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The entire carbon removal "industry" is a dangerous joke. None of the systems and proposals are able deliver anything even remotely approximating planetary-sca

The entire carbon removal "industry" is a dangerous joke. None of the systems and proposals are able deliver anything even remotely approximating planetary-scale CO2 mitigation without side effects in a range between making things worse and killing or destroying entire ecosystems. Not to mention requiring more energy, materials and resources than the planet might be able to provide. And nobody ever answers the question about violating some of the most basic laws of physics in the process. So long as money keeps flowing into this ridiculous industry and politicians keep using FUD to drive their voter-base, the flow of nonsensical non-solution will not stop. It is inevitable that, at some point in the future, people will finally understand reality for what it is. As an example, it has taken around twenty years for people to finally start understanding the scale of the energy problem we have in order to support full electrification of ground transportation. And now, with AI data centers likely doubling that requirement, this is finally leading to the --surprise!-- conclusion that nuclear power is a necessary solution. I have been brutalized here on HN in the past for daring to (years ago) bring-up the simple math related to the EV problem. Today we are at a point where the issue is starting to float to the surface. That took about twenty years. The math was the same back then. It's just that people refuse to think past what is being shoved into their heads from every angle. The next bridge to cross is the carbon removal scam. It will take time. I get it. People will eventually understand. I just hope we don't do irreparable damage to entire ecosystems between now and then.

kragen 2y ago
In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425415 (and elsewhere in the same thread) I corrected you the last time you made some of these false assertions. In the above comment, however, you seem to be repeating some of the claims that I demonstrated were incorrect, as well as adding some new ones. I did the math. I even had to correct my own math errors in that thread because you couldn't find them. In particular, as I showed there, no ecosystems need to be killed or destroyed for direct air capture; much less energy and materials are needed than the planet can provide (and which other resources do you have in mind?); and no laws of physics need to be violated.
- robomartin 2y ago
  @kragen You are trolling me every time I post about these issues. I have no interest whatsoever in anything you have to say. You are right. I am wrong. Happy now?
  - kragen 2y ago
    It's encouraging to see an unreserved admission that what you said wasn't true; but, given that what I had to say was easily-verified evidence that what you were saying was false, it's puzzling that you would say you "have no interest whatsoever" in it. That would seem to entail that you have no interest whatsoever in whether what you were saying was true or false. Is that what you intended to admit? It does seem to be in keeping with the fact that you knew or should have known that the things you were saying were falsehoods, given that I had corrected them only 13 days earlier. In that context, it's interesting that you mention trolling, which is precisely saying things to get a reaction without any interest in whether those things are true or false. Obviously that isn't what I was doing; these are difficult and complex topics, and I wouldn't have been able to uncover your mistakes if I wasn't dedicating significant effort to figuring out what was actually true. I understand that your lower animal nature would like to not hear what I have to say, because it's embarrassing when I provide clear and convincing evidence that you're mistaken about something, and so you want to play some kind of chimpanzee dominance games with me. But I'm not addressing your lower nature, and I'm not interested in your dominance games. I'm assuming that there's some part of you that does care whether what you're saying is true or false—that you have a higher nature that really believes it to some extent when you recommend that people do the following: - "accept and comprehend reality" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42482071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42482071 - study verifiable and quantitative data about CO₂ emissions, give priority to matters of physics over feelings or opinion, make at least a "minimal attempt at critical thinking", and study "the rules of physics" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42418501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42418501 - "work on how to live in this reality" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42419170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42419170 - "leaving fantasy-land to then be able to discuss, evaluate and address reality" rather than "creating a religion out of fantasies" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42419979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42419979 - "exercise critical thinking" using "the requisite scientific background or real-world experience to understand what are otherwise simple arguments rooted in physics" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425472 - reading research papers to find "the correct scientific perspective" rather than "pushing nonsense" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42420244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42420244 (though in that case the thing you were citing wasn't a research paper and had clearly turned out to be incorrect) - to "actually have an intelligent conversation" and "consider the entire life cycle" of solar energy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42424685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42424685 Taking your own advice on these points would entail responding seriously to the new, easily verifiable information I am presenting you with, rather than repeating claims I have clearly disproven. Above you say you have no interest whatsoever in doing this, and additionally you are accusing me of "trolling", but presumably there is some part of you that actually does believe in those stated ideals. Hopefully it can overcome your chimpanzee side. Nevertheless, even if you have no interest in whether the things you are saying are true or false (as you seem to be claiming), certainly there are other people who are interested in what is true, so I will continue to correct your errors when I notice them. As I said before, I would very much appreciate it if you would extend me the same courtesy.
hedora 2y ago
Here are some existence proofs that contradict your argument: A) It’s easy for a typical US family of four to net produce electricity with about 800-1000 sq ft of solar panels, assuming all electric appliances and vehicles (with reasonable commutes). The EV’s are basically rolling powerwalls, so this solves the storage problem. B) Some of the direct air capture systems rely solely on industrial processes that we know how to scale. They target ~$1-2 to remediate a gallon of burnt gas. (They haven’t scaled quickly yet because no one with enough money has placed a big bet on them.) I also think we should invest heavily in nuclear, and think most of the current carbon removal schemes are frauds, fwiw.
- robomartin 2y ago
  > It’s easy for a typical US family of four to net produce electricity with about 800-1000 sq ft of solar panels, assuming all electric appliances and vehicles (with reasonable commutes). The EV’s are basically rolling powerwalls, so this solves the storage problem. Not really. Our solar array is almost 900 square feet (4 x 20 meters). However, most people, even those with solar, have a misconception about the realities of solar power. This, because most people don't have technical backgrounds and never really look at their systems analytically. And, BTW, most arrays are significantly smaller than this one. For example, this is what the array can look like on a good day: https://i.imgur.com/aNnbmDp.png https://i.imgur.com/aNnbmDp.png This is what it can look like during a cloudy day: https://i.imgur.com/breTHQd.png https://i.imgur.com/breTHQd.png Yes! Those are white puffy clouds in sunny southern California! I have posted the math here on HN in detail in the past. The idea of using your EV as a battery simply will not work on multiple fronts. One of the most basic problems is that you'd age your battery prematurely by adding charge/discharge cycles. Need to travel somewhere? Too bad, your battery is down to 25% because it was powering your home. The reality of the situation is that you need many times the storage that an EV is able to provide in order to deal with the unreliability of solar production. If I remember correctly, when I did the math for our system, the conclusion was that we would have to triple the size of the array and have over 400 kWh of storage in place. The effects of unpredictable weather events and just plain clouds during otherwise beautiful sunny days makes this problematic. We had a particularly rough set of days in January of 2023 (and other times, I just have screen grabs for that period): https://i.imgur.com/bo0s7b0.png https://i.imgur.com/bo0s7b0.png It is quite sobering to do the math for what it would take to mitigate this. Adding EV's to charge at home to this equation makes it even worse. > Some of the direct air capture systems rely solely on industrial processes that we know how to scale. When you add-up the realities of manufacturing (which in some cases might include mining), transportation, construction, deployment, operations and maintenance, not one system has yet surfaced that can conclusively operate beyond the lab or, at best, a small test area (like a small farm patch). It is quite a different matter to operate at a the scale of a city, province/state, country and globally. I'd love for it to work, but, so far, everything is in the category of a fantasy. We should focus on cleaning-up our act. Nature will take care of the planet over time. I think I can say that hurricanes and large storms are probably the largest carbon capture mechanism. This is how the planet handles the problem. So, yeah, places like Florida might need to adapt to more intense weather for the next few hundred years. That's just an unavoidable fact as far as I am concerned and until proven otherwise. There are realities that are inconvenient and nobody wants to discuss. Current example: The effect of the fires in Australia. https://apnews.com/article/wild-fires-australia-victoria-d3ffa3454c942eb5d29b618e702c4373 https://apnews.com/article/wild-fires-australia-victoria-d3f... So far, 55K hectares burned and no stop in sight. At 130 tons of CO2 per hectare, that's over seven million tons. Passenger cars in the entire US produce approximately 370 million tons PER YEAR. In other words, in just a few days, a single fire in Australia generated approximately 2% of the CO2 produced by vehicles in the US during an entire year. There are thousands of massive fires around the world, including mine fires that have been burning for hundreds of years. Which means that this idea of achieving net zero or capturing enough CO2 from the atmosphere through technical means is, well, simply not reasonable. As I like to put it, even if all of humanity left this planet it would still take 50K to 100K years for a 100 ppm drop in CO2...because this isn't a lab experiment, it's a planet-scale problem.

kragen 2y ago

In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425415 (and elsewhere in the same thread) I corrected you the last time you made some of these false assertions. In the above comment, however, you seem to be repeating some of the claims that I demonstrated were incorrect, as well as adding some new ones. I did the math. I even had to correct my own math errors in that thread because you couldn't find them. In particular, as I showed there, no ecosystems need to be killed or destroyed for direct air capture; much less energy and materials are needed than the planet can provide (and which other resources do you have in mind?); and no laws of physics need to be violated.

robomartin 2y ago
@kragen You are trolling me every time I post about these issues. I have no interest whatsoever in anything you have to say. You are right. I am wrong. Happy now?
- kragen 2y ago
  It's encouraging to see an unreserved admission that what you said wasn't true; but, given that what I had to say was easily-verified evidence that what you were saying was false, it's puzzling that you would say you "have no interest whatsoever" in it. That would seem to entail that you have no interest whatsoever in whether what you were saying was true or false. Is that what you intended to admit? It does seem to be in keeping with the fact that you knew or should have known that the things you were saying were falsehoods, given that I had corrected them only 13 days earlier. In that context, it's interesting that you mention trolling, which is precisely saying things to get a reaction without any interest in whether those things are true or false. Obviously that isn't what I was doing; these are difficult and complex topics, and I wouldn't have been able to uncover your mistakes if I wasn't dedicating significant effort to figuring out what was actually true. I understand that your lower animal nature would like to not hear what I have to say, because it's embarrassing when I provide clear and convincing evidence that you're mistaken about something, and so you want to play some kind of chimpanzee dominance games with me. But I'm not addressing your lower nature, and I'm not interested in your dominance games. I'm assuming that there's some part of you that does care whether what you're saying is true or false—that you have a higher nature that really believes it to some extent when you recommend that people do the following: - "accept and comprehend reality" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42482071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42482071 - study verifiable and quantitative data about CO₂ emissions, give priority to matters of physics over feelings or opinion, make at least a "minimal attempt at critical thinking", and study "the rules of physics" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42418501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42418501 - "work on how to live in this reality" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42419170 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42419170 - "leaving fantasy-land to then be able to discuss, evaluate and address reality" rather than "creating a religion out of fantasies" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42419979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42419979 - "exercise critical thinking" using "the requisite scientific background or real-world experience to understand what are otherwise simple arguments rooted in physics" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425472 - reading research papers to find "the correct scientific perspective" rather than "pushing nonsense" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42420244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42420244 (though in that case the thing you were citing wasn't a research paper and had clearly turned out to be incorrect) - to "actually have an intelligent conversation" and "consider the entire life cycle" of solar energy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42424685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42424685 Taking your own advice on these points would entail responding seriously to the new, easily verifiable information I am presenting you with, rather than repeating claims I have clearly disproven. Above you say you have no interest whatsoever in doing this, and additionally you are accusing me of "trolling", but presumably there is some part of you that actually does believe in those stated ideals. Hopefully it can overcome your chimpanzee side. Nevertheless, even if you have no interest in whether the things you are saying are true or false (as you seem to be claiming), certainly there are other people who are interested in what is true, so I will continue to correct your errors when I notice them. As I said before, I would very much appreciate it if you would extend me the same courtesy.

hedora 2y ago

Here are some existence proofs that contradict your argument: A) It’s easy for a typical US family of four to net produce electricity with about 800-1000 sq ft of solar panels, assuming all electric appliances and vehicles (with reasonable commutes). The EV’s are basically rolling powerwalls, so this solves the storage problem. B) Some of the direct air capture systems rely solely on industrial processes that we know how to scale. They target ~$1-2 to remediate a gallon of burnt gas. (They haven’t scaled quickly yet because no one with enough money has placed a big bet on them.) I also think we should invest heavily in nuclear, and think most of the current carbon removal schemes are frauds, fwiw.

robomartin 2y ago
> It’s easy for a typical US family of four to net produce electricity with about 800-1000 sq ft of solar panels, assuming all electric appliances and vehicles (with reasonable commutes). The EV’s are basically rolling powerwalls, so this solves the storage problem. Not really. Our solar array is almost 900 square feet (4 x 20 meters). However, most people, even those with solar, have a misconception about the realities of solar power. This, because most people don't have technical backgrounds and never really look at their systems analytically. And, BTW, most arrays are significantly smaller than this one. For example, this is what the array can look like on a good day: https://i.imgur.com/aNnbmDp.png https://i.imgur.com/aNnbmDp.png This is what it can look like during a cloudy day: https://i.imgur.com/breTHQd.png https://i.imgur.com/breTHQd.png Yes! Those are white puffy clouds in sunny southern California! I have posted the math here on HN in detail in the past. The idea of using your EV as a battery simply will not work on multiple fronts. One of the most basic problems is that you'd age your battery prematurely by adding charge/discharge cycles. Need to travel somewhere? Too bad, your battery is down to 25% because it was powering your home. The reality of the situation is that you need many times the storage that an EV is able to provide in order to deal with the unreliability of solar production. If I remember correctly, when I did the math for our system, the conclusion was that we would have to triple the size of the array and have over 400 kWh of storage in place. The effects of unpredictable weather events and just plain clouds during otherwise beautiful sunny days makes this problematic. We had a particularly rough set of days in January of 2023 (and other times, I just have screen grabs for that period): https://i.imgur.com/bo0s7b0.png https://i.imgur.com/bo0s7b0.png It is quite sobering to do the math for what it would take to mitigate this. Adding EV's to charge at home to this equation makes it even worse. > Some of the direct air capture systems rely solely on industrial processes that we know how to scale. When you add-up the realities of manufacturing (which in some cases might include mining), transportation, construction, deployment, operations and maintenance, not one system has yet surfaced that can conclusively operate beyond the lab or, at best, a small test area (like a small farm patch). It is quite a different matter to operate at a the scale of a city, province/state, country and globally. I'd love for it to work, but, so far, everything is in the category of a fantasy. We should focus on cleaning-up our act. Nature will take care of the planet over time. I think I can say that hurricanes and large storms are probably the largest carbon capture mechanism. This is how the planet handles the problem. So, yeah, places like Florida might need to adapt to more intense weather for the next few hundred years. That's just an unavoidable fact as far as I am concerned and until proven otherwise. There are realities that are inconvenient and nobody wants to discuss. Current example: The effect of the fires in Australia. https://apnews.com/article/wild-fires-australia-victoria-d3ffa3454c942eb5d29b618e702c4373 https://apnews.com/article/wild-fires-australia-victoria-d3f... So far, 55K hectares burned and no stop in sight. At 130 tons of CO2 per hectare, that's over seven million tons. Passenger cars in the entire US produce approximately 370 million tons PER YEAR. In other words, in just a few days, a single fire in Australia generated approximately 2% of the CO2 produced by vehicles in the US during an entire year. There are thousands of massive fires around the world, including mine fires that have been burning for hundreds of years. Which means that this idea of achieving net zero or capturing enough CO2 from the atmosphere through technical means is, well, simply not reasonable. As I like to put it, even if all of humanity left this planet it would still take 50K to 100K years for a 100 ppm drop in CO2...because this isn't a lab experiment, it's a planet-scale problem.