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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

#251

Post by KozmoNau7 »

ed_balls wrote: post #172
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…

> lasts a life time. This won't change much. Nobody will work on Pentium II, drive a gas guzzler or get a low resolution MRI. It's hard to regulate such stuff. You can only improve it a bit e.g. mandatory 3-year warranty with an option to extend it to 6 years. While buying the consumer would see the price for each warranty length.

Pentium II no, however my desktop machine and main PC is 2011-era (aside from an upgraded GPU) and it still keeps up just fine. It won't play the very latest AAA titles, but just about anything else is fine. It gets ~50fps at 1080p ultra details in GTA V, which is not shabby at all.

For office and graphical work, it's obviously beyond merely capable. 200+ tabs in Firefox, no problem.

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

#252

Post by ttul »

taneq wrote: post #85
ttul wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can capture the CO2 using transient power from wind or solar and use it to make a synthetic fuel, then you have a potentially viable option. Carbon Engineering in Squamish BC is doing this for $100 a tonne. Their synthetic fuel costs about $2/L to make - still too expensive, but not if the carbon price rises to about $100/T.

That’s way better than I thought it would be, aren’t some European countries fairly close to that mark?

The World Bank has compiled a database that you can query [1]. Sweden's carbon tax is USD $121, the highest in the world. Next best is Switzerland and Lichtenstein tied at $97, followed by Finland at $68.

Sweden's tax covers 40% of emissions from that country. Finland covers 36%. Switzerland covers 33%.

British Columbia's tax is lower, but it covers 70% of carbon emissions - a very broad-based tax. It will be USD $38 in 2021.

Personally, I think it's better for governments to focus on total coverage rather than the price. The more broad-based the tax is, the more efficient it is in shaping the economic development of the region. You don't want carbon "leaking" into sectors where it's cheap to pollute - that's inefficient. Far better to have all sectors equally incentivized to decarbonize.

[1] https://carbonpricingdashboard.worldbank.org/map_data

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

#253

Post by stouset »

avmich wrote: post #215
stouset wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’d use energy from “green” sources… This isn’t something you can just assert as if by magic. By using this kind of technology, you increase the total power requirements of our civilization. That power has to come from somewhere. If you earmark green energy sources for it, something else will need to use a dirty energy source. This remains true as long as green energy production falls short of planetary demand (m…

That's why I'm trying to estimate energy requirements of such a process. Somebody experienced with gas liquification could perhaps help. You have to build these cleaning devices, and you'll need to build energy sources for them. We do have both power and increase in power supply with time; the question is specific numbers, which I'm trying to estimate.

But that’s the problem. When you say you could just build new clean energy sources for these things, you’d be better off by only doing that.

Every kWh of clean energy produced is far more effective at addressing climate change when it replaces a kWh generated by fossil fuel than it is trying to remove the carbon from that fossil fuel after the fact.

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

#254

Post by spodek »

dahfizz wrote: post #192
spodek wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to see reducing consumption at the top. People's scarcity mindset makes them think burning less fossil fuels and consuming less stuff will lower their quality of life. On the contrary, most Americans could reduce their consumption by 80% off pure life improvements . People convolve reducing consumption with returning to the stone age, which is a false dichotomy. It's more like exiting a mindset that stuff means…

How do you define consumption, and how did you come up with the 90% figure? I commend your efforts but that's... A little hard to believe. You mean to say you used to "consume" 10x what you do now? I'm skeptical that's even possible for someone living in the first world. Just food, clothing, and housing is too much consumption to make that figure reasonable.

I can only compare roughly, but I compared my footprint now, which is 0.4 Earths http://joshuaspodek.com/my-ecological-footprint, with the average American, which is 5.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint. I figure I contributed about average for American before.

My TEDx talks cover some of the major changes http://joshuaspodek.com/my-tedx-talk-is-online-find-your-del.... The important part was shedding the myths erroneously justifying flying or packaged food. Then practicing and finding the joy, community, and connection that life is about when you avoid polluting behavior.

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

#255

Post by spodek »

natdempk wrote: post #191
spodek wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to see reducing consumption at the top. People's scarcity mindset makes them think burning less fossil fuels and consuming less stuff will lower their quality of life. On the contrary, most Americans could reduce their consumption by 80% off pure life improvements . People convolve reducing consumption with returning to the stone age, which is a false dichotomy. It's more like exiting a mindset that stuff means…

> On the contrary, most Americans could reduce their consumption by 80% off pure life improvements. This sounds great, how do I do it?

My first TEDx talk describes my process and how to do it http://joshuaspodek.com/my-tedx-talk-is-online-find-your-del....

My podcast shares me walking through many people to start their challenge http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast.

Do they give you enough to start with?

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

#256

Post by spodek »

harimau777 wrote: post #231
spodek wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to see reducing consumption at the top. People's scarcity mindset makes them think burning less fossil fuels and consuming less stuff will lower their quality of life. On the contrary, most Americans could reduce their consumption by 80% off pure life improvements . People convolve reducing consumption with returning to the stone age, which is a false dichotomy. It's more like exiting a mindset that stuff means…

Are there any resources that you'd suggest on life improvements that also reduce consumption?

I mentioned my TEDx talks and podcast with links in a post above.

A couple podcast guests are prominent in zero waste and minimalism, so you might enjoy their episodes and books: Bea Johnson http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/bea-johnson and Joshua Becker http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/joshua-becker.

The biggest resource in my experience is to start however you can. People get hung up on toothbrushes while still ordering take-out while their fridges are full, which uses far more plastic than a toothbrush.

The more you do it, the easier it gets and the more horrible the old ways become.

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

#257

Post by natdempk »

spodek wrote: post #255
natdempk wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the contrary, most Americans could reduce their consumption by 80% off pure life improvements. This sounds great, how do I do it?

My first TEDx talk describes my process and how to do it http://joshuaspodek.com/my-tedx-talk-is-online-find-your-del... . My podcast shares me walking through many people to start their challenge http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast . Do they give you enough to start with?

I will check them out. Thanks for the links!

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

#258

Post by AtlasBarfed »

edanm wrote: post #151
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.

> 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. Then people are wrong. Almost no economy is purely one of the other - even the most "free market" economies have lots of government regulation, government spending makes up huge parts of their economy, etc. > We would need a way of incentivising re-use,…

Taxing externalities reduces to a blame avoidance game in the political arena.

If you think America has "free markets" you haven't been watching the steady march of monopolies and cartels in virtually all sectors.

Corporations own the political process in America to avoid these well past the point of usefulness to reducing emissions/concentrations.

The toothless and ineffective Paris accords show this is roughly the same for even "progressive" economies like Europe.

The privileged will risk complete destruction over the surrender of advantage. That cute quote is frightening accurate when applied to modern partisan republican politics, think tanks, and especially the billionaire donor class, and has been for 40-50 years now with respect to environmental policy.

The only hope right now is the near-miraculous development of solar/wind/EV tech that can challenge and hopefully fundamentally undercut the viability of fossil fuels.

The article's suggestion for mass investment in sequestration technologies is warranted.

But if externality taxing was actually something politically doable as opposed to some policy dream by an economist, then we would have had a carbon tax on gasoline two decades ago, which any look at the cost of sequestration of carbon generally leads to a 3-10$/gallon tax.

And we are probably a decade from it now.

I do agree that it is basic stuff from an economic theory, which is tragically hilarious given the fundamental arrogance of Republican policy towards progressive reforms such as carbon taxation always invokes laissez faire principles.

The fact that basically applicable economic theory is politically untenable means that the people in economics as discipline have utterly failed humanity, sitting on their hands as this happened for some, or actively contributing to its exacerbation from the free market/laissez faire/libertarian wing of the University of Chicago.

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

#259

Post by avmich »

stouset wrote: post #253
avmich wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I'm trying to estimate energy requirements of such a process. Somebody experienced with gas liquification could perhaps help. You have to build these cleaning devices, and you'll need to build energy sources for them. We do have both power and increase in power supply with time; the question is specific numbers, which I'm trying to estimate.

But that’s the problem. When you say you could just build new clean energy sources for these things, you’d be better off by only doing that . Every kWh of clean energy produced is far more effective at addressing climate change when it replaces a kWh generated by fossil fuel than it is trying to remove the carbon from that fossil fuel after the fact.

> Every kWh of clean energy produced is far more effective at addressing climate change when it replaces a kWh generated by fossil fuel than it is trying to remove the carbon from that fossil fuel after the fact.

True. However, here are two significant, in my opinion, notes.

1) We already have a lot of CO2 in the air. We'd better get it out, and sooner.

2) We're proving every day our limited abilities in organizing focused efforts in fighting climate crisis, particularly by a single specific way. So, if we could reduce organizational problems by choosing a solution which has less of them, we could win in practice.

It's rather obvious that it's better not to get CO2 into the air in the first place. Looks like we can't avoid doing that now. So other options become interesting.

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

#260

Post by akie »

lopmotr wrote: post #239
Elrac wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's anticipated that at least millions, more likely hundreds of millions of humans will die to the consequences of climate change including effects of extreme weather, flooding and (especially) famine. This won't extinct all of humanity but can be expected to severely impact civilization(s), with a chance of this impact being fatal to individual cultures. For a prospectus of what could happen, I point to the large-s…

100's of millions is not necessarily an existential crisis because it already happened in the 1900's due to war, disease, and famine. Even if that absolute scale of deaths happens again because of climate change, it will be proportionally smaller due to the global population being an order of magnitude larger. Do you have a reference to that prediction of it probably killing 100's of millions of people? On it's own,…

Famine, meteorites, large scale war, atomic bombs, infectious disease, the plague - all survivable by society at large. With your definition almost nothing qualifies as existential crisis.
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