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Ocean Carbon Removal: Captura's marine carbon capture explained

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

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how much do you produce to make the devices, maintain and run them, the boats Boats consume way more fuel than a layman may think. I’ve been on a ~80m / 20people crew coast guard ship for 6 weeks and did a napkin math onboard based on tank levels and refueling date. It was +1000l/person/day of diesel (can’t remember precise numbers). We were moving ~50% or the time. In addition of the motors there were many BIG gen…

Hamilton class?

Won’t say more on the boat, I hope you understand, sorry…

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

#72
post #6

I feel like it is missing most of the important questions. What's the impact on sea life (one sentence saying we need monitoring...) The techniques used mean that all the microorganisms, planktons, algaes will be destroyed by those processes. What is the yield of those approaches, you remove 1000 tons, but how much do you produce to make the devices, maintain and run them, the boats... What do you do with the CO2, th…

> how much do you produce to make the devices, maintain and run them, the boats Boats consume way more fuel than a layman may think. I’ve been on a ~80m / 20people crew coast guard ship for 6 weeks and did a napkin math onboard based on tank levels and refueling date. It was +1000l/person/day of diesel (can’t remember precise numbers). We were moving ~50% or the time. In addition of the motors there were many BIG gen…

Timewizard post is dead so I respond here. Disclaimer I should have put above: It was my first and only time I worked on a big ship. My position was deckhand but had the chance to learn a lot from others crew members.

> This is not remotely representative of "boats."

I talked about the consumption with the first mate and he wasn’t surprised. He’s a long time sailor. I’m sure there is a variety of boat types but I don’t think we were representative of those that consume the most.

> Were you on a ice cutter or a research ship?

It wasn’t an ice cutter. We were sailing mostly around The Channel (France/UK) so "average" air temperature (~ 5-15 celcius)

> This is why they made anchors and why sailboats can function even without power

If the seabed is too deep you can’t. Also dropping or pulling a big anchor isn’t trivial: you need to find the right spot (wind, currents, coast rocks, seabed material…), do some calculation for chain length, some deckhands to operate it, time to drop it slow enough and not destroy your boat (see anchor fails on YouTube) and sometimes a few trials to "anchor" the anchor (it can drift of above parameter we’re not optimal). Also there’s always a chance to break the chain during the process. I’m sure all of this is easier or even trivial for smaller boats or in easy condition like an archipel with not much wind, waves or current.

Sailboats are great but another level of navigation techniques.

Also, you don’t completely shut down the engines even if drift isn’t a problem : startup isn’t trivial either.

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

#74

The entire carbon removal "industry" is a dangerous joke. None of the systems and proposals are able deliver anything even remotely approximating planetary-scale CO2 mitigation without side effects in a range between making things worse and killing or destroying entire ecosystems. Not to mention requiring more energy, materials and resources than the planet might be able to provide. And nobody ever answers the questi…

In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425415 (and elsewhere in the same thread) I corrected you the last time you made some of these false assertions. In the above comment, however, you seem to be repeating some of the claims that I demonstrated were incorrect, as well as adding some new ones. I did the math. I even had to correct my own math errors in that thread because you couldn't find them.

In particular, as I showed there, no ecosystems need to be killed or destroyed for direct air capture; much less energy and materials are needed than the planet can provide (and which other resources do you have in mind?); and no laws of physics need to be violated.

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

#75
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some existence proofs that contradict your argument: A) It’s easy for a typical US family of four to net produce electricity with about 800-1000 sq ft of solar panels, assuming all electric appliances and vehicles (with reasonable commutes). The EV’s are basically rolling powerwalls, so this solves the storage problem. B) Some of the direct air capture systems rely solely on industrial processes that we know…

> It’s easy for a typical US family of four to net produce electricity with about 800-1000 sq ft of solar panels, assuming all electric appliances and vehicles (with reasonable commutes). The EV’s are basically rolling powerwalls, so this solves the storage problem. Not really. Our solar array is almost 900 square feet (4 x 20 meters). However, most people, even those with solar, have a misconception about the realit…

> When you add-up the realities of manufacturing (which in some cases might include mining), transportation, construction, deployment, operations and maintenance, not one system has yet surfaced that can conclusively operate beyond the lab or, at best, a small test area (like a small farm patch).

In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425985 I corrected you the last time you made this false claim, providing verifiable calculations on lime burning, the simplest system that can conclusively operate beyond the lab, though possibly not the cheapest. So I'm surprised to see you repeating the same false claim again in a different thread.

> I have posted the math here on HN in detail in the past.

Links to the math you've posted previously to HN (rather than bare assertions that it exists) would be appreciated. If it's correct, it will inform others; if it's incorrect, the correction will inform you.

> The idea of using your EV as a battery simply will not work on multiple fronts. One of the most basic problems is that you'd age your battery prematurely by adding charge/discharge cycles.

Battery aging has cost, but grid-scale energy storage has value. It isn't sufficient to establish that the cost exists; you must establish that it exceeds the value provided. As we'll see below, the value is typically about five times the cost.

> The reality of the situation is that you need many times the storage that an EV is able to provide in order to deal with the unreliability of solar production.

Again, I'd like to see your calculations. The Tesla Model Y's LFP battery capacity is supposedly 60 kilowatt hours, and a house averages about a kilowatt, only a small fraction of which needs to be active at night, perhaps 250 watts. So I think an EV provides about 240 hours' worth of nighttime backup power, but only needs to provide about 18 hours' worth.

So, rather than needing many times the storage that an EV is able to provide, an EV is able to provide many times the storage you need.

LFP batteries are particularly good on the wear-and-tear front, lasting around 5000 cycles. The car costs US$50k, so if we junk the car when the battery wears out, each cycle costs about US$10, about 17 cents per kilowatt hour. This is enormously more expensive than solar energy but still cheaper than grid power in many places. In California it's about half the cost of grid power.

However, evidently replacing just the battery costs only US$10-15k: https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaModelY/comments/1cf1fkr/how_mu... which means each cycle only costs about US$2.50, 4 cents per kilowatt hour. So if otherwise you'd be paying 24 cents per kilowatt hour from the grid, the net value from draining your Tesla battery is about 20 cents per kilowatt hour.

Other companies such as BYD, which outsells Ford, Honda, and Tesla, have even cheaper batteries.

> we would have to triple the size of the array and have over 400 kWh of storage in place.

Where are you getting that? It sounds like you want weeks' worth of energy, not nights' worth. Batteries aren't a practical way to store weeks' worth of power. That doesn't make them useless.

> 55K hectares burned and no stop in sight. At 130 tons of CO2 per hectare, that's over seven million tons

Burning forests is, counterintuitively, carbon-neutral. The carbon in the forest had been removed from the atmosphere previously, and when the forest grows back, it will be removed from the atmosphere again. Only long-term changes in land use affect the greenhouse effect over more than a few years.

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

#76
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the goal to get something "stable" in the first place? Climate on earth never was and never will be stable, so this should not be our goal in the first place. The goal should be to keep the change fairly slow because most living things have trouble with fast changes. That's it we don't need more than that.

> The goal should be to keep the change fairly slow because most living things have trouble with fast changes. That's what is meant by "stable". It doesn't mean static.

But no one knows what "fairly slow" is. Also the climate collapse theories predict that once a certain tipping point is reached, its game over. If that is true then slow and stable increase still gets us to that point just a bit later.

In other words to make climate change stable do we need to reduce CO2 emissions, completely stop CO2 emission or remove CO2 and reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere?

We don't even know which of these 3 options would lead to the "fairly slow/stable" we want. It seems like we just do all 3 with no evidence of any real world effect whatsoever.

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

#77
post #74

The entire carbon removal "industry" is a dangerous joke. None of the systems and proposals are able deliver anything even remotely approximating planetary-scale CO2 mitigation without side effects in a range between making things worse and killing or destroying entire ecosystems. Not to mention requiring more energy, materials and resources than the planet might be able to provide. And nobody ever answers the questi…

In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425415 (and elsewhere in the same thread) I corrected you the last time you made some of these false assertions. In the above comment, however, you seem to be repeating some of the claims that I demonstrated were incorrect, as well as adding some new ones. I did the math. I even had to correct my own math errors in that thread because you couldn't find them. In particular, as…

@kragen

You are trolling me every time I post about these issues. I have no interest whatsoever in anything you have to say.

You are right. I am wrong.

Happy now?

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

#78
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425415 (and elsewhere in the same thread) I corrected you the last time you made some of these false assertions. In the above comment, however, you seem to be repeating some of the claims that I demonstrated were incorrect, as well as adding some new ones. I did the math. I even had to correct my own math errors in that thread because you couldn't find them. In particular, as…

@kragen You are trolling me every time I post about these issues. I have no interest whatsoever in anything you have to say. You are right. I am wrong. Happy now?

It's encouraging to see an unreserved admission that what you said wasn't true; but, given that what I had to say was easily-verified evidence that what you were saying was false, it's puzzling that you would say you "have no interest whatsoever" in it. That would seem to entail that you have no interest whatsoever in whether what you were saying was true or false. Is that what you intended to admit? It does seem to be in keeping with the fact that you knew or should have known that the things you were saying were falsehoods, given that I had corrected them only 13 days earlier.

In that context, it's interesting that you mention trolling, which is precisely saying things to get a reaction without any interest in whether those things are true or false. Obviously that isn't what I was doing; these are difficult and complex topics, and I wouldn't have been able to uncover your mistakes if I wasn't dedicating significant effort to figuring out what was actually true.

I understand that your lower animal nature would like to not hear what I have to say, because it's embarrassing when I provide clear and convincing evidence that you're mistaken about something, and so you want to play some kind of chimpanzee dominance games with me. But I'm not addressing your lower nature, and I'm not interested in your dominance games. I'm assuming that there's some part of you that does care whether what you're saying is true or false—that you have a higher nature that really believes it to some extent when you recommend that people do the following:

- "accept and comprehend reality" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42482071

- study verifiable and quantitative data about CO₂ emissions, give priority to matters of physics over feelings or opinion, make at least a "minimal attempt at critical thinking", and study "the rules of physics" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42418501

- "work on how to live in this reality" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42419170

- "leaving fantasy-land to then be able to discuss, evaluate and address reality" rather than "creating a religion out of fantasies" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42419979

- "exercise critical thinking" using "the requisite scientific background or real-world experience to understand what are otherwise simple arguments rooted in physics" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42425472

- reading research papers to find "the correct scientific perspective" rather than "pushing nonsense" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42420244 (though in that case the thing you were citing wasn't a research paper and had clearly turned out to be incorrect)

- to "actually have an intelligent conversation" and "consider the entire life cycle" of solar energy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42424685

Taking your own advice on these points would entail responding seriously to the new, easily verifiable information I am presenting you with, rather than repeating claims I have clearly disproven. Above you say you have no interest whatsoever in doing this, and additionally you are accusing me of "trolling", but presumably there is some part of you that actually does believe in those stated ideals. Hopefully it can overcome your chimpanzee side.

Nevertheless, even if you have no interest in whether the things you are saying are true or false (as you seem to be claiming), certainly there are other people who are interested in what is true, so I will continue to correct your errors when I notice them. As I said before, I would very much appreciate it if you would extend me the same courtesy.

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