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Carbon Removal Technologies

carbon.ycombinator.com

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Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#231

Post by wott »

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.

Not exactly. The sharpest drop happened "thanks to" the financial crisis, and after that, it has been bouncing up and down depending on the year. The overall trend is downwards though. But not enough, by far.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#232

Post by nanomonkey »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #19
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.

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

Any and all plants sequester carbon, and plants for all intents and purposes create all the wealth in the world. Everything else is just reusing existing wealth.

So, there is a ton of value to growing fruit and nut trees, not to mention hedge rows, vineyards, and other farmable plants, and then figuring a way to keep that carbon sequestered in the soil.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#233

Post by usaar333 »

wallace_f wrote: post #152
thereisnospork wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

> 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.

The first statement doesn't imply the second. Low social status can make someone unhappy, but that doesn't imply that consuming more doesn't make them happy.

In fact, I'm not even sure how much "materialism" is to blame for global warming. I know plenty of people who care more about "experiences" than "material goods" -- and in turn massively contribute to global warming by flying a lot. Equally, I don't view someone as wanting to live in a reasonably sized home in suburbia as necessarily materialistic, even though living there can introduce huge CO2 emissions from driving a lot.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#234

Post by btilly »

astrodust wrote: post #178
Dylan16807 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 The iron particles aren't going to breed and make more iron particles. > let's just curtail CO2 emissions So we shouldn't aim for zero (or even less)? Because 'curtail' will never reach zero.

Fucking around with the ocean on a scale that's going to move the needle on CO2 in the atmosphere has a very high probability of serious unintended consequences. Iron particles won't replicate, but the chemistry of the ocean could change dramatically. We don't know what happens at scale, and we probably don't want to find out. Find another solution.

Not doing anything has a certainty of turning the ocean to a mild acid, with disastrous effects that are already becoming visible in coral bleaching and shellfish die offs. And carbon that is already in the atmosphere and not yet dissolved is only going to make it worse.

We are at the point of choosing between what disasters we will suffer, rather than figuring out how to not have a disaster.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#235

Post by philipkglass »

astrodust wrote: post #188
nostromo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The United States fully intends to reverse course on that and fire up coal plants in order to something something jobs. The reason it was falling was because of strict emissions standards and a strong EPA, both of which are basically gone.

I was afraid that the new administration would follow through on its promise to increase American coal use and extraction. Fortunately, it has not.

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/coal.php

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/westmoreland-chapter-11-mar...

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mission-coal-bankruptcy-marks-5...

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#236

Post by PeterisP »

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.

A set of forests that stays the same size, i.e. some trees fall down and rot or get cut down and burned while new trees sprout or get planted, so that the total amount of biomass in these forests is more or less stable long-term is not a carbon removal technology but simply a carbon store. To remove carbon, the amount of biomass needs to increase... so we essentially need to cut down trees and somehow store their carbon instead of releasing it back into air through decay or burning.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#237

Post by dharma1 »

Cshelton wrote: post #113
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

Is that really the biggest reason for forest being removed? Are there issues with raising cattle on land with a trees spaced maybe every 10 feet or so? Does it have to do with herding the cattle? Feeding the cattle? Those I feel can be solved with technology, specifically IoT/Drones/Autonomous Bots. It seems to me, if every livestock pasture in the world has trees every 10 feet, maybe less, it could have a pretty big…

I don't think you need fart bags, cows fed seaweed emit significantly less methane -https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-eating-seaweed-can-help-c....

Cattle is one main reason, second one is clearing forest for industrial agriculture like soybean and palm oil plantations. Third one is logging for wood products.

Essentially they are all because of overpopulation and massively increased demand for these products.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#238

Post by Tuna-Fish »

Retric wrote: post #97
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earth-Sol L1 is probably a bad place for a solar shade. That's where a solar shade of any given size is the most efficient, but the cost of getting it there is much more than the cost of having more, less efficient ones. A better choice is something akin to a semi-sun-synchronous Molniya-style-orbit. That is, orbit that is somewhat highly elliptical (so a satellite on it spends most of it's time near apogee, and zips…

LEO to L1 is not that bad using solar sails or ionic propulsion. There are going to be real trade-offs to any orbit, but I think the minimum cost is going to be above X mass in L1 means X mass into LEO as you can't use less mass than that in any other orbit.

But then you have to put solar sails or ionic propulsion into the shade.

BFR could deploy a completely passive sail directly into such a sun-synchronous elliptical orbit, return to land, and launch again after a few hours.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#239

Post by aoner »

xchaotic wrote: post #195

Like any sane person, I totally accept the global warming is real and most likely mostly man made. But rather than fighting that change which is already underway, can we not adapt to the higher temperatures and entropy? I appreciate that there's lots of side effects that we see as disastrous, but generally warmer = better for life in many parts of the earth. Most likely the positive outcomes of global warming do not…

I think one of the bigger problems of global warming will be mass migrations and less arable land and probably a ton of other big problems. How would you deal with those problems? Do you have any ideas on that (serious question)? And what do you think the biggest problems would be and how would we adapt to those?

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#240

Post by [deleted] »

matznerd wrote: post #230
btilly wrote: post #59

I would strongly suggest investigating the claims of http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/oli... that after mining, milling, and then being spread in the ocean, olivine rocks weather quickly and take out CO2. The estimated costs of large scale CO2 sequestration this way are surprisingly reasonable, and the technology is already available. Also the various ocean technologies are going to run into t…

I am working on a non-profit that is utilizing Schuiling's research and is actually getting this project done. We are scouting beaches right now for a "wiggle" tank, which is a sort of see-saw like device where we can gather data to affirm the real world dissolution rate. The chemistry, however, is sound that each 1 ton of olivine will sequester 1.25 tons of carbon. By the end of 2019 we hope to have our first olivin…

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