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We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech

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Re: We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech

#131

Post by yqx »

acd wrote: post #120

We need to stop consuming like there is no tomorrow. This is driven by advertisement convincing consumers they should buy products they may not need. Secondly we need to make products which lasts a life time. I see root cause that we need to remodel the economy from market economy consumerism to a circular sustainable economy. Most current economists is saying expand expand expand, but that increases co2 levels due t…

I think this is absolutely right. I've heard people on this website wondering why climate change and plastic soup are seen as the same problem. This is it. We live in an economy based on burning through huge amounts of resources and generating tons of waste. Climate change, plastic soup, and I dare say almost any other environmental problem are all consequences of this mentality. The economic cost of waste is way too low. This is really the fundamental problem.

Re: We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech

#132

Post by lm28469 »

philbarr wrote: post #129
acd wrote: post #120

We need to stop consuming like there is no tomorrow. This is driven by advertisement convincing consumers they should buy products they may not need. Secondly we need to make products which lasts a life time. I see root cause that we need to remodel the economy from market economy consumerism to a circular sustainable economy. Most current economists is saying expand expand expand, but that increases co2 levels due t…

How would this "circular sustainable economy" work? People tend to think of there being only two versions of the economy available - the government tells us what stuff to make, or free markets determine what we make. We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies to make things re-usable. Currently the only way to make more money is to make and sell more stuff.

> We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies to make things re-usable.

That's what happened pre 50s. My mother still uses the sewing machine my grandma was using and it was made in my country, not in buttfuck nowhere SE asia.

As it turns out making long lasting products isn't the most profitable thing so we shifted to producing to the least reliable standards people would still accept

Re: We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech

#133

Post by jokoon »

phtrivier wrote: post #122
jokoon wrote: post #113

I don't like those sorts of articles because they dismiss the idea of reducing CO2 emissions, while only talking about hypothetical technologies. I don't think it's a good idea to wait for such undeveloped technology to mature, because the clock is already ticking. It is still much more important to reduce emissions now. What would be much better, for example, is developing smaller cars. I would rather see society or…

I think the author actually agrees with you, per the article itself: "there are two general approaches to keep warming to below a certain level: - Reducing emissions - Removing previous emissions from the sky If you remember one thing from this piece, it should be that we need to do both. Gone are the days where optimistic emissions reductions kept us below a 2-degree warming target."

Except reducing emissions seems much more doable, safe and simple. It's just politically difficult. I have little hope that technology will be able to capture co2 in a manner that will be sufficient.

I don't like those sorts of techs because people will brandish them as a solution, while it's highly unlikely they will help at all.

Re: We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech

#135

Post by lotsofpulp »

lm28469 wrote: post #132
philbarr wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would this "circular sustainable economy" work? People tend to think of there being only two versions of the economy available - the government tells us what stuff to make, or free markets determine what we make. We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies to make things re-usable. Currently the only way to make more money is to make and sell more stuff.

> We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies to make things re-usable. That's what happened pre 50s. My mother still uses the sewing machine my grandma was using and it was made in my country, not in buttfuck nowhere SE asia. As it turns out making long lasting products isn't the most profitable thing so we shifted to producing to the least reliable standards people would still accept

People shifted to buying the cheapest products available.

Re: We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech

#136

Post by anonsivalley652 »

Net negative emissions must be a global goal within 5 years because this is a climate change emergency. It doesn't mean no emissions, it means deeply net negative. Even going crazy to get to zero emissions, it doesn't change the inconvenient fact that an excess of GHGs are already in the air. Sequestration (CCS) and solar shades (SRM) are the primary, big-$tretch approaches that are most readily-apparent to moderating insolation. CCS seems much more doable than sending a giant blackout curtain into space or spraying tons of SO2 into the air to return as acid rain.

Here's the thing about CCS: direct air capture is like a junior engineer's naive, brute-force solution because it's way too expensive and not scalable for the several teratons that need to be sequestered.

Bio CCS remediation approaches are superior because they use biology to do more of the work for less resources. Kelp, phytoplankton (including ferrous seeding) and other ocean-based CC are the natural solutions to lock-up carbon. There's a massive kelp forest right now off the Yucatan in Mexico stretching nearly to Africa. Harvesting, expanding and fertilizing such an ecosystem with an army of specialized ships seems like a better plan for tackling it. Such a plan would still require assuring the Sequestration in CCS such that biomass sinks to deep ocean trenches OR harvesting, compacting and pumping underground. If we can manage and offset GHGs down to a sane level at some point in the future, then it should be an immutable prime-directive that GHGs cannot be emitted without first purchasing or accomplishing an equivalent assured CCS.

PS: As luck would have it, I happen to subscribe to several climatology and related academics on various video platforms, including Paul Beckwith, who does a good job of summarizing the latest research and underscoring events and trends. EDIT: https://paulbeckwith.net

Re: We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech

#137

Post by AdmiralGinge »

acd wrote: post #120

We need to stop consuming like there is no tomorrow. This is driven by advertisement convincing consumers they should buy products they may not need. Secondly we need to make products which lasts a life time. I see root cause that we need to remodel the economy from market economy consumerism to a circular sustainable economy. Most current economists is saying expand expand expand, but that increases co2 levels due t…

What would economics aimed at a sustainable planet look like? I guess this is quite an interesting question, are there any elegant solutions to penalising climate change in the same way a land-value tax penalises passively holding on to land? We definitely need to wean ourselves off unbridled consumption at any rate, even if it wasn't an ecological nightmare it's terrible for people's mental health. Existing to consume like chickens in a human battery farm is no way for a sentient species to live.

Any country attempting to combat climate change using economic means would absolutely have to use "green tariffs" I think, otherwise businesses would simply export their emissions to the developing world on an even greater scale than they do today.

Re: We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech

#138

Post by blablabla123 »

phtrivier wrote: post #122
jokoon wrote: post #113

I don't like those sorts of articles because they dismiss the idea of reducing CO2 emissions, while only talking about hypothetical technologies. I don't think it's a good idea to wait for such undeveloped technology to mature, because the clock is already ticking. It is still much more important to reduce emissions now. What would be much better, for example, is developing smaller cars. I would rather see society or…

I think the author actually agrees with you, per the article itself: "there are two general approaches to keep warming to below a certain level: - Reducing emissions - Removing previous emissions from the sky If you remember one thing from this piece, it should be that we need to do both. Gone are the days where optimistic emissions reductions kept us below a 2-degree warming target."

The alternative to reducing emissions etc. is called "Geoengineering" and there are dozens of proposed methods. [1] In fact some have even been tested in the field, like growing algae. Unfortunately most solutions have unlikely but quite extreme risk scenarios. Although some surface reflection techniques seem actually reasonable [2]

The article seems to ignore scientific research from the field that actually started decades ago, so it's difficult to take that very seriously. To me most of these methods look more like emergency measures when sh* literally hits the fan...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_surfaces_(climate_e...

Re: We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech

#139

Post by lotsofpulp »

acd wrote: post #120

We need to stop consuming like there is no tomorrow. This is driven by advertisement convincing consumers they should buy products they may not need. Secondly we need to make products which lasts a life time. I see root cause that we need to remodel the economy from market economy consumerism to a circular sustainable economy. Most current economists is saying expand expand expand, but that increases co2 levels due t…

> We need to stop consuming like there is no tomorrow. This is driven by advertisement convincing consumers they should buy products they may not need.

I think it’s at least partly driven by people’s desire to status signal, if not their desire to consume anyway to occupy their time.

Re: We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech

#140

Post by vnorilo »

philbarr wrote: post #129
acd wrote: post #120

We need to stop consuming like there is no tomorrow. This is driven by advertisement convincing consumers they should buy products they may not need. Secondly we need to make products which lasts a life time. I see root cause that we need to remodel the economy from market economy consumerism to a circular sustainable economy. Most current economists is saying expand expand expand, but that increases co2 levels due t…

How would this "circular sustainable economy" work? People tend to think of there being only two versions of the economy available - the government tells us what stuff to make, or free markets determine what we make. We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies to make things re-usable. Currently the only way to make more money is to make and sell more stuff.

We'd need to increase the price of materials compared to labor.

Correct taxation of negative externalities would work towards this.

I (like everyone else in my neighborhood) have super cheap, barely servicable tools in my shed that I have used once or twice. There's no way that's a reasonable allocation of resources in comparison to neighbor sharing, renting high quality tools or hiring a pro who owns such, but price and convenience heavily push me towards owning disposable crap, and I have to consciously fight it.

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