Live data from Hacker News

Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

bloomberg.com

121–130 of 133 posts

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- CO2 is plant food. Indoor growers supplement CO2 levels up to 1500 ppm (after which they say that there is not much return) to enhance growth. There is no reason to remove it from the atmosphere. - Supposedly CO2 is also a green house gas that helps earth trap some heat from the sun. The link between how much heat CO2 captures based on the concentration is very difficult to find, suggesting that the link is not ver…

https://xkcd.com/1732/

That's all nice and good, except it assumes that CO2 emissions is the cause of warming and no such causality has been established.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

That's all nice and good, except it assumes that CO2 emissions is the cause of warming and no such causality has been established.

A single chart can't possibly explain the entirety of climate change. I was just addressing your points that climate change in the past is like what we're seeing now and that the current trend is cooling.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all nice and good, except it assumes that CO2 emissions is the cause of warming and no such causality has been established.

A single chart can't possibly explain the entirety of climate change. I was just addressing your points that climate change in the past is like what we're seeing now and that the current trend is cooling.

It's very convenient to start from the ice age and show how it's warming up. Here is a much longer timeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#124
post #65

Is this cheaper than growing wood and turning it into charcoal? That doesn't take energy (in fact you get some out), it only takes time and land.

I have a better alternative: growing excess food and dumping it on the ground.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#125
post #65

Is this cheaper than growing wood and turning it into charcoal? That doesn't take energy (in fact you get some out), it only takes time and land.

I have a better alternative: growing excess food and dumping it on the ground.

Char takes a lot longer to rot. So the carbon is pulled out of the short cycle.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single chart can't possibly explain the entirety of climate change. I was just addressing your points that climate change in the past is like what we're seeing now and that the current trend is cooling.

It's very convenient to start from the ice age and show how it's warming up. Here is a much longer timeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png

What do you think is the correct staring point? Obviously if you go back far enough the earth was just a hot ball of lava, and temperatures have been below that ever since.

Showing that temperatures have been relatively steady for a big chunk of human history/prehistory and then suddenly started shooting up right when we started burning mass quantities of fossil fuels seems most relevant to me.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#128

I've always imagined blimps floating around and filtering our air above all the major cities and places where air pollution/CO2 density is worst. Does anyone have any reasoning as to why this isn't really being done?

The magnitude of the emissions. We are putting tens of billions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere per year. Even assuming the filtering process is very efficient (net-carbon negative) where do we store that in the blimp? How many blimps would we need?

As a thought experiment - look at the average car - a Toyota Camry for example. That car emits 206 grams per kilometer. Over the course of the car's lifetime (about 200 thousand kilometers or so) that's 41 thousand kilograms of CO2. For one family car.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#129
post #36
post #6

I find that the idea of "climate engineers" and "geo engineering" has markers which will make it appeal to the same people currently peddling climate denial. My running bet/prediction is that 1) the imbroglio in America on climate denial will continue, 2) most of the world will feel happy that they are doing less than it should, but more than the stat 3) Eventually someone will sell the idea of !!GEO ENGINEERING!! to…

I think a lot of global warming activists/campaigners hate the idea of a technological solution as it won't allow them to tackle things like "global inequality" which they see as important as fixing global warming itself.

Or maybe people are just very skeptical of a claim made by a company ran by people trying to make lots of money off of this. Just as they should be skeptical of claims made by oil and coal companies that are making alot of money off the current energy system.

Re: Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere

#130

Do they have plans to remove Methane and NOx. Methane emissions have increased and we are seeing weather changes. One shouldn't forget CO2 is also needed in the atmosphere.

You don't need to remove those. You just need to make sure they get them wet, so entropy can follow its inexorable path.

Getting wet alright, Irma probably does it.
Post reply on HN