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The quest to trap carbon in stone

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Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#21

Post by betwixthewires »

GunnarSturla wrote: post #17
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 impo…

So follow up question, wasn't the carbon in oil itself sequestered from the carbon cycle? If so, this would be a reversal of that sequestration and not introduction, right?

Maybe if you want to remove the carbon permanently, creation of synthetic polymers like plastics and things similar in composition to oil might be the trick.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#22

Post by GunnarSturla »

Gabriel_Martin wrote: post #19
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?

We should do that too, but then the question becomes what to do with the carbon. It turns out that getting rid of it in a safe way is a pretty difficult problem. The solution that's described in the article needs a lot of freshwater and the right type of rock for it to flow through so it can't be done where most of the power plants are located.

That leaves basically two solutions; capture the carbon from the air, which takes a lot of energy, or ship it with tankers. The first is being done (at a small scale) and the second is being worked on.

In an ideal world, we wouldn't have power plants that release carbon, but that's another discussion :)

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#23

Post by Dig1t »

macanchex wrote: post #4

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/11/03/Tech-Will-Not-Save-Us...

>"An economic contraction, or what Gaia theorist James Lovelock calls a “sustainable retreat,”

Yeah I would expect someone making this argument to quote a "Gaia theorist"..

To force the majority of humans to self limit (i.e. voluntarily limit their own quality of life) requires an authoritarian government to force people to behave unnaturally en masse.

It may be the only solution, but it seems far from conclusive that that is the case right now. Also it seems counterproductive and extremely short sighted to make the blanket statement that the problem is impossible to solve with technology when so many problems throughout history have been solved by technology.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#24

Post by dr_dshiv »

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.

Technology is the problem, so how can it be the solution, amirite? Except — there are so many other cases where improved technology fixes technological externalities.

The caveat is that technology alone can't be expected to solve social-political-cultural issues

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#25

Post by gtsop »

When I was a kid my teacher told me trees convert co2 to oxygen. If I had to suck co2 out of the atmosphere I would plant more trees and stop choping/burning down existing ones. It is cheap, sustainable and aesthetically pleasing, but I guess this isn't tecky enough for today's world. Maybe if we add a wifi module on trees it would fix it.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#26

Post by beaconstudios »

Dig1t wrote: post #23
macanchex wrote: post #4

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/11/03/Tech-Will-Not-Save-Us...

>"An economic contraction, or what Gaia theorist James Lovelock calls a “sustainable retreat,” Yeah I would expect someone making this argument to quote a "Gaia theorist".. To force the majority of humans to self limit (i.e. voluntarily limit their own quality of life) requires an authoritarian government to force people to behave unnaturally en masse. It may be the only solution, but it seems far from conclusive tha…

I don't think that degrowth would have to limit quality of life - many of the things that we spend tremendous amounta of fossil fuels on, like commuting, are not things we want to do, but that we have to do primarily due to really bad planning and systems that don't need to exist. For the last two years a bunch of people stopped commuting and while WFH doesn't work well for some of us (if it weren't a pandemic, the same change could've come with local co-working spaces), that has not hurt quality of life while having a great impact on co2 production.

Other solutions exist that still allow us to live good lives, but the real barrier is entrenched and stubborn systems resistant to change. Even simple things like the urbanism movement being implemented would help a great deal, but getting American urban planning to change course is like trying to push a boulder up mount everest, it would seem.

In my mind, we should aim to solve climate change however we can, while minimising lifestyle harm. But if its a choice between the irreversible destruction of the environment we live in and my lifestyle changing somewhat, I'll choose the latter.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#27

Post by tunesmith »

gtsop wrote: post #25

When I was a kid my teacher told me trees convert co2 to oxygen. If I had to suck co2 out of the atmosphere I would plant more trees and stop choping/burning down existing ones. It is cheap, sustainable and aesthetically pleasing, but I guess this isn't tecky enough for today's world. Maybe if we add a wifi module on trees it would fix it.

From what I understand, planting trees isn't sufficient, but it would sure help.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#28

Post by GunnarSturla »

betwixthewires wrote: post #21
GunnarSturla wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impo…

So follow up question, wasn't the carbon in oil itself sequestered from the carbon cycle? If so, this would be a reversal of that sequestration and not introduction, right? Maybe if you want to remove the carbon permanently, creation of synthetic polymers like plastics and things similar in composition to oil might be the trick.

Yes, you could say burning of fossil fuels is a reversal of some sorts, but the earth has always stored some amount of carbon (with some of it released in volcanic eruptions). But the carbon we've re-introduced into the atmosphere had been sequestered for a long time (thousands or millions of years?) and for all intents and purposes wasn't a part of the cycle.

I guess we could create synthetic polymers and store them, but the scale of the problem is just so insanely massive. We'd need a place to store all that plastic (I don't even know where to begin to do the math, but we use around 10 gigatons of carbon each year [1] so it would take up some amount of space), and we'd also have to hope that bacteria won't develop that can digest it

[1] https://www.wri.org/insights/co2-emissions-climb-all-time-hi...

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#29

Post by mynegation »

gtsop wrote: post #25

When I was a kid my teacher told me trees convert co2 to oxygen. If I had to suck co2 out of the atmosphere I would plant more trees and stop choping/burning down existing ones. It is cheap, sustainable and aesthetically pleasing, but I guess this isn't tecky enough for today's world. Maybe if we add a wifi module on trees it would fix it.

It will help a bit but not all the way. When trees die, CO2 is released again by fungi and bacteria in the process of making the wood rot.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#30

Post by kiba »

beaconstudios wrote: post #26
Dig1t wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"An economic contraction, or what Gaia theorist James Lovelock calls a “sustainable retreat,” Yeah I would expect someone making this argument to quote a "Gaia theorist".. To force the majority of humans to self limit (i.e. voluntarily limit their own quality of life) requires an authoritarian government to force people to behave unnaturally en masse. It may be the only solution, but it seems far from conclusive tha…

I don't think that degrowth would have to limit quality of life - many of the things that we spend tremendous amounta of fossil fuels on, like commuting, are not things we want to do, but that we have to do primarily due to really bad planning and systems that don't need to exist. For the last two years a bunch of people stopped commuting and while WFH doesn't work well for some of us (if it weren't a pandemic, the s…

I don't think that degrowth would have to limit quality of life - many of the things that we spend tremendous amounta of fossil fuels on, like commuting, are not things we want to do, but that we have to do primarily due to really bad planning and systems that don't need to exist. For the last two years a bunch of people stopped commuting and while WFH doesn't work well for some of us (if it weren't a pandemic, the same change could've come with local co-working spaces), that has not hurt quality of life while having a great impact on co2 production.

I hardly call that degrowth, That's just efficiency.

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