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The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

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Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#101

Post by imtringued »

scarygliders wrote: post #35
pipermerriam wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide anything beyond conjecture that there is any merit to what you've stated? My understanding is that the effects of CO2 as a greenhouse gas are pretty well understood at this point.

I can only ask that you read some Stuff From The Other Side Of The Argument... http://www.drroyspencer.com/ is a good start on that. I'm already being downvoted on here - proof that there are a substantial number of HN users who have Made Up Their Minds on this, and simply do not want to even consider that they have been bamboozled by various interested parties. I realise that no one likes to either admit they've bee…

The problems with fossil fuels go way beyond climate change. If you told me that everything is a myth and it was just some government conspiracy involving almost every country on earth it wouldn't change anything. Even at 0.30€/kWh a used Kia Soul EV (small SUV) would pay for itself in gas savings compared to my 40MPG car. If climate change turns out to be true it will just be a nice bonus on top of all the other benefits you get by switching away from fossil fuels and if it doesn't, then everything is fine. You just can't lose by betting against fossil fuels. You know what the best part is? You get to avoid fuel taxes! The German government budget will shrink by 10% if we go all EV so if you hate taxation then EVs are the way to go!

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#102

Post by pfdietz »

adrianN wrote: post #79
dx034 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? I couldn't find any reference to that on their homepage. Is it a byproduct of the process?

Olivine rock usually contains those elements.

And the scheme would involve many gigatons of olivine, so the release would be very large.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#103

Post by graeme »

spodek wrote: post #42

Not a word about the most effective, cheapest strategy: reduce emissions? Most Americans could reduce their emissions by 75% while improving their standard of living by buying less junk, wearing a sweater in the winter, eating more healthy, and other low hanging fruit that will make them more active, healthy, connected to their communities, etc. Reduce consumption by half. There, I just saved us $300 million. How is…

We’re already over the safe threshold. And as a practical matter we won’t be at zero tomorrow, so we’re going to go even further past it.

We’ll need to do both: reduce emissions to zero, and then suck more out.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#104

Post by xorfish »

relieferator wrote: post #43
kijin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Burning methane is even better Actually, burning is probably the best way to deal with any excess methane. Methane has a significantly higher warming potential than CO2 does. So if there's any methane we're venting into the atmosphere, we should burn it to convert it into CO2. Bonus points if you can use the generated energy to capture the CO2 as well.

From what I can recall, landfills produce more methane than any other process. How about we build a carbon capture next to every landfill, divert the methane and burn it to run the DAC?

Or you just burn the trash directly.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#105

Post by 40four »

I've been interested in these types of technologies lateley.

>that many people are extremely pessimistic about climate change. They can’t imagine any solution – often, they become mesmerized by what appears to be an insoluble collective action problem – and fall into fatalistic despair.

More and more, I find this description matches my thoughts on climate change. I'm really beginning to think the problem might require building carbon capture solutions on a huge scale. We might have to engineer our way out, because it doesn't appear we are slowing down emissions fast enough.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#106

Post by rimliu »

adrianN wrote: post #80
WalterBright wrote: post #40

Just plant trees. They're cheap, solar powered, and convert CO2 to building materials.

Start by protecting existing forests. We're still losing rainforests ever more rapidly.

Existing forests don't do much in terms of CO2 reduction.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#107

Post by TomMarius »

fastbeef wrote: post #83
tedk-42 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL. Now we just need to execute the second part of his plan to capture the carbon from the energy produced

Or capture the methane, upgrade it and run generators/cars/busses of it. It's existing tech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas

This scheme is used in real life in Czech Republic

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#109

Post by pinkfoot »

riffraff wrote: post #90
pinkfoot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spekboom (Portulacaria afra) is said to sequester up 10 times the carbon of a rain forest by area. This is largely due to a special mechanism that continues photosynthesis at night. And it grows best in semi-arid regions. Where people don't live or farm.

interesting, the Portulaca Oleracea is edible, I wonder if it has the same property and whether we should plant a ton of it.

Wikipedia sais it does:

"P. oleracea is one of very few plants able to utilize both CAM and C4 photosynthesis pathways, for a long time believed to be incompatible with each other despite biochemical similarities. P. oleracea will switch from C4 to CAM pathways during times of drought and there is transcription regulation and physiological evidence for C4-CAM hybrid photosynthesis during mild drought."

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#110

Post by yifanl »

tekstar wrote: post #44
btilly wrote: post #20

I would have liked to see https://projectvesta.org/ commented on in the article. They claim to be able to sequester carbon by scattering olivine rock in an active and warm coast. The cost of the rock is $25/ton now, with the prospect of $10/ton in the future. Plus whatever it costs to break it up and scatter it. That makes it at an interesting price point if it works as advertised. Even more interesting to me is that…

I believe this type of project is referred to as geo-engineering, which is a bit more controversial as it's typically assumed that the side effects are somewhat unknown.

They're targeting a pilot within the next 5 years on a single beach, which should help towards figuring what side effects exist.

They also note there exist naturally occurring green sand beaches (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papakolea_Beach), though those are tourist spots and probably haven't been deeply studied.

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