Carbon Removal Technologies

Post by throwaway5752 » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 8:03 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #144

gustaf wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Gustaf from YC. I wrote the first Carbon Removal RFS. Planting tree is actually a great carbon removal technology. Unfortunately most forest owners in the world don't know or don't have incentive to care the about the carbon impact the forest have on the climate. Biggest reason forests are taken down is to grow cattle for beef. If you are working on a startup to reverse this we'd like to fund it too

Well, The other thing with trees is that they aren't permanent carbon sinks in the way that coal underground is. Wood will eventually rot or burn and release it's carbon. Human beings have taken carbon in the form of hydrocarbons underground and released is into the C02 - O2 cycle in the air. The main way to solve this would seem to be putting it back into the ground. So, reverse coal-mining? Turning wood into charco…

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 8:03 PM UTC

philipkglass wrote: post #132

greglindahl wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that the biggest problem with the "seeding the ocean with iron" method of sequestration was not the "qualms of environmentalists" but that it turned out to sequester a lot less carbon than initially thought?

Its sequestration efficacy is not well-established yet. I think that more experiments should be run to better quantify the effects. Some environmentalists oppose even additional research-scale trials. Some proponents of iron fertilization have internalized "some environmentalists oppose this, and efficacy still has large error bars" as "it probably works great but technophobic environmentalists want us to suffer depr…

Post by Symmetry » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 8:03 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #91

Symmetry wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The launch volume looks infeasibly large in the foreseeable future, but I don't think the station keeping problem is that bad. Any sun shade is basically going to be a solar sail already and steering via LCD panels like IKAROS did should be sufficient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKAROS

The problem is you now need some actual structure rather than just some thin sheets / inflatable structure or whatever. Further applying even small amounts of force across huge sheets adds up while as you say it's acting like a solar sail. That is to say it's clearly still possible, just not as cheap as people are assuming.

Post by nthot » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

gingerbread-man wrote: post #24

An obvious step towards reducing CO2 emissions in the US would be raising taxes on gasoline. Americans are driving ever larger and less fuel-efficient cars in part because gas prices have remained steady or fallen in real terms since the 70s. In fact, Ford announced a few months ago that they will stop selling passenger cars in the US (except the Mustang), to focus on more popular trucks and SUVs. But this is just ab…

Post by ForHackernews » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #22

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.

That's why you set up orbital infrastructure so that you don't have to bring up everything from Earth and can just mine stuff in space.