7 ms·

You can tell when someone is a process or chemical engineer, by how they carefully consider each of the system boundaries and the inputs, outputs and processes

by acyou 11mo ago

You can tell when someone is a process or chemical engineer, by how they carefully consider each of the system boundaries and the inputs, outputs and processes inside and outside each of these boundaries. There seems to be a whole series of issues in considering system boundaries and where they can and should be drawn when considering the best course of action. EVs are a classic case, you draw the system boundary around the vehicle and get a MPG figure, and externalize the remaining costs. Might as well claim infinite MPG. Bill Gates proves himself as a process oriented guy here. Carbon capture is another funny one. You report that you sequester this amount of carbon, but on the other hand deplete the soil. The amount of carbon in healthy soil is staggering, activities leading to soil erosion and depletion of soil nutrients have to be very carefully considered. How do you draw a system boundary around a volume of soil with biological activity extending down 500 feet and predict the carbon balance over the next 500 years? It's introducing predators into Australia all over again, people thinking they are smart and going for the course of action that is politically favorable in the very short term but ultimately ill considered. For regulation, this is pretty much why can't we just have regulations that benefit me right now? For people with deep pockets, they ignore the regulations and pay the fines. Problem with these guys is their entire business model revolves around making money off of externalizing costs onto the rest of the economy, via environmental regulatory burden. What is unsaid in the article is the sentiment that regulators should more heavily support the EV business, the carbon capture business, etc, in general which makes sense to those invested, but not to everyone else.

internetter 11mo ago
> How do you draw a system boundary around a volume of soil with biological activity extending down 500 feet and predict the carbon balance over the next 500 years? Are the potential harms in the very worst case scenario more significant than the harms of failing to sequester carbon and stop its production? It’s hard for me to imagine this being so. Mind that the process that created these holes have also created tremendously large biohazards very consistently, yet are normalized by society. We must accelerate the pace we’re on. > What is unsaid in the article is the sentiment that regulators should more heavily support the EV business, the carbon capture business, etc, in general which makes sense to those invested, but not to everyone else. Makes a hell of a lot of sense to me? I absolutely think businesses which are working to save millions of lives should receive regulatory support, instead of the oil companies which are still to this day benefiting from price subsidies?
- delusional 11mo ago
  Aren't the oil companies "working" on carbon capture?
  - scotty79 11mo ago
    To be honest they should be forced to actually work on it. The rule should be, if you want to be allowed to sell X amount of carbon as fuel on a given market, you have to capture k*X amount of CO2.
  - rcxdude 11mo ago
    The oil companies are generally working on carbon capture that produces CO2 that can be sequestered with the equipment and know-how they already have (i.e. pumping pressurised CO2 back into underground reservoirs). Growing crops is one of their focuses (and it's not a very good form of carbon capture, anyhow).
  - sfn42 11mo ago
    Carbon capture is a waste of time. You essentially have to suck the entire atmosphere through capture facilities. It's completely infeasible in practice, the largest plant we have right now is called mammoth and in order to offset our current emissions we would need a million mammoths. A million of these large, expensive facilities that take years to build.
- oezi 11mo ago
  The key point contested is stated like this in the OP: > A regulatory system that structurally insists on legalistic, ultra-extreme caution is bound to generate a massive negative return for society. The OP mostly sees the downsides and disregards how hard earned any of those regulatory requirements are. Each requirement is usually the outcome of people being substantially impacted by industry before regulation. For instance the Thalidomide scandal with 10000 children born with deformities. If OP doesn't grasp the origin and rationale behind regulations, it doesn't mean there aren't any.
  - terminalshort 11mo ago
mnau 11mo ago
Waiting 4 years until regulator even decides which regulation you fall under is "regulations that benefit me right now?" There is a lot of similar sentiment ITT. Speedy resolution by government is essential. They get too much slack from being slow, from regulators to court. > what kind of injection well is this? Should it be permitted as a Class I disposal, Class II oilfield disposal, or Class V experimental? This question on permitting path took four years to answer. Four years to decide which path to use, not even the actual permit! It took this long because regulators are structurally faced with no upside, only downside legal risk in taking a formal position on something new.
- fragmede 11mo ago
  Oil companies routinely flared off natural gas that came up with oil because it wasn’t economically worthwhile build the infrastructure to capture it. It was expensive and it was just easier to flare it off and let it go to waste. North Dakota changed the calculus by implementing strict regulations that limited how much gas companies could flare in the state set a target that companies could only flare 10% of a natural gas production and if you exceeded that you would get a fine this regulatory pressure made previously un economical infrastructure investment suddenly worthwhile, and suddenly, they managed to build pipelines.
  - mnau 11mo ago
    What does that have to do with fact that company in the article had to wait 4 years before they knew what regulation even to use?
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
0xDEAFBEAD 11mo ago
>deplete the soil Doesn't carbon get pulled out of the air through photosynthesis? That's why people plant trees to address global warming, no? Your arguments seem very handwavey and not very well thought through. Do you really believe that EV business owners are the only ones who benefit from more widespread EV usage? In any case, even if you're flagging real issues, there is no evidence that existing regulators identified those issues in the case of the OP? So it could still be the case that the existing regulatory scheme is useless overburden.
11101010001100 11mo ago
Even to chemical engineers, life cycle analysis is not something that is general knowledge.

by acyou 11mo ago

internetter 11mo ago

> How do you draw a system boundary around a volume of soil with biological activity extending down 500 feet and predict the carbon balance over the next 500 years? Are the potential harms in the very worst case scenario more significant than the harms of failing to sequester carbon and stop its production? It’s hard for me to imagine this being so. Mind that the process that created these holes have also created tremendously large biohazards very consistently, yet are normalized by society. We must accelerate the pace we’re on. > What is unsaid in the article is the sentiment that regulators should more heavily support the EV business, the carbon capture business, etc, in general which makes sense to those invested, but not to everyone else. Makes a hell of a lot of sense to me? I absolutely think businesses which are working to save millions of lives should receive regulatory support, instead of the oil companies which are still to this day benefiting from price subsidies?

delusional 11mo ago
Aren't the oil companies "working" on carbon capture?
- scotty79 11mo ago
  To be honest they should be forced to actually work on it. The rule should be, if you want to be allowed to sell X amount of carbon as fuel on a given market, you have to capture k*X amount of CO2.
- rcxdude 11mo ago
  The oil companies are generally working on carbon capture that produces CO2 that can be sequestered with the equipment and know-how they already have (i.e. pumping pressurised CO2 back into underground reservoirs). Growing crops is one of their focuses (and it's not a very good form of carbon capture, anyhow).
- sfn42 11mo ago
  Carbon capture is a waste of time. You essentially have to suck the entire atmosphere through capture facilities. It's completely infeasible in practice, the largest plant we have right now is called mammoth and in order to offset our current emissions we would need a million mammoths. A million of these large, expensive facilities that take years to build.
oezi 11mo ago
The key point contested is stated like this in the OP: > A regulatory system that structurally insists on legalistic, ultra-extreme caution is bound to generate a massive negative return for society. The OP mostly sees the downsides and disregards how hard earned any of those regulatory requirements are. Each requirement is usually the outcome of people being substantially impacted by industry before regulation. For instance the Thalidomide scandal with 10000 children born with deformities. If OP doesn't grasp the origin and rationale behind regulations, it doesn't mean there aren't any.
- terminalshort 11mo ago

mnau 11mo ago

Waiting 4 years until regulator even decides which regulation you fall under is "regulations that benefit me right now?" There is a lot of similar sentiment ITT. Speedy resolution by government is essential. They get too much slack from being slow, from regulators to court. > what kind of injection well is this? Should it be permitted as a Class I disposal, Class II oilfield disposal, or Class V experimental? This question on permitting path took four years to answer. Four years to decide which path to use, not even the actual permit! It took this long because regulators are structurally faced with no upside, only downside legal risk in taking a formal position on something new.

fragmede 11mo ago
Oil companies routinely flared off natural gas that came up with oil because it wasn’t economically worthwhile build the infrastructure to capture it. It was expensive and it was just easier to flare it off and let it go to waste. North Dakota changed the calculus by implementing strict regulations that limited how much gas companies could flare in the state set a target that companies could only flare 10% of a natural gas production and if you exceeded that you would get a fine this regulatory pressure made previously un economical infrastructure investment suddenly worthwhile, and suddenly, they managed to build pipelines.
- mnau 11mo ago
  What does that have to do with fact that company in the article had to wait 4 years before they knew what regulation even to use?

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

0xDEAFBEAD 11mo ago

>deplete the soil Doesn't carbon get pulled out of the air through photosynthesis? That's why people plant trees to address global warming, no? Your arguments seem very handwavey and not very well thought through. Do you really believe that EV business owners are the only ones who benefit from more widespread EV usage? In any case, even if you're flagging real issues, there is no evidence that existing regulators identified those issues in the case of the OP? So it could still be the case that the existing regulatory scheme is useless overburden.

11101010001100 11mo ago

Even to chemical engineers, life cycle analysis is not something that is general knowledge.