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Stripe Climate

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Re: Stripe Climate

#171

Post by jackdeansmith »

core-questions wrote: post #154
coldpie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that energy costs need to be accounted for when examining a potential capture method. But this is so blindingly obvious that of course the researchers are doing it. It is always accounted for when they are making their claims. As a single example see this recent article[1]: > A simple chemical model estimated the rate of weathering for the crushed rock based on the local soil conditions. They also calcul…

> If it was true that any carbon capture method that uses energy will emit more carbon that it captures The only way this works is if it's using excess energy that wasn't produced by processes that emit carbon to start with. Run it on nuclear, solar, etc. and it can work. However, the grid is still awash with coal power! There's no way any machine is going to capture more carbon per KW consumed energy than the coal t…

> the grid is still awash with coal power!

Not really, coal is quickly vanishing from the US electricity sector due to cheap natural gas and renewables. I see no reason that trend won't continue. Source: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...

> So, does it makes sense to deploy this in areas with a ton of green energy available on the grid? Maybe... but those areas have lower PPM carbon in the air, so it's not the right place to run the machine anyway.

Global carbon dioxide concentrations are not evenly distributed, but the distribution has much more to do with climate patterns than where the emissions happened. The atmosphere is fairly well-mixed. Across the whole globe, concentrations are significantly higher than pre-industrial levels. Source: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/82142/global-patter...

> Perhaps instead of all this wasted effort and engineering time, we could just replace the damned coal plants and stop emitting carbon itself.

Once the world reaches net-zero emissions, we can't celebrate and say we've stopped the problem. We just stopped it from getting worse. Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for centuries, if we want to return the climate to pre-industrial, massive negative emissions will eventually be necessary. Engineering work on negative emissions will not be wasted unless we give up on that goal completly.

Re: Stripe Climate

#172

Post by el_nahual »

angusb wrote: post #152
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…

this isn't quite right - if you use zero carbon sources (e.g. solar) to power carbon removal the operation would be net carbon negative. "but why wouldn't you just use that solar capacity to displace coal plants on the electricity grid??????" there's already a rapid switch of installed electrical capacity from fossil fuels to solar/wind, but electricity typically accounts for 20% of a developed economy's emissions, s…

Agreed on the need to invest in carbon capture now. My main argument was that a) reducing emissions to ~0 is going to be necessary even if we invent some insanely efficient carbon sequestration tech; b) the longer we wait, the worse the problem gets, in an exponential way. Emissions reproduce; c) Therefore the bulk of our effort should be spent trying to get emissions down to 0. Because if we fail at that (a task that we know how to accomplish), then no amount of sequestration tech will save us.

Re: Stripe Climate

#173

Post by sampo »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #64
sritchie wrote: post #10

If anyone from Stripe is reading - is it possible yet for me to simply donate money to the portfolio you’ve assembled without running a business? We purchase monthly offsets now and I’d love to switch to funding direct carbon capture (and will happily spend more).

If you want to do this, try compensate.com

> compensate.com

This Finnish nonprofit has some legal problems in Finland. The authorities interpret that their promise of compensation is too vague to be seen as their customers receiving something for their payments. So the nonprofit would need a permit for asking donations, instead of selling compensation, and they hadn't applied for the permit.

https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11138597

Re: Stripe Climate

#174

Post by jackdeansmith »

marvin wrote: post #141

Is there anywhere I can credibly pay any reasonable amount of money to offset my CO2 emissions? I would be willing to pay a monthly salary for this, if the effect can be demonstrated to be sustainable and permanent. I've been wondering how the various companies that have CO2 offset programs do it; whether it's credible or not.

It depends on what you mean by offset. If you're okay with carbon stored in the biosphere by trees then there are plenty of programs. If you want to put carbon back in the geosphere (since trees eventually rot or burn) sending money to climeworks is the best thing available right now. Their DAC + geologic storage approach is expensive at around $1k/ton, but highly credible.

Re: Stripe Climate

#175

Post by jackdeansmith »

markkat wrote: post #74

Why not direct the money to the planting of trees?

Trees eventually rot or burn, carbon stored in the biosphere can be a useful "capacitor" for reducing atmospheric carbon, but in the long run we really need to put it back in the geosphere where we got it from.

Re: Stripe Climate

#176

Post by BurningFrog »

el_nahual wrote: post #170
eloff wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, your conclusion is wrong. You don't need to put more carbon into the atmosphere to take carbon out. Nobody would fund that, well without bad subsidies anyway. We need to reduce the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere AND increase the amount we take out. There is no reason not to pursue both strategies at the same time - indeed time is short and everything we can do counts.

Agreed. What I was trying to convey is that reducing new emissions to ~0 is a necessary win condition. It's not optional...and it's also urgent because those emissions reproduce . We're going to have to cut emissions to 0 anyway , so the sooner we do so, the better...by a LOT. And besides being urgent, it's also something that we know how to do. As in, today. We have the technology! (It's called massive carbon taxes)…

> because those emissions reproduce

What does that mean?

> We have the technology! (It's called massive carbon taxes)

I agree that that's the best solution. Buy I don't see any signs it's politically possible.

Re: Stripe Climate

#177

Post by jackdeansmith »

thrownaway954 wrote: post #156

this is such a gimmick. the earth can heal itself if we stop polluting it. removal isn't the answer we have to stop producing it.

> the earth can heal itself if we stop polluting it

Nope, we're currently moving gigatons of carbon from the geosphere to the atmosphere and a significant amount of that carbon will remain for tens of thousands of years. If we miraculously stop emitting tomorrow, we wont have fixed the problem, we would just stop it from getting worse. Source: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2010/12/common-climate-mi...

If we want to return the climate to pre-industrial, we need aggressive emissions cuts to net zero AND massive carbon removal later this century.

Re: Stripe Climate

#178

Post by jackdeansmith »

jl2718 wrote: post #65

Sorry, but this feel-goodism around carbon capture doesn’t work. They paid $775/ton. Coal is $30/ton. Those are not carbon-free facilities and salaries. Capture requires energy that could be used to reduce carbon emissions demand. 2nd law of thermodynamics says you can’t win this game. The best carbon capture technology is plants and plankton. The best carbon strategy is to use less. Buying offsets feels like peniten…

> They paid $775/ton. Coal is $30/ton.

That's the whole problem, the cost of coal needs to come up and that's something that's in policy makers hands. Stripe is trying to reduce that $775 by investing early in these projects.

> Capture requires energy that could be used to reduce carbon emissions demand. 2nd law of thermodynamics says you can’t win this game.

Assuming all energy comes from coal, which isn't even remotely close to true.

> The best carbon capture technology is plants and plankton.

Plants and plankton are useful for capturing carbon and storing that biomass, but that's not a long-term storage strategy. All plants die and decay, returning carbon to the carbon cycle. If we want a long term solution, we need to put carbon back into the geosphere where we got it from.

Re: Stripe Climate

#179

Post by jackdeansmith »

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #27

"In the teaching of the Catholic Church, an indulgence (Latin: indulgentia, from indulgeō, 'permit') is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins".[1] The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes an indulgence as "a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain presc…

If sin were a global problem where the total amount of sin in the world caused suffering, and indulgences actually reduced the total amount of sin in the world, the system of indulgences would make perfect sense.

Re: Stripe Climate

#180

Post by BlueTemplar »

hannob wrote: post #126
BlueTemplar wrote: post #13

The history of the carbon removal companies is not good (mostly due to the large incentive to game the measures), and smells of indulgences . However, this industry is still quite young... EDIT : Also this initiative seems to be very research-focused, rather than be just about using already known methods?

Are you confusing carbon offsetting companies with carbon removal companies? They can overlap, but are not the same thing. And I think the gaming is a particular problem of carbon offsetting (and I don't think there's a lot of history with carbon removal yet, at least if we talk about carbon removal in the sense of direct air capture technology).

I had indeed first confused them but they are likely to run into similar issues (depending on the regulatory environment).
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