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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

#221

Post by nradov »

manmal wrote: post #124
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…

Even better than developing smaller cars would be to reduce meat intake. AFAIK that's the single biggest improvement a single person can make to their CO2 footprint. And it's not that hard to pull off - just tax meat more heavily. I'm not sure the party who passes such a law would get reelected though.

There's no need to tax meat specifically. A blanket tax on CO2 emissions would suffice. Regenerative agriculture allows for carbon neutral meat production.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90368127/is-it-possible-to-raise...

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

#223

Post by cmrdporcupine »

nradov wrote: post #217
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been the Canadian model and the Right has still weaponized the worst kind of vitriol against it (despite a carbon tax being the most market friendly mechanism). Opponents of carbon tax and similar measures need to decide which they like less... some lost profits, an escalating carbon tax, and reshuffling their investment portfolios -- or food riots, mass migration, the massive resurgence of left wing populis…

Canada is likely to be spared the worst effects of climate change due to geography so it might not seem like such a serious problem to them. Even under the worst case scenario, Canada will still be self sufficient in staple crops. And any mass migrations will have to pass through the USA first.

People living through massive record forest fires in B.C. and Alberta probably won't agree with you.

Not to mention the water supply of Calgary and many other western Canadian cities is glacier fed, and the Bow Glacier that provides to Calgary may not be able to meet demand within the next 30 years... a problem that will only get worse with climate change.

Yes, the great lakes region looks better than most. And it will look desirable to a lot of displaced people...

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

#224

Post by pjc50 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #218
jsomau wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been building a browser extension called Curb Your Consumerism that detects when you're on a checkout page for a website and redirects you to a screen that shows you how long you had to work to earn the purchase you're about to make. The idea is to get people to more consciously consume and reduce their consumption. It still needs work, and I'm hoping to find a way to approximate the CO2 impact of their purchase…

Let's say this works, and people spend less. That means they get more and more savings. Eventually everyone will have huge bank accounts, but live simple lives?

Given that it's already declared to be "necessary" for people to have huge retirement saving to not live in penury .. yes? Also people could work less or retire earlier?

(Although more likely the economic contraction from wasting less stuff will cause incomes to go down!)

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

#225

Post by jsomau »

BurningFrog wrote: post #218
jsomau wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been building a browser extension called Curb Your Consumerism that detects when you're on a checkout page for a website and redirects you to a screen that shows you how long you had to work to earn the purchase you're about to make. The idea is to get people to more consciously consume and reduce their consumption. It still needs work, and I'm hoping to find a way to approximate the CO2 impact of their purchase…

Let's say this works, and people spend less. That means they get more and more savings. Eventually everyone will have huge bank accounts, but live simple lives?

That's a possibility or perhaps they will work less and enjoy their family, relationships, exercise, nature and art more. Maybe they'll decide to pay off their loans or save for retirement or their kids education or donate to a charity. Even if they end up buying something at least they stopped to think about it and committed to it knowing what it took to earn, rather than just hitting the checkout button with a reflex action. Maybe during that time they'll choose to look in to the company they're buying from and look for more sustainable alternatives.

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

#226

Post by pjc50 »

nnq wrote: post #203
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…

> It has killed every government that even dared to discuss it. And politically it is utterly impossible to defend Then pull it out of political discussion! We don't have political discussion about "how to hang people of color Q better" anywhere in the world (mostly) anymore because we've wrote it in the text of our f laws that violence and racial discrimination are forbidden! Not on the political menu anymore. Same…

I have some very bad news for you: there are lots of people actively trying to work to bring those back on the menu. It's almost impossible to put things "beyond politics" so long as someone wants to bring them back.

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

#227

Post by graeme »

roel_v wrote: post #14
symplee wrote: post #4

I empathize with people who are trying to help by reducing their footprint. Though I fear it'll all be in vain when a machine is invented that can suck a lifetime's worth of frugality out of the air in a fraction of a second.

The article links to a website where you can calculate your footprint, and buy offsets in various programs to negate that footprint (projectwren.com). It would cost me USD 17 / month to offset my (larger than average for my country) footprint. Why do I even bother with my reusable coffee cup and paper straws for that kind of money? I just don't understand. If an extra charge of $10 / month for everyone in Europe woul…

I think at a certain point you need more than offsets. We once had a forested world, with oil in the ground.

We cut forests, and burned oil. Offsets help revert one of these things. But, we’d need to do more than that to reverse the change.

So the offsets you can buy now are low hanging fruit. Actual carbon sucking costs vastly more than wren’s offsets.

Though still achiveble? Would be about $10,000 usd per person at average european emissions. About $20,000 usd per person at average american emisisons. Includes children.

https://climeworks.shop/?utm_source=CW-Website&utm_medium=ba...

If those costs go down, the costs become realistic. I don’t mean politically realistic, just possible to do.

Fwiw I use both wren and climeworks. And maybe if enough people used wren they might find non-forest offsets that are achievable at low cost. But right now it wouldn’t obviously scale if all did it.

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

#228

Post by BurningFrog »

jsomau wrote: post #225
BurningFrog wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say this works, and people spend less. That means they get more and more savings. Eventually everyone will have huge bank accounts, but live simple lives?

That's a possibility or perhaps they will work less and enjoy their family, relationships, exercise, nature and art more. Maybe they'll decide to pay off their loans or save for retirement or their kids education or donate to a charity. Even if they end up buying something at least they stopped to think about it and committed to it knowing what it took to earn, rather than just hitting the checkout button with a refl…

That actually clarifies things. Now I understand your point. Thanks!

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

#229

Post by Fiahil »

hawski wrote: post #197
Hermel wrote: post #102

I’m paying Climeworks 1000$ to remove a ton of CO2 every month. Not very cost effective, but a start.

How much CO2, on scale, let's say, 10 years, planting 1000 trees a month would remove? I have https://teamtrees.org/ in mind, they claim to plant one tree for each dollar.

10 years, with 1000 trees a month (it's a lot of trees!) make 42834 tons of CO2 (with very average calculation and constant CO2 removal rate instead of linear growth)

By comparison, climeworks would have removed 120 tons of CO2.

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

#230

Post by scythe »

avmich wrote: post #58
scythe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I integrated the PV curve at constant temperature, so P = nRT/V and dW = P dV = nRT dV/V. Then we can write W = nRT log(V0 / V1) = nRT log(P1 / P0), and n = M / 44, the molar mass of CO2. Also, you can't restore the initial pressure because at the initial pressure the CO2 takes up a whole atmosphere of space!

Thanks. You've calculated the energy required to pressurize the gas. You can get that energy back if you make the gas doing work; if you pressurize it quasi-statically, you at least won't lose energy while compressing... I didn't get your last line though. I assume you compress "dirty" air.

You can't get the energy back because I assumed you have a magical compressor that only compresses carbon dioxide. I didn't include any terms for compressing air. You get a slightly cheaper term (ca 420 J/kg) if you set the upper pressure to atmospheric but then you're storing gaseous CO2 which is not practical. But recovering energy by restoring the original [partial] pressure of 0.0004 atm is not possible unless you somehow jettison the CO2 into outer space.

To be clear: all real processes probably require many times more energy than this. There is no way I know of to selectively compress one component of a gas mixture. But if you did, this would be the energy cost.

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