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there are a lot of people arguing strongly for one xor the other. reduction in harm and reduction in use are both good things. neither need to be prioritised mo

there are a lot of people arguing strongly for one xor the other. reduction in harm and reduction in use are both good things. neither need to be prioritised more than the other. however, one is easier to legislate for

tsimionescu 3y ago
I disagree. There are limited resources to spend on this issue, physically, and politically, and economically. Every bit of carbon capture technology that you build is taking up resources that would be infinitely better spent on carbon emission reductions: more efficient devices, more robust consumer products that can be replaced once a decade or less, more local production to reduce long-distance transportation, PR campaigns against over consumption, etc. And again, carbon capture is simply not a viable technology. It's almost like using a shovel to take water from a leaking pipe and move it to a nearby puddle: lots of effort for little gain, and there's no guarantee that the puddle won't connect back to the leak. Not to mention, most of those who peddle it are outright dishonest. Most have 0 plans for storage, and instead plan to "re-use the captured carbon", for example to grow plants mute efficiently in green houses, which is to say, to release it back at a slightly lower rate. And finally, even if by some magic the effort was somewhat successful, and we built up huge deposits of sequestered carbon, the most likely next step is for some idiot politician to start advocating for burning it as soon as the trend became slightly positive.
- ffhhttt 3y ago
  > re-use the captured carbon I assumes that was the entire point of carbon capture? i.e. instead of introducing more carbon into the atmosphere from oil/etc. you just reuse what’s already in it?
  - kaba0 3y ago
    But.. why? The problem is that we put an insane amount of carbon into the atmosphere from million years old plants that was stored there just fine. If we just continue to circulate the existing amounts (and increase it in a tiny bit slower rate because let’s be honest, that’s the reality) we are not even a bit ahead.
    - ffhhttt 3y ago
      Because gasoline/diesel/etc. are very energy dense and much easier to store and transport than any alternativd. In some cases e.g. airplane there simply seem to be no other options (unless there is a massive breakthrough in battery tech and possibly out understanding of physics). So ‘clean’ burning synthetic fuels don’t seem like a terrible idea. Of course it all comes down to energy efficiency, but if solar/wind continue growing and carbon capture somehow becomes cost-efficient (assuming free solar/wind energy) it seems like a much better option than continuing oil extraction or even biofuels (which of course is also technically “carbon capture” just not very land/water efficient). > we are not even a bit ahead. Of course. But how does it make it different from every other option? Moving to 100% renewables won’t reverse climate change either .
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    No, the theoretical point of carbon capture is to take the carbon we released from the ground back into it. Ultimately, there is simply too much CO2 in the atmosphere at the moment. The long term goal has to be to permanently sequester it back into the ground - essentially reversing the last 100-200 years of burning fossil fuels, replacing everything we got from coal, oil, and gas with better alternatives so we can keep living a life that is at least as decent as today's. It is impossible for human civilization as we know it to thrive longer term if we keep the current amount of CO2 (and thus carbon) in any way that is circulating. Of course, capture can and should be the goal after we do the much much easier thing, which is not releasing even 1kg more of the already trapped carbon from the ground.
    - ffhhttt 3y ago
      > It is impossible for human civilization as we know it to thrive longer term if we keep the current amount of CO2 (and thus carbon) in any way that is circulating. I’m not sure that true. Han civilizations “thrived” under much worse conditions than we can reasonably expect (by that I mean that technological/economical/social progress historically outweighed environmental factors and I don’t why this won’t be the case in the future)
      - tsimionescu 3y ago
        Han civilization was vastly different from human civilization as we know it today, so it seems you're agreeing with me. I wasn't claiming humans would go extinct, just that there would be a massive upheaval that would entirely change civilization. Also, the Earth has never been as inhospitable to human life as it's expected to be since any known civilization started, so there's no historical precedent to compare to in terms of speed or effects of adaptation.
        ffhhttt 3y ago
        > Han civilization Sorry. I’m not sure how did I manage to write that, it was supposed to be “civilizations have [thrived]”. > Earth has never been as inhospitable to human life as it's expected to be since any known civilization started, That debatable and very hard to quantify. Also it really depends on the region, e.g. Europe was probably quite worse than now during the “little ice age” or the 600s (coincidentally the Arabian peninsula seems to have thrived during that period due to higher humidity). Climate change was the reason many ancient civilizations collapsed, it seems to have been a pretty regular occurrence and we were only be to break out of that circle in the late middle ages/1500s.
  - bmer 3y ago
    I think you might have a very fundamental misunderstanding on how thermodynamics works? The maximum theoretical efficiency for a combustion engine is about 50%. We'll probably struggle to hit 40%, and that too only after a fair bit of further investment (in particular, materials science investments, and the production of most engineered materials itself requires a fair bit of energy, which generally increases based on the non-standardness/"information-content" of the material (very roughly: "how likely is it that we find a naturally occurring deposit of it on Earth"). So, you cannot really "re-use what's already in it [the atmosphere]". Not sustainably, not while also accommodating growth.
    - ffhhttt 3y ago
      > I think you might have a very fundamental misunderstanding on how thermodynamics works? Why would you say that? lol. If we have a large surplus of cheap solar/wind energy during certain periods (which is unavoidable if they share will continue increasing significantly in the future). Of course yeah, that only works if this process becomes relatively cheap and efficient.
      - bmer 3y ago
        > Why would you say that? lol. I'm not entirely sure if you do have a misunderstanding, which is why I asked the question. I'm trying to figure out why you think "carbon capturing" is equivalent to "being able to re-mine hydrocarbons"? Assuming for the moment that the rest of the process is perfect (that is: ignoring that it costs energy to perform carbon capture, ignoring that it costs energy to convert from captured carbon back into some sort of usable hydrocarbon, etc.): it is already very challenging to get to even 50% efficiency in the engines involved in converting a fuel into electricity; whether that engine is an ICE, or a steam engine often used to convert certain renewable sources of energy into other forms. Most of that lost efficiency is due to fundamental constraints of thermodynamics : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine (Essentially, useful engines that produce mechanical work from difference in average energy between two bodies operate in cycles. Suppose we start at time 0, and it takes k time ticks for a cycle to start from its initial state X(0), go through its processes, and return back to the initial state: X(k). The fact is that X(0) and X(k) must be different, they cannot be exactly the same, because then that would mean that it is impossible to distinguish between X(0) and X(k), and your engine is not just an engine, but a time machine. (This is why entropy is closely related to the fact that time is an "arrow": always moving in a particular direction.)) All this to say: it is not possible to use a finite source of energy for a "long time", unless the finite source dwarfs by "many orders of magnitudes" (how large the magnitude, determines how much time before it runs out) the energy drained from it per time tick. So even if we got carbon capture working as a way to "recycle fuel" (totally, totally ignoring the fact that it will cost more energy to do the carbon capture and store said captured carbon, than the mechanical work we get out of it (the nuclear fusion problem, except not even technically solvable)) it would not last us for more than a few seconds. (Existing hydrocarbon reservoirs do dwarf our current energy use per time tick, but not by that much, and not if we also want to accommodate material growth, because of the energy cost of also "safely managing" the byproducts of the hydrocarbon->mechanical work process. The sun in particular, massively, massively dwarfs our current use per time tick. This is what makes "renewables" renewable: they have a massive bank of energy banking them. We have an awe-inspiring fusion reactor just throwing energy at us for a while. How do we convert it into usable work?) https://e360.yale.edu/features/three-myths-about-renewable-energy-and-the-grid-debunked https://e360.yale.edu/features/three-myths-about-renewable-e... Putting all that together as the context then, my question to you would be: how can one still use captured carbon as a sort of battery in any meaningful way? Is there a misunderstanding of thermodynamics involved on your part, or could you help me understand where my misunderstanding around thermodynamics lies (I am not an expert, just a novice)?
- permo-w 3y ago
  if you solve carbon capture, you solve the problem. efficiency cannot be permanently solved. efficiency is still worth seeking, but if you solve carbon capture you don't have to bother with efficiency for CO2 to be captured, you need some equivalent of the energy from sunlight in photosynthesis. so build these carbon capture facilities in places with powerful natural energy sources, and build them to last eternity
  - kaba0 3y ago
    > if you solve carbon capture, you solve the problem In what way does it solve anything? At that point we built a huge Rube Goldberg machine that burns coal for X energy, spends 2X energy on getting back the carbon (it’s simple entropy), producing that offset from nuclear and renewables.. it may be fun as an art installation somewhere, but to play with this bullshit at the scale of our planet is just ridiculous.
    - permo-w 3y ago
      this is what life on earth does. it's not some kind of wacky googly eyes rube goldberg machine, it's what plants and animals have been doing for hundreds of millions of years. carbon capture's job is to refine and accelerate the plant side of the equation
      - kaba0 3y ago
        First of all, there is no reason behind life. It just is, and on a big enough scale it is just thermodynamic equations in a closed material, but open energy system being driven by sunlight. Also, in and of itself life is 100% carbon neutral, or actually carbon decreasing as it is not 100% efficient - that small inefficiency is basically how we got many of our current oil/coal reserves. Biology did fix a big “mistake” of it, and since a few million years ago even trees can be properly “burnt” by fungi, so only some carbon is actually lost due to some extreme conditions (like it fall into whatever that embalmed it for a long time). The problem is that we reintroduce all these lost efficiency buffers in a few years that is such a fast paced change that it has dire consequences. Also, the reason for carbon in case of life is energy and a fundamental temporary constituent of the very thing. We do use carbon for many things, but the energy part can be entirely replaced by more efficient generation into electricity which is much more readily applicable than ATP is.
- tomp 3y ago
  > more efficient devices, more robust consumer products that can be replaced once a decade or less, more local production to reduce long-distance transportation, PR campaigns against over consumption You're advocating for degrowth policies. Degrowth is an evil, destructive, murderous mentality, and if you support it, you're evil. The only thing we should be doing is building more energy production capacity. Primarily nuclear, and also some solar (to use for e.g. air conditioning and maybe some energy intensive industries that don't need constant power). Carbon capture is a good way of supporting more energy production.
  - Retric 3y ago
    That’s not an argument for degrowth, so your attacking a strawman. Further, your suggestion is incredibly inefficient and so would result in a lower standard of living for humanity. The litmus test for carbon capture is to see what kind of carbon tax would be needed to offset the costs and hit net zero. If you actually implemented it you wouldn’t see massive scale carbon capture programs and current emissions you would instead see a vast reduction in emissions.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      His description of degrowth as "an evil, destructive, murderous mentality, and if you support it, you're evil" is already a strawman, with ad-hominem and moral panic thrown in. God forbid we forego "business as usual" while the bodies start piling up from continued growth's side-effects that are not impacted at all by kludges and unfeasible patches like "sucking carbon dioxide", "electric cars", and other such not-even-half measures...
    - concordDance 3y ago
      Properly taxing externalities on a global level would likely result in a giant reduction in fossil fuel burning and would indeed be a great thing. I'm a bit confused as to why you think nuclear power would result in a lower standard of living though.
      - Retric 3y ago
geysersam 3y ago
No. Just no. Just because we have two options doesn't mean both are equally good. And our resources are limited ! We cannot do everything, we have to choose.

tsimionescu 3y ago

I disagree. There are limited resources to spend on this issue, physically, and politically, and economically. Every bit of carbon capture technology that you build is taking up resources that would be infinitely better spent on carbon emission reductions: more efficient devices, more robust consumer products that can be replaced once a decade or less, more local production to reduce long-distance transportation, PR campaigns against over consumption, etc. And again, carbon capture is simply not a viable technology. It's almost like using a shovel to take water from a leaking pipe and move it to a nearby puddle: lots of effort for little gain, and there's no guarantee that the puddle won't connect back to the leak. Not to mention, most of those who peddle it are outright dishonest. Most have 0 plans for storage, and instead plan to "re-use the captured carbon", for example to grow plants mute efficiently in green houses, which is to say, to release it back at a slightly lower rate. And finally, even if by some magic the effort was somewhat successful, and we built up huge deposits of sequestered carbon, the most likely next step is for some idiot politician to start advocating for burning it as soon as the trend became slightly positive.

ffhhttt 3y ago
> re-use the captured carbon I assumes that was the entire point of carbon capture? i.e. instead of introducing more carbon into the atmosphere from oil/etc. you just reuse what’s already in it?
- kaba0 3y ago
  But.. why? The problem is that we put an insane amount of carbon into the atmosphere from million years old plants that was stored there just fine. If we just continue to circulate the existing amounts (and increase it in a tiny bit slower rate because let’s be honest, that’s the reality) we are not even a bit ahead.
  - ffhhttt 3y ago
    Because gasoline/diesel/etc. are very energy dense and much easier to store and transport than any alternativd. In some cases e.g. airplane there simply seem to be no other options (unless there is a massive breakthrough in battery tech and possibly out understanding of physics). So ‘clean’ burning synthetic fuels don’t seem like a terrible idea. Of course it all comes down to energy efficiency, but if solar/wind continue growing and carbon capture somehow becomes cost-efficient (assuming free solar/wind energy) it seems like a much better option than continuing oil extraction or even biofuels (which of course is also technically “carbon capture” just not very land/water efficient). > we are not even a bit ahead. Of course. But how does it make it different from every other option? Moving to 100% renewables won’t reverse climate change either .
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  No, the theoretical point of carbon capture is to take the carbon we released from the ground back into it. Ultimately, there is simply too much CO2 in the atmosphere at the moment. The long term goal has to be to permanently sequester it back into the ground - essentially reversing the last 100-200 years of burning fossil fuels, replacing everything we got from coal, oil, and gas with better alternatives so we can keep living a life that is at least as decent as today's. It is impossible for human civilization as we know it to thrive longer term if we keep the current amount of CO2 (and thus carbon) in any way that is circulating. Of course, capture can and should be the goal after we do the much much easier thing, which is not releasing even 1kg more of the already trapped carbon from the ground.
  - ffhhttt 3y ago
    > It is impossible for human civilization as we know it to thrive longer term if we keep the current amount of CO2 (and thus carbon) in any way that is circulating. I’m not sure that true. Han civilizations “thrived” under much worse conditions than we can reasonably expect (by that I mean that technological/economical/social progress historically outweighed environmental factors and I don’t why this won’t be the case in the future)
    - tsimionescu 3y ago
      Han civilization was vastly different from human civilization as we know it today, so it seems you're agreeing with me. I wasn't claiming humans would go extinct, just that there would be a massive upheaval that would entirely change civilization. Also, the Earth has never been as inhospitable to human life as it's expected to be since any known civilization started, so there's no historical precedent to compare to in terms of speed or effects of adaptation.
      - ffhhttt 3y ago
        > Han civilization Sorry. I’m not sure how did I manage to write that, it was supposed to be “civilizations have [thrived]”. > Earth has never been as inhospitable to human life as it's expected to be since any known civilization started, That debatable and very hard to quantify. Also it really depends on the region, e.g. Europe was probably quite worse than now during the “little ice age” or the 600s (coincidentally the Arabian peninsula seems to have thrived during that period due to higher humidity). Climate change was the reason many ancient civilizations collapsed, it seems to have been a pretty regular occurrence and we were only be to break out of that circle in the late middle ages/1500s.
- bmer 3y ago
  I think you might have a very fundamental misunderstanding on how thermodynamics works? The maximum theoretical efficiency for a combustion engine is about 50%. We'll probably struggle to hit 40%, and that too only after a fair bit of further investment (in particular, materials science investments, and the production of most engineered materials itself requires a fair bit of energy, which generally increases based on the non-standardness/"information-content" of the material (very roughly: "how likely is it that we find a naturally occurring deposit of it on Earth"). So, you cannot really "re-use what's already in it [the atmosphere]". Not sustainably, not while also accommodating growth.
  - ffhhttt 3y ago
    > I think you might have a very fundamental misunderstanding on how thermodynamics works? Why would you say that? lol. If we have a large surplus of cheap solar/wind energy during certain periods (which is unavoidable if they share will continue increasing significantly in the future). Of course yeah, that only works if this process becomes relatively cheap and efficient.
    - bmer 3y ago
      > Why would you say that? lol. I'm not entirely sure if you do have a misunderstanding, which is why I asked the question. I'm trying to figure out why you think "carbon capturing" is equivalent to "being able to re-mine hydrocarbons"? Assuming for the moment that the rest of the process is perfect (that is: ignoring that it costs energy to perform carbon capture, ignoring that it costs energy to convert from captured carbon back into some sort of usable hydrocarbon, etc.): it is already very challenging to get to even 50% efficiency in the engines involved in converting a fuel into electricity; whether that engine is an ICE, or a steam engine often used to convert certain renewable sources of energy into other forms. Most of that lost efficiency is due to fundamental constraints of thermodynamics : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine (Essentially, useful engines that produce mechanical work from difference in average energy between two bodies operate in cycles. Suppose we start at time 0, and it takes k time ticks for a cycle to start from its initial state X(0), go through its processes, and return back to the initial state: X(k). The fact is that X(0) and X(k) must be different, they cannot be exactly the same, because then that would mean that it is impossible to distinguish between X(0) and X(k), and your engine is not just an engine, but a time machine. (This is why entropy is closely related to the fact that time is an "arrow": always moving in a particular direction.)) All this to say: it is not possible to use a finite source of energy for a "long time", unless the finite source dwarfs by "many orders of magnitudes" (how large the magnitude, determines how much time before it runs out) the energy drained from it per time tick. So even if we got carbon capture working as a way to "recycle fuel" (totally, totally ignoring the fact that it will cost more energy to do the carbon capture and store said captured carbon, than the mechanical work we get out of it (the nuclear fusion problem, except not even technically solvable)) it would not last us for more than a few seconds. (Existing hydrocarbon reservoirs do dwarf our current energy use per time tick, but not by that much, and not if we also want to accommodate material growth, because of the energy cost of also "safely managing" the byproducts of the hydrocarbon->mechanical work process. The sun in particular, massively, massively dwarfs our current use per time tick. This is what makes "renewables" renewable: they have a massive bank of energy banking them. We have an awe-inspiring fusion reactor just throwing energy at us for a while. How do we convert it into usable work?) https://e360.yale.edu/features/three-myths-about-renewable-energy-and-the-grid-debunked https://e360.yale.edu/features/three-myths-about-renewable-e... Putting all that together as the context then, my question to you would be: how can one still use captured carbon as a sort of battery in any meaningful way? Is there a misunderstanding of thermodynamics involved on your part, or could you help me understand where my misunderstanding around thermodynamics lies (I am not an expert, just a novice)?
permo-w 3y ago
if you solve carbon capture, you solve the problem. efficiency cannot be permanently solved. efficiency is still worth seeking, but if you solve carbon capture you don't have to bother with efficiency for CO2 to be captured, you need some equivalent of the energy from sunlight in photosynthesis. so build these carbon capture facilities in places with powerful natural energy sources, and build them to last eternity
- kaba0 3y ago
  > if you solve carbon capture, you solve the problem In what way does it solve anything? At that point we built a huge Rube Goldberg machine that burns coal for X energy, spends 2X energy on getting back the carbon (it’s simple entropy), producing that offset from nuclear and renewables.. it may be fun as an art installation somewhere, but to play with this bullshit at the scale of our planet is just ridiculous.
  - permo-w 3y ago
    this is what life on earth does. it's not some kind of wacky googly eyes rube goldberg machine, it's what plants and animals have been doing for hundreds of millions of years. carbon capture's job is to refine and accelerate the plant side of the equation
    - kaba0 3y ago
      First of all, there is no reason behind life. It just is, and on a big enough scale it is just thermodynamic equations in a closed material, but open energy system being driven by sunlight. Also, in and of itself life is 100% carbon neutral, or actually carbon decreasing as it is not 100% efficient - that small inefficiency is basically how we got many of our current oil/coal reserves. Biology did fix a big “mistake” of it, and since a few million years ago even trees can be properly “burnt” by fungi, so only some carbon is actually lost due to some extreme conditions (like it fall into whatever that embalmed it for a long time). The problem is that we reintroduce all these lost efficiency buffers in a few years that is such a fast paced change that it has dire consequences. Also, the reason for carbon in case of life is energy and a fundamental temporary constituent of the very thing. We do use carbon for many things, but the energy part can be entirely replaced by more efficient generation into electricity which is much more readily applicable than ATP is.
tomp 3y ago
> more efficient devices, more robust consumer products that can be replaced once a decade or less, more local production to reduce long-distance transportation, PR campaigns against over consumption You're advocating for degrowth policies. Degrowth is an evil, destructive, murderous mentality, and if you support it, you're evil. The only thing we should be doing is building more energy production capacity. Primarily nuclear, and also some solar (to use for e.g. air conditioning and maybe some energy intensive industries that don't need constant power). Carbon capture is a good way of supporting more energy production.
- Retric 3y ago
  That’s not an argument for degrowth, so your attacking a strawman. Further, your suggestion is incredibly inefficient and so would result in a lower standard of living for humanity. The litmus test for carbon capture is to see what kind of carbon tax would be needed to offset the costs and hit net zero. If you actually implemented it you wouldn’t see massive scale carbon capture programs and current emissions you would instead see a vast reduction in emissions.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    His description of degrowth as "an evil, destructive, murderous mentality, and if you support it, you're evil" is already a strawman, with ad-hominem and moral panic thrown in. God forbid we forego "business as usual" while the bodies start piling up from continued growth's side-effects that are not impacted at all by kludges and unfeasible patches like "sucking carbon dioxide", "electric cars", and other such not-even-half measures...
  - concordDance 3y ago
    Properly taxing externalities on a global level would likely result in a giant reduction in fossil fuel burning and would indeed be a great thing. I'm a bit confused as to why you think nuclear power would result in a lower standard of living though.
    - Retric 3y ago

geysersam 3y ago

No. Just no. Just because we have two options doesn't mean both are equally good. And our resources are limited ! We cannot do everything, we have to choose.