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The quest to trap carbon in stone

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Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#51

Post by kbenson »

brightstep wrote: post #31
eikenberry wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can forgive people for wanting to look for solutions that don't require millions/billions of deaths, as that's the only way you'll see the level of change necessary. It will happen naturally over time as economic levels rise and reproduction rates drop below sustaining. But that will take centuries and lots of resources, so I'm doubtful that is what you are proposing.

The solution you describe has already been found: stop burning and leave fossil fuels in the ground. Technological solutions are the opposite. They're an attempt to avoid the what everyone already knows is the answer.

I think what you call "the answer" is almost definitely going to lead to future large wars. What it really requires is either all nations, at the same time, agreeing to just stop doing things that give them an advantage, or to have people (correctly) view other nations lack of care with regard to the environment as actively hurting them and their future, and be willing to take action over that.

I think people trying to find anything possible to avoid or alleviate that issue perhaps deserve a bit more consideration of their position and reasoning. Because the U.S, Europe, China and India and Pakistan have a lot of people to prioritize over the rest of the world, and how they decide if and when to adopt provisions may be different than other nations, but they have just as big of sticks to try to protect what they see as their own best course of action.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#52

Post by lovecg »

Sanzig wrote: post #16
kornhole wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 buil…

Yeah but it’s way more expensive (in the short term) than doing nothing…

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#53

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

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.

> 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.

Massive reductions and degrowth are not going to happen in a democracy. People can say they are all for fighting climate change, but the minute the price of gasoline goes up, they are ready to vote out the leaders. Look at the US where Biden's approval rate has an inverse correlation with the price of gasoline.

Look at France and the yellow vest protests.

Expecting people to reduce consumption to fight climate change is like Malthus expecting people to embrace celibacy to combat overpopulation - not going to happen. Thankfully, for overpopulation, safe, cheap, effective birth control (a technological solution) turned things around. We will need the same for climate change.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#54

Post by lovecg »

Nabati wrote: post #32
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…

"The fundamental problem is that the earth was in a balance," Nit pick but, is there anything that says the earth isn't or won't be at a balance? Sure, climate change will be hugely impactful, especially for humans, but I figure the earth will still be in balance, just not the one we are used to.

Historically huge swings in climate did occur, they also often coincided with catastrophic extinction events. Forgive me for not caring that the warmer Earth is newly “in balance” for whatever heat-loving species emerge.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#55

Post by chriswarbo »

anonporridge wrote: post #40
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.

By "petroleum industry CCS is a scam" I assume you're referring to efforts to make fuels from atmospheric carbon, which is only means we burn it again and put it right back in the atmosphere? If so, then I disagree that this is a scam. Liquid carbon fuels are going to continue being mission critical for civilization for many decades to come. So much of our infrastructure is built with the assumption of liquid carbon…

> By "petroleum industry CCS is a scam" I assume you're referring to efforts to make fuels from atmospheric carbon

Petroleum industry CCS also includes pumping captured CO2 directly into underground reservoirs. Not only is this unstable (it's not chemically transformed), and inefficient (solid chemical forms take less space, less pressure, don't need cooling to remain liquid, etc.), but those reservoirs are typically old oil/gas wells: "capturing" CO2 in those wells will push out any remaining oil/gas, which the company can then sell for burning.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#56

Post by chriswarbo »

lstodd wrote: post #50
toomuchtodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great insight as to why we shouldn’t stop ramping renewables deployments. You need not only cover current electrical demand, but demand growth over time, transportation, HVAC, and all of the energy needed to sequester excess atmospheric CO2 emitted during human industrialization (>1000 gigatonnes based on 280ppm atmospheric CO2 pre industrialization and 420ppm current state). Burning ancient sunlight is expensive.

Maybe it's a better idea to release massive amounts of N2 and O2 rather than chasing a 100ppm of CO2 here and there. In, like, setting up petawatts of nuclear electrolysing plants that will split seawater into H2 and O2, where the gases will dilute the atmosphere enough that CO2 levels drop. This harebrained idea is on par with those CCS projects, but has the nice side effect that the nukes can sometime later be repu…

The nukes could run carbon capture plants. Or, even more directly, they could power homes, industry, charge electric cars, etc.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#57

Post by splittingTimes »

"a system of solar-powered machines that would autonomously harvest raw materials from common dirt, use them to build more machines, and then perform useful tasks such as sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. The replico-bots didn’t pan out, because—well, do I really need to explain?"

Back in the early 90ies, i can see that, but today/in 20 years it does not sound too ridiculous. Or am I missing something?

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#58

Post by pacifist »

nickff wrote: post #13
kornhole wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Do you have any examples of a successful technological solution? We've never been here before so there are no examples in either category. It's clear that we need massive changes in behavior to stop dumping CO2 and other more potent greenhouse gases, such as methane, into the atmosphere(stop driving, don't fly, and, I'm sorry, no more babies). At 8 billion and counting, we've outstripped the planet's ability to sustain life(see Holocene Extinction Event[1][2]). It's possible we could augment these behavioral changes with sequestering efforts using technology that hasn't been invented or brought to scale yet. We'll see. I would also suggest that you pressure your political leaders but to date that approach seems to be fruitless. Politicians are all talk and no action, especially when it means pushing back against their petroleum industry donors. So we need to take things into our own hands. If we don't, and keep going down this road, we are headed straight for 4+ degrees of global warming and billions of people dead. As well as most other life on the planet. [1] https://rebellion.global/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#59

Post by lisper »

splittingTimes wrote: post #57

"a system of solar-powered machines that would autonomously harvest raw materials from common dirt, use them to build more machines, and then perform useful tasks such as sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. The replico-bots didn’t pan out, because—well, do I really need to explain?" Back in the early 90ies, i can see that, but today/in 20 years it does not sound too ridiculous. Or am I missing something?

No one has ever built a self-contained self-replicating hardware system. It's incredibly hard. It's also incredibly dangerous because if it actually works you have effectively built a competing life form.

Re: The quest to trap carbon in stone

#60

Post by SantalBlush »

kiba wrote: post #30
beaconstudios wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Even better. Promoting efficiency is a much easier sell than degrowth anyway.
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