7 ms·

I may be completely wrong, but I have read that the underlying chemistry is endothermic, which is to say, requires energy to occur. In other words, you have to

I may be completely wrong, but I have read that the underlying chemistry is endothermic, which is to say, requires energy to occur. In other words, you have to generate energy to remove CO2 from the air. Problem is, how do you generate that energy - on the civilizational scale required - in a way which produces less CO2 than you're removing from the air? Right now we're already failing, globally, to replace dirty energy with clean. India IIRC has an aspirational goal to be off coal by 2070...! How do we manage to produce a purely green civilizational-level energy supply, doing it all a second time over as well, and now or soon, to start producing the energy to remove CO2 from the air on a scale which will matter?

TapWaterBandit 3y ago
It would have to be nuclear, I imagine. Doesn't seem like any other method would have the juice required while simultaneously being able to power all the other stuff we want (and not also creating emissions). I can't believe the cosmic irony that probably the biggest "success" of the environmental movement and arguably its motivating raison d'etre might be the one thing that would destroy the earth's environment. Imagine an alternate reality where nuclear uptake continued at rates of 50s/60s and where we'd be today.
- m_mueller 3y ago
  History has shown various times[1] that our timeline is the one to bet on when it comes to narrowly avoiding the extinction of much of human life. My bet is thus that one or several of the many ideas how to avoid a total climate crisis will prevail, in a soft-quantum-immortality kinda way. [1] examples: Hitler‘s halt before Dunkirk and his various other silly mistakes (resulting in them not being able to develop the bomb first), Vasili Arkhipov‘s abort to launch a nuclear torpedo during Cuban Crisis, Stanislav Petrov not reporting what their systems indicated to be a nuclear attack…
  - concordDance 3y ago
    The idea that Nazi Germany invading Britain would result in the extinction of most human life is utterly absurd. Even a full nuclear exchange at the height of the cold war wouldn't have bumped off human civilization.
  - sfn42 3y ago
    Yeah let's just keep calm and carry on and hope that something magically saves us. That's probably going to work out great
    - m_mueller 3y ago
      Well, better to panic and run in 1000 directions, none of which going away from the planet that is so far our only habitat? It will work out one way or another. And either many-worlds is true, and some of them will carry on human life, or it’s not, I‘m wrong and all these examples were just lucky accidents. In the second option we‘re likely screwed either way, because the number of ways that humanity can kill itself is growing by the decade, and one of these will trigger sooner or later.
      - hju22_-3 3y ago
        This is such a... strange way to essential just ignore the problem and hope it goes away. Like a student deciding not to study, because why would that help. Either he fails or another in a—essentially—another world does or doesn't. Problem solved. This kind of attitude is problematic regardless of the topic though. Because whether it works out or not isn't dependent on you, because what you're describing is just noping out of the situation and ignoring it. And, for those who genuinely do care, one way or the other. That take the many hours upon hours to write out good whitepapers on the topic, how is that panicking exactly? Sure, there is a lot of horror media, purposefully misleading information, and doomer attitudes thrown around from either side of the argument, and some of those average (statistically speaking) folk can probably be described as panicking. And there's also companies doing and implementing things only for the PR, or to remove heat from themselves, or preemt such things, and what have you. But I still wouldn't go so far as to write the entire topic off because some people are panicky and a lot of companies have financial incentives to earn more regardless of morality. I do agree that, on the current course, I can't see humanity lasting very long, so to speak... that is, if nothing is done about it. Sure, perhaps nothing will work out. Perhaps everything will fix itself if one ignores the problem. Perhaps the fictional student ends up passing either way. Perhaps it won't. But is that reason enough to simply brush our hands of it? To just let it happen? Sitting back and doing nothing won't make things better either. Doing something has—at least—the potential for change, whether good or bad.
  - robotresearcher 3y ago
    Survivor bias.
    - m_mueller 3y ago
      Well it is. The question is what percentage you assign to the probability of having survived so far. Depending on that it can give evidence towards many-worlds (coupled with the anthropic principle).
  - 1letterunixname 3y ago
    No so probabilistic, but more like a linear combination of approaches maximizing for gain function and economy of scale. I can tell you with certainty planting trees is far down on the list. At the top of the list would be strategies that utilize biological processes as the capture component of CCS. Kelp and phytoplankton robotic oceanic aquaculture seem the most obvious. Going GMO to increase yield and reduce needs for micronutrients would probably be helpful. Terrestrial CCS would look like either chemical processes or DACCS. I think the Microsoft approach has legs to it if it can be demonstrated, Omniprocessor-style. For soil health and to combat desertification, it would be wiser to stop rain forest loss and reintroduce megafauna across the world to improve non-wooden plains / semi-wooded land.
    - m_mueller 3y ago
      I think along the same lines. On the point of megafauna, isn’t it rather dependent on having enough large predators? E.g. in temperate forests, wolves have been shown to be very effective at repairing forest health by keeping deer at bay, leading to positive changes throughout the ecosystem.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    > History has shown various times that our timeline is the one to bet on when it comes to narrowly avoiding the extinction of much of human life. I'm not convinced by that logic, although as I've never yet died, maybe I could convince myself that I'm immortal by employing it.
- imtringued 3y ago
  Using nuclear to power carbon capture will only make it more expensive. You do realize that only the cheapest energy is viable for carbon capture? Also, among "pro nuclear" advocates there is this tendency to blame the problem on "stupid people" (environmentalists, politicians, Chernobyl watchers, etc) but once you disregard that and let them build their project suddenly you get budget overruns, delayed schedules and failed projects and surprise cleanup costs from decommissioning. There isn't a cosmic irony. People are against nuclear power because frankly: it sucks.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    > budget overruns, delayed schedules and failed projects How the fk is that unique to nuclear powerplants? Also, did you take into account the same shit for coal plants as well, that are multiple orders more numerous?
    - uoaei 3y ago
      I think people who are exasperated with blind nuclear activism also don't want coal. Yours is a strange kind of whataboutism that isn't even relevant. Issues with commissioning/decommissioning nuclear plants are unique in the magnitudes of sunk costs, both time and money, as well as the somehow still astonishing to many delays and hidden costs that somehow always catch us off guard and somehow are unique to each site and were somehow completely unpredictable that nonetheless somehow happen in every instance.
      - kaba0 3y ago
        Yet look at French’s energy graphs vs that of Germany. Also, frankly, this is such a topic that the capitalist view makes no sense - there is no buyer/seller for green-ness (though it can be introduced into the system through laws like carbon taxes), these are costs that must be coughed up by governments, period. I still believe that a nuclear baseline and a renewable variable energy production on top is the cleanest, greenest solution that actually further our case. There is simply no competition on the efficiency of nuclear.
    - 3y ago
phire 3y ago
You don't need to build carbon capture plants near people, you can build them anywhere in the world. So you can put them in places where you have the potential for large amounts of cheap renewable energy that would otherwise be unused. Build solar plants in the middle of the desert, build tidal and wind generation on remote islands. There are plenty of places where green energy projects never got off the ground simply because the cost of transmitting it to places with energy demand was cost prohibitive. The bigger problem is that simply removing CO2 from the atmosphere is not enough, you have to actually store it somewhere and be confident it will stay locked up for centuries, otherwise the effort is wasted.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Iridescent_ 3y ago
  You need to build carbon capture at emission sites however. Carbon density in regular air is too low for capture to be efficient, it needs to be captured as the air exits fossil fuel power plants, which is difficult enough as is (I believe we can reasonably get about two thirds of the CO2 this way) to not be enough at all. All in all, carbon capture is just a way to pretend to solve issues while only dealing with symptoms. GHG (and CO2) are just one of the many consequences of the excessive pressure our society has on our environment, and solving just one consequence won't save us from all the other (resource exhaustion, biodiversity collapse, GHG besides CO2).
mschuster91 3y ago
> Problem is, how do you generate that energy - on the civilizational scale required - in a way which produces less CO2 than you're removing from the air? The answer is simple: trees, moors and other biological processes. That would also work out on scale, as it has before humans have ever entered the play.
- david-gpu 3y ago
  Forests and such are carbon neutral unless somebody goes there, cuts the trees, and crucially does something to prevent the wood from burning or decomposing for hundreds or thousands of years. That is the costly part.
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    That's a fairly simplified view of what a forest is. A forest is not just a bunch of trees, but an ecosystem where perhaps the most important part is the soil, which in the long term is the bigger carbon reservoir. A lot of the carbon that first goes into the trees eventually ends up in the soil, which if left undisturbed (i.e. not used for farming) is stable and does not leech significant amounts of CO2. Admittedly the downside of this is that such soil is almost absurdly fertile. This is in large why slash-and-burns are so popular where ever there's old forest. Indonesia, Brazil, etc. Like it's not even about the lumber, the farmland is amazing for a decade or so.
    - david-gpu 3y ago
      > A lot of the carbon that first goes into the trees eventually ends up in the soil, which if left undisturbed (i.e. not used for farming) is stable Stable, as in the amount of carbon that is captured is offset by the amount that is released? That sounds like after a short while forests become carbon neutral, unless we cut the trees down and do something to prevent the wood from burning or decomposing. I think we are in agreement?
      - marginalia_nu 3y ago
manmal 3y ago
If I got the article right, the plan is to use underground carbon stores like a battery, “charging” it by pushing carbon under that has been pulled from the air, and “discharging” by pulling it up later? That has to be one of the most inefficient ways of storing energy imaginable.
eximius 3y ago
Sahara solar plants + carbon capture? Solar capture in Africa is supposed to have a lot of potential except for the problem of transporting the power. If you can use it locally, maybe it's more valuable. It's not clear to me if direct carbon capture needs to be distributed.

TapWaterBandit 3y ago

It would have to be nuclear, I imagine. Doesn't seem like any other method would have the juice required while simultaneously being able to power all the other stuff we want (and not also creating emissions). I can't believe the cosmic irony that probably the biggest "success" of the environmental movement and arguably its motivating raison d'etre might be the one thing that would destroy the earth's environment. Imagine an alternate reality where nuclear uptake continued at rates of 50s/60s and where we'd be today.

m_mueller 3y ago
History has shown various times[1] that our timeline is the one to bet on when it comes to narrowly avoiding the extinction of much of human life. My bet is thus that one or several of the many ideas how to avoid a total climate crisis will prevail, in a soft-quantum-immortality kinda way. [1] examples: Hitler‘s halt before Dunkirk and his various other silly mistakes (resulting in them not being able to develop the bomb first), Vasili Arkhipov‘s abort to launch a nuclear torpedo during Cuban Crisis, Stanislav Petrov not reporting what their systems indicated to be a nuclear attack…
- concordDance 3y ago
  The idea that Nazi Germany invading Britain would result in the extinction of most human life is utterly absurd. Even a full nuclear exchange at the height of the cold war wouldn't have bumped off human civilization.
- sfn42 3y ago
  Yeah let's just keep calm and carry on and hope that something magically saves us. That's probably going to work out great
  - m_mueller 3y ago
    Well, better to panic and run in 1000 directions, none of which going away from the planet that is so far our only habitat? It will work out one way or another. And either many-worlds is true, and some of them will carry on human life, or it’s not, I‘m wrong and all these examples were just lucky accidents. In the second option we‘re likely screwed either way, because the number of ways that humanity can kill itself is growing by the decade, and one of these will trigger sooner or later.
    - hju22_-3 3y ago
      This is such a... strange way to essential just ignore the problem and hope it goes away. Like a student deciding not to study, because why would that help. Either he fails or another in a—essentially—another world does or doesn't. Problem solved. This kind of attitude is problematic regardless of the topic though. Because whether it works out or not isn't dependent on you, because what you're describing is just noping out of the situation and ignoring it. And, for those who genuinely do care, one way or the other. That take the many hours upon hours to write out good whitepapers on the topic, how is that panicking exactly? Sure, there is a lot of horror media, purposefully misleading information, and doomer attitudes thrown around from either side of the argument, and some of those average (statistically speaking) folk can probably be described as panicking. And there's also companies doing and implementing things only for the PR, or to remove heat from themselves, or preemt such things, and what have you. But I still wouldn't go so far as to write the entire topic off because some people are panicky and a lot of companies have financial incentives to earn more regardless of morality. I do agree that, on the current course, I can't see humanity lasting very long, so to speak... that is, if nothing is done about it. Sure, perhaps nothing will work out. Perhaps everything will fix itself if one ignores the problem. Perhaps the fictional student ends up passing either way. Perhaps it won't. But is that reason enough to simply brush our hands of it? To just let it happen? Sitting back and doing nothing won't make things better either. Doing something has—at least—the potential for change, whether good or bad.
- robotresearcher 3y ago
  Survivor bias.
  - m_mueller 3y ago
    Well it is. The question is what percentage you assign to the probability of having survived so far. Depending on that it can give evidence towards many-worlds (coupled with the anthropic principle).
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  No so probabilistic, but more like a linear combination of approaches maximizing for gain function and economy of scale. I can tell you with certainty planting trees is far down on the list. At the top of the list would be strategies that utilize biological processes as the capture component of CCS. Kelp and phytoplankton robotic oceanic aquaculture seem the most obvious. Going GMO to increase yield and reduce needs for micronutrients would probably be helpful. Terrestrial CCS would look like either chemical processes or DACCS. I think the Microsoft approach has legs to it if it can be demonstrated, Omniprocessor-style. For soil health and to combat desertification, it would be wiser to stop rain forest loss and reintroduce megafauna across the world to improve non-wooden plains / semi-wooded land.
  - m_mueller 3y ago
    I think along the same lines. On the point of megafauna, isn’t it rather dependent on having enough large predators? E.g. in temperate forests, wolves have been shown to be very effective at repairing forest health by keeping deer at bay, leading to positive changes throughout the ecosystem.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  > History has shown various times that our timeline is the one to bet on when it comes to narrowly avoiding the extinction of much of human life. I'm not convinced by that logic, although as I've never yet died, maybe I could convince myself that I'm immortal by employing it.
imtringued 3y ago
Using nuclear to power carbon capture will only make it more expensive. You do realize that only the cheapest energy is viable for carbon capture? Also, among "pro nuclear" advocates there is this tendency to blame the problem on "stupid people" (environmentalists, politicians, Chernobyl watchers, etc) but once you disregard that and let them build their project suddenly you get budget overruns, delayed schedules and failed projects and surprise cleanup costs from decommissioning. There isn't a cosmic irony. People are against nuclear power because frankly: it sucks.
- kaba0 3y ago
  > budget overruns, delayed schedules and failed projects How the fk is that unique to nuclear powerplants? Also, did you take into account the same shit for coal plants as well, that are multiple orders more numerous?
  - uoaei 3y ago
    I think people who are exasperated with blind nuclear activism also don't want coal. Yours is a strange kind of whataboutism that isn't even relevant. Issues with commissioning/decommissioning nuclear plants are unique in the magnitudes of sunk costs, both time and money, as well as the somehow still astonishing to many delays and hidden costs that somehow always catch us off guard and somehow are unique to each site and were somehow completely unpredictable that nonetheless somehow happen in every instance.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      Yet look at French’s energy graphs vs that of Germany. Also, frankly, this is such a topic that the capitalist view makes no sense - there is no buyer/seller for green-ness (though it can be introduced into the system through laws like carbon taxes), these are costs that must be coughed up by governments, period. I still believe that a nuclear baseline and a renewable variable energy production on top is the cleanest, greenest solution that actually further our case. There is simply no competition on the efficiency of nuclear.
  - 3y ago

phire 3y ago

You don't need to build carbon capture plants near people, you can build them anywhere in the world. So you can put them in places where you have the potential for large amounts of cheap renewable energy that would otherwise be unused. Build solar plants in the middle of the desert, build tidal and wind generation on remote islands. There are plenty of places where green energy projects never got off the ground simply because the cost of transmitting it to places with energy demand was cost prohibitive. The bigger problem is that simply removing CO2 from the atmosphere is not enough, you have to actually store it somewhere and be confident it will stay locked up for centuries, otherwise the effort is wasted.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Iridescent_ 3y ago
You need to build carbon capture at emission sites however. Carbon density in regular air is too low for capture to be efficient, it needs to be captured as the air exits fossil fuel power plants, which is difficult enough as is (I believe we can reasonably get about two thirds of the CO2 this way) to not be enough at all. All in all, carbon capture is just a way to pretend to solve issues while only dealing with symptoms. GHG (and CO2) are just one of the many consequences of the excessive pressure our society has on our environment, and solving just one consequence won't save us from all the other (resource exhaustion, biodiversity collapse, GHG besides CO2).

mschuster91 3y ago

> Problem is, how do you generate that energy - on the civilizational scale required - in a way which produces less CO2 than you're removing from the air? The answer is simple: trees, moors and other biological processes. That would also work out on scale, as it has before humans have ever entered the play.

david-gpu 3y ago
Forests and such are carbon neutral unless somebody goes there, cuts the trees, and crucially does something to prevent the wood from burning or decomposing for hundreds or thousands of years. That is the costly part.
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  That's a fairly simplified view of what a forest is. A forest is not just a bunch of trees, but an ecosystem where perhaps the most important part is the soil, which in the long term is the bigger carbon reservoir. A lot of the carbon that first goes into the trees eventually ends up in the soil, which if left undisturbed (i.e. not used for farming) is stable and does not leech significant amounts of CO2. Admittedly the downside of this is that such soil is almost absurdly fertile. This is in large why slash-and-burns are so popular where ever there's old forest. Indonesia, Brazil, etc. Like it's not even about the lumber, the farmland is amazing for a decade or so.
  - david-gpu 3y ago
    > A lot of the carbon that first goes into the trees eventually ends up in the soil, which if left undisturbed (i.e. not used for farming) is stable Stable, as in the amount of carbon that is captured is offset by the amount that is released? That sounds like after a short while forests become carbon neutral, unless we cut the trees down and do something to prevent the wood from burning or decomposing. I think we are in agreement?
    - marginalia_nu 3y ago

manmal 3y ago

If I got the article right, the plan is to use underground carbon stores like a battery, “charging” it by pushing carbon under that has been pulled from the air, and “discharging” by pulling it up later? That has to be one of the most inefficient ways of storing energy imaginable.

eximius 3y ago

Sahara solar plants + carbon capture? Solar capture in Africa is supposed to have a lot of potential except for the problem of transporting the power. If you can use it locally, maybe it's more valuable. It's not clear to me if direct carbon capture needs to be distributed.