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Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

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Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#141

Post by throwaway3627 »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #84
godelski wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your sequestration comment. No one is saying don't plant trees. Fuck yeah, plant all the trees! But that won't wont be enough. Sequestration will get better, but one of the big things it helps with is locality. CO2 isn't homogenously spread across the globe. It also doesn't spread very well. Concentrations vary drastically over the year and so do plants' ability to capture carbon. Carbon can build up in certain re…

I’m no biologist but coral seems incredibly f *ed whenever I hear about it. Is there any chance of us actually saving coral?

There's a crash plan to save species of dying coral and another plan to develop/disperse heat-/acid-resistant species.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#142

Post by azernik »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #132
azernik wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sequestration is also good for catching carbon at potential emission sources; it's easier to grab CO2 out of the atmosphere at the point where you're burning methane than to let it out in the atmosphere and then try to catch it again. (Or, in some interesting experiments, even before emission; there's work on splitting methane from natural gas into carbon and hydrogen and just burning the hydrogen. Gets you something…

Re: your second point, splitting methane into H2 and CO2 is not something that's being investigated at lab scale, it's how 95% of global hydrogen production today is done. We're talking close to a trillion cubic meters per year from steam methane reforming. It's just that most of the time, resulting CO2 is just released instead of being stored. But that is changing, fast.

I was specifically referring to pyrolysis, where unlike steam reforming no oxygen is introduced and so the carbon comes out as solid graphite. Scaling the process, and running it in a continuous-operation reactor, is still an area of active engineering work (see e.g. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d36a/ff0a2db0f99a92c2debd5b...), mostly focused on designing the physical system so that the solid carbon comes out nicely during the reaction instead of gunking up the works.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#143

Post by icebraining »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #40
surfmike wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t you then need to worry about enforcement mechanisms to keep those trees from getting cut down? If they’re all harvested after say n decades, there’s no net effect on climate.

When a tree grows, it captures carbon. If after N years it is cut, in most cases that carbon is NOT going to go back to the atmosphere. Most CO2 emissions come from fossil fuels (oil, etc), NOT from voluntary wood burning.

Wood burning is not the only way to release that CO2 back into the atmosphere. Just cutting a tree and letting it decompose also releases the same carbon. You need to store it in wood form, or bury it deep.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#144

Post by icebraining »

titojankowski wrote: post #114
Rapzid wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably a really sensitive topic but.. Donating your time to help get politicians elected who are serious about doing what's necessary may be the best thing you can do.

Politicians are powerless without good technology options. Today, the technology options are not good. but good options are within sight. As a technologist, let's go make better tech. Climate change is a technology problem and a marketing problem. YC's carbon site does a great job marketing for these crucial technologies: http://carbon.ycombinator.com/

Politicians can also direct funds to the development of such technology.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#145

Post by icebraining »

itcrowd wrote: post #38
moultano wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limiting climate change to 2C is such a hail mary at this point that we should look favorably on anything, no matter how imperfect, that moves us in that direction. There are no silver bullets, we need to do everything at once.

While I agree that there are no silver bullets and multiple approaches are required, I don't agree that we need to pursue everything that may help. First, a lot of R&D must be done (for all types of solutions) and the money to fund this can only be spent once. So we need to pre-select some promising ideas (could still be many ideas, but not all ideas). Second, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. While I am…

> Third, CCS technology disincentiveses investment and R&D into fully renewable energy production (the point made before)

Eh, renewable energy is getting quite cheap. If you add the costs of CCS into fossil fuel, I think you'll still have plenty of incentives to invest on renewables, and to use fossil as a last resort only.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#146

Post by amelius »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #14

It's a small step in the grand scheme of things... But it's a huge step (and commitment) coming from a single company. I can honestly say that no company the size of Stripe has even come close to being this "cool" (in a good way, not in a superficial sense) on so many things: company culture, remote-ok, perks, and now environment. At least from my point of view. Kudos. Lots of kudos. Keep the good work, guys. As a si…

Google should also do this as zero emissions aligns with "do no evil".

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#147

Post by semi-extrinsic »

azernik wrote: post #142
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: your second point, splitting methane into H2 and CO2 is not something that's being investigated at lab scale, it's how 95% of global hydrogen production today is done. We're talking close to a trillion cubic meters per year from steam methane reforming. It's just that most of the time, resulting CO2 is just released instead of being stored. But that is changing, fast.

I was specifically referring to pyrolysis, where unlike steam reforming no oxygen is introduced and so the carbon comes out as solid graphite. Scaling the process, and running it in a continuous-operation reactor, is still an area of active engineering work (see e.g. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d36a/ff0a2db0f99a92c2debd5b... ), mostly focused on designing the physical system so that the solid carbon comes out ni…

What are the benefits of pyrolysis versus steam methane reforming (SMR)? My immediate thought would be that you leave energy on the table, and that storage at scale is harder when the end result is graphite. Moreover, SMR is proven technology at very large scale.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#148

Post by cmutel »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #14

It's a small step in the grand scheme of things... But it's a huge step (and commitment) coming from a single company. I can honestly say that no company the size of Stripe has even come close to being this "cool" (in a good way, not in a superficial sense) on so many things: company culture, remote-ok, perks, and now environment. At least from my point of view. Kudos. Lots of kudos. Keep the good work, guys. As a si…

Here is a whole (open access) journal issue on negative emission technologies: https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/1748-9326/page/Negative%2...

Short summary: There is no free lunch. Almost everything is expensive, natural systems (afforestation and land use change) are cheaper but more variable. The cheapest negative emission technology is not to emit in the first place.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#149

Post by ar0 »

amelius wrote: post #146
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #14

It's a small step in the grand scheme of things... But it's a huge step (and commitment) coming from a single company. I can honestly say that no company the size of Stripe has even come close to being this "cool" (in a good way, not in a superficial sense) on so many things: company culture, remote-ok, perks, and now environment. At least from my point of view. Kudos. Lots of kudos. Keep the good work, guys. As a si…

Google should also do this as zero emissions aligns with "do no evil".

Note that you do not have to wait for Google: You can just start searching using Ecosia (https://www.ecosia.org/) which use their revenue to plant trees around the world and are also a "negative emissions" operation. (Yes, the results are not as good as Google's, but for me they are good enough in the vast majority of searches, and for the remaining I can still hop over to Google.)

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#150

Post by truthwhisperer »

This is indeed very bad news. You are a payment processor. Stick to your core and let the "CO2" discussion held by the government and apply the rules they issue. Don't create your own society related rules. If you don't agree create your own political movement

What's next? Companies who produce a lot of "CO2" are not allowed to process payments anymore? Or should first "buy" your CO2 credits? Crazy millennial trash talk

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