though the biggest question, apart from whether the technology can actually work, is who will pay for such removal, if it's not for carbon credits).
- _aavaa_ 3y ago
  I don’t believe that it is. My sibling comment even argues for needing to invest in technologies for removing carbon from the air because we need a way to remove the CO2 that’s already up there. I believe that putting this same money into building more renewables is better use for the money. We can worry about removing CO2 from the atmosphere once we stop dumping immense quantities of it. That being said, this problem is as much economical as technical. Microsoft, want to help reduce CO2 levels? Spend this money on lobbing to introduce carbon prices, e.g. see Canada’s carbon tax or the EU carbon tax WITH a border adjustment.
  - harpooniker 3y ago
    [flagged]
- satvikpendem 3y ago
  We must both remove existing carbon from the air as well as not emit more carbon. They are different goals, one does not replace the other.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Not really, as long as we hit net zero fast enough that’s sufficient. People working on carbon capture are really trying to sell the idea of carbon capture but it’s optional. Earth slowly returns to equilibrium point well below current CO2 levels without our intervention and current levels aren’t so high as to be unlivable. So the only question we need to ask is if it’s easier to cut emissions or sequester them.
    - rapind 3y ago
      > So the only question we need to ask is if it’s easier to cut emissions or sequester them. I can think of another. How do we get everyone to do the answer to your question? I think it’s fine to identify what’s most efficient in a political vacuum, so long as we then address how we actually convince people to do it (lower consumption & emissions).
      - harpooniker 3y ago
        [flagged]
    - hedora 3y ago
      We had to hit net zero 10-20 years ago. We’re already hitting climate tipping points, so we’re already committed to some form of climate engineering. The lowest risk approach to that is carbon capture.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      > So the only question we need to ask is if it’s easier to cut emissions or sequester them. At the start, cutting is much easier. But each percent is harder to cut than the last. There is a point where cutting costs more than sequestering.
- slothtrop 3y ago
  Not mutually exclusive, and the plummeting cost of solar makes it increasingly competitive anyway.
candiddevmike 3y ago
In 2021, the US emitted more than 5 billion tons of CO2 [1]. I don't see how technology like this could ever scale to capture even a tiny fraction of that. A ton of dirt is roughly 20 cubic feet (just for perspective/I don't know what these things output), and we emit more than 13 million of those every day. The kind of scale here is insane, and that's even assuming the technology can be truly carbon negative from cradle to grave. And this is just for the US... It's all green washing. Everyone, the rich especially, must dramatically reduce consumption and put our money towards regrowing/healing the green space. 1 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/270499/co2-emissions-in-selected-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/270499/co2-emissions-in-...
- vinay_ys 3y ago
  What blows my mind is the dilution capacity of the air in our atmosphere. How much more of this can air hold and still keep it acceptable from breathable and visibility aspects?
  - mr_toad 3y ago
    Currently CO2 concentration in the air is about 0.04 percent. Levels above 0.5 percent may be harmful in the long-term. Levels above 7 percent can cause suffocation.
- junofan 3y ago
  They heat rocks. What’s the barrier to scale other than cash?
- brian-armstrong 3y ago
  Cynically, a "market forces" carbon reduction strategy does have the advantage that it doesn't require anyone to stop any particular behavior, which collectively is easier said than done. If there's even a small chance it could work, shouldn't we try?
  - chii 3y ago
    to make market forces work, you will need to regulate the release of carbon, just like the release of other pollutants - have a penalty, or some sort of cost that is higher than the actual capture cost.
Gigachad 3y ago
Active removal seems like the only legitimate scheme. All the carbon credits stuff is absolute crap.
- BariumBlue 3y ago
  Quick math, it takes 10+ times more energy to scrub and then store carbon from the air, then you get by burning natgas for the same amount of CO2. (1 ton of LNG produces 100 KWh and 2.76 tons CO2, and the thermodynamic minimum energy required to extract CO2 from ambient air is about 250 kWh/ton CO2, but apparently realistically closer to 1,200 kWh / ton.) It'd make way more sense to first focus on decarbonizing our energy grid, before starting to spend 10+x more energy to recapture and push it back underground.
  - notatoad 3y ago
    obviously not putting the carbon in the air in the first place is the best solution, and carbon removal has the real potential to take away electricity that could be used for other productive purposes. but clean energy isn't entirely fungible, and if you've got a context where it's abundant then it can make sense to use it for carbon removal. we just need to be careful that the carbon removal projects are only getting built in places where the energy would otherwise be wasted.
  - cperciva 3y ago
    While I agree about the thermodynamic argument -- you can't extract CO2 from the atmosphere without using significantly more energy than you released by burning fossil fuels -- there's an argument to be made that not all kWh are equal. If you can extract CO2 from the atmosphere close to the equator at noon on a sunny day, you're going to be able to do that pretty cheaply.
  - hedora 3y ago
    We’ve already emitted so much CO2 that we have to capture a lot of what is currently in the atmosphere. Also, decarbonizing the grid with solar, wind, tides, nuclear, and even geothermal is going to involve generating massive amounts of waste electricity. On top of that, some energy generation technologies (like solar) are ramping faster than Moore’s law used to. That means that non-peak energy production will no longer be scarce, so thermodynamic efficiency is a second-order effect. In all likelihood, the most economic path forward probably involves simultaneously drawing down CO2 and also generating 5-10% of the energy we use from fossil fuels, 90-95% from renewables, and an additional 10-100% on carbon capture.
bboygravity 3y ago
Is there anything better than trees though? I mean when you look at amount of CO2 emitted for planting/maintenance/harvest v.s. absorbed over the course of 10+ years?
- stupendousyappi 3y ago
  Bamboo grows faster in compatible climates.
- murrayb 3y ago
  Trees are good. Everything I have read suggests soil (hummus) is better. Requires change to farming practices though which is traditionally difficult to do and has rich lobby groups arrayed against it.
- input_sh 3y ago
  It works the same for all plants: they consume CO2 to grow and release it back when they die. The reason most of the effort is focused on trees is precisely because they store CO2 the longest and can be grown pretty much anywhere. If speed is what you're after, bamboo grows very quickly, consuming high levels of CO2, but also doesn't live that long, undoing that. Wetlands filled with peat are the absolute kings of storing CO2 (~3% of Earth's surface stores ~1/3 of CO2), but you can't artificially make them anywhere, and it would take hundreds of years before it becomes effective. Seaweed like kelp are also very effective at storing a lot of CO2, but organisms that feed on them cancel out the benefits. So, a properly designed[0] forest still wins. What works better than planting is conserving, as in not draining swamplands, cutting down forests, and so on. Not because it's something we can't recreate, but because the sheer amount of time it took for such ecosystems to develop makes it much more effective than anything we'd plant today. Which brings me to the best solution: not building anything on an empty patch of land, but to build around the existing ecosystems, essentially extending them. The ends of a forest aren't anywhere near as productive as their middle, so by extending the space around them you're extending that most productive middle. Another very effective method is re-connecting forests via corridors (tunneling roads or building wildlife crossings), allowing animals to roam between the two parts, which makes both parts healthier. In summary, building trees is absolutely the best, but it's not just about planting them, it's about picking the best spots to do so. [0] Not planting all the trees at once, the diversity of the trees planted, proper spacing, re-introducing animals so that the space below the trees thrives with vegetation, etc.

KennyBlanken 3y ago

> But, this involves funding development and use of an actual technology to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere. And how is that better than putting the money toward solar panels or other renewable energy sources?

rcxdude 3y ago
The first thing to understand is that money at this stage is mostly investment: the goal is to develop the technology and try to scale it up, not to just offset the carbon in the short term (in much the same way as investment in solar was not just to generate electricity but to enable economies of scale to actually get it to be a serious contender for replacing fossil fuels). Why is such technology important to invest in? Two main reasons: firstly it could very well be the most economical means to make certain carbon-emitting processes carbon neutral, for cases where there is not currently a good means to eliminate the carbon emissions. Think aircraft emissions, for example. Secondly, even if we completely eliminate net carbon emissions, global warming will still continue for a fair few decades, as the climate takes a long time to actually reach equilibrium. If we want to avoid that equilibrium being too hot, we will need to remove carbon from the atmosphere. And while planting trees is generally a good thing, it's not really a feasible way to actually remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to make much of a dent (only growing new forests generally removes much carbon: mature forests are mostly carbon neutral, and the carbon capture process is slow). Technology like this, if it can be scaled and use renewable energy, has a chance of being able to make this difference (though the biggest question, apart from whether the technology can actually work, is who will pay for such removal, if it's not for carbon credits).
_aavaa_ 3y ago
I don’t believe that it is. My sibling comment even argues for needing to invest in technologies for removing carbon from the air because we need a way to remove the CO2 that’s already up there. I believe that putting this same money into building more renewables is better use for the money. We can worry about removing CO2 from the atmosphere once we stop dumping immense quantities of it. That being said, this problem is as much economical as technical. Microsoft, want to help reduce CO2 levels? Spend this money on lobbing to introduce carbon prices, e.g. see Canada’s carbon tax or the EU carbon tax WITH a border adjustment.
- harpooniker 3y ago
  [flagged]
satvikpendem 3y ago
We must both remove existing carbon from the air as well as not emit more carbon. They are different goals, one does not replace the other.
- Retric 3y ago
  Not really, as long as we hit net zero fast enough that’s sufficient. People working on carbon capture are really trying to sell the idea of carbon capture but it’s optional. Earth slowly returns to equilibrium point well below current CO2 levels without our intervention and current levels aren’t so high as to be unlivable. So the only question we need to ask is if it’s easier to cut emissions or sequester them.
  - rapind 3y ago
    > So the only question we need to ask is if it’s easier to cut emissions or sequester them. I can think of another. How do we get everyone to do the answer to your question? I think it’s fine to identify what’s most efficient in a political vacuum, so long as we then address how we actually convince people to do it (lower consumption & emissions).
    - harpooniker 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - hedora 3y ago
    We had to hit net zero 10-20 years ago. We’re already hitting climate tipping points, so we’re already committed to some form of climate engineering. The lowest risk approach to that is carbon capture.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    > So the only question we need to ask is if it’s easier to cut emissions or sequester them. At the start, cutting is much easier. But each percent is harder to cut than the last. There is a point where cutting costs more than sequestering.
slothtrop 3y ago
Not mutually exclusive, and the plummeting cost of solar makes it increasingly competitive anyway.

candiddevmike 3y ago

In 2021, the US emitted more than 5 billion tons of CO2 [1]. I don't see how technology like this could ever scale to capture even a tiny fraction of that. A ton of dirt is roughly 20 cubic feet (just for perspective/I don't know what these things output), and we emit more than 13 million of those every day. The kind of scale here is insane, and that's even assuming the technology can be truly carbon negative from cradle to grave. And this is just for the US... It's all green washing. Everyone, the rich especially, must dramatically reduce consumption and put our money towards regrowing/healing the green space. 1 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/270499/co2-emissions-in-selected-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/270499/co2-emissions-in-...

vinay_ys 3y ago
What blows my mind is the dilution capacity of the air in our atmosphere. How much more of this can air hold and still keep it acceptable from breathable and visibility aspects?
- mr_toad 3y ago
  Currently CO2 concentration in the air is about 0.04 percent. Levels above 0.5 percent may be harmful in the long-term. Levels above 7 percent can cause suffocation.
junofan 3y ago
They heat rocks. What’s the barrier to scale other than cash?
brian-armstrong 3y ago
Cynically, a "market forces" carbon reduction strategy does have the advantage that it doesn't require anyone to stop any particular behavior, which collectively is easier said than done. If there's even a small chance it could work, shouldn't we try?
- chii 3y ago
  to make market forces work, you will need to regulate the release of carbon, just like the release of other pollutants - have a penalty, or some sort of cost that is higher than the actual capture cost.

Gigachad 3y ago

Active removal seems like the only legitimate scheme. All the carbon credits stuff is absolute crap.

BariumBlue 3y ago
Quick math, it takes 10+ times more energy to scrub and then store carbon from the air, then you get by burning natgas for the same amount of CO2. (1 ton of LNG produces 100 KWh and 2.76 tons CO2, and the thermodynamic minimum energy required to extract CO2 from ambient air is about 250 kWh/ton CO2, but apparently realistically closer to 1,200 kWh / ton.) It'd make way more sense to first focus on decarbonizing our energy grid, before starting to spend 10+x more energy to recapture and push it back underground.
- notatoad 3y ago
  obviously not putting the carbon in the air in the first place is the best solution, and carbon removal has the real potential to take away electricity that could be used for other productive purposes. but clean energy isn't entirely fungible, and if you've got a context where it's abundant then it can make sense to use it for carbon removal. we just need to be careful that the carbon removal projects are only getting built in places where the energy would otherwise be wasted.
- cperciva 3y ago
  While I agree about the thermodynamic argument -- you can't extract CO2 from the atmosphere without using significantly more energy than you released by burning fossil fuels -- there's an argument to be made that not all kWh are equal. If you can extract CO2 from the atmosphere close to the equator at noon on a sunny day, you're going to be able to do that pretty cheaply.
- hedora 3y ago
  We’ve already emitted so much CO2 that we have to capture a lot of what is currently in the atmosphere. Also, decarbonizing the grid with solar, wind, tides, nuclear, and even geothermal is going to involve generating massive amounts of waste electricity. On top of that, some energy generation technologies (like solar) are ramping faster than Moore’s law used to. That means that non-peak energy production will no longer be scarce, so thermodynamic efficiency is a second-order effect. In all likelihood, the most economic path forward probably involves simultaneously drawing down CO2 and also generating 5-10% of the energy we use from fossil fuels, 90-95% from renewables, and an additional 10-100% on carbon capture.

bboygravity 3y ago

Is there anything better than trees though? I mean when you look at amount of CO2 emitted for planting/maintenance/harvest v.s. absorbed over the course of 10+ years?

stupendousyappi 3y ago
Bamboo grows faster in compatible climates.
murrayb 3y ago
Trees are good. Everything I have read suggests soil (hummus) is better. Requires change to farming practices though which is traditionally difficult to do and has rich lobby groups arrayed against it.
input_sh 3y ago
It works the same for all plants: they consume CO2 to grow and release it back when they die. The reason most of the effort is focused on trees is precisely because they store CO2 the longest and can be grown pretty much anywhere. If speed is what you're after, bamboo grows very quickly, consuming high levels of CO2, but also doesn't live that long, undoing that. Wetlands filled with peat are the absolute kings of storing CO2 (~3% of Earth's surface stores ~1/3 of CO2), but you can't artificially make them anywhere, and it would take hundreds of years before it becomes effective. Seaweed like kelp are also very effective at storing a lot of CO2, but organisms that feed on them cancel out the benefits. So, a properly designed[0] forest still wins. What works better than planting is conserving, as in not draining swamplands, cutting down forests, and so on. Not because it's something we can't recreate, but because the sheer amount of time it took for such ecosystems to develop makes it much more effective than anything we'd plant today. Which brings me to the best solution: not building anything on an empty patch of land, but to build around the existing ecosystems, essentially extending them. The ends of a forest aren't anywhere near as productive as their middle, so by extending the space around them you're extending that most productive middle. Another very effective method is re-connecting forests via corridors (tunneling roads or building wildlife crossings), allowing animals to roam between the two parts, which makes both parts healthier. In summary, building trees is absolutely the best, but it's not just about planting them, it's about picking the best spots to do so. [0] Not planting all the trees at once, the diversity of the trees planted, proper spacing, re-introducing animals so that the space below the trees thrives with vegetation, etc.