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Stripe Climate

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Re: Stripe Climate

#111

Post by valw »

immmmmm wrote: post #30

Removing carbon from the atmosphere is a fight against the second law of thermodynamic. To win a fight against Entropy one needs energy, and typically a lot of. My question is simple: where do we find enough energy to capture the carbon that was emitted during the 200 last years? Because we consume already too much energy i fear..

The crazy thing about it, I think, is that removing CO2 from the atmosphere rather than where it's readily concentrated like power and cement plants, is picking the worse amount of entropy to fight.

Re: Stripe Climate

#112

Post by valw »

alien1993 wrote: post #39

Yet another way to feel like you're doing something while doing absolutely nothing, or maybe even worse. Keep it up people!

As should be known in a community of programmers, it's misguided to blame tools from their potential abuses. Every single tool for the ecological transition can be misused for green-washing, from solar panels to electric cars to carbon taxes.

Let's welcome and improve the tools, while keeping an eye on how people use them.

Re: Stripe Climate

#113

Post by el_nahual »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #110
el_nahual wrote: post #92

Quick reminder that carbon removal is a necessary but secondary step. We need to stop pumping more carbon into the air faster than we need to stop taking it out, simply because it takes more energy to get carbon out of the air than the energy that carbon was used for in the first place . To use a financial analogy: We have a high-interest credit card. That debt has compounding interest rates, and the interest rate is…

Sure, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. It's easy for me to directly contribute to carbon removal, because of things like this. It's a little more difficult for me to help pump less carbon into the air — I can try to minimize my carbon footprint, but ultimately the thing we need is investment in clean energy and legislation forcing companies to limit their emissions.

My point was that Stripe's massive resources are better spent lobbying/writing legislation/researching how to properly implement a carbon tax than this.

Re: Stripe Climate

#114

Post by colincooke »

el_nahual wrote: post #104
colincooke wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While ideal, this isn't very realistic. Likelier is that we will slowly get off carbon intensive energy sources and production mechanisms, but fail to move off them entirely for a long period. In this period it is essential that we invest in the technology required to stablize our climate, i.e. carbon capture. With the proper clean energy generation capacity these systems can exist in harmony. Where carbon capture bu…

I agree it's not realistic, but it's actually more realistic than the alternative. The key here is that every new emission today multiplies because of positive feedback. So every day that passes, the problem of scrubbing enough carbon actually becomes harder--whereas the problem of simply not putting it out there keeps the same magnitude. Put differently, it costs "one less airplane trip" to prevent the carbon associ…

This isn't entirely true. There are many high benefit activities we should target (flights are a good one), however there are also others that are much more difficult to reduce (energy production in emerging economies for example). I think my main issue is that zero, or effectively zero, is too high a bar.

Your thinking is in-line with mine. That we should treat carbon emission as an economic problem, as in we need to get to net zero, so what is the most effective (by $$$) way to get there. My bet is that it's a mix of reduction + capture, and we should pursue the most ecost-effective mix.

Re: Stripe Climate

#115

Post by baron_harkonnen »

coldpie wrote: post #38
immmmmm wrote: post #30

Removing carbon from the atmosphere is a fight against the second law of thermodynamic. To win a fight against Entropy one needs energy, and typically a lot of. My question is simple: where do we find enough energy to capture the carbon that was emitted during the 200 last years? Because we consume already too much energy i fear..

Wind, solar, tidal energy. Your question is like number zero on the list of carbon sequestration questions, obviously they have thought about that problem.

They have thought about it but not solved it. We haven’t solved our current energy needs, or anywhere even close to that with renewable, clean energy. We don’t know how to scale it so that > 50% of grid power can be from intermittent renewables.

So power large scale carbon sequestration is still an unsolved problem.

Re: Stripe Climate

#116

Post by MrKristopher »

el_nahual wrote: post #113
jakelazaroff wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. It's easy for me to directly contribute to carbon removal, because of things like this. It's a little more difficult for me to help pump less carbon into the air — I can try to minimize my carbon footprint, but ultimately the thing we need is investment in clean energy and legislation forcing companies to limit their emissions.

My point was that Stripe's massive resources are better spent lobbying/writing legislation/researching how to properly implement a carbon tax than this.

Why would Stripe write legislation to create a new tax? How does that help their bottom line or their customers' bottom line?

Re: Stripe Climate

#117

Post by noodle »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #89
abalone wrote: post #73

The only realistic solution to carbon removal is massive government investment, like most other major Silicon Valley core technologies. We need the Green New Deal. Anything less is posturing. I would even go so far as to say that on an issue of this importance, where we have maybe a decade left to turn the tide, giving the impression that private enterprise can solve it is irresponsible. Put those donations into GND…

It seems pretty unlikely that a very specific bundle of proposed legislation is the only way to address climate change. Are all other countries doomed to failure because they don't have the Green New Deal?

> It seems pretty unlikely that a very specific bundle of proposed legislation is the only way to address climate change. Are all other countries doomed to failure because they don't have the Green New Deal?

GND is not the only way to address it, but it definitely seems like the most politically palatable option right now inside the US. In terms of options that will have an actual impact and are also legislatively achievable, GND seems to be it. It also doesn't really "address" it so much as slow it.

Other countries HAVE already passed legislation and have taken substantive action, so they would not need to pass a GND. Though the ones that haven't passed anything would need to figure out what they can do that is palatable, yes. The US hasn't, and lately has been rolling back rules and regulations such that we're moving in the opposite direction.

Re: Stripe Climate

#118

Post by 15243user »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40
tima101 wrote: post #36

Nature already has powerful carbon-removing technology, it's called a tree. Why reinvent the wheel? Simply fund reforestation efforts. Plus many wildlife species will be saved from extinction. For example, orangutans in forests of Borneo island. EDIT And besides, humans will survive climate change, we are 7.8 billion. But we made 1000s of species go extinct. So I say carbon capture is the wrong problem to solve.

> Nature already has powerful carbon-removing technology, it's called a tree. Why reinvent the wheel? Trees haven’t been carbon sinks for hundreds of millions of years [1]. They absorb carbon while growing, but release it in decay. Short of planting and burying gigatonnes of forest, trees aren’t going to be our way out of this. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous

> They absorb carbon while growing, but release it in decay

Can you backup this claim? I haven't been able to find anything conclusive.

This is the furthest I've gone: https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/9089/does-o... https://www.gardenmyths.com/forests-remove-co2/

Have there been any reputable studies on the subject? Is this the consensus?

Re: Stripe Climate

#119

Post by faitswulff »

PaulHoule wrote: post #9

I like it that they are attempting at least four different schemes. There is a lot of risk in some schemes, for instance it is easy to say you left some trees standing but it is not easy to know somebody won't cut them in five years. For instance, it will be hard to prove that the Vesta scheme works. Putting all the money in the lowest cost strategy would be likely to fail. If you spread it out probably some will suc…

What are the other 3 schemes?

Re: Stripe Climate

#120

Post by defterGoose »

lefrenchy wrote: post #87
defterGoose wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only hope that those driving the division (older people) will be dead soon, so that the younger generations who are by and large more eco-friendly can get on with the difficult work that needs to be done. Its past time for the old, rotten way of thinking to be plowed under.

I'm not entirely convinced older people are driving the division.

The average age of congressional representatives is roughly 60, and has been creeping up for 40 years. Im not sure how to not analyze that as a problem with ideological stagnation. Additionally, people from younger generations never experienced the relative boom period of the 50s and 60s so there's not as much dogmatic inertia there.
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