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$100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

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Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#101

Post by knodi123 »

oezi wrote: post #17
wedn3sday wrote: post #4

Here'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 about just buying the oil and putting it into storage somewhere (maybe just buy oil ships with oil in them). This will drive up price of oil for everyone which is the most effective way to accelerate the adoption of renewables. The world spends 6-9bn USD per day on oil (100m barrels at 60-90 USD), maybe we start with spending 1bn per day. Edit: Fixed calculation.

> How about just buying the oil and putting it into storage somewhere

What about burying it in the ground?

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#102

Post by giantg2 »

kisamoto wrote: post #48
giantg2 wrote: post #2

Time 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.

Actually what would be really good is instead of looking at carbon capture you could use that invention brain to find solutions to reduce our emissions. Carbon neutral or negative alternatives to energy production, concrete production, travel (flight), meat and many others would be incredible. The best emissions are the ones never emitted in the first place.

Eliminating emissions would be carbon neutral. The competition wants carbon negative solutions for sequestering carbon in the atmosphere or oceans. Sure there are some carbon negative things like the replacement for concrete that reacts with CO2, but the negative impact is not extensible beyond a specific point without better mining/refining tech.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#103

Post by slavik81 »

quaintdev wrote: post #27
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for terrestrial plants, the math just doesn't work out. Plants are really not fast or efficient enough to suck up carbon in meaningful quantities. Algae can be >100 times as efficient at that than terrestrial plants, so there might be a there there, but even still, fracking basalt probably beats that by a couple of orders of magnitude.

I understand this concern but I was blown away when I heard this fact which I wanted to share with you. > Certain species of bamboo can grow 910 mm (36 in) within a 24-hour period, at a rate of almost 40 mm (11⁄2 in) an hour (a growth around 1 mm every 90 seconds, or 1 inch {2.54 centimeters} every 40 minutes). At least it's better than no trees at all.

The giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) is the fastest-growing plant in the world, living mostly on the Pacific coast, off the shores of California and British Columbia. It had economic value at one point, so kelp farming was a major industry in the early 20th century. Though, I suspect if CO2 is all that matters, simple algae is easier to manage than large plants.

Sadly, the natural kelp forests are in really bad shape. I haven't seen the stats on giant kelp, but the bull kelp forests have been practically been wiped off the map by sea urchins and warming waters over the past decade or two. The natural kelp forests probably didn't provide much in terms of CO2 absorption, as dead plant matter would decay quickly in the ocean, but it's been a huge loss for aquatic wildlife.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#104

Post by knodi123 »

jeffbee wrote: post #74
wedn3sday wrote: post #4

Here'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 about paying a $1m/head bounty for every dead oilman the local militia can bring me? Seems more economical.

A modest proposal indeed.

I often wonder if, once the effects of climate change rack up a few million more dead, whether the people directly affected with nothing left to lose might go all Rambo on whatever responsible target of opportunity happens to be at hand. It certainly wouldn't take a $1m bounty. I suspect $1k would be just as effective in a couple of decades.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#105

Post by shadowlight »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #31
re-al wrote: post #28

Why cant we just plant more trees? Or let the trees we have grow bigger, to soak up all that extra carbon?

>"Why cant we just plant more trees?" We can, and we certainly should, but that does not solve the problem because those trees will eventually die and that carbon will cycle back through the biosphere. Mankind extracted a ton of carbon from the ground, where it was locked away, and we put it back into the air. People are trying to find ways of putting all that extra carbon back somewhere where it won't affect the cyc…

no. Unless the tree vaporizes or burns, none of it gets back into the air. It is for all intents and purposes a permanent lock up. Mankind is the gatekeeper of whether to unlock this carbon prison in our choice to burn oil or wood.

Trees aren't the complete solution and the reason why has nothing to do with the tree dying and releasing the carbon.

What's going on here is that plants are converting CO2 into mass. A tree that isn't growing isn't creating new mass and therefore isn't lowering carbon in the atmosphere.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#106

Post by vladTheInhaler »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #9
wedn3sday wrote: post #4

Here'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.

I wonder if there is a way to poison an oil well, so that it becomes un-economical to purify. Chemical separation is obviously what the whole petrochemical industry is about, so maybe something like injecting radioactive material. Then you pay the well owner to poison and seal off their well.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#107

Post by uranium »

knodi123 wrote: post #61

I wonder if there's any possibilities in engineering a quick-growing trash tree that would have a higher percentage of mineralization, or properties that facilitate quick pseudo-petrification, so that it can be embedded in concrete without worrying about rot. They would serve the same purpose as rebar, but with greater volume meaning less concrete needed. And it would be a near-permanent carbon sink.

Living Carbon is doing something similar, working on quick-growing trees that take up enough metals from the soil to slow decomposition.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#108

Post by nostromo »

lend000 wrote: post #40
nostromo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those trees will eventually die and that carbon will cycle back through the biosphere. Trees in forests are self-replicating. When one dies another grows in its place. Yes, this isn't the only solution, but it's certainly part of the solution.

Yes, but the point is that there is an upper limit to the contribution, and even reforesting unrealistically vast tracts of land does not make up for carbon extracted from deeper in the crust. Growing, cutting, and burying fast growing trees deep in the Earth, then replanting them, would not have that limit (although there would be other problems keeping the land fertile).

If you wanted to keep sequestering after the forest matures, just bulldoze the forest ever few years and put the logs in a cave.

You've accomplished everything other sequestration technology promises, but you've done so in a way that is environmentally friendly.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#109

Post by datameta »

mchusma wrote: post #94

Elon is such an amazing force in the world. This prize is great, and overdue. Not surprised to see Elon involved.

Everything he does is in some way to make the post-scarcity far future of The Culture more attainable.

For all of his social flaws this thought alone gives him my deep respect. I don't think he is infallible but in my opinion a lot of attempts at character assassination don't truly understand the underlying purpose of why he does what he does. I still look at developments in his companies with a critical eye - for example neuralink is rather close to making me uncomfortable with how soon we may have commerically viable high-speed BMI. And then I remember all the medical good that can be done with it. I am wary of Starlink interfering with space observation and science, and yet I can think of all the good that can come from more minds having better access to humanity's greatest learning tool, the internet.

He's not perfect, and I most certainly cannot defend the work ethic required of those employed under him. But if I were to have a chance to do it for a year, I would know the reasons I was going through it for.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#110

Post by songzme »

kisamoto wrote: post #56

There's a few "plant trees" or "terraform the sahara" comments in here. For some context, if we planted trees wherever we could around the world we can only undo a decades worth of emissions[0]. Not only that but it would still take a century for the trees to reach maturity. Our use of technology threw nature out of balance and we need to use technology to get the balance back again. [0] https://science.sciencemag.or…

Trees do much more than remove carbon from the air. Carbon removal machine could potentially create c02 deficit regions, creating hostile environments for trees.

We can't possibly build a machine for every function a tree does.

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