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The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

cognitivemedium.com

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Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#62
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad sees articles like this and he'll just say that maybe the damage needed to prevent warming is worse than the damage that will be done by the warming.

The cost to ordinary people would actually be relatively minor. You buy an electric car instead of a gasoline one. The average new car price in the US is ~$36,000. A new Nissan Leaf starts below $30,000, Model 3 only a little more than that. Replace coal with alternatives. We can do at least as well as nuclear, which is barely any more expensive than coal has been. Best case is that storage gets a lot cheaper than it…

The point of the Vox article is that just switching from gas to electric isn't going to be enough. The argument is that without large-scale carbon capture we will not hit the 1.5C goal.

Large-scale carbon capture is still untested. Reforestation is the only well established large-scale carbon capture but is very land intensive.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#63
post #48

Fast-growing trees, which are then burnt to charcoal (and some energy), which is then put in the soil as biochar. Could be very cheap/low-tech and at the same time improve soils.

Or, buried wholesale as part of a Hügelkultur.

yes this could be even cheaper, though I'm not sure if perhaps the co2 is released quicker as the trees decompose- charcoal can keep the carbon locked up for centuries.

Either way, these methods greatly improve the land-use efficiency of growing trees for carbon capture/storage, as it is stored in the soil over many years, not only in the living trees. "putting coal back in the ground" as it were.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, I shouldn't feed trolls... 1) AGM has hit the gold-standard of proof, it's not an open question at this point, and CO2 is the primary driver along with other GHG [1] 2) What exactly are the "potentially disastrous" consequences of going back to 300ppm, roughly where we were for 10k years? [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-temperature...

Being called a troll for questioning a false premise amuses me no end. Have you ever read any of the other side's information, or do you solely read Reuters and other "CO2 is the demon!" mainstream media sources?

Thanks for your comments. A bit of fresh air. Really, I don't think that demonizing CO2 is the objective. Demonizing oil and other petrochemicals seems more likely. I think we are in a CO2 drought -- we know the planet (including corals) had an explosion of life at the 700+ ppm CO2 level.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#66
post #42

Not a word about the most effective, cheapest strategy: reduce emissions? Most Americans could reduce their emissions by 75% while improving their standard of living by buying less junk, wearing a sweater in the winter, eating more healthy, and other low hanging fruit that will make them more active, healthy, connected to their communities, etc. Reduce consumption by half. There, I just saved us $300 million. How is…

Because it’s also the least effective strategy. The reality is getting nearly everyone to change their behavior just isn’t gonna happen. Even if everyone in America went vegan, showered once a day and biked everywhere wouldn’t change much with impoverished countries coming out of the third world. If you can’t get them to change then it doesn’t really matter. Big problems require big, comprehensive solutions. For that…

Wait. Does the average American shower more than once daily? Is water consumption/heating for showering even a measurable component of GHG emissions?

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#68
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost to ordinary people would actually be relatively minor. You buy an electric car instead of a gasoline one. The average new car price in the US is ~$36,000. A new Nissan Leaf starts below $30,000, Model 3 only a little more than that. Replace coal with alternatives. We can do at least as well as nuclear, which is barely any more expensive than coal has been. Best case is that storage gets a lot cheaper than it…

The point of the Vox article is that just switching from gas to electric isn't going to be enough. The argument is that without large-scale carbon capture we will not hit the 1.5C goal. Large-scale carbon capture is still untested. Reforestation is the only well established large-scale carbon capture but is very land intensive.

Spekboom (Portulacaria afra) is said to sequester up 10 times the carbon of a rain forest by area.

This is largely due to a special mechanism that continues photosynthesis at night.

And it grows best in semi-arid regions.

Where people don't live or farm.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#70
post #42

Not a word about the most effective, cheapest strategy: reduce emissions? Most Americans could reduce their emissions by 75% while improving their standard of living by buying less junk, wearing a sweater in the winter, eating more healthy, and other low hanging fruit that will make them more active, healthy, connected to their communities, etc. Reduce consumption by half. There, I just saved us $300 million. How is…

Don't forget, the military is the biggest emitter on the planet. We should rapidly downsize all militaries immediately.
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