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$100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

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Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#261

Post by tt23523 »

thechao wrote: post #233
tt23523 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most of the plans to sequester carbon in the ocean make me worry about how that would impact the broader ecosystem. As I understand it, it would change the chemistry of the ocean, which might trade one disaster for another. Not to mention ideally sequestration would last for millennia.

We’re already sequestering a quarter of the CO2 in the ocean; this will do so in a safer way that mimics the large scale natural process that’d happen over the next few millennia anyways.

well scaling a natural process will change the chemistry of the ocean. Since the ocean is such a huge component of our planetary system it would be foolish of us to approach it without monitoring and planning for the consequences of this scale of engineering.

i've found https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.energy... to be a pretty good overview.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#262

Post by jazzyjackson »

prox wrote: post #247
krastanov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, everyone here seems to think CO2 is the most important thing to reduce, but we're not suffering from CO2 (2*C never hurt anybody), we're suffering from increased weather volatility as the homeostatic influence of the biosphere has been destroyed, slash and burned for cow pasture, drained for corn and soy farms, overfished and trawled until nothing is left.

But since CO2 is easier to measure than biomass and ecosystem complexity, everyone is focused on sucking carbon out of the air when we need to be restoring grasslands, forests, and coral reefs.

Source: Charles Eisenstein's "Climate: A New Story"

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#263

Post by abathur »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #250
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.

This comment makes me think you may reading me differently than I intend, though I'm not sure which bit you're responding to. Perhaps my use of the word "operators"?

In any case, I do not intend to suggest any subsidy to fossil fuel producers, here. When I say operators, I mean the operators of capture operations. The only context in which I intentionally point to producers is around the possibility that they might also become capture operators if it was profitable.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#264

Post by Mizza »

detritus wrote: post #256

Soil. It's soil. Soil, in prodigious quantities. We need to be making it. Using human waste - food and faecal from our cities; Using whatever plant fixes the most CO2 in a useful form that we can turn into charcoal (quick trees? bamboo grass? something genetically modified?), releasing heat energy, and then fixing carbon in a useful matrix, for soil regeneration a la Terra Preta. I sort of made this post elsewhere he…

Have you done the math on that? It seems like it would take an awful lot of poop to counteract a coal fired power plant.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#265

Post by [deleted] »

krastanov wrote: post #91
soperj wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it break down into methane instead though? I doubt that building buildings are carbon neutral, let alone a carbon sink.

Dried up wooden building material is pretty stable and a fairly common (even commercialized) suggestion for a carbon sink. If you let it rot/burn, then no, it is not a carbon sink.

[deleted]

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#266

Post by burgessaccount »

rcpt wrote: post #200
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…

It does seem unlikely that we'd be able to control temperatures without resorting to sulfur dioxide. It'll probably start a war, but once natural resources start getting scarce I fully expect the affected nation to deploy SO2.

Calcium carbonate is a better fit - see Gates’s experiments. Likely to still be disastrous, but better than sulfur dioxide

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#267

Post by PeterisP »

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.

If you want to drive up the price of oil for everyone, then instead of buying some oil and putting it into storage, you can just tax it, gaining revenue (that can be used for subsidizing renewables) instead of spending money to buy oil.

The problem is that driving up the price of oil for everyone significantly (so much that there would be a meaningful reduction in usage, not just a slight decrease) is politically unacceptable. Looking at historical gas crises, even literally doubling the price of gas probably would not cause sufficient reduction in driving; but a government intentionally doubling the price of gas to reduce driving would not get popular support, it get voted out for daring to impose such punitive measures.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#268

Post by gpt5 »

daddylonglegs wrote: post #236

Most types of carbon capture technology [1] being touted are credit cards for climate change: You burn enough fuel to generate 4MJ worth of heat... Your internal combustion engine generates 1MJ worth of mechanical effort from this... You use this to propel a 2 ton vehicle... Carrying 1 person... To take part in the rat race or indulge in some consumerism. [2] The carbon dioxide sits in the atmosphere for 50 years whe…

Genuine question - if CO2 half life in the atmosphere is less than 50 years, why are we so concerned about it? Wouldn’t the problem solve itself given that we are both reaching peak consumption of fossil fuels and that they are expected to deplete with the next century?

In other words, wouldn’t the co2 concentration go down naturally within the next 100 years even if we let thing run naturally?

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#269

Post by Dylan16807 »

abathur wrote: post #263
Dylan16807 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This comment makes me think you may reading me differently than I intend, though I'm not sure which bit you're responding to. Perhaps my use of the word "operators"? In any case, I do not intend to suggest any subsidy to fossil fuel producers, here. When I say operators, I mean the operators of capture operations. The only context in which I intentionally point to producers is around the possibility that they might a…

You quoted someone talking about not-pumping oil as part of your line about subsidies. That's on the production side.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#270

Post by burgessaccount »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #245
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".

Trees actually can provide tremendous cooling dynamics, beyond CO2 absorption. They provide shade at ground level. If every house in the US were surrounded by trees instead of useless lawns, energy use for both heating and cooling would be lower, so you’d get emissions reductions AND carbon absorption.
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