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Carbon Removal Technologies

carbon.ycombinator.com

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Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#151

Post by throwaway5752 »

bpicolo wrote: post #21
throwaway5752 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trees hardly make anyone any money (absent a carbon credits/tax system).

Wood is 50-100 billion dollar business globally, it's not nothin. Plus, a bunch of trees are food sources.

I didn't address all the possible nuances, but for the purposes of being precise: "reforestation at the scale necessary to act as an effective carbon sink is uneconomical".

As you must know, trees accelerate their carbon sequestration as they get larger. Also, fruit and nut agricultural species are frequently not robust enough, fast growing enough, or zone hardy enough to be good candidates for this either.

Yes, trees have economical value. Trees an a AGW-countering scale carbon sink are not. I'm in favor of a carbon tax/credit system in part for this reason.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#152

Post by wallace_f »

thereisnospork wrote: post #118
astrodust wrote: post #90

At the rate we're setting up for a future where the entire ocean blooms, dies, and we're left with nothing. Already jellyfish are taking over. We're killing off so many life forms we're essentially going back in time to the precambrian era. Instead of looking for "quick fixes" like iron seeding, which has just as much a chance of going awry as Australia importing cane toads to deal with their crop insects, let's just…

Sure we could curtail CO2 emissions, but that means lowering people's quality of life which is a hard sell.

Studies on happiness--as hard as that is to objectively study--show it is more closely related to social status than absolute and total consumption.

In other words, the SUV or sports car apparently has more to do with making people happy by making them look to be of higher social status than the actual utility of those goods.

This is also demonstrated in the South Park episode Smug, which criticizes hybrids. From a public policy perspective, the greatest reduction in CO2 comes from getting people into economical cars (like a 42+mpg --or higher in EU models--Civic) rather than in necessarily Hybrids or electrics which not everyone can afford. The greatest co2/$ reduced is actually going from average to a civic-like car.

Perhaps cultural changes away from materialism, as well as effective public policy may be important in reducing global warming.

But what we get is more "War on Poverty" style bureaucracies and activism which has become a self-perpetuating and wasteful industry of its own.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#153

Post by biglenny »

ttul wrote: post #84
sandworm101 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I understand the qualms of environmentalists As one of those environmentalists, my qualm isn't so much that this may be dangerous but that carbon capture tech (and associated "carbon capture and storage") is often championed by people looking to delay implementation of technology and laws that limit carbon emissions. It is far more energy-efficient to curtail carbon emissions than try to capture it once emitted. T…

How about investing in lobbying? If $10B were sent to politicians, perhaps they’d implement a carbon tax? The future of the world is presently in the hands of pasty white men on Capitol Hill. Why not sequester their carbon (hot air) first?

Reminder to be civil during dialogue.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#154

Post by danielharan »

I'd like to propose a different scale removal, for anyone that may have the means to do it: home and office CO2 scrubbers.

CO2 concentrations are higher indoors, and they're affecting our cognitive ability. Atmospheric concentrations are going to be high for human cognition, especially in dense urban areas.

Better indoor ventilation will help, but if outdoor air already has higher than optimal CO2 concentrations, scrubbing that air is the only option left. Given the number of air changes needed (assuming 10X), a home unit would need to scrub CO2 from around 100,000 liters of air a day per person.

Small-scale removal is likely much more expensive than industrial BECCS or other carbon capture technology - but the value proposition would be fresher air for healthier, smarter workplaces and homes. Sell me cartridges of enzymes, and take spent ones with bicarbonate for reconditioning, and I can feel like I'm helping the planet a bit while making my life nicer.

https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-levels-dire...

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#155

Post by ForHackernews »

jaggederest wrote: post #101
ttul wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about investing in lobbying? If $10B were sent to politicians, perhaps they’d implement a carbon tax? The future of the world is presently in the hands of pasty white men on Capitol Hill. Why not sequester their carbon (hot air) first?

Agreed. I think the highest leverage at this point is actually in political realms, when it comes to climate change. It's just infuriating that a $100/ton tax could fix the problem in a perfectly reasonable manner and government has their head in the sand.

I thought the recent UN report was saying that we'd need more like a $5,000/ton tax at this late stage.

Here's a right wing source: https://www.heritage.org/energy-economics/commentary/un-clim...

> To accomplish such a feat, the new IPCC report proposes an energy tax of epic proportions. It claims that, to keep warming in check, by 2030 we’ll need to impose a tax of between $135 and $5,500 on every ton of carbon emitted. And that’s just for starters. By the end of the century, the authors say, we’ll have to jack the tax up to as much as $27,000 per ton.

The denialists have stalled for so long that it's too late for anything except drastic emergency actions, and then they complain that the drastic actions are too extreme. Personally, I think we're doomed but we owe it to future generations to at least try.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#156

Post by throwaway5752 »

nostromo wrote: post #124
astrodust wrote: post #90

At the rate we're setting up for a future where the entire ocean blooms, dies, and we're left with nothing. Already jellyfish are taking over. We're killing off so many life forms we're essentially going back in time to the precambrian era. Instead of looking for "quick fixes" like iron seeding, which has just as much a chance of going awry as Australia importing cane toads to deal with their crop insects, let's just…

> let's just curtail CO2 emissions We are though. Most people I talk to don't know that the US peaked CO2 emissions ten years ago and it's been falling every since - in per capita, per GDP, and absolute terms.

If only there weren't other countries that we import goods from. If I drive a car made in Canada, Mexico, China, and the US what do I contribute as a consumer to CO2 production?

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#157

Post by theonemind »

GreeniFi wrote: post #2

We already have carbon removal technology. They’re called trees. [Edit] I’m not being facetious. 40% of emissions are as a result of poor land management. We’ll need all the technological help we can get, but if we can’t manage land as carbon stores - not sources, we’re not going to win this race.

I once started thinking through what we would want out of some kind of ideal carbon sequestering device. I thought that for the scale of the problem, they would need to self-replicate, and run on some natural energy source, like solar power. Then, I realized I had just invented the tree.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#158

Post by wallace_f »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #17
natosaichek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything you can do in space would be cheaper on earth. So rather than shading the pole by spreading ~100,000 sq. km of material in orbit, instead ask why we wouldn't spread the same shade cloth / reflective mylar etc. on the surface of the earth. Then you realize how much of a colossal project it is and how completely impractical is is.

Earth is a closed system, so the shade cloth on Earth would simply warm up and reradiate the absorbed energy as infrared. Reflective mylar would see a portion of the reflected sunlight (which would have warmed the atmosphere upon entry) trapped by the greenhouse effect.

This is not necessarily true as demonstrated by Steven Chu's 'Paint the Earth White' campaign.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#159

Post by jf- »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #86
jf- wrote: post #63

Here’s my crazy idea: nuclear powered high pressure differential centrifugation. Under centrifugal force fluids separate into bands based on mass. The same principle as oil and water separating under gravity. Use giant centrifuges to spin compressed air until it separates into bands, then extract the bands corresponding to greenhouse gasses. I don’t know the energy requirements for this or if there is a better way of…

Liquids have differential densities which allows them to spread into layers. If you have "compressed air" that separates into bands, you're just talking about compressing the air into a liquid phase so it can then be extracted as above. The triple point of carbon dioxide is -57 C and 5.1 atm, so in other words you'd have to get colder and higher pressure than that to even produce the liquid. Then you'd have to spin i…

I’m not sure that compressing to a liquid would be necessary. https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Gas_centrifuge , which is describing the uranium enrichment process mentioned by Ichengify, states that the separation occurs while the uranium is still a gas, with the heavier fraction just being scooped out.

Also taking a quick look at the natural separation of gasses in Earth’s atmosphere, it seems that the uppermost layer consists mostly of hydrogen, helium and CO2, and that’s just under gravity.

I’m not a chemical engineer, but I’ll have a stab at what the energy for the process might be. No promises that I can reach an answer.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#160

Post by joe_the_user »

nostromo wrote: post #124
astrodust wrote: post #90

At the rate we're setting up for a future where the entire ocean blooms, dies, and we're left with nothing. Already jellyfish are taking over. We're killing off so many life forms we're essentially going back in time to the precambrian era. Instead of looking for "quick fixes" like iron seeding, which has just as much a chance of going awry as Australia importing cane toads to deal with their crop insects, let's just…

> let's just curtail CO2 emissions We are though. Most people I talk to don't know that the US peaked CO2 emissions ten years ago and it's been falling every since - in per capita, per GDP, and absolute terms.

But this achievement is less even impressive than a "OK, we've done the US, now let's look at other countries"

The problem is that the US can export it's carbon-intensive industries and even consume new carbon intensive entities produced by other countries. For example, US investors certainly consume a modest fraction of bitcoins mined in China and bitcoins wind-up consuming not just a lot of energy but also form a new source sort of carbon-intensive production.

Solar and wind power are becoming competitive with oil in general but this can never by itself halt hydrocarbon-energy production 'cause as it's relative price drops, there's always a practical use for hydrocarbon-energy close to the source, where pumping it out of the ground is nearly free.

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