The quest to trap carbon in stone • Hacker News Board

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#11

Post by DennisP » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:10 PM UTC

kornhole wrote: post #5

jeffrallen wrote: post #3

Climeworks' technology is the real deal, and needs to thrive. The only good CCS is 100% carbon negative and sequesters the carbon in chemically stable forms. This is it, and we need more. Petroleum industry CCS is a scam, but Climeworks is not that. Disclaimer: I'm biased because I'm Swiss and so is this technology.

We hackers like to believe there is a technological solution for everything. These projects feed that delusion. Massive reductions and degrowth are hard for us to accept. This article somewhat fairly explains how extremely impractical and unlikely carbon capture technologies will be. The investments in the technology and the PR around them serve more to feed the delusion and keep us burning as usual.

I don't see how it's delusional to look for a technological solution to a problem that was caused by technology in the first place.

In any case, at this point even if we stopped emissions tomorrow we'd still need negative emissions to get back to a safe level.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#12

Post by bamboozled » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:11 PM UTC

kornhole wrote: post #5

jeffrallen wrote: post #3

Climeworks' technology is the real deal, and needs to thrive. The only good CCS is 100% carbon negative and sequesters the carbon in chemically stable forms. This is it, and we need more. Petroleum industry CCS is a scam, but Climeworks is not that. Disclaimer: I'm biased because I'm Swiss and so is this technology.

We hackers like to believe there is a technological solution for everything. These projects feed that delusion. Massive reductions and degrowth are hard for us to accept. This article somewhat fairly explains how extremely impractical and unlikely carbon capture technologies will be. The investments in the technology and the PR around them serve more to feed the delusion and keep us burning as usual.

How do you quantify the limits of technological solutions?

PS, I love that you’re making that comment using…a technological solution which would’ve been considered wizardry not too long ago.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#13

Post by nickff » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:14 PM UTC

kornhole wrote: post #5

jeffrallen wrote: post #3

Climeworks' technology is the real deal, and needs to thrive. The only good CCS is 100% carbon negative and sequesters the carbon in chemically stable forms. This is it, and we need more. Petroleum industry CCS is a scam, but Climeworks is not that. Disclaimer: I'm biased because I'm Swiss and so is this technology.

We hackers like to believe there is a technological solution for everything. These projects feed that delusion. Massive reductions and degrowth are hard for us to accept. This article somewhat fairly explains how extremely impractical and unlikely carbon capture technologies will be. The investments in the technology and the PR around them serve more to feed the delusion and keep us burning as usual.

Why do you think the technological solution is less likely to succeed than your 'reduction and degrowth' political solution?

Do you have any examples of a successful political solution like the one you describe?

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#14

Post by 908B64B197 » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

kornhole wrote: post #5

jeffrallen wrote: post #3

Climeworks' technology is the real deal, and needs to thrive. The only good CCS is 100% carbon negative and sequesters the carbon in chemically stable forms. This is it, and we need more. Petroleum industry CCS is a scam, but Climeworks is not that. Disclaimer: I'm biased because I'm Swiss and so is this technology.

We hackers like to believe there is a technological solution for everything. These projects feed that delusion. Massive reductions and degrowth are hard for us to accept. This article somewhat fairly explains how extremely impractical and unlikely carbon capture technologies will be. The investments in the technology and the PR around them serve more to feed the delusion and keep us burning as usual.

> Massive reductions and degrowth are hard for us to accept.

How would you suggest to proceed?

I can already hear the "true communism hasn't really been tested yet!"

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#15

Post by betwixthewires » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:42 PM UTC

I've got a question, maybe a stupid one to those in the know, but why not just trap carbon in biomass?

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#16

Post by Sanzig » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:44 PM UTC

kornhole wrote: post #5

jeffrallen wrote: post #3

Climeworks' technology is the real deal, and needs to thrive. The only good CCS is 100% carbon negative and sequesters the carbon in chemically stable forms. This is it, and we need more. Petroleum industry CCS is a scam, but Climeworks is not that. Disclaimer: I'm biased because I'm Swiss and so is this technology.

We hackers like to believe there is a technological solution for everything. These projects feed that delusion. Massive reductions and degrowth are hard for us to accept. This article somewhat fairly explains how extremely impractical and unlikely carbon capture technologies will be. The investments in the technology and the PR around them serve more to feed the delusion and keep us burning as usual.

I didn't get that impression from the article.

> But even if that bears out, multiply $100 by even a single gigaton—barely enough to make a dent in our annual emissions—and you’re talking about $100 billion. (The National Academy of Sciences has estimated that by 2050 we need to be removing at least 10 gigatons of carbon. Every year.) That’s on top of the hundreds of billions of dollars that would be required to build the plants themselves.

Big numbers, sure. But if they can hit the promised $100 per ton at scale, and we have to remove 10 gigatons per year by 2050... we're talking like $1T per year in operating costs. That's a bit more than one percent of current global GDP.

Maybe I'm missing something, but for an existential threat, that kinda seems like a pretty good deal? Even if it ends up a couple times that at scale... still a pretty good deal?

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#17

Post by GunnarSturla » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 11:54 PM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #15

I've got a question, maybe a stupid one to those in the know, but why not just trap carbon in biomass?

If we trap it in biomass, it will escape if anything happens to the ecosystem storing the carbon (like a forest fire).

The fundamental problem is that the earth was in a balance, with regards to carbon; a bunch was trapped in biomass, and cycled through the carbon cycle [1]. Then humanity did two things; we destroyed a lot of carbon stores (with agriculture, deforestation and setting off soil erosion), and (more importantly) dug up and released even more carbon into the carbon cycle. It will not be enough for us to only trap it in biomass, we need to permanently remove it from the cycle.

We definitely need to do both, and storing carbon in biomass is probably more cost-effective currently, but if we're going to restore the balance, we'll need more than biomass.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#18

Post by kentonv » Wed, Dec 29, 2021, 12:00 AM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #15

I've got a question, maybe a stupid one to those in the know, but why not just trap carbon in biomass?

Climeworks addressed that question here:

https://www.facebook.com/climeworks/posts/we-often-receive-q...

The short version is: We should be doing all the things. Growing trees is cost-effective but requires a lot of land and water, which we don't have infinite supplies of.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#19

Post by Gabriel_Martin » Wed, Dec 29, 2021, 12:03 AM UTC

betwixthewires wrote: post #15

I've got a question, maybe a stupid one to those in the know, but why not just trap carbon in biomass?

In the trend of questions we kinda know are dumb questions, why not just capture it where it comes out, at the powerplants?

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#20

Post by GunnarSturla » Wed, Dec 29, 2021, 12:03 AM UTC

jeffrallen wrote: post #3

Climeworks' technology is the real deal, and needs to thrive. The only good CCS is 100% carbon negative and sequesters the carbon in chemically stable forms. This is it, and we need more. Petroleum industry CCS is a scam, but Climeworks is not that. Disclaimer: I'm biased because I'm Swiss and so is this technology.

One note about Climeworks is that Climeworks only operates the carbon capture part of CCS. Climeworks can not store the carbon themselves so they rely on re-use of the carbon, or buying storage from other companies, mostly Carbfix (afik).

Carbfix, has been researching the storage part for a while now, and they plan to import CO2 to their facilities in Iceland with tankers from European polluters (crazy idea, but apparently works out).