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$100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

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Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#241

Post by burgessaccount »

zdragnar wrote: post #165
burgessaccount wrote: post #139

Why doesn’t he just use a few of his billions to build free renewable power plants? Emissions reduction, now, is so much more important than the possibility of carbon reduction in ten or fifteen years

Because he has a one-off fortune that would require selling all of his investments to turn into cash. By 2050, all of the power plants he built would be just so much garbage in a landfill. Based on the growth projections of energy consumption, it wouldn't put a dent in the problem long term. By incentivizing economical carbon capture, he might be able to kick off a self-funding industry, which would be an important p…

I partly agree - yes, individual people spending money is not a long-term solution. But we aren’t even in the stage of needing stable, long-term solutions - we need immediate, drastic, dramatic actions. And there are already strong incentives for carbon capture technology - it’s a big and growing market. The bigger bottleneck is not in capture innovations, but in emissions-reduction action, now, here, this decade. So, yeah, I mean, I get why he wouldn’t personally choose to do it that way, and I guess I’m excited about the prize? But man do I wish he would do more.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#242

Post by Dylan16807 »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #135
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…

>For some context, if we planted trees wherever we could around the world we can only undo a decades worth of emissions[0]. Not even, say you could transform the Sahara to rain forest, awesome right? I mean it would be an incredible feat, but it would give you exactly 0 with reducing carbon. Contrary to popular belief the Amazon rain forest aren't the "lungs" of the planet, the Amazon rain forest is basically net 0.…

When people talk about adding new forests, they're mostly talking about the carbon used to make up the trees and animals. That all comes out of the air.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#243

Post by burgessaccount »

jdavis703 wrote: post #159
burgessaccount wrote: post #139

Why doesn’t he just use a few of his billions to build free renewable power plants? Emissions reduction, now, is so much more important than the possibility of carbon reduction in ten or fifteen years

The impact that even a billionaires could have is relatively trivial. The Green New Deal is estimated to cost trillions of dollars. Even if some of the proposed ideas are dubious, the amount of infrastructure needed is an order of magnitude more than what a billionaire can provide.

Yeah, I mean the green new deal was like 75% not climate spending? And a billionaire does not need to tackle the whole problem, just make a dent? My main point was that we actually already have most of the technology needed to fight climate change, we just aren’t deploying it.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#244

Post by PeterisP »

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?

It's difficult to get enough total quantity, and it's also not rapid enough as it takes decades after planting (which would also take a lot of time) to soak up that extra carbon.

One aspect is that the required land area - https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2927/examining-the-viability-o... mentions 900 million hectares (2.2 billion acres), which would roughly cover the 10Gt/year asked by the x-prize - is enormous, and it's not an accident or negligence that this land isn't forested now, it's generally because we turned it into farmland or pastures.

Are we willing to take away 900 million hectares of land that produces food for the world and money for the locals away from that productive use and turn all of it into unproductive forest that won't get used for logging? Perhaps we are, but if there are other options for carbon removal that don't require as much land resources, that would be preferable.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#245

Post by Dylan16807 »

Nydhal wrote: post #216

There'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…

It's true that there are "other cooling dynamics".

But most of those don't involve trees. And "reducing certain industrial practices" has nothing to do with trees.

So I don't really understand your point. It's correct that we shouldn't be too reductionist, but even if we avoid reductionism it's still correct to say that plants and trees won't do the job, and is not "missing the entire point of regenerative methods".

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#246

Post by Arete314159 »

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…

A decade sounds like a pretty good start. If we could combine that with transitioning away from lawns and towards gardens / orchards (like even on highway medians!), imagine the savings in terms of shipping food.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#247

Post by prox »

krastanov wrote: post #8
wyager wrote: post #3

How 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-…

Beyond carbon capture, trees cool an area, which is good in its own right.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#248

Post by kmtrowbr »

detritus wrote: post #77
tekstar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, planting trees sequesters co2 into the biosphere. That is not good enough, we need to be sequestering co2 into the geosphere if we want to remove it from the equation

I'm sure it's been mentioned elsewhere here already by someone, but I've always thought that converting felled 'sequestration stock' to bio-char and making terra preta out of it would be win-win-win, as it could then be used to improve desertified land. As much as CO2 emissions befear me, so too does increasingly poor topsoil, globally. - ed I'm not even sure we'd need to wait for trees to mature either - we just nee…

This is definitely a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioenergy_with_carbon_capture_...

In theory it's energy positive: burning the crop can produce energy.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#249

Post by daddylonglegs »

flavius29663 wrote: post #163
abeppu wrote: post #96

This sounds cool from a tech-nerd perspective, but of course it all is pretty futile if we don't get emissions under control. The video says 10 gigatons/yr by 2050. Our 2019 emissions were ~36 gigatons. I.e. even if capture is successful, it needs to be accompanied by aggressive emissions reductions for us to even get to neutral, let alone reversing damage. I'm guessing Musk had some thought process around the expect…

> Our 2019 emissions were ~36 gigatons The plants absorb about 25% of that and the oceans another 25%. If we absorb 10 gigatons yearly by 2050, that might be good enough.

Surely dissolving CO2 in the ocean acts as a buffer, not a sink? We will have to stop emitting all of that CO2 as well (and future generations will have to sequester it). The net absorption / emission from the biosphere involves a lot of emission following from our changes to the planet. We can significantly reduce our emissions (and slowly recover some of them) with better stewardship of the environment but there is a risk to the sequestered carbon: eg. where climate change causes forests to die and release most of their stored carbon.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#250

Post by Dylan16807 »

abathur wrote: post #97

I don't mean to be a wet blanket (I imagine the prize will be a net good) but I want to talk into the void about something I've been befuddled by... I feel like I see/hear a lot of uncritical faith in (techno|market|competition)-solutions, with little discussion of what Nth-order effects may travel with those approaches. Just some scattered thoughts: - The best case for progress is probably technology that leads to p…

There shouldn't be subsidies anywhere near producers. The emissions end should be handled entirely via taxes.
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