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$100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

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Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#401

Post by randomswede »

shadilay wrote: post #345
kisamoto wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree and I'm sorry if I gave the impression that trees should not be part of a solution. Trees (and other nature based methods) should definitely not be neglected. I merely wanted to try and raise some awareness to those who question the need for technological removal methods as there is a bit of a toxic "trees will save us" attitude when things like this get mentioned.

Trees are nature's best solution after millions of years of evolution. The R&D cost is low as well as the complexity. The problem is that dead trees turn back into CO2 so there will need to be some kind of sequestration like burying lumber.

Even burying the lumber doesn't remove the coal from the cycle, just delays it by a few years. You'd need to get the carbon into a "not readily accessible to biological processes" form. Charcoal is probably an OK start, but something like calcium carbonate would be even more stable.

And you can (probably) do better than trees, in terms of carbon captured per time unit. But I guess you'd have to run comparative studies between birch and bamboo for biomass grown per time unit and area.

Hm, that means that a sensible unit for carbon capture would be "kg / (m * m * s)".

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#402

Post by apendleton »

oconnore wrote: post #393
apendleton wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the general consensus is that where it's possible to eliminate emissions, that's much better than emitting and then capturing later, but there are huge disparities across emitters as to how easy that is to do, and there's a likely outcome where getting to net zero (or even net negative) emissions involves eliminating emissions in most industries and then using capture to deal with the laggards. Getting less a…

Carbon neutral jet fuel exists (synthetic fuels from electrolysis, and/or biofuels), and could be scaled up. The issue is not “can we do this”, it’s “can we justify doing this economically”.

For synthetic fuels: yes, absolutely... but it requires economical carbon capture, which GP was saying we maybe shouldn't invest in, in favor of emissions reductions (and if we want net zero, it'd have to be direct air capture, probably, rather than point source, because in this theoretical future, the coal power plants or whatever are all gone). Anyhow, whether you frame captured-carbon fuels as "you capture carbon and then burn it again so it's neutral" or "you burn it, and then deal with its emissions by capturing it again" is sort of arbitrary, and the latter is basically what I'm already arguing for.

Biofuels seem mostly like a crock, honestly -- the ones we can produce now compete with food for arable land and would do so more aggressively at scale, and the ones that wouldn't do that (algal fuels, maybe cellulosic fuels like switchgrass) still require fundamental R&D to make the economics work. And again: even if they did work, this is a solution where you're burning fuels and emitting carbon, and then remedying by capturing again, this time with plants. So again: it's carbon capture.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#403

Post by shadilay »

randomswede wrote: post #401
shadilay wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trees are nature's best solution after millions of years of evolution. The R&D cost is low as well as the complexity. The problem is that dead trees turn back into CO2 so there will need to be some kind of sequestration like burying lumber.

Even burying the lumber doesn't remove the coal from the cycle, just delays it by a few years. You'd need to get the carbon into a "not readily accessible to biological processes" form. Charcoal is probably an OK start, but something like calcium carbonate would be even more stable. And you can (probably) do better than trees, in terms of carbon captured per time unit. But I guess you'd have to run comparative studie…

There's always some local maximum most efficient process. If you take into account process inputs trees would likely come out on top. A lot of carbon capture tech can capture lots of carbon but consumes a huge amount of power/energy intense resources. My unit would be kg / (W * m^2 * s)

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#404

Post by belorn »

mbgerring wrote: post #148
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…

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.

> The advantage of planting trees is that we know it works, it's cheap, and we can do it right now

Here in Sweden it is the law that if you cut down a forest you replant it. We have been doing it for a century. All forests here is basically in a constant plant-grow-cut cycle unless the land is claimed for new buildings (farm land has been steady declining every year).

It is debatable if the practice is carbon negative or carbon neutral. Most of wood product do get burned sooner or later, or turned into bio gas which then get burned. Almost nothing remain as stable carbon sink. A planted forest is an future investment to be cut, processed and burned. The only exception is forest reservations and those are much more expensive to make than planting trees.

The advocacy behind replanting might be better invested into a political action of bringing similar replanting laws to other countries. Sweden mostly did it because it looked ugly to have wast areas cut down without regrowth, and because it hurt biodiversity. It also make sense economically in the long run.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#405

Post by prox »

blamestross wrote: post #369
jazzyjackson wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ecos…

I'm scared of "climate change" not because of temperature rise, not because of dangerous weather, not even because of ocean acidification. We have practice in handling all those things. I'm scared of C02 directly. It sure as hell does hurt people, we are looking a 685 ppm in 2050[1], over 1000 ppm in 2100[2], spiraling worse than that for the next 5000 years. The problem is that c02 makes us dumber, even small amount…

What if we build co2 scrubbers in every home?

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#406

Post by sennight »

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…

> What if we need systematic memetic engineering, to make lower energy consumption actually feel desirable?

lol, there has been an unrelenting campaign to do so, going all the way back to the 70s - when global cooling and population control were the hot topics at Davos. Captain Planet, he's our hero, gonna take pollution down to zero...

I'm all for abandoning conspicuous consumption and the treatment of electronics as consumable goods (sent from 2011 vintage Thinkpad), but I'm not on board with weird its-for-your-own-good social engineering/propaganda campaigns. It is a moot point anyway, as you'd be impotently counter-messaging every advertising/branding strategy that has (or will) ever exist.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#407

Post by blamestross »

prox wrote: post #405
blamestross wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm scared of "climate change" not because of temperature rise, not because of dangerous weather, not even because of ocean acidification. We have practice in handling all those things. I'm scared of C02 directly. It sure as hell does hurt people, we are looking a 685 ppm in 2050[1], over 1000 ppm in 2100[2], spiraling worse than that for the next 5000 years. The problem is that c02 makes us dumber, even small amount…

What if we build co2 scrubbers in every home?

13% of the population doesn't even have electricity, that would take more work than mitigating climate change.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#408

Post by reader_mode »

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…

>Our use of technology threw nature out of balance and we need to use technology to get the balance back again.

The notion being that nature or even the climate is balanced/stable ?

I think the focus should be on increasing resiliency not hoping everything is going to be alright "if we just undo this one thing".

Having said that I'm all for reverting CO2 emissions, just dislike this implicit notion that nature is harmonious by default and humans fucked it up - there's speculation about weather related disasters pre industrial era, so even very recently in human context. Or the disruptions we have with relatively minor volcanic activity. So many natural thing could screw us way worse than global warming and for the first time in history we're getting technologically advanced enough to protect against it.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#409

Post by cjblomqvist »

abeppu wrote: post #335
lutorm wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think at this point emissions reductions is a matter of will, not technology. Rather than waiting for some technological magic bullet when it comes to emissions reductions, we need to take aggressive action. But we're going to need CCS technologies to start pulling the carbon back out if we want to avoid really bad outcomes, and those technologies are much less developed.

I agree that reducing emissions is about will, but I'm frightened that we seem not especially willful. And that does seem like a matter of culture, which could be changed. We just don't have a robust framework for deliberately creating those changes. We gave a portfolio of expensive one-offs.

Ah, but we do. Tax carbon emissions (cf EU) at a proper level and you'll solve the core incentive issue.

Follow (policy) research on how to implement this and it should be fine. The biggest hurdle is will, especially to take the first step.

Re: $100M xPrize for Carbon Removal

#410

Post by tohmasu »

mbgerring wrote: post #160
tohmasu wrote: post #137

I 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…

> Even assuming the forecast 5x increase in "renewables*" I don't know where these figures come from, but the IEA underestimating the deployment of renewable energy, as well as cost reductions, has become a running joke among people who model energy or study the electric grid. Renewable energy is a growing and profitable field, and if you're concerned about not having enough clean electricity to power carbon removal,…

>> Even assuming the forecast 5x increase in "renewables*"

> I don't know where these figures come from /../

There is a link to a well respected statistics site right above the line you are quoting, so if you don't know where the figures are coming from, that says a lot.

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