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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

#141

Post by dd36 »

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.

One way I recall from college is “producer responsibility”. If you produce it, you’re on the hook for its safe disposal. You can bake disposal deposits or some other such mechanism into the price. Such a mechanism would help deter cheap plastic junk (Chucky Cheese prizes).

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

#142

Post by usrusr »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #28

What the article leaves to the conclusion is what needs to be stated up front and center: it's virtually impossible to do this efficiently, cheaply, or effectively because there's so little CO2 in the air, meaning a) adding even a little bit more greatly affects the CO2 levels b) with a global ppm of ~400, it basically means that you need to filter 2500 molecules of air to get a single molecule of CO2, and that's ass…

There is exactly one technology that can affordably bind CO2 at scale and that is plants. We are just very, very far from measures to keep that carbon from reescaping back. And rightfully so, because burning carbon freshly captured by plants is infinitely less bad than burning carbon that has been nicely stashed away for geological timespans (the carbon captured by contemporary plants would recycle back into the air anyways, energy use is merely a minor latency reduction). Sequestration at burn site might be an improvement on that, but that still doesn't answer the question of where to put it. Geologically buried hydrocarbons are really hard to beat at keeping carbon out of the atmosphere, that is unless there happens an industrialization event...

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

#143

Post by incangold »

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.

The U.K. will soon charge manufacturers for the recycling of their packaging:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46261129

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

#144

Post by lukifer »

baq wrote: post #107
threeseed wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean a Carbon Tax ? The tax that applies to every single business, every single product, every single process, everything. The one that causes every single vested interest to come out of the woodwork and join together to make it politically toxic. We tried this in Australia. It has killed every government that even dared to discuss it. And politically it is utterly impossible to defend e.g. "Carbon tax that raise…

don't call it tax, call it carbon dividend and give the collected money away to citizens.

This is the secret. The average citizen would actually come out ahead financially, making it a progressive tax, as opposed to the de-facto regressive taxes that have received popular opposition in other attempts.

"The Largest Public Statement of Economists in History": https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/

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

#145

Post by Fiahil »

ProjectVesta wrote: post #77
tempestn wrote: post #25

I'm interested to see what comes of this: https://projectvesta.org/

Hi thanks for the mention! We are available to answer any questions. And we'll have a new version of the website out soon with some updates.

Have you tested it in secret somewhere in the real world already ?

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

#146

Post by Super_Jambo »

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.

Switch the limited liability companies from their current blacklist based regulation to whitelisting allowed behaviour. Focus this entirely on creating highly competitive markets & fostering innovation in technology, logistics and production. Markets should be full of small companies making a specific product or service as efficiently as possible. Comparison of different products should be simple, pricing should be transparent. Basically the market for products and services should resemble as closely as possible the stock market.

It's really telling that the only market the wealthy class needs to care about has incredibly tight regulation on how you describe the 'product' (Accounting standards, auditing, what the CEO tweets...).

Meanwhile the markets every day consumers & workers lives are ruled by are wall to wall lies and deception.

Our current low-regulation markets are basically designed to innovate in manipulating voters, consumers and workers. Where our most profitable industries main focus is buying off their regulators, competitors and focusing on creating moats and monopolies.

In my view a good first step would be to bring in tight regulation on political spending & lobbying. Followed by regulating advertising with a view to nationalized product discovery. Basically if even Amazon can't stop fake reviews we should make it a publicly funded good. Let every company freely list their products and (as with listed companies accounting regulation) any product produced by a big company should have stats which are directly comparable to their competitors products & legally binding. We could also require companies to list the CAD files for replacement parts they no longer make.

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

#147

Post by usrusr »

privateSFacct wrote: post #37
ComputerGuru wrote: post #28

What the article leaves to the conclusion is what needs to be stated up front and center: it's virtually impossible to do this efficiently, cheaply, or effectively because there's so little CO2 in the air, meaning a) adding even a little bit more greatly affects the CO2 levels b) with a global ppm of ~400, it basically means that you need to filter 2500 molecules of air to get a single molecule of CO2, and that's ass…

It only has to do it cheaply now because there is NO COST to putting CO2 into the air. Why are people surprised that if something is free (pumping CO2 into air) demand for it is high? You are telling me that doing a charge of let's say $10 - $100/ton of CO2 wouldn't have a DRAMATIC impact on emissions? Is $10 - $100/ton too little for a supposed climate emergency? There is so much funding and lawmaking and finger poi…

Given the extremely uneven distribution of money I suspect that you'd reach "couldn't afford exhaling" levels at one end before making anything resembling a dent at the other. I'm not against a carbon tax, far from it, but it's a difficult problem.

The most direct approach would be to levy the tax at the time buried carbon is taken out of its geological grave, but good luck enforcing that globally. The most realistic approach (still a total sci-fi fantasy, with plenty of room for a dystopian touch) would be a fundamental removal of resource extraction sovereignty, implemented through a combination of military force and buying out whoever is currently in charge of representing that sovereignty.

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

#148

Post by sampo »

lukifer wrote: post #144
baq wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't call it tax, call it carbon dividend and give the collected money away to citizens.

This is the secret. The average citizen would actually come out ahead financially, making it a progressive tax, as opposed to the de-facto regressive taxes that have received popular opposition in other attempts. "The Largest Public Statement of Economists in History": https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/

> The average citizen would actually come out ahead financially

For a while. But if the carbon tax works and society switches to clean energy, then there is no more emissions and no more dividends pay to the citizens.

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

#149

Post by lopmotr »

akie wrote: post #123
ComputerGuru wrote: post #28

What the article leaves to the conclusion is what needs to be stated up front and center: it's virtually impossible to do this efficiently, cheaply, or effectively because there's so little CO2 in the air, meaning a) adding even a little bit more greatly affects the CO2 levels b) with a global ppm of ~400, it basically means that you need to filter 2500 molecules of air to get a single molecule of CO2, and that's ass…

We need to treat climate change like the existential crisis that it is, and start spending like we're at war. If we can drop 2000 billion dollars on war in Iraq, why can we not do the same for something actually worthwhile like ensuring that our children and grandchildren inherit a livable planet?

It's not an existential crisis. That's not what the science says. There's no evidence that climate change will make humans extinct or end civilization. If that's not what you mean by existential crisis, then don't use that word because that's what it means.

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

#150

Post by shafyy »

One danger of promoting carbon sequestration is that people might think that they can emit as much as they want, since its' going to be removed from the atmosphere anyways. More dangerous yet, lobbies pushing this way of thinking to the public and trying to get away with more emissions: "Yes we are extracting oil, but we also spend X$ each year for carbon sequestration.

This is a little bit how these lobbies have been pushing changing personal habits "turn of the water while brushing your teeth, don't use plastic straws". Or also CO2 compensation (or absolution as I call it).

Not to say that we shouldn't invest in sequestration, but just need to be careful with the phrasing. This article does a good job, saying BOTH need to happen (reduction of emission and sequestration).

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