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Ocean Carbon Removal: Captura's marine carbon capture explained

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Ocean Carbon Removal: Captura's marine carbon capture explained

#21

Post by jfengel »

hnthrow90348765 wrote: post #14

It seems like they will do anything except the obvious because that would affect the economy. Why harm one business by forcing them to reduce emissions and profits when you can have two profitable companies where one pollutes and the other cancels that out (ideally...)? There has to be some other, unannounced benefit to funding these things like contributing research insights to naval warfare problems.

I suspect that the unannounced side benefit is that it sounds cool. You get to be the guy who had the brilliant idea that saved the planet with no effort on anybody else's part.

Re: Ocean Carbon Removal: Captura's marine carbon capture explained

#23

Post by WillAdams »

jvanderbot wrote: post #11

In my sci-fi addled mind, and massive ship would trundle over the worlds oceans extracting readily available uranium and CO2 to make synthetic fuels for all time from nuclear energy. This skips a lot of important steps that likely cannot fit on one ship, but I love the idea of it.

Hal Clement posited schools of "pseudolife" fish processing seawater to extract gold/platinum and harvested by tenders in his short story "The Mechanic" --- it, "Raindrop" and "Halo" are still relevant today and highly recommended.

Re: Ocean Carbon Removal: Captura's marine carbon capture explained

#24

Post by jstanley »

chvrchbvrner wrote: post #22

Whenever I read about Geo engineering stuff like this, I remember the last episode of "Dinosaurs" [0] and immediately get a bad feeling about it. Hopefully I'm just paranoid. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changing_Nature

Beware of generalising from fictional evidence.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rHBdcHGLJ7KvLJQPk/the-logica...

Re: Ocean Carbon Removal: Captura's marine carbon capture explained

#27

Post by ANewFormation »

jstanley wrote: post #24
chvrchbvrner wrote: post #22

Whenever I read about Geo engineering stuff like this, I remember the last episode of "Dinosaurs" [0] and immediately get a bad feeling about it. Hopefully I'm just paranoid. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changing_Nature

Beware of generalising from fictional evidence. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rHBdcHGLJ7KvLJQPk/the-logica...

The most compelling of fiction tends to be compelling because it's based on reality. History is chock full of grand ideas intended to achieve some desired outcome only to create far worse problems than that you aimed to solve.

Irrigation has destroyed entire seas, crop pests have been near exterminated only to learn those pests were eating far more dangerous pests - resulting in mass starvation, and so on endlessly.

This entire idea really seems like the sort of action we're really not thinking through. Even the article points this out... "What’s not easy to quantify is what happens after the CO2-depleted effluent is returned to the sea. Theoretically, if.." To say nothing of the million other possible issues mostly just handwaved away.

Re: Ocean Carbon Removal: Captura's marine carbon capture explained

#29

Post by Avicebron »

youngtaff wrote: post #12
Avicebron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is seems like it's reduced the complexity down to one dimension (removing the CO2) and has blown past any of that, didn't even think about the algae initially, just energy expenditures getting this up and running, but yeah, that's pretty much saying you'll solve climate change by chopping down trees and planting golf course grass

They’re not even removing that much CO2 either > Captura’s Port of Los Angeles pilot can remove about 100 tonnes of CO2 per year from seawater. The company’s new plant under construction in Hawaii will capture 10 times that amount—a measurement the company can definitively quantify. So 1,000 tonnes of CO2 / year?

So back of the sticky note math, 1,000 ton/yr, at $7.37/ton carbon credit resell value per Google "AI" header thing, that's $7,370/year profit. Hopefully that covers the boat, employee salaries, and fuel. Good job team.

Re: Ocean Carbon Removal: Captura's marine carbon capture explained

#30

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

This needs to really be slowed down. Just like we need changes in the FDA for approval of food ingredients as opposed to the current process that allows ingredients by default, this needs to change to a process of examining what the impacts might be and gaining approval first. This will of course hurt innovation with startups by slowing things down and making it expensive, but I worry about irreversible consequences.

That said, I doubt any of this will be stopped in time. Our governments (state and federal) aren’t even quick enough to understand the impact of offshore wind farms on marine life. These geoengineering projects are far more complex and have less data available. So I think the default is that they’ll continue.

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