Live data from Hacker News

The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

bloomberg.com

41–50 of 111 posts

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#41
post #24

How on earth is this ever going to be economically feasible. Wouldn’t it be more economically viable to literally just bury paper in the ground, or like simply not use the carbon in the first place?

> simply not use the carbon in the first place

No one is disputing this is obviously the best move. But telling humans not to consume stuff has a rather long and unsuccessful history. Let's not try to keep doing that.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#42
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How on earth could you possibly make an economic argument on the future viability of our species on this planet? It's because of economics we're in this mess in the first place.

Huh? Even with extremely important life-saving goals, you still want to use a cost-effective method to get there. Also if it was actually expensive enough, we'd simply be doomed. Economics can't be ignored. They're a proxy for how much we can accomplish.

That's an extremely sad point of view. Of course humans can accomplish things that are not economically viable.

Perhaps it's become harder in our current society, but many great projects of man were economic folly.

To give one admittedly a little cliche example, landing on the moon never made any economic sense.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#43
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another yardstick, it will cost about 2x the annual world GDP to mitigate all emissions this way. With normal amortisation rates and operating costs, it will be about 1.5x-2x more than entire energy expenditure worldwide. I wonder if this is simply a scheme to siphon public money. What a good catch for Fox News! Of course, if $100 per ton ever becomes a reality, then it's just 3% of world GDP and is probably affor…

People on this technology forum seem skeptical that technology can improve or get cheaper.

The first solar panels were completely useless, therefore, it makes no sense that solar panels today are much better. QED

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#44
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on this technology forum are skeptical that an incredibly inefficient technology used to recover carbon from air is a better investment than using technology to emit less carbon in the first place.

Those seem like different goals. Don’t we need both?

Yes. Defense in depth is somehow only applied to computer security around these parts.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#46

How does carbon capture help? Wouldn't it need to be stored somewhere? What happens if the storage leaks? People say that trees is a bad solution because the carbon is still there. This is even worse than trees. Trees at least looks good.

Do what now? Who is complaining that “the carbon is still there?” Surely the total amount of carbon on Earth is relatively fixed and only changes slightly from, like, meteorites and space launches and radioactive decay.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#47
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Even with extremely important life-saving goals, you still want to use a cost-effective method to get there. Also if it was actually expensive enough, we'd simply be doomed. Economics can't be ignored. They're a proxy for how much we can accomplish.

That's an extremely sad point of view. Of course humans can accomplish things that are not economically viable. Perhaps it's become harder in our current society, but many great projects of man were economic folly. To give one admittedly a little cliche example, landing on the moon never made any economic sense.

That's not what I'm talking about. Pretend getting to the moon would have cost a quadrillion dollars. We wouldn't have been able to do it.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#48
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Even with extremely important life-saving goals, you still want to use a cost-effective method to get there. Also if it was actually expensive enough, we'd simply be doomed. Economics can't be ignored. They're a proxy for how much we can accomplish.

I agree in principle, but my question to you, is how do we make something economic i.e. CO2 pollution, which in principle provides no value? The same goes for fossil fuel consumption. There's nothing economic about not using fossil fuels. Understandably it's a compromise, but the first reaction shouldn't be "it costs too much, so don't do it". This attitude is the reason why nothing ends up getting done. I would much…

Taxes are one straightforward way. But no matter how you're paying for it, if you have method A and method B, and they'd both do the job, you don't pick the one that costs 5x as much because you think economic arguments are a bad thing.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#49
post #24

How on earth is this ever going to be economically feasible. Wouldn’t it be more economically viable to literally just bury paper in the ground, or like simply not use the carbon in the first place?

turning trees into paper is too slow. anything you can do with trees is too slow, actually.

if carbon capture is undertaken seriously enough to just break even at current burn, the storage alone will be the largest industrial project in human history.

if we somehow stop burning carbon tomorrow we will still see catastrophic change as the carbon we've already emitted takes effect.

the beginning of any solution is to stop, but nobody can afford to stop.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#50
post #49
post #24

How on earth is this ever going to be economically feasible. Wouldn’t it be more economically viable to literally just bury paper in the ground, or like simply not use the carbon in the first place?

turning trees into paper is too slow. anything you can do with trees is too slow, actually. if carbon capture is undertaken seriously enough to just break even at current burn, the storage alone will be the largest industrial project in human history. if we somehow stop burning carbon tomorrow we will still see catastrophic change as the carbon we've already emitted takes effect. the beginning of any solution is to s…

Wouldn't it be simpler to plant trees instead of using energy to capture carbon? To absorb 1000 tons of CO2 a year, you'd need roughly 200 acres of land, which seems more feasible.
Post reply on HN