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Literally all ideas about man made climate change are quickly revealed to be just fantasy if you think about one simple thing: how much CO2 do we need to produc

by TekMol 3y ago

Literally all ideas about man made climate change are quickly revealed to be just fantasy if you think about one simple thing: how much CO2 do we need to produce to change the global climate? The answer is that we need to produce almost 10B tonnes of CO2 every year. That's something on the order of 1500 great pyramids of Giza (which weighs 6M tonnes) worth of carbon every year.

moritzwarhier 3y ago
I don't understand if this argument makes sense, but I feel it doesn't. Isn't carbon capture harder than emitting carbon (hand-waving at thermodynamics here)? Also, don't all methods of carbon capture produce new emissions again because they need energy, resources etc? I don't claim to be able to do the hard science here, but the comparison you make seems a lot more far-fetched to me than that of the original comment. edit: sister comments already make the argument much more clear and I guess the self-doubt of people with responsible intention versus the chuzpe of climate denialists contributes even more to our dire outlook. If you were being sarcastic: oh well, not helpful. Quoting a sibling comment here: > The sad reality with carbon capture is that it's an excuse to put more carbon into the atmosphere than is actually being captured. The oil and gas companies pump billions into capturing carbon are not interested in efficiencies. They are merely interested in making many billions more on dumping more carbon in the atmosphere. If that ever gets close to what they produce, their cost will be so high that they will be out of business
- TekMol 3y ago
  Isn't carbon capture harder than emitting carbon That's the question. To burn coal, we have to dig it up from the ground. Is it possible that we one day find a way to "dig it up from the air" instead which is "less hard" than to dig it up from the ground? Or that we find some other process which has seperating carbon and oxygen as a byproduct? Like some form of photosynthesis? Trees already do this. The fastest bird can fly 200 mph. Apollo 10 flew at 25k mph. A factor of over 100. Maybe we can increase trees by a factor of 100 too.
  - moritzwarhier 3y ago
    But the burden of proof is clearly on carbon capture then. Most carbon we produce is caused by burning of energy-dense fuel, leaving well: heat, smoke, gas dissipation and some forms of energy that are useful to us. If I understood basic thermodynamics at school, this process is irreversible and claims to the contrary are charlatanery.
    - TekMol 3y ago
      We don't have to reverse the process of creating energy from fuel. Firstly, we only need to seperate carbon and oxygen. Secondly, we get thousands of times more energy from the sun than we need. So even if seperating carbon and oxygen requires energy, that is not fundamentally a problem.
      - ctack 3y ago
        So it would be like using our solar potential to capture and then turn atmospheric carbon into fuel again. Probably battery storage will be cheaper, right? Clear to see how cynical it is if you keep pumping carbon out of the ground at the same time as trying to reclaim some bit of it from the atmosphere.
      - brazzy 3y ago
        > We don't have to reverse the process of creating energy from fuel. > Firstly, we only need to seperate carbon and oxygen. Separating carbon and oxygen is literally reversing the process of creating energy from fuel. That's how physics works. Please stop trying to make arguments when you don't even understand the fundamentals of the subject.
      - kaba0 3y ago
        At that point, why don’t just stop the ever-increasing rate of CO2 release we do? Sounds much easier than recreating millions of years worth of photosynthesis that did the same thing (coal, oil is from plants mostly that lived many millions of years ago) we conveniently dig up.
  - 3y ago
- ctack 3y ago
  > The sad reality with carbon capture is that it's an excuse to put more carbon into the atmosphere than is actually being captured. Surely there is a simm type game that can illustrate this super clearly?
  - moritzwarhier 3y ago
    I'd love a Civilization: X - The end game as well It should include consumerism, garbage and car culture and insane urban planning as well. It could have a satisfying, Idle-game-like pair of bars: - external costs - profit Maybe this could even be presented in a form aking to regular bookkeeping standards.
solumunus 3y ago
What’s your point?
tetsuhamu 3y ago
Quick google search: 37.12 billion metric tons of CO2 currently released per year https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/#:~:text=Global%20carbon%20dioxide%20emissions%20from,by%20more%20than%2060%20percent https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi....
imtringued 3y ago
Good thing we started more than a hundred years ago and CO2 accumulates over time.
ChrisClark 3y ago
And we do produce that, more than that, every year. So using your exact argument, man made climate change is obviously real.
tsimionescu 3y ago
The reason my original argument works and your sarcasm doesn't is that extracting resources from the ground is much easier then putting them back in. Mining is easy - that's why we have gigantic mega mines. Building things from the mined materials is much harder - that's why we don't have anything resembling the same scale of buildings compared to the largest mines.

by TekMol 3y ago

moritzwarhier 3y ago

I don't understand if this argument makes sense, but I feel it doesn't. Isn't carbon capture harder than emitting carbon (hand-waving at thermodynamics here)? Also, don't all methods of carbon capture produce new emissions again because they need energy, resources etc? I don't claim to be able to do the hard science here, but the comparison you make seems a lot more far-fetched to me than that of the original comment. edit: sister comments already make the argument much more clear and I guess the self-doubt of people with responsible intention versus the chuzpe of climate denialists contributes even more to our dire outlook. If you were being sarcastic: oh well, not helpful. Quoting a sibling comment here: > The sad reality with carbon capture is that it's an excuse to put more carbon into the atmosphere than is actually being captured. The oil and gas companies pump billions into capturing carbon are not interested in efficiencies. They are merely interested in making many billions more on dumping more carbon in the atmosphere. If that ever gets close to what they produce, their cost will be so high that they will be out of business

TekMol 3y ago
Isn't carbon capture harder than emitting carbon That's the question. To burn coal, we have to dig it up from the ground. Is it possible that we one day find a way to "dig it up from the air" instead which is "less hard" than to dig it up from the ground? Or that we find some other process which has seperating carbon and oxygen as a byproduct? Like some form of photosynthesis? Trees already do this. The fastest bird can fly 200 mph. Apollo 10 flew at 25k mph. A factor of over 100. Maybe we can increase trees by a factor of 100 too.
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  But the burden of proof is clearly on carbon capture then. Most carbon we produce is caused by burning of energy-dense fuel, leaving well: heat, smoke, gas dissipation and some forms of energy that are useful to us. If I understood basic thermodynamics at school, this process is irreversible and claims to the contrary are charlatanery.
  - TekMol 3y ago
    We don't have to reverse the process of creating energy from fuel. Firstly, we only need to seperate carbon and oxygen. Secondly, we get thousands of times more energy from the sun than we need. So even if seperating carbon and oxygen requires energy, that is not fundamentally a problem.
    - ctack 3y ago
      So it would be like using our solar potential to capture and then turn atmospheric carbon into fuel again. Probably battery storage will be cheaper, right? Clear to see how cynical it is if you keep pumping carbon out of the ground at the same time as trying to reclaim some bit of it from the atmosphere.
    - brazzy 3y ago
      > We don't have to reverse the process of creating energy from fuel. > Firstly, we only need to seperate carbon and oxygen. Separating carbon and oxygen is literally reversing the process of creating energy from fuel. That's how physics works. Please stop trying to make arguments when you don't even understand the fundamentals of the subject.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      At that point, why don’t just stop the ever-increasing rate of CO2 release we do? Sounds much easier than recreating millions of years worth of photosynthesis that did the same thing (coal, oil is from plants mostly that lived many millions of years ago) we conveniently dig up.
- 3y ago
ctack 3y ago
> The sad reality with carbon capture is that it's an excuse to put more carbon into the atmosphere than is actually being captured. Surely there is a simm type game that can illustrate this super clearly?
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  I'd love a Civilization: X - The end game as well It should include consumerism, garbage and car culture and insane urban planning as well. It could have a satisfying, Idle-game-like pair of bars: - external costs - profit Maybe this could even be presented in a form aking to regular bookkeeping standards.

solumunus 3y ago

What’s your point?

tetsuhamu 3y ago

Quick google search: 37.12 billion metric tons of CO2 currently released per year https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/#:~:text=Global%20carbon%20dioxide%20emissions%20from,by%20more%20than%2060%20percent https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi....

imtringued 3y ago

Good thing we started more than a hundred years ago and CO2 accumulates over time.

ChrisClark 3y ago

And we do produce that, more than that, every year. So using your exact argument, man made climate change is obviously real.

tsimionescu 3y ago

The reason my original argument works and your sarcasm doesn't is that extracting resources from the ground is much easier then putting them back in. Mining is easy - that's why we have gigantic mega mines. Building things from the mined materials is much harder - that's why we don't have anything resembling the same scale of buildings compared to the largest mines.