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I realize carbon capture may be some part of reducing total carbon in the atmosphere, but it's disproportionately brought up as a potentially effective one. It

I realize carbon capture may be some part of reducing total carbon in the atmosphere, but it's disproportionately brought up as a potentially effective one. It stinks to high heaven of chasing public "investment" rather than actually holding industries accountable for actually reducing emissions.

renewiltord 2y ago
People when carbon capture: This stinks of redirecting tax money. Hold accountable. People when carbon tax: You made inflation high. Get out! The ideal voter gets to ask for things he'll never get but complain about them if he does get them. That way he can act free of sin and simultaneously vote out people who give him that. There's always some other pretext. "I'm not voting him out for his carbon tax. I'm voting him out because X". Because the space of actions a political leader must do is large enough that nothing is perfect, the voter can always claim he is optimizing to some good. In the West, people get what they vote for and my experience is that they're quite representative of peoples' views.
- klabb3 2y ago
  > People when carbon capture: This stinks of redirecting tax money. Hold accountable. > People when carbon tax: You made inflation high. Get out! This is quite a funny observation. And true. The general psychological bias is when immediate known losses are standing against unknown future gains. Also Americans in particular are allergic to the term tax. A carbon tax would be the most hands-off way to solve the problem. Ideally phased in slowly and with a clear price structure from the get-go. All you need is: - industry needs to know how much they will be taxed in X years, so the bean counters can put it in their projections so execs listen - the tax needs to be tight enough so you can’t escape through tax “planning” aka move operations to unregulated countries The rest takes care of itself. Once there’s a tangible measurable cost things will change quickly from green leaf-decorated “we care”-pamphlets to fire in the ass of the decision makers.
- partiallypro 2y ago
  I generally agree with you, but in terms of CO2 output the West is not really the problem anymore. It's developing countries, and the general argument they have is that "why should we have to suffer with slower economic output when you didn't?"
  - adrianN 2y ago
    "The West" is absolutely still the problem. No country is on a path that is compatible with 2° warming.
    - wakawaka28 2y ago
      No country in the world is on a path compatible with the supposed 2 degree goal, and it's not mainly a problem of the West. I think the whole climate freakout is a scam in the first place. In any case, the West should not cripple itself as other countries continue business as usual. We can't survive like that, and it won't be the climate that gets us either.
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    Yeah, but that's not going to work because we used carbon to fuel growth and then decarbonized. Everyone else saw that China did the same thing to raise half a billion out of poverty. Everyone remaining saw that India raised more than that out of poverty burning carbon. It's not like we're going to give developing countries nuclear power so their choice is coal, natural gas, wind, and solar. And inevitably they follow that specific chain of energy build-out as their growing economy starts cleaning up. No one has demonstrated a high-scale success that is not that.
  - pshc 2y ago
    If anything the West needs to to be a model and driver for a carbon neutral or negative lifestyle. We burned all the carbon in the first place, and developing countries will suffer the consequences disproportionately.
  - abdullahkhalids 2y ago
    Let's look at the data [1], which should be a table of per capita emission/country, sorted by 2022 numbers. The countries at the top have to make the largest changes in their socio-economic systems in order to get close to zero emissions. While countries at the bottom have to make minimal changes. They simply have to not emit in the future by using carbon-neutral methods to attain improved human well-being. You will note in the table [2], that at the top are the oil producing countries in the Middle East, followed by Canada, USA, and Australia. Most of the large European countries are far below. The bottom half of the table obviously contains no West countries. China has half the per capita emissions of USA/Canada/Australia, and the same as current Europe, and it's already decreasing both its population and soon its per capita emissions. It's precisely the people in the Middle East and USA/Canada/Australia have to make the largest changes in their systems. China+Europe have to follow the same downward trajectories. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=table&time=2011..latest&facet=none&hideControls=false&Gas+or+Warming=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting=Territorial&Fuel+or+Land+Use+Change=All+fossil+emissions&Count=Per+capita&Relative+to+world+total=false https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=table&time=2011... [2] Please ignore small countries, which have negligible total emissions.
- wakawaka28 2y ago
  >People when carbon capture: This stinks of redirecting tax money. Hold accountable. > >People when carbon tax: You made inflation high. Get out! It's almost like the voting population consists of people with various different opinions. Personally if I could be assured that a carbon tax would be spent mostly on low-overhead tree/algae farming, and to a lesser extent useful research, I would be ok with it. Otherwise, it's just a cash grab that impoverishes people more for no benefit.
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    Haha, of course. Carbon taxes can't be a cash grab if they're revenue neutral which is easy to do: just evenly split by each taxpayer+dependents and send it back as a tax credit. In fact, that's exactly how it's done right now in many places that implement it. But no algae farms, sorry. Sort of illustrates the point perfectly hahaha.
    - wakawaka28 2y ago
      >Carbon taxes can't be a cash grab if they're revenue neutral which is easy to do: just evenly split by each taxpayer+dependents and send it back as a tax credit. In fact, that's exactly how it's done right now in many places that implement it. Tax credits are a scam too. I'd rather have everyone pay a reasonable low tax for this purpose than favor some people and uses over others. The market will probably sort that out if you let it. >But no algae farms, sorry. Sort of illustrates the point perfectly hahaha. Most of our oxygen comes from algae, so it's not crazy. But I'd prioritize other things first, probably.
janice1999 2y ago
Pretty much the same way that plastic recycling turned out to be huge scam.
- mywittyname 2y ago
  Scientist knew plastic recycling was impossible. But marketing companies working for plastics producers came up with the idea of lying to the public about it to stave off a ban they were looking at. Today, it's basically impossible to convince people that plastics are not recyclable - at least not in the same way that glass or metals are - because of that little recyclable symbol ever piece of plastic has on it.
  - scotty79 2y ago
    Plastics can be beneficial for global warming. They need less energy for making them and for transporting them than the alternatives. And they sequester CO2 when they are landfilled at the end of their useful life. We should be pushing them back underground through the same holes we used to dig up the carbon.
    - nerdponx 2y ago
      How do they sequester CO2?
      - scotty79 2y ago
        They consist of mostly carbon. If you don't burn them, that carbon doesn't end up in the atmosphere.
    - legitster 2y ago
      And honestly, the a lot of the problems with plastics are actually a very specific and fixable problem. 90% of the plastics in the Pacific Ocean come from 2 rivers.
      - janice1999 2y ago
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
We have built our society on a lot of incentives that are bad for the planet unfortunately so we now have some conflicting requirements for tackling climate change. 1. Cut back on emissions 2. Nobody anywhere is allowed to lose money How can this possibly work? How do you cut emissions which are a proxy for consumption/production without anybody losing out?
- vkou 2y ago
  We can't, we won't, and we'll regret it.
  - kranke155 2y ago
    It's as if human civilization is reaching adulthood, late 20s early 30s, where the errors of being young and foolish start catching up to you.
    - vkou 2y ago
      Those errors don't really catch up to you until your late 40s, when your health is shot, your bank account is empty, and you don't really have enough time left to dig your way out of the hole you're in. That's about the stage we're at.
      - kranke155 2y ago
        I certainly hope not!
    - bumby 2y ago
      I maybe be misremembering, but I think one of Carl Sagan’s characters in the book Contact was asked what she would want to ask extra terrestrials if given the opportunity. Her answer was along the lines of “how did you manage to survive this technological adolescence we are currently experiencing?”
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  Efficiency, which is what we have been (sort of) doing and why things are moving so slowly. For instance, efficiency is what has made solar panels both effective enough to use, and cheap enough to install.
causal 2y ago
Likewise Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about how sustainability hype in general is oriented toward sustaining consumer lifestyles, which will never really be compatible with living in a closed ecosystem.
scotty79 2y ago
We can capture carbon before emitting it. For example if we can use carbon to make plastic that saves us energy (especially in areas where energy doesn't come from renewables) then it's a huge benefit. Especially if we don't burn the plastic afterwards, just put it under ground instead.
- adrianN 2y ago
  We can either leave the oil in the ground, or turn it into long lived products. But we can't economically suck carbon from the air and turn it into long lived products, but that's exactly what we need to do to prevent catastrophic warming. We have already emitted too much carbon dioxide.
marcosdumay 2y ago
Not only it's a small part of the effort, it's also only really effective after we stop generating that huge amount of CO2, and almost all the initiatives around are snake-oil that can't grow enough to make an impact. Some accountability would go a long way here. Most of the stuff around carbon capture are plainly fraudulent.
vvvvvvvvvvvvv 2y ago
I agree with this in principle, but only insofar as it applies to western countries. Emissions from the developing world will continue to increase (rightfully so, given we had such massive head start) and they will have little incentive to curtail emissions, even when climate-related disasters become more frequent. The only unilateral solution seems to be a technological one, therefore necessitating carbon capture.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Just like late-development countries didn't avoid getting celphones and investing in mobile internet before they could put their wired internet in place, developing countries will stop their emissions on about the same time as developed ones. Nobody is making any bit of extra work towards cleaning the planet. And that's a really big shame for the developed countries.
- hackerlight 2y ago
  > The only unilateral solution seems to be a technological one Or a political one. Developed countries provide them a small financial incentive to build out renewables instead. Some kind of UN fund. It doesn't have to be a large incentive, it just needs to tip the financial decision over at the margin. The economic logic: it's a retroactive carbon tax, of sorts, given the extreme inequality in emissions per-capita since the industrial revolution. It's also a pragmatic solution, because it's cheaper to prevent the emissions than extract it after they've been released.
- darby_eight 2y ago
  There's a simpler solution: rich (read "developed") nations can simply pay poor countries to not use coal or other carbon-emitting processes.
LargeWu 2y ago
The only argument for investing in carbon capture today seems to be to allow the technology to mature. We'd probably be saying similar things about the effectiveness of solar panels if we started developing that technology now. The idea is that maybe, and that's a big maybe, by the time we get to a point where all of our power generation is low emissions, we will have matured carbon capture tech enough to make it viable.
- 11101010001100 2y ago
  Good thing we invested in solar when did then because if CC has any chance of success, then it will heavily depend on solar.
- abdullahkhalids 2y ago
  The difference is that thermodynamic analysis of solar panels, even before building them or improving them, tells us that it is a winning bet. We can't say the same for carbon capture. It's a thermodynamically losing bet. The humongous amount of entropy we will have to generate to offset any significant part of current emissions via carbon capture (let alone already emitted CO2) basically tells us that carbon capture can only be used in exceptional circumstances where there are no feasible methods of reducing emissions. If there are, then the winning method is to not emit in the first place.
- rasz 2y ago
  >allow the technology to mature just like recycling plastics matured, right? :)
- xethos 2y ago
  > only argument for investing in carbon capture today seems to be to allow the technology to mature > CDR currently removes about 3bn tonnes of CO2 from the air every year, of which almost 100% comes from land-based methods, *such as afforestation and reforestation*, the study says. Trees have pretty well matured. They will not get the same improvements through material science that solar got. "Letting carbon capture tech mature" is hoping for a moonshot to bear fruit.
r00fus 2y ago
"Carbon capture" == "clean coal". Different decade, same scam.
scratcheee 2y ago
One potential value of CC today is as a final and most flexible solution. Even with the limited and experimental technology of today, which is obviously economically insane, we have a way (with enough money) to make anything carbon neutral. The value is not that we actually do that (humanity cannot afford it, in general), but instead to give us the number to beat, the correct carbon tax, the absolute cost of failing to decarbonise. It’s easier to justify improved efficiency when the cost of spilling carbon is a big number of dollars rather than a tiny slither of a global problem. That said, I do agree investment should be limited, it’s obviously only going to be the “best” solution in the rare circumstance that there is no good solution.

renewiltord 2y ago

People when carbon capture: This stinks of redirecting tax money. Hold accountable. People when carbon tax: You made inflation high. Get out! The ideal voter gets to ask for things he'll never get but complain about them if he does get them. That way he can act free of sin and simultaneously vote out people who give him that. There's always some other pretext. "I'm not voting him out for his carbon tax. I'm voting him out because X". Because the space of actions a political leader must do is large enough that nothing is perfect, the voter can always claim he is optimizing to some good. In the West, people get what they vote for and my experience is that they're quite representative of peoples' views.

klabb3 2y ago
> People when carbon capture: This stinks of redirecting tax money. Hold accountable. > People when carbon tax: You made inflation high. Get out! This is quite a funny observation. And true. The general psychological bias is when immediate known losses are standing against unknown future gains. Also Americans in particular are allergic to the term tax. A carbon tax would be the most hands-off way to solve the problem. Ideally phased in slowly and with a clear price structure from the get-go. All you need is: - industry needs to know how much they will be taxed in X years, so the bean counters can put it in their projections so execs listen - the tax needs to be tight enough so you can’t escape through tax “planning” aka move operations to unregulated countries The rest takes care of itself. Once there’s a tangible measurable cost things will change quickly from green leaf-decorated “we care”-pamphlets to fire in the ass of the decision makers.
partiallypro 2y ago
I generally agree with you, but in terms of CO2 output the West is not really the problem anymore. It's developing countries, and the general argument they have is that "why should we have to suffer with slower economic output when you didn't?"
- adrianN 2y ago
  "The West" is absolutely still the problem. No country is on a path that is compatible with 2° warming.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    No country in the world is on a path compatible with the supposed 2 degree goal, and it's not mainly a problem of the West. I think the whole climate freakout is a scam in the first place. In any case, the West should not cripple itself as other countries continue business as usual. We can't survive like that, and it won't be the climate that gets us either.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  Yeah, but that's not going to work because we used carbon to fuel growth and then decarbonized. Everyone else saw that China did the same thing to raise half a billion out of poverty. Everyone remaining saw that India raised more than that out of poverty burning carbon. It's not like we're going to give developing countries nuclear power so their choice is coal, natural gas, wind, and solar. And inevitably they follow that specific chain of energy build-out as their growing economy starts cleaning up. No one has demonstrated a high-scale success that is not that.
- pshc 2y ago
  If anything the West needs to to be a model and driver for a carbon neutral or negative lifestyle. We burned all the carbon in the first place, and developing countries will suffer the consequences disproportionately.
- abdullahkhalids 2y ago
  Let's look at the data [1], which should be a table of per capita emission/country, sorted by 2022 numbers. The countries at the top have to make the largest changes in their socio-economic systems in order to get close to zero emissions. While countries at the bottom have to make minimal changes. They simply have to not emit in the future by using carbon-neutral methods to attain improved human well-being. You will note in the table [2], that at the top are the oil producing countries in the Middle East, followed by Canada, USA, and Australia. Most of the large European countries are far below. The bottom half of the table obviously contains no West countries. China has half the per capita emissions of USA/Canada/Australia, and the same as current Europe, and it's already decreasing both its population and soon its per capita emissions. It's precisely the people in the Middle East and USA/Canada/Australia have to make the largest changes in their systems. China+Europe have to follow the same downward trajectories. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=table&time=2011..latest&facet=none&hideControls=false&Gas+or+Warming=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting=Territorial&Fuel+or+Land+Use+Change=All+fossil+emissions&Count=Per+capita&Relative+to+world+total=false https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=table&time=2011... [2] Please ignore small countries, which have negligible total emissions.
wakawaka28 2y ago
>People when carbon capture: This stinks of redirecting tax money. Hold accountable. > >People when carbon tax: You made inflation high. Get out! It's almost like the voting population consists of people with various different opinions. Personally if I could be assured that a carbon tax would be spent mostly on low-overhead tree/algae farming, and to a lesser extent useful research, I would be ok with it. Otherwise, it's just a cash grab that impoverishes people more for no benefit.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  Haha, of course. Carbon taxes can't be a cash grab if they're revenue neutral which is easy to do: just evenly split by each taxpayer+dependents and send it back as a tax credit. In fact, that's exactly how it's done right now in many places that implement it. But no algae farms, sorry. Sort of illustrates the point perfectly hahaha.
  - wakawaka28 2y ago
    >Carbon taxes can't be a cash grab if they're revenue neutral which is easy to do: just evenly split by each taxpayer+dependents and send it back as a tax credit. In fact, that's exactly how it's done right now in many places that implement it. Tax credits are a scam too. I'd rather have everyone pay a reasonable low tax for this purpose than favor some people and uses over others. The market will probably sort that out if you let it. >But no algae farms, sorry. Sort of illustrates the point perfectly hahaha. Most of our oxygen comes from algae, so it's not crazy. But I'd prioritize other things first, probably.

janice1999 2y ago

Pretty much the same way that plastic recycling turned out to be huge scam.

mywittyname 2y ago
Scientist knew plastic recycling was impossible. But marketing companies working for plastics producers came up with the idea of lying to the public about it to stave off a ban they were looking at. Today, it's basically impossible to convince people that plastics are not recyclable - at least not in the same way that glass or metals are - because of that little recyclable symbol ever piece of plastic has on it.
- scotty79 2y ago
  Plastics can be beneficial for global warming. They need less energy for making them and for transporting them than the alternatives. And they sequester CO2 when they are landfilled at the end of their useful life. We should be pushing them back underground through the same holes we used to dig up the carbon.
  - nerdponx 2y ago
    How do they sequester CO2?
    - scotty79 2y ago
      They consist of mostly carbon. If you don't burn them, that carbon doesn't end up in the atmosphere.
  - legitster 2y ago
    And honestly, the a lot of the problems with plastics are actually a very specific and fixable problem. 90% of the plastics in the Pacific Ocean come from 2 rivers.
    - janice1999 2y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

We have built our society on a lot of incentives that are bad for the planet unfortunately so we now have some conflicting requirements for tackling climate change. 1. Cut back on emissions 2. Nobody anywhere is allowed to lose money How can this possibly work? How do you cut emissions which are a proxy for consumption/production without anybody losing out?

vkou 2y ago
We can't, we won't, and we'll regret it.
- kranke155 2y ago
  It's as if human civilization is reaching adulthood, late 20s early 30s, where the errors of being young and foolish start catching up to you.
  - vkou 2y ago
    Those errors don't really catch up to you until your late 40s, when your health is shot, your bank account is empty, and you don't really have enough time left to dig your way out of the hole you're in. That's about the stage we're at.
    - kranke155 2y ago
      I certainly hope not!
  - bumby 2y ago
    I maybe be misremembering, but I think one of Carl Sagan’s characters in the book Contact was asked what she would want to ask extra terrestrials if given the opportunity. Her answer was along the lines of “how did you manage to survive this technological adolescence we are currently experiencing?”
Workaccount2 2y ago
Efficiency, which is what we have been (sort of) doing and why things are moving so slowly. For instance, efficiency is what has made solar panels both effective enough to use, and cheap enough to install.

causal 2y ago

Likewise Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about how sustainability hype in general is oriented toward sustaining consumer lifestyles, which will never really be compatible with living in a closed ecosystem.

scotty79 2y ago

We can capture carbon before emitting it. For example if we can use carbon to make plastic that saves us energy (especially in areas where energy doesn't come from renewables) then it's a huge benefit. Especially if we don't burn the plastic afterwards, just put it under ground instead.

adrianN 2y ago
We can either leave the oil in the ground, or turn it into long lived products. But we can't economically suck carbon from the air and turn it into long lived products, but that's exactly what we need to do to prevent catastrophic warming. We have already emitted too much carbon dioxide.

marcosdumay 2y ago

Not only it's a small part of the effort, it's also only really effective after we stop generating that huge amount of CO2, and almost all the initiatives around are snake-oil that can't grow enough to make an impact. Some accountability would go a long way here. Most of the stuff around carbon capture are plainly fraudulent.

vvvvvvvvvvvvv 2y ago

I agree with this in principle, but only insofar as it applies to western countries. Emissions from the developing world will continue to increase (rightfully so, given we had such massive head start) and they will have little incentive to curtail emissions, even when climate-related disasters become more frequent. The only unilateral solution seems to be a technological one, therefore necessitating carbon capture.

marcosdumay 2y ago
Just like late-development countries didn't avoid getting celphones and investing in mobile internet before they could put their wired internet in place, developing countries will stop their emissions on about the same time as developed ones. Nobody is making any bit of extra work towards cleaning the planet. And that's a really big shame for the developed countries.
hackerlight 2y ago
> The only unilateral solution seems to be a technological one Or a political one. Developed countries provide them a small financial incentive to build out renewables instead. Some kind of UN fund. It doesn't have to be a large incentive, it just needs to tip the financial decision over at the margin. The economic logic: it's a retroactive carbon tax, of sorts, given the extreme inequality in emissions per-capita since the industrial revolution. It's also a pragmatic solution, because it's cheaper to prevent the emissions than extract it after they've been released.
darby_eight 2y ago
There's a simpler solution: rich (read "developed") nations can simply pay poor countries to not use coal or other carbon-emitting processes.

LargeWu 2y ago

The only argument for investing in carbon capture today seems to be to allow the technology to mature. We'd probably be saying similar things about the effectiveness of solar panels if we started developing that technology now. The idea is that maybe, and that's a big maybe, by the time we get to a point where all of our power generation is low emissions, we will have matured carbon capture tech enough to make it viable.

11101010001100 2y ago
Good thing we invested in solar when did then because if CC has any chance of success, then it will heavily depend on solar.
abdullahkhalids 2y ago
The difference is that thermodynamic analysis of solar panels, even before building them or improving them, tells us that it is a winning bet. We can't say the same for carbon capture. It's a thermodynamically losing bet. The humongous amount of entropy we will have to generate to offset any significant part of current emissions via carbon capture (let alone already emitted CO2) basically tells us that carbon capture can only be used in exceptional circumstances where there are no feasible methods of reducing emissions. If there are, then the winning method is to not emit in the first place.
rasz 2y ago
>allow the technology to mature just like recycling plastics matured, right? :)
xethos 2y ago
> only argument for investing in carbon capture today seems to be to allow the technology to mature > CDR currently removes about 3bn tonnes of CO2 from the air every year, of which almost 100% comes from land-based methods, *such as afforestation and reforestation*, the study says. Trees have pretty well matured. They will not get the same improvements through material science that solar got. "Letting carbon capture tech mature" is hoping for a moonshot to bear fruit.

r00fus 2y ago

"Carbon capture" == "clean coal". Different decade, same scam.

scratcheee 2y ago

One potential value of CC today is as a final and most flexible solution. Even with the limited and experimental technology of today, which is obviously economically insane, we have a way (with enough money) to make anything carbon neutral. The value is not that we actually do that (humanity cannot afford it, in general), but instead to give us the number to beat, the correct carbon tax, the absolute cost of failing to decarbonise. It’s easier to justify improved efficiency when the cost of spilling carbon is a big number of dollars rather than a tiny slither of a global problem. That said, I do agree investment should be limited, it’s obviously only going to be the “best” solution in the rare circumstance that there is no good solution.