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Stripe Climate

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Re: Stripe Climate

#181

Post by yongjik »

My chief problem with carbon capture as policy is that it's even less politically viable than carbon tax or any other government subsidies.

Carbon capture doesn't generate money in itself. You have to pay someone to do this, and since it's more expensive to capture CO2 than not emitting it in the first place, someone has to pay more money than, say, reducing US fossil fuel usage by 10%, to achieve the same CO2 reduction.

We can't even muster enough political willpower to shut down coal plants. Imagine going to these same people and saying "Good news, you can keep your coal plants, we will just tax you more than how much it would cost to shut them down!"

Re: Stripe Climate

#182

Post by lopmotr »

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…

You use the word "need" a lot, but need is relative. We need to do X in order to get Y. What's Y and what's its value? Is it greater than the cost of X? If not, then not only do we not need to do X, but we also should not do X.

Re: Stripe Climate

#183

Post by markdown »

grzm wrote: post #165
markdown wrote: post #164

There are some quotes half-way down the page. One of them is from someone called Cabel Sasser. He has the title of Co-Founder, but it doesn't say of what. The company logo is just a P. Anyone have any ideas?

Cabel Sasser is a cofounder if Panic. ( https://panic.com/ )

Thanks. Not sure why Stripe thinks that they have a recognisable logo.

Re: Stripe Climate

#184

Post by jackdeansmith »

adamsea wrote: post #143
kisamoto wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a distinction between carbon credits and negative emissions. I wouldn't say these projects are bias towards silicon valley style there is simply a growing acceptance that nature based solutions - whole undeniably important and essential - are simply not enough. They are cheap but slow. Trees can be wiped out with wild-fires releasing CO2 back into the atmosphere. Negative emissions technologies such as bio-o…

Any studies you can cite to support your beliefs you're sharing here?

As far as nature based solutions go, this study on the potential for afforestation is a good place to start: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14887/. Simply put, there isn't enough land to plant enough trees to get us out of this mess. That doesn't mean that planting trees isn't useful, I think the paper makes a good case for why it's cost effective and buys time, but it isn't enough alone.

My personal take is that the cheap carbon credits are indeed a more cost effective use of money right now, but it's low hanging fruit that we will run out of soon.

Re: Stripe Climate

#185

Post by hokkos »

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…

We still need to fund those project, to make them able to be scaled and have ridden their learning curve when we have decarbonized our energy systems.

Re: Stripe Climate

#186

Post by kyleee »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #162

I don't know much about spaceflight, but with SpaceX's rapidly reducing the cost of launching objects into orbit, would it make sense to block some small % of heat/radiation from the sun with mirrors or shades? We could use the LaGrange point or could focus on blocking light hitting the poles, to decelerate ice loss there? I wonder when that cooling would make sense financially and how it would be enacted.

Probably plausible; that's basically what happens with the particulate matter from volcanic activity just on a finer scale i think.

On the flip side if we had a big volcanic eruption do we have any way to scrub particulate matter on a large enough scale to prevent catastrophic cooling?

Re: Stripe Climate

#187

Post by eloff »

el_nahual wrote: post #170
eloff wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, your conclusion is wrong. You don't need to put more carbon into the atmosphere to take carbon out. Nobody would fund that, well without bad subsidies anyway. We need to reduce the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere AND increase the amount we take out. There is no reason not to pursue both strategies at the same time - indeed time is short and everything we can do counts.

Agreed. What I was trying to convey is that reducing new emissions to ~0 is a necessary win condition. It's not optional...and it's also urgent because those emissions reproduce . We're going to have to cut emissions to 0 anyway , so the sooner we do so, the better...by a LOT. And besides being urgent, it's also something that we know how to do. As in, today. We have the technology! (It's called massive carbon taxes)…

I don't think we'll get to 0, nor do we need to. We do need to get our net emissions to 0 though, or even drive it negative for a while.

I'm such a fan of carbon taxes. If the market doesn't account for externalities, then price them in with taxes. Then the market will solve climate faster than any amount of regulation or wishful thinking. That's an excellent use of state power. Or governments or our people are too shortsighted or stupid I think it's fair to say in this case to see that. I'm not entirely sure which it is, maybe both.

Working on carbon sequestration instead is also silly. I mean it's a typical engineer response of ignoring the messy regulatory and political world and trying to build our way out of the problem. But we need to focus on both, working on one approach does not preclude the other.

Re: Stripe Climate

#188

Post by valw »

kisamoto wrote: post #131
valw wrote: post #108

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 futuris…

There is a distinction between carbon credits and negative emissions. I wouldn't say these projects are bias towards silicon valley style there is simply a growing acceptance that nature based solutions - whole undeniably important and essential - are simply not enough. They are cheap but slow. Trees can be wiped out with wild-fires releasing CO2 back into the atmosphere. Negative emissions technologies such as bio-o…

Note that carbon credits are not all about afforestation - if you don't believe in afforestation, fine, you can buy from projects that do energy transition or industrial efficiency (at the same cost, preventing emissions is always better than capturing CO2). So that's not really an argument against carbon credits.

I'm not saying technology has no role to play - but this specific choice of technologies by Stripe seems dubious to me, and seems to optimize for futuristic enthusiasm rather than potential impact.

I'm not against researching uncertain technology. But all of these projects are about aiming for highly-uncertain technology to solve our problems. Not a single one is about changing the way we live or relying on proven techniques. See why I'm talking about Silicon Valley bias here?

Re: Stripe Climate

#189

Post by genidoi »

yongjik wrote: post #181

My chief problem with carbon capture as policy is that it's even less politically viable than carbon tax or any other government subsidies. Carbon capture doesn't generate money in itself. You have to pay someone to do this, and since it's more expensive to capture CO2 than not emitting it in the first place, someone has to pay more money than, say, reducing US fossil fuel usage by 10%, to achieve the same CO2 reduct…

Is the state of carbon capture tech like where transistors were in 1950, or has it already reached the physical limit and the only gains to be made are through better/cheaper/cleaner energy sources to power carbon capture?

Re: Stripe Climate

#190

Post by jackdeansmith »

genidoi wrote: post #189
yongjik wrote: post #181

My chief problem with carbon capture as policy is that it's even less politically viable than carbon tax or any other government subsidies. Carbon capture doesn't generate money in itself. You have to pay someone to do this, and since it's more expensive to capture CO2 than not emitting it in the first place, someone has to pay more money than, say, reducing US fossil fuel usage by 10%, to achieve the same CO2 reduct…

Is the state of carbon capture tech like where transistors were in 1950, or has it already reached the physical limit and the only gains to be made are through better/cheaper/cleaner energy sources to power carbon capture?

Somewhere in the middle I'd guess, I'd say more like photovoltaics about ten years ago. There's still a lot of room for improving efficiency and manufacturing cheap hardware.
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