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The best way to sequester carbon is to leave it in the god damn ground. Please go google climate town talking about clean coal. Carbon capture is a scam.

sanderjd 3y ago
Nobody thinks direct air capture is a scam. There's already more CO2 in the air than we want. Even after we get to net zero emissions, we'll want to suck some of it back out. It's reasonable to question whether it makes sense to be focusing resources on it right now, when it is not the lowest hanging fruit toward reaching net zero, but personally I think it is, because it takes many years for technologies to mature, so it makes sense to get that flywheel spinning on these technologies now. I think what you're responding strongly to is capturing emissions from point sources where fossil fuels are being burned. I don't think that's a scam either - I'd characterize it as an unfortunate necessity due to path dependency - but it's a very different thing than direct air capture.
- brightlancer 3y ago
  > > Carbon capture is a scam. > Nobody thinks direct air capture is a scam. Yes, folks do. points up Two more examples in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37452537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37452537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37452761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37452761 As a general rule, "nobody thinks that" or "nobody is saying that" are false -- there are always folks who do, sometimes very vocally. We must stop pretending extremists aren't out there.
  - awestroke 3y ago
    And you need to stop referring to people who disagree with you as "extremists"
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    I thought it would be clear from context that I meant "nobody who seriously works on this problem" rather than "no internet randos". People on social media believe all kinds of dumb things. But there is an actual and notable difference of opinion between point-source carbon capture and direct air capture among people who work in the space.
- alexey-salmin 3y ago
  > Nobody thinks direct air capture is a scam I do
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Sorry I meant nobody who works seriously on climate solutions. There are many people who are in that category and reasonably believe point source capture is a bad / scam idea (which, again, I disagree with this strongly), but it's still clear to those people that we need to get direct air capture of some kind working at some point in time to reverse the trend rather than just mitigate it like we're doing now (though many reasonably believe now isn't the right time, which, again, I disagree with).
    - alexey-salmin 3y ago
      Any solution that draws electricity from the grid is a scam because it's better to shut it down along with the matching amount of power generation. Any solution that relies on scarce resources like fertile soil, freshwater or agricultural waste is a scam because it has zero impact at this scale and will never grow beyond that. In theory, there are feasible solutions that would rely e.g on solar energy and seawater, but I'm yet to see one. If you people "who works seriously on climate solutions" want to be taken seriously outside of your circle, you first need to call out openly and honestly all the scams in your field. But since they amount to like 95% of it no one dares to disrupt the flow of money. Basically you're like "people seriously working on mortgage derivative solutions" in 2008.
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        > If you people "who works seriously on climate solutions" want to be taken seriously outside of your circle, you first need to call out openly and honestly all the scams in your field. I didn't say I was one of those people. But the reason the people who do work seriously on climate technology don't consider DAC a scam is not that they are dishonest, it's that it isn't a scam; it's a nascent technology that may not work out, but currently seems promising. > Any solution that draws electricity from the grid is a scam because it's better to shut it down along with the matching amount of power generation. The nice thing about connecting things to the grid is that then instead of decarbonizing the energy use of a bunch of heterogenous things, you can focus on decarbonizing the grid, and then everything connected to it benefits at once.
- lozenge 3y ago
  An oil company running a piddly project and getting it covered on NPR, with a favourable reaction from the Department of Resource Extraction, is a scam.
rayiner 3y ago
Unless you want to bomb China and India and Africa, carbon capture is going to be a major aspect of any response to climate change. The amount of concrete that’s going to be poured in those places over the next century is by itself going to release enormous amounts of CO2.
- ant6n 3y ago
  Going by the numbers, and using this logic, China should be bombing the US.
  - drewmate 3y ago
    It seems pretty self evident that China would not be in favor of military action to enforce climate goals. GP's point was that still developing nations are going to continue producing CO2 regardless of what electric grids look in OECD nations.
    - jabradoodle 3y ago
      For the time being the USA is still a big polluter per capita than China.
      - tptacek 3y ago
        What matters for the climate is absolute emissions, not the some underlying fairness metric. Chinese CO2 emissions dwarf ours. Further: China's CO2 emissions are rising. Ours peaked in 2008, and are today lower than they were in 1990.
        jabradoodle 3y ago
        Of course climate change is about absolute emissions. I am replying to this nonsense: > are going to continue producing CO2 regardless of what electric grids look in OECD nations.
        ant6n 3y ago
jjallen 3y ago
Many very very smart people are working on it. Are you saying all of these people are scammers? Are you saying that they aren’t smart for working on it because the idea itself is a scam?
- jiggawatts 3y ago
  A lot of smart programmers worked on NFTs too. What’s your point?
  - jjallen 3y ago
    It’s a sincere question. I didn’t have a point. I was surprised to see someone saying that attempting to sequester carbon for the good of the planet is a scam. Saying something is a scam implies it’s completely a scam. Equating NFTs with attempting to sequester carbon is not an appropriate comparison.
    - jiggawatts 3y ago
      Most people working at Fox are not Rupert Murdoch and haven’t signed a contract with the devil using a newborn’s blood. Jokes aside, some organisations exist primarily for the benefit of special interests. In fact, most organisations serve a special interest, it’s just that in many cases that’s “shareholders” and we’ve all accepted that as a stand-in for “the economy” and call it a good thing. There are many organisations that exist only to serve some agenda. Most think tanks, for example. Lobby groups, industry organisations, unions, etc… Sometimes these interests align with the general public interest but most often they do not. That’s why they need private funding — the public demand doesn’t exist. Hydrogen power is a classic example. Just look at the companies behind the hydrogen companies and it is all petrochemical giants. They’re simply “greenwashing” their dirty energy. The people working for these special interest organisations are just like everyone else working for shareholder-owned private profit organisations. They’re not evil, selfish, or deluded. They’re just accepting a salary in exchange for labour. Think of the employees of Enron or Theranos. They weren’t evil, they were just working for companies that were.

sanderjd 3y ago

Nobody thinks direct air capture is a scam. There's already more CO2 in the air than we want. Even after we get to net zero emissions, we'll want to suck some of it back out. It's reasonable to question whether it makes sense to be focusing resources on it right now, when it is not the lowest hanging fruit toward reaching net zero, but personally I think it is, because it takes many years for technologies to mature, so it makes sense to get that flywheel spinning on these technologies now. I think what you're responding strongly to is capturing emissions from point sources where fossil fuels are being burned. I don't think that's a scam either - I'd characterize it as an unfortunate necessity due to path dependency - but it's a very different thing than direct air capture.

brightlancer 3y ago
> > Carbon capture is a scam. > Nobody thinks direct air capture is a scam. Yes, folks do. points up Two more examples in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37452537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37452537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37452761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37452761 As a general rule, "nobody thinks that" or "nobody is saying that" are false -- there are always folks who do, sometimes very vocally. We must stop pretending extremists aren't out there.
- awestroke 3y ago
  And you need to stop referring to people who disagree with you as "extremists"
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I thought it would be clear from context that I meant "nobody who seriously works on this problem" rather than "no internet randos". People on social media believe all kinds of dumb things. But there is an actual and notable difference of opinion between point-source carbon capture and direct air capture among people who work in the space.
alexey-salmin 3y ago
> Nobody thinks direct air capture is a scam I do
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Sorry I meant nobody who works seriously on climate solutions. There are many people who are in that category and reasonably believe point source capture is a bad / scam idea (which, again, I disagree with this strongly), but it's still clear to those people that we need to get direct air capture of some kind working at some point in time to reverse the trend rather than just mitigate it like we're doing now (though many reasonably believe now isn't the right time, which, again, I disagree with).
  - alexey-salmin 3y ago
    Any solution that draws electricity from the grid is a scam because it's better to shut it down along with the matching amount of power generation. Any solution that relies on scarce resources like fertile soil, freshwater or agricultural waste is a scam because it has zero impact at this scale and will never grow beyond that. In theory, there are feasible solutions that would rely e.g on solar energy and seawater, but I'm yet to see one. If you people "who works seriously on climate solutions" want to be taken seriously outside of your circle, you first need to call out openly and honestly all the scams in your field. But since they amount to like 95% of it no one dares to disrupt the flow of money. Basically you're like "people seriously working on mortgage derivative solutions" in 2008.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      > If you people "who works seriously on climate solutions" want to be taken seriously outside of your circle, you first need to call out openly and honestly all the scams in your field. I didn't say I was one of those people. But the reason the people who do work seriously on climate technology don't consider DAC a scam is not that they are dishonest, it's that it isn't a scam; it's a nascent technology that may not work out, but currently seems promising. > Any solution that draws electricity from the grid is a scam because it's better to shut it down along with the matching amount of power generation. The nice thing about connecting things to the grid is that then instead of decarbonizing the energy use of a bunch of heterogenous things, you can focus on decarbonizing the grid, and then everything connected to it benefits at once.
lozenge 3y ago
An oil company running a piddly project and getting it covered on NPR, with a favourable reaction from the Department of Resource Extraction, is a scam.

rayiner 3y ago

Unless you want to bomb China and India and Africa, carbon capture is going to be a major aspect of any response to climate change. The amount of concrete that’s going to be poured in those places over the next century is by itself going to release enormous amounts of CO2.

ant6n 3y ago
Going by the numbers, and using this logic, China should be bombing the US.
- drewmate 3y ago
  It seems pretty self evident that China would not be in favor of military action to enforce climate goals. GP's point was that still developing nations are going to continue producing CO2 regardless of what electric grids look in OECD nations.
  - jabradoodle 3y ago
    For the time being the USA is still a big polluter per capita than China.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      What matters for the climate is absolute emissions, not the some underlying fairness metric. Chinese CO2 emissions dwarf ours. Further: China's CO2 emissions are rising. Ours peaked in 2008, and are today lower than they were in 1990.
      - jabradoodle 3y ago
        Of course climate change is about absolute emissions. I am replying to this nonsense: > are going to continue producing CO2 regardless of what electric grids look in OECD nations.
      - ant6n 3y ago

jjallen 3y ago

Many very very smart people are working on it. Are you saying all of these people are scammers? Are you saying that they aren’t smart for working on it because the idea itself is a scam?

jiggawatts 3y ago
A lot of smart programmers worked on NFTs too. What’s your point?
- jjallen 3y ago
  It’s a sincere question. I didn’t have a point. I was surprised to see someone saying that attempting to sequester carbon for the good of the planet is a scam. Saying something is a scam implies it’s completely a scam. Equating NFTs with attempting to sequester carbon is not an appropriate comparison.
  - jiggawatts 3y ago
    Most people working at Fox are not Rupert Murdoch and haven’t signed a contract with the devil using a newborn’s blood. Jokes aside, some organisations exist primarily for the benefit of special interests. In fact, most organisations serve a special interest, it’s just that in many cases that’s “shareholders” and we’ve all accepted that as a stand-in for “the economy” and call it a good thing. There are many organisations that exist only to serve some agenda. Most think tanks, for example. Lobby groups, industry organisations, unions, etc… Sometimes these interests align with the general public interest but most often they do not. That’s why they need private funding — the public demand doesn’t exist. Hydrogen power is a classic example. Just look at the companies behind the hydrogen companies and it is all petrochemical giants. They’re simply “greenwashing” their dirty energy. The people working for these special interest organisations are just like everyone else working for shareholder-owned private profit organisations. They’re not evil, selfish, or deluded. They’re just accepting a salary in exchange for labour. Think of the employees of Enron or Theranos. They weren’t evil, they were just working for companies that were.