$100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
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$100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
1–10 of 469 posts
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#2Time to quit my job and become an inventor (actually something I thought was a real thing when I was a kid).
My idiot-layman brain says buy it from AirGas or capture from large emitters and pipe it into a geological structures like the do for storing helium. It could probably only get to gigatons if it's worldwide and we have enough geological structures capable of containing it.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#3How is the answer to “carbon removal” not just “turn deserts into plant areas” or “encourage algae blooms” or something? It seems implausible to me that any chemical carbon extraction process has superior externalities to just planting more trees or something.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#4Here's my proposal, take that $100M and find a Saudi/Venezuela oil well operator. Give him the $100M in exchange for not pumping $100M worth of oil out of the ground.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#5Here's my proposal, take that $100M and find a Saudi/Venezuela oil well operator. Give him the $100M in exchange for not pumping $100M worth of oil out of the ground.
I can not-pump 100M of oil in my own back yard. And you wouldn't believe the rate I can not pump it at!
But seriously, this is harder than it sounds. Unless you pay him to permanently sequester $100M of oil, I don't see how it would make a difference.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#6Here's my proposal, take that $100M and find a Saudi/Venezuela oil well operator. Give him the $100M in exchange for not pumping $100M worth of oil out of the ground.
How would you cost-effectively enforce that commitment?
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#7Time to quit my job and become an inventor (actually something I thought was a real thing when I was a kid). My idiot-layman brain says buy it from AirGas or capture from large emitters and pipe it into a geological structures like the do for storing helium. It could probably only get to gigatons if it's worldwide and we have enough geological structures capable of containing it.
I thought the same thing as a child. Recently I realized that programming and making apps is like being an inventor. When I make applications for other people to use, is that not akin to making some kind of new machine or tool?
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#8How is the answer to “carbon removal” not just “turn deserts into plant areas” or “encourage algae blooms” or something? It seems implausible to me that any chemical carbon extraction process has superior externalities to just planting more trees or something.
I do not have a complete well-sourced answer, but the common argument against your suggestion is that such a carbon sink would work for only a couple of decades until it reaches a steady state, and these couple of decades do not seem to be enough to make a dent.
Also, it is difficult to plant trees in a desert. Also, algae blooms are dangerous for other life forms.
However, there are some startups working with super-fast-growing (ugly) trees that are then used as construction material, which would be a longer-term-functioning sink. Not very clear whether that scales.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#9Here's my proposal, take that $100M and find a Saudi/Venezuela oil well operator. Give him the $100M in exchange for not pumping $100M worth of oil out of the ground.
But in the next 20 or 30 years when there is another energy crisis they'll just start pumping again under the pretext of an emergency.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#1025,000 years ago, CO2 levels stood at 180 ppm - the lowest in 4.7 billion years of earth's history. About 30 ppm above the level at which RuBisCo stops effectively working, which would bring a halt to most photosynthesis on earth.
You can blindly accept dogma or you can think about the implications of that in light of fanatical calls to remove CO2 from the atmosphere - CO2 which has been steadily removed by long term geological processes, and which is now below the levels of over 99% of earth's history.