Increase taxes for car owners globally, done.
I agree with 80% of this. Just the last part is overreaching.
$100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
221–230 of 469 posts
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#222Interesting. The grand prize timeline is 4 years from now. That seems VERY fast. However, I like the aggressiveness- if this can produce viable demonstrations of the technology at anywhere near what the aformentioned Prometheus Fuels ($36/ton) claims, then that produces a huge line in the sand for policy makers on carbon pricing and mitigation. $36/ton would raise the price of gasoline about 36 cents. The cost to cap…
I am skeptical of the $36/ton claim.
The elephant in the room is that most of the proposed process chemistry does not have the necessary scale. If I need a billion tons of mined mineral per year to make a dent -- the reality for many of these proposals -- and current global production is a few thousand tons, you have a serious practicality problem. Not only would you need to develop those mines and the corresponding power generation facilities to manufacture the chemicals (which is energy intensive), we may not have the necessary mineral reserves. Addressing these all require massive amounts of capital investment that are not included in the cost per ton of the process at current scales. Buying a liter of water has completely different economics than buying a trillion liters of the same water, and the cost is always calculated as if it was the former case.
While recycling of reactant chemicals is always a part of these proposals, they are typically only ~90% efficient as designed (each marginal increase in recycling efficiency tends to be exponentially more expensive). At the scales involved, that requires billions of tons of reactants being produced that don't exist today. It would be the largest mining and chemical manufacturing endeavor ever undertaken on the planet, starting from zero.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#223I get the feeling there's a "snake eating its own tail" aspect here. Assuming carbon sequestration can be done at scale, it will likely require energy, maybe even a lot of energy. So where's this energy going to come from? Well... global energy demand is increasing as-is and the winners are: coal, oil and "natural" gas (which is a fossil fuel): https://www.statista.com/statistics/222066/projected-global-... Even assu…
> carbon sequestration [will] likely require energy Yes, but that doesn't mean we won't need it. Take air planes. We can't just put batteries in there: too low energy density or something (I'm no physicist, but they won't fly very far is what I gather). But by capturing the CO2 (at exhaust, or atmospherically) that they put out, we can have both airplanes and a stable climate -- assuming it's all done right. Who want…
One of the more exciting things in green aviation is "air to fuels". There are companies working on converting atmospheric carbon into hydrocarbons for storage (using renewable energy). Those hydrocarbons can then be used as jet fuel, so it's isn't carbon-negative, but at least it's carbon-neutral. Any hydrocarbons left over that are stored are carbon-negative.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#224There'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…
There's no reason not to plant trees in addition to everything else we'll need to do to fix this problem. The advantage of planting trees is that we know it works, it's cheap, and we can do it right now. So some people should be doing that, and others should be doing R&D on other means of carbon removal. No need to pit one against the other.
>There's no reason not to plant trees in addition to everything else we'll need to do to fix this problem.
Yes, there is. Trees take a up valuable real estate. As long as people can do something even remotely profitable with land they own, this can not work.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ex…
The biggest problem with Elon and it's not just him or his fault is that the biggest barrier is our political systems. $100M is like a small city's annual budget. In Ashland, OR the city budget is $140M/year with about 20,000 residents. This prize is not going to solve anything. Even if Elon spent all of his money on this prize, it would still be a drop in the bucket compared to how many resources our political syste…
The largest barrier to human progress is personal greed. It reduces the effectiveness of our governments. It directs our brightest minds toward harmful projects like making addicting apps. Personal greed deforms peoples' attitudes about work, leading them to marginalize those few people who are driven by other motivations.
I think we need to experiment with new political systems. One I am interested in is democracy + communism. I think it's time to start a new city where everyone earns the same salary. I have many ideas for how to start and build the city and make it a great place to live.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"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…
Dead trees lie on the ground, with all their sequestered carbon sitting there. It's not like the carbon is going back into the atmosphere, at least not without some process like combustion. Coal is basically dead trees. Before we started extracting coal and burning it, it was harmless to the atmosphere.
They release the carbon as the decompose or burn. Sahara sounds like a very likely place for wildfires
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
>"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…
Dead trees lie on the ground, with all their sequestered carbon sitting there. It's not like the carbon is going back into the atmosphere, at least not without some process like combustion. Coal is basically dead trees. Before we started extracting coal and burning it, it was harmless to the atmosphere.
> It's not like the carbon is going back into the atmosphere, at least not without some process like combustion.
Western USA has had a "fire season" for every year for the last like 4 years. Last year, other places like Brazil and Africa join in on the fun.
So planting trees without a robust animal/insect ecosystem to decompose them before they combust is an incomplete solution.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no reason not to plant trees in addition to everything else we'll need to do to fix this problem. The advantage of planting trees is that we know it works, it's cheap, and we can do it right now. So some people should be doing that, and others should be doing R&D on other means of carbon removal. No need to pit one against the other.
>There's no reason not to plant trees in addition to everything else we'll need to do to fix this problem. Yes, there is. Trees take a up valuable real estate. As long as people can do something even remotely profitable with land they own, this can not work.
With carbon credits, planting trees can be a profitable land use.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#229There's a few "Plants and trees won't do" comments here, which really misses the entire point of regenerative methods. Earth is an entire complex living system. Thinking of it as a simple chemical matter of CO2 is a very reductionist take. The point is to sequester carbon but ALSO trigger other cooling dynamics and reducing certain industrial practices that themselves release CO2. Too many engineers need to study com…
Plant and trees are definitely a very good solution. The real engineering challenge is really : 1. how to measure precisely how much carbon is in that tree and this other one here. 2. how to plant them efficiently so you can remove 1000T of co2 per year.
Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal
#230There's a few "Plants and trees won't do" comments here, which really misses the entire point of regenerative methods. Earth is an entire complex living system. Thinking of it as a simple chemical matter of CO2 is a very reductionist take. The point is to sequester carbon but ALSO trigger other cooling dynamics and reducing certain industrial practices that themselves release CO2. Too many engineers need to study com…
I think financially it's not reasonable and you can't actually get enough carbon back or enough cooling for it to work on its own. Part of the solution but no it really isn't that simple.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6463/eaaz0388.ful...