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Stripe Climate

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Re: Stripe Climate

#101

Post by abalone »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #89
abalone wrote: post #73

The only realistic solution to carbon removal is massive government investment, like most other major Silicon Valley core technologies. We need the Green New Deal. Anything less is posturing. I would even go so far as to say that on an issue of this importance, where we have maybe a decade left to turn the tide, giving the impression that private enterprise can solve it is irresponsible. Put those donations into GND…

It seems pretty unlikely that a very specific bundle of proposed legislation is the only way to address climate change. Are all other countries doomed to failure because they don't have the Green New Deal?

There are similar efforts in other countries, e.g. the European Green Deal.[1] And yes, we are all doomed without massive government intervention and mass mobilization in the next few years.

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

Re: Stripe Climate

#102

Post by cultus »

cialowicz wrote: post #98
el_nahual wrote: post #92

Quick reminder that carbon removal is a necessary but secondary step. We need to stop pumping more carbon into the air faster than we need to stop taking it out, simply because it takes more energy to get carbon out of the air than the energy that carbon was used for in the first place . To use a financial analogy: We have a high-interest credit card. That debt has compounding interest rates, and the interest rate is…

I'm not super familiar on the subject, but are you sure the analogy holds? If we build enough capacity to scrub more carbon from the atmosphere than we add each year, then the problem will taper off, no? In your analogy, we'd be moving money from the high rate card to a lower rate one, and also making more $$$ than we spend annually.

Scrubbing that carbon takes energy. Thus, if that energy is from fossil fuels, the carbon emitted can be greater than that captured. In that case, it is worse than doing nothing.

At any rate, removing carbon from the atmosphere is a vastly harder problem than reducing our emissions. Geoengineering solutions are so impractical or beyond currently practical engineering can't be realistically done on human timescales. Planting trees is going to be insignificant, especially when places like the Amazon are being destroyed far faster.

The exception is sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere. That doesn't solve ocean acidification, and the effects are still somewhat unpredictable, especially regionally. That, and the temp immediately shoots up once you stop.

edit: I'm not sure people realize the difference, but there is a big difference between reducing emissions by capturing CO2 before it comes out of the stack vs. geoengineering removal of much more diffuse CO2 from the atmosphere itself, which Stripe seems to be implying. The first is a tool worth using sometimes, the second is hard enough to be impossible and would be massively energy-hungry.

Either that or people really don't like to be told there isn't a magic tech fix for climate change and ecosystem collapse.

Re: Stripe Climate

#103

Post by arrosenberg »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #47
gravitystorm wrote: post #29

Carbon capture is necessary in the long term, for particular emissions that are hard to avoid (like specific industrial processes and parts of agriculture). But while we're still pumping out emissions that can be easily and cheaply displaced today, like coal and gas fired grid electricity, then the money being spent on carbon capture is being spent terribly ineffectively. And globally, we don't have the time or money…

> But while we're still pumping out emissions that can be easily and cheaply displaced today, like coal and gas fired grid electricity Coal and gas fired electricity can be easily and cheaply displaced today? Then why isn't it? I was under the impression that we needed coal + gas still because it wasn't easy or cheap to meet the energy level needs of today with alternatives.

We could have displaced them almost entirely in the 60s and 70s with nuclear, and we can do so today with renewables and nuclear. We haven't yet because it turns out oil and gas are pretty profitable, and climate change became a recognized issue just as the US was moving toward a more laissez-faire style of governance.

We can't currently displace oil usage for certain fuels, but we can start creating it from renewable sources using the carbon-free energy sources to power the process. Basically convert nuclear energy (via uranium or the Sun) into chemical energy.

Re: Stripe Climate

#104

Post by el_nahual »

colincooke wrote: post #97
el_nahual wrote: post #92

Quick reminder that carbon removal is a necessary but secondary step. We need to stop pumping more carbon into the air faster than we need to stop taking it out, simply because it takes more energy to get carbon out of the air than the energy that carbon was used for in the first place . To use a financial analogy: We have a high-interest credit card. That debt has compounding interest rates, and the interest rate is…

While ideal, this isn't very realistic. Likelier is that we will slowly get off carbon intensive energy sources and production mechanisms, but fail to move off them entirely for a long period. In this period it is essential that we invest in the technology required to stablize our climate, i.e. carbon capture. With the proper clean energy generation capacity these systems can exist in harmony. Where carbon capture bu…

I agree it's not realistic, but it's actually more realistic than the alternative.

The key here is that every new emission today multiplies because of positive feedback. So every day that passes, the problem of scrubbing enough carbon actually becomes harder--whereas the problem of simply not putting it out there keeps the same magnitude.

Put differently, it costs "one less airplane trip" to prevent the carbon associated with 1 flight out of the air, but it costs an increasing amount of trips to get it out.

Lastly... we know how to keep carbon out of the air. It's a politically difficult problem but one with a known solution. Just stop doing things. And stop doing them by taxing them to oblivion.... whereas we don't actually know how to get carbon out of the air in a clean way with sufficient magnitude in order to prevent runaway growth. And it goes without saying that in that scenario we'd probably have to reduce emissions as well!

The argument that reducing emissions to ~0 is unrealistic is true, but it's more realistic than the alternative.

Re: Stripe Climate

#105

Post by el_nahual »

cialowicz wrote: post #98
el_nahual wrote: post #92

Quick reminder that carbon removal is a necessary but secondary step. We need to stop pumping more carbon into the air faster than we need to stop taking it out, simply because it takes more energy to get carbon out of the air than the energy that carbon was used for in the first place . To use a financial analogy: We have a high-interest credit card. That debt has compounding interest rates, and the interest rate is…

I'm not super familiar on the subject, but are you sure the analogy holds? If we build enough capacity to scrub more carbon from the atmosphere than we add each year, then the problem will taper off, no? In your analogy, we'd be moving money from the high rate card to a lower rate one, and also making more $$$ than we spend annually.

The issue is two-fold:

One, that there are positive feedback loops out there for existing carbon, but there are no positive feedback loops for carbon removal. You're never going to catch it.

Two, it takes more energy to get carbon out of the air than the energy it took to put it in there. So not only do you have to find clean energy to replace our current needs, you then have to find an integer multiple of that clean energy to get the carbon out, plus an accelerating multiple to get the postive-feedback carbon out too.

You'll never get that card down to 0 if you keep spending on it.

Re: Stripe Climate

#106

Post by timerol »

cultus wrote: post #102
cialowicz wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not super familiar on the subject, but are you sure the analogy holds? If we build enough capacity to scrub more carbon from the atmosphere than we add each year, then the problem will taper off, no? In your analogy, we'd be moving money from the high rate card to a lower rate one, and also making more $$$ than we spend annually.

Scrubbing that carbon takes energy. Thus, if that energy is from fossil fuels, the carbon emitted can be greater than that captured. In that case, it is worse than doing nothing. At any rate, removing carbon from the atmosphere is a vastly harder problem than reducing our emissions. Geoengineering solutions are so impractical or beyond currently practical engineering can't be realistically done on human timescales. P…

Not all carbon sequestration requires input energy from the grid. As an example, one of the projects that Stripe is funding is https://projectvesta.org/, which distributes olivine, a volcanic rock that absorbs CO2 to become limestone when it is eroded. By moving this material to beaches, wave energy can be harnessed to remove CO2

Re: Stripe Climate

#107

Post by ta1234567890 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #99
ta1234567890 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not because of not having a GND, but if the US doesn't take drastic measures soon, yes all other countries are doomed. Because the US alone is the 2nd biggest contributor to carbon emissions in the world, and probably the only country that can make China (the 1st carbon emitter) cut theirs.

I agree that it's important to take lots of action on climate change as soon as possible. That's why it seems counterproductive to tell a company they should stop taking direct action and start promoting the Green New Deal. It's too urgent of a problem to insist that only people with a particular political stance should help. Maybe the specifics of the Green New Deal are getting lost in translation here? The package…

You are completely right. If individuals and companies can contribute in any way possible that's great. Personally I don't care if it's the GND or whatever, but the government needs to take climate change very very seriously.

Re: Stripe Climate

#108

Post by valw »

I'm surprised to not see these investments directed towards the voluntary carbon market, in which projects such as those REDD+ certified achieve more than 10X higher efficiency, with significant co-benefits in biodiversity and support to the local communities (here's an example I give often: https://standfortrees.org/).

It looks like the projects were chosen through the biases of Silicon Valley, chosen to be futuristic and technologically impressive rather than impactful.

Carbon credits markets sometimes have a bad press due to the abuses in carbon offsetting approaches, but since the approach here is voluntary action rather than offsetting, I see no reason not to use them.

What seems more sensible to you, financing Western entrepreneurs at $100/tCO2e, or financing nature preservation, energy transition and poverty alleviation in developing countries at $10/tCO2e? Thanks Stripe, but I'll keep buying carbon credits.

Re: Stripe Climate

#109

Post by cultus »

timerol wrote: post #106
cultus wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scrubbing that carbon takes energy. Thus, if that energy is from fossil fuels, the carbon emitted can be greater than that captured. In that case, it is worse than doing nothing. At any rate, removing carbon from the atmosphere is a vastly harder problem than reducing our emissions. Geoengineering solutions are so impractical or beyond currently practical engineering can't be realistically done on human timescales. P…

Not all carbon sequestration requires input energy from the grid. As an example, one of the projects that Stripe is funding is https://projectvesta.org/ , which distributes olivine, a volcanic rock that absorbs CO2 to become limestone when it is eroded. By moving this material to beaches, wave energy can be harnessed to remove CO2

Ah, simply crush billions of tons of olivine and move it to a beach.

Weathering olivine doesn't scale, because you need so much. It involves hitherto unprecendented amounts of quarrying and then transport. The quarrying would destroy massive amounts of habitat. After the waves do their trick, near-shore habitats would be devastated because the entire ocean floor is covered in olivine.

I am a former geophysicist by the way. While I did not work in geoengineering, I am familiar with most of the serious proposals with scientific support. Be skeptical of these groups that claim to have an easy answer. I can tell you that no one in the field thinks carbon capture from the atmosphere is realistic anytime soon. The scale is enormous. Most people have trouble understanding the difference in scale with what we actually have the capability for.

Re: Stripe Climate

#110

Post by jakelazaroff »

el_nahual wrote: post #92

Quick reminder that carbon removal is a necessary but secondary step. We need to stop pumping more carbon into the air faster than we need to stop taking it out, simply because it takes more energy to get carbon out of the air than the energy that carbon was used for in the first place . To use a financial analogy: We have a high-interest credit card. That debt has compounding interest rates, and the interest rate is…

Sure, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. It's easy for me to directly contribute to carbon removal, because of things like this. It's a little more difficult for me to help pump less carbon into the air — I can try to minimize my carbon footprint, but ultimately the thing we need is investment in clean energy and legislation forcing companies to limit their emissions.
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