People seem upset that this is working? Maybe because this provides a solution to the problem that doesn't mean we have to fundamentally change society, or bring down the 1st world, or say that "America was the bad guy to ignore all the EU regulations".
- CO2 is plant food. Indoor growers supplement CO2 levels up to 1500 ppm (after which they say that there is not much return) to enhance growth. There is no reason to remove it from the atmosphere. - Supposedly CO2 is also a green house gas that helps earth trap some heat from the sun. The link between how much heat CO2 captures based on the concentration is very difficult to find, suggesting that the link is not ver…
Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere
111–120 of 133 posts
Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere
#112I 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…
to add to your optimism: * geoengineering avoids fixing the root problem by patching some (but not all) of the symptoms, and probably creating new symptoms * the effects of climate change are not uniform over the globe, so for any application of geoengineering there will be winners and losers * much research hasn't been done to figure out if the various geoengineering proposals are safe, and there is no test environm…
> for any application of geoengineering there will be winners and losers
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/ice-stupas-himalaya... comes to mind as a project where there doesn't have to be a "loser". They are trying to replicate the previously naturally occurring process and the water still works it's way through the watershed.
Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere
#113Do they have plans to remove Methane and NOx. Methane emissions have increased and we are seeing weather changes. One shouldn't forget CO2 is also needed in the atmosphere.
Methane goes away pretty quickly on its own, so that's less pressing. CO2 is needed in the atmosphere, but not nearly as much as we have. Pre-industrial levels were 30% lower than current levels.
Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere
#114There's one significant thing they're achieving here: putting a price on CO2 in the atmosphere. Some of the resistance to action on climate change comes from the notion that the cost is unknown, which in turn stems from the fact, that to date there was no scalable way to undo the emissions. Now that a way has been demonstrated emitters can choose whether they want to reduce their emissions or undo them(assuming the r…
> There's one significant thing they're achieving here: putting a price on CO2 in the atmosphere. Just for fun: Humans have added ~1 trillion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere over 200 years, taking atmospheric CO2 from 275 to 407 ppm by volume. Ongoing emissions are around 36 billion tonnes (2015). Climeworks apparently costs $600/tonne of CO2[1], with 10 year goal of $100/tonne (although skeptics estimate it really c…
That's a great back-of-the-envelope calculation. Main takeaway is that it is probably solveable, but only by government-scale efforts (philanthropy can't cover it).
The real problem is that it costs a lot and captialism shows no quarterly gains for preserving humanity. The best bet would be to have an international contribution agreement that ties something like defense spending to CO2 reduction. Fat chance of that happening, but it could really improve two situations at once.
Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere
#115There's one significant thing they're achieving here: putting a price on CO2 in the atmosphere. Some of the resistance to action on climate change comes from the notion that the cost is unknown, which in turn stems from the fact, that to date there was no scalable way to undo the emissions. Now that a way has been demonstrated emitters can choose whether they want to reduce their emissions or undo them(assuming the r…
The cost of undoing the emissions only sets the price on CO2 emissions if that cost is lower than the cost of enduring the damage associated with not undoing them. The cost of enduring those damages may be (and probably is) immeasurably large. But unless we're starting from some kind of reasonable estimate of the cost of the damage, however approximate, it can't be right to say that these guys are setting the price o…
> The cost of undoing the emissions only sets the price on CO2 emissions if that cost is lower than the cost of enduring the damage associated with not undoing them.
That's correct. that's why parent poster said "assuming the right legislation forcing them to do so is in place". The cost of enduring the damage would be fines and/or jail time.
Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's one significant thing they're achieving here: putting a price on CO2 in the atmosphere. Just for fun: Humans have added ~1 trillion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere over 200 years, taking atmospheric CO2 from 275 to 407 ppm by volume. Ongoing emissions are around 36 billion tonnes (2015). Climeworks apparently costs $600/tonne of CO2[1], with 10 year goal of $100/tonne (although skeptics estimate it really c…
That's a great back-of-the-envelope calculation. Main takeaway is that it is probably solveable, but only by government-scale efforts (philanthropy can't cover it). The real problem is that it costs a lot and captialism shows no quarterly gains for preserving humanity. The best bet would be to have an international contribution agreement that ties something like defense spending to CO2 reduction. Fat chance of that h…
> Main takeaway is that it is probably solveable, but only by government-scale efforts (philanthropy can't cover it).
Well... Technically possible, yeah. One of the more expensive projects the US has ever done is the Apollo project, which was a bit over $20 billion annually in todays money, or .1% of GDP. Even building the nuclear arsenal was only $100 billion annually. So as a country the best we've managed is .5% of GDP, against the much more politically actionable threat of the USSR. A 1-2 order of magnitude increase over that is pretty unlikely.
Hell, global defense spending in 2016 was only 1.6 trillion.
Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere
#117I 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…
Agree 100% that the introduction of climate/geo engineering as a means to offset CO2 emissions will be an enormous reason industry and individuals lose interest in trying to reduce emissions. Unfortunately, it is far too late for even the most amazing reduction in emissions to solve the problem now, so these techniques will be needed.
Just as most folks prefer to medicate their health issues away rather than making lifestyle changes, by the same token we're going to be living in a more and more over-engineered environment, with each "solution" leading to more "unintended consequences".
Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere
#118I 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…
It's been said multiple times that reduction is no longer enough - even a cut to zero won't prevent warming at this point. Geo-engineering to actively reduce carbon is the inevitable conclusion.
You are absolutely correct.
Here's a data point: If we shoved the entire United States into the ocean and ended this nation as we know it, the reduction in GHG's (greenhouse gases) would be less than 15%, maybe half, if that much. A single massive wild fire emits more GHG's than the entire transportation and energy industry does in an entire year.
See "Emissions by Country" section in this report:
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
Also,
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1704.full.pdf
The paper explains, paraphrasing, how the issues created by carbon dioxide concentration are irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop.
Here's an excellent write-up on the conclusions from extensive experiments by Google:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-re...
From the article:
"We decided to combine our energy innovation study’s best-case scenario results with Hansen’s climate model to see whether a 55 percent emission cut by 2050 would bring the world back below that 350-ppm threshold. Our calculations revealed otherwise. Even if every renewable energy technology advanced as quickly as imagined and they were all applied globally, atmospheric CO2 levels wouldn’t just remain above 350 ppm; they would continue to rise exponentially due to continued fossil fuel use." Paraphrasing: If the world converted to 100% renewable energy, CO2 levels would still rise exponentially.
Another point they made:
"Our reckoning showed that reversing the trend would require both radical technological advances in cheap zero-carbon energy, as well as a method of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering the carbon."
Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere
#119There are basically two approaches to geo-engineering, and they both have unpredictable consequences: * reflect sunlight back into space through "albedo modification", either by spraying sulfates high in the stratosphere to mimic a volcano, or by conducting cloud whitening. complication: it will affect precipitation patterns, and allows the CO2 buildup to continue, meaning a sudden cessation would produce wrenching w…
Serious question. Why not just plant a shit load more trees?
The total amount of CO2 we have added to the atmosphere is ~1 trillion tonnes[1], or 280 billion tonnes of carbon. That's roughly equal or at least similar to the mass of all of the carbon in plant and animal life on land. Obviously it's impossible to double the amount of plants, animals and bacteria on land.
If you add in oceanic biomass, we'd only have to increase biomass by 25% overall. This is is still practically impossible and we are at a historic loss of biomass and biodiversity. Ocean acidification also makes this impossible.
The scale of global warming is entirely beyond planting trees or anything else. There are 3000 tonnes of CO2 in the air for every person on earth.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at...
Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm of course in favor of any solution that allows us to do less damage, but I think it's unlikely that we'll figure something out that allows us to continue burning fossil fuels at the rate we're currently doing. Doing both, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, and figuring out methods for undoing what damage we can seems to me to be the best strategy.
Fossil fuels will last quite a long time. CO2, however, seems to be a greater problem. Nuclear energy has nearly zero carbon footprint, though. With the closed nuclear cycle (breeders) uranium will last for millions of years.
Now you only need to convince everybody that nuclear power isn't literally the devil. And I guess you'll need some taxes to pay for the CO2 scrubbers.