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Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

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Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#31

Post by Beltiras »

intended wrote: post #17
xbmcuser wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last few months I have read a few articles on hackernews about converting carbon dioxide into usable fuel. My hope for the future is that we come up with a way to capture and convert carbon dioxide even if doing so requires electricity as this would make renewables cheaper and stop more carbon output.

So be forewarned - spending more energy to clean the system is just adding more heat to the system. Any solution must somehow be a net negative in the long and medium term - and must also not have complex unpredictable knock on effects. To give you an idea of how often mankind tries this - before the internet there was a time where london's dogs were so Onerous they felt that it would be a good idea to pour oil over…

The one-time energy cost of removal might offset the constant cost of having the CO2 in the atmosphere. It's dependant on the energy cost of removal of course.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#32

Post by mimhoff »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #29
intended wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will have to forgive me when I cannot fathom how actively meddling with a complex system, which requires a substantial investment by our species in terms of scientists, research departments, universities, government offices - is going to result in a tightly controlled, well predicted result. As opposed to getting a project with moving targets, hard to prove results, great optics and massive funding requirements.…

Climate is a complex, dynamic system, but is not magic. I have the feeling that most people desperately try to pretend everything is a static system (so it can be described, once, in a non-time-evolving form, and then called done), and in the few cases it fails, they throw their hands up and say "it's complex, dynamic, beyond human comprehension". I mean, you could use the same argument against entire modern medicine…

It's an interesting comparison, but people do die because of bad medical interventions.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#33

Post by jlebrech »

intended wrote: post #6

I find that the idea of "climate engineers" and "geo engineering" has markers which will make it appeal to the same people currently peddling climate denial. My running bet/prediction is that 1) the imbroglio in America on climate denial will continue, 2) most of the world will feel happy that they are doing less than it should, but more than the stat 3) Eventually someone will sell the idea of !!GEO ENGINEERING!! to…

what about a GeoCoin where you create the coin by paying someone to suck up carbon dioxide?

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#34

Post by TeMPOraL »

mimhoff wrote: post #32
TeMPOraL wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate is a complex, dynamic system, but is not magic. I have the feeling that most people desperately try to pretend everything is a static system (so it can be described, once, in a non-time-evolving form, and then called done), and in the few cases it fails, they throw their hands up and say "it's complex, dynamic, beyond human comprehension". I mean, you could use the same argument against entire modern medicine…

It's an interesting comparison, but people do die because of bad medical interventions.

Yes. But many more survive where, without interventions, they wouldn't.

Geoengineering, if implemented, will definitely be responsible for some deaths, suffering, and negative environmental changes. But the alternative, doing nothing while on current trajectory, is going to be much worse.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#35

Post by atemerev »

intended wrote: post #6

I find that the idea of "climate engineers" and "geo engineering" has markers which will make it appeal to the same people currently peddling climate denial. My running bet/prediction is that 1) the imbroglio in America on climate denial will continue, 2) most of the world will feel happy that they are doing less than it should, but more than the stat 3) Eventually someone will sell the idea of !!GEO ENGINEERING!! to…

And what's exactly wrong with that? Assuming that technology works, and it is possible to reverse the environmental damage — why not do just that and keep our life satisfaction? Looks like win-win-win for me.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#36

Post by gadders »

intended wrote: post #6

I find that the idea of "climate engineers" and "geo engineering" has markers which will make it appeal to the same people currently peddling climate denial. My running bet/prediction is that 1) the imbroglio in America on climate denial will continue, 2) most of the world will feel happy that they are doing less than it should, but more than the stat 3) Eventually someone will sell the idea of !!GEO ENGINEERING!! to…

I think a lot of global warming activists/campaigners hate the idea of a technological solution as it won't allow them to tackle things like "global inequality" which they see as important as fixing global warming itself.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#37

Post by klunger »

intended wrote: post #6

I find that the idea of "climate engineers" and "geo engineering" has markers which will make it appeal to the same people currently peddling climate denial. My running bet/prediction is that 1) the imbroglio in America on climate denial will continue, 2) most of the world will feel happy that they are doing less than it should, but more than the stat 3) Eventually someone will sell the idea of !!GEO ENGINEERING!! to…

The Industrial Revolution -- and all of the CO2 put in the atmosphere since then - was basically "climate engineering". It was unintended, unplanned climate engineering, but that is what it was. We took a stick and poked at the climate system enough to cause measurable shifts in it (climate change).

Many of the solutions being proposed are simply more thoughtful forms of climate engineering, designed with a better understanding of the system's inputs and outputs.

The law of unintended consequences will play a big part here, because the climate is a terrifyingly complex system. But, at this point, it is reasonable to make assertions about big picture inputs and outputs (eg., more/less CO2 = warmer/cooler global temperatures).

So, climate engineering is something that has been going on for a very long time, even if it was not called that. It will continue being a thing, albeit hopefully in a much more directed and thoughtful way.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#38

Post by intended »

Beltiras wrote: post #31
intended wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So be forewarned - spending more energy to clean the system is just adding more heat to the system. Any solution must somehow be a net negative in the long and medium term - and must also not have complex unpredictable knock on effects. To give you an idea of how often mankind tries this - before the internet there was a time where london's dogs were so Onerous they felt that it would be a good idea to pour oil over…

The one-time energy cost of removal might offset the constant cost of having the CO2 in the atmosphere. It's dependant on the energy cost of removal of course.

Right, but a one time energy cost of removal?

Our environment built itself out of eons of incremental changes using self replicating systems using the entirety of habitable surface area.

I think its extremely unlikely that there will be a single one time way of removing carbon from the air (I'd bet on it).

So we will be left with constant and continuous systems cleaning the air.

Instead of not mucking it up in the first place.

----

You should also consider that the moment people start selling Geo engineering, they will also sell permission to keep doing what we are doing.

So the solution seems to be to spend more on cleaning the air, and allowing us to pollute it further at the same time.

In such a scenario I see things going MORE wrong, with unanticipated effects going on to create more damage.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#39

Post by vixen99 »

intended wrote: post #6

I find that the idea of "climate engineers" and "geo engineering" has markers which will make it appeal to the same people currently peddling climate denial. My running bet/prediction is that 1) the imbroglio in America on climate denial will continue, 2) most of the world will feel happy that they are doing less than it should, but more than the stat 3) Eventually someone will sell the idea of !!GEO ENGINEERING!! to…

What is climate denial? Please define. I hope this is a reference to the debate regarding the magnitude of the climate sensitivity parameter. If not, then what is it? No one of any consequence (least of all, someone like Richard Lindzen) denies that there is such a parameter and that it is central to the climate question. So what value would you go for and why? I guess a climate denialist would say it has a value of zero (denies science as we understand climate at present) but we can conclude that Arrhenius (at '5') went too high. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity So it lies somewhere in between.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#40

Post by Tade0 »

legulere wrote: post #20

> Working around the clock, each capture plant can vacuum about 50 tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere a year, Wurzbacher says. For a comparison the per capita CO₂ emissions per capita in the US are 20 tons. With an average household size of 2.58 you would need one of those plants + CO₂ storage facilities per household.

Or, given that the world annual CO2 emissions are around ~400*10^9 tonnes, there should exist one for literally every human being.
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