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Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

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Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#261

Post by schoen »

rayiner wrote: post #235
teknopaul wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid proved this generalisation is not a truism. USofA was probably the only place that actively resisted the global effort. I think people do want a better world. Greed is not universal. Most countries that grow a middle class find most people prefer to stop work. I.e. there are not that many infinitely greedy humans. And they can be taxed. Despite neocon economic theory, most people aren't selfish. And those that…

COVID didn’t cost anyone anything in terms of improved standard of living. Curbing emissions growth would do that. People aren’t “greedy,” but my family in Bangladesh absolutely wants to live like my family in America, or at the very least like my family in Canada. They don’t consider that “greedy” and if you tell them it is they’ll laugh at you. The country’s CO2 emissions per person have increased by a factor of 5x…

Maybe with nuclear power? Are you already factoring that in under "an efficient development path"?

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#262

Post by beloch »

jmward01 wrote: post #114

I am not against doing research in this area, please do, it is interesting and likely has many applications but global CO2 removal isn't one of them. Nothing proposed, including this, is within any orders of magnitude of a viable solution. The only solution we have is put less in the air in the first place. This tech looks interesting for transporting CO2 but that doesn't mean it sequesters it and even if sequestrati…

"The Wizard and the Prophet" by Charles C Mann sets up an interesting duality that I think more people should be aware of.

Mann describes "Prophets" as people who see a problem and then try to prod people to change their behaviour in order to avoid it. e.g. Thomas Malthus observed that exponential population growth had humanity on track to experience severe famine, conflict, etc. that would violently and savagely bring our numbers back within the carrying capacity of the Earth. Multiple people have made predictions about when humanity would reach the brink at numerous points in the years since Malthus, but were always wrong about when the Malthusian trap would finally spring...

...because of "Wizards". Wizards are people who set about solving problems with tech. Advances like the use of fertilizer, first bat guano and then the Haber-Bosch process, followed by scientific crop breeding have effectively raised the carrying capacity of the Earth so much that, despite our exponentially ballooning numbers, there are far more calories per person available now than in Malthus' day.

Prophets are valuable for their ability to observe and raise awareness about problems. The Earth does have an ultimate carrying capacity too, which we should keep in mind even if we don't know what it is. However, the track record undeniably favours the Wizards. They get things done. Prophets hate this, because it makes it look like they were wrong. They weren't wrong. They were just too focused on an approach to the problem that rarely works.

The modern environmentalist movement is dominated by prophets. So much so, that wizards are often portrayed as the enemy. History has shown that this is wrong-headed. We should value prophets for what they do, but ignore them when they tell us not to fund the wizards.

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#264

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

zahlman wrote: post #213
blacksqr wrote: post #211

The best carbon capture device is the ocean, and for the last 10 years or so huge amounts of free-floating sargassum seaweed have grown in warm ocean waters around the world. Nobody is certain why the sargassum has appeared in such volume lately, but it's plausible to speculate that increased CO2 in ocean water plays a role. As far as I can see the only remotely efficient way to sequester carbon at scale is to levera…

> leverage the ocean by gathering the seaweed and dumping it on marginal or desert land Why would it gather more CO2 over there than it does where it already is?

Presumably relocating it makes room for more?

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#265

Post by vdupras »

beloch wrote: post #262
jmward01 wrote: post #114

I am not against doing research in this area, please do, it is interesting and likely has many applications but global CO2 removal isn't one of them. Nothing proposed, including this, is within any orders of magnitude of a viable solution. The only solution we have is put less in the air in the first place. This tech looks interesting for transporting CO2 but that doesn't mean it sequesters it and even if sequestrati…

"The Wizard and the Prophet" by Charles C Mann sets up an interesting duality that I think more people should be aware of. Mann describes "Prophets" as people who see a problem and then try to prod people to change their behaviour in order to avoid it. e.g. Thomas Malthus observed that exponential population growth had humanity on track to experience severe famine, conflict, etc. that would violently and savagely bri…

Wizards invented guns, good for them, but now the order is tall: they need to figure out how to undo the effect of their bullets.

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#266

Post by IshKebab »

PeterHolzwarth wrote: post #84

Well, instead of repeating myself manually, I'll paste in a comment of mine here from a past discussion on carbon capture: It's easy to forget why there is a bit of a challenge to getting C02 out of the air: there's so little of it, comparatively. In order, air is, broadly, made up of the following: Nitrogen: %78.084 Oxygen: %20.946 Argon: %00.934 CO2: %00.042 The stuff is essentially beyond a rounding error - it rea…

Also more fundamentally it's always going to be more efficient to not produce CO2 than to unproduce it.

Ok maybe in a small number of circumstances there's no other option (e.g. planes), but mostly you're far better off spending your energy making solar, wind, batteries, heat pumps, insulation etc.

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#267

Post by rangestransform »

rayiner wrote: post #255
dalyons wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they are, but more by accident. They’re going to industrialize with renewables, batteries, EVs and electric everything. It’s inevitable due to economics

They will increase emissions more slowly than European countries did at the same phase in their development, but emissions will still go up a ton compared to now. China's CO2 emissions per capita is now almost double that of France. India has gone from 0.5 tons/person in 1980 to over 2 tons/person today. They're building some renewables, but they're also building a ton of coal and gas. The EU retired 11 GW of coal in…

China couldn’t jump past the fossil fuel stage of technology development, but now its technology development and gigantic manufacturing capacity allows it to help poorer nations fully bypass that stage.

I think it’s entirely possible that giving first world money to poor nations to buy Chinese solar and batteries is a more cost effective solution to carbon emissions than paying western skilled labour wages to decarbonize energy production in the west.

Of course, I’m sure you’ll have tremendous success convincing “candy for dinner” American voters to pay third worlders to spend in China

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#268

Post by _yb2s »

wcoenen wrote: post #126
_yb2s wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s little appreciated that high CO2 levels cause cognitive impairment, and with the same amount of (often very poor) air exchange, higher outdoor concentrations can push indoor spaces to levels that cause impaired cognition and poor sleep. I’ve already been seeing this in my home, and will often open windows even when cold just to keep co2 levels reasonable. One solution that can help is an external air hea…

> Noticeable cognitive impairment starts in the 700-1000ppm range The US navy failed to detect such effects in submarine crew, even at much higher levels like 10,000 ppm. Another reason to be skeptical is that exhaled breath is 4% CO2 (40,000 ppm!). Therefore a few thousand extra ppm in the inhaled air should not make much of a difference to the homeostasis mechanisms in our bodies.

I don’t need to look at studies in other people, I notice and feel the effects directly at high CO2 levels, such that I can tell when it it too high before checking the meter.

I’d need to look at the study, but I also suspect the submariners would be used to high CO2, and also not experienced enough in doing focused creative or knowledge work for impaired abilities there to be detectable.

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#269

Post by nine_k »

marcosdumay wrote: post #202
nine_k wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perfectly reversible, but that uses a lot of energy Looks like a perfect match to a solar plant, which provides basically free energy periodically. All you need is a large enough cistern to hold the liquid during night time.

Yes, it's a great match to solar plants. But you don't need to store the capture medium. You use a bit more energy to make they work faster while the Sun is shining, and stop everything when it's gone. The largest bottleneck is what you do to get rid of the CO2.

I mean, you have to recycle the CO2-carrying liquid. You have to store some of it that has CO2 captured but not yet recycled because the Sun is down.

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#270

Post by nine_k »

TSiege wrote: post #185
nine_k wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sequestering CO2 where it's highly concentrated, e.g. at power plants or cement factories exhausts, would be one way to emit less.

This is called Carbon Capture and Storage and so far it has never been worth it energetically. And the only companies doing it are oil companies in a process known as enhanced recovery which pushes more co2 out than is pushed in. The OP was right. Better to leave it in the ground

You can have 100% renewable energy. You can't realistically produce cement or steel without using and exhausting large amounts of CO2. This has to be addressed, even if it costs energy (which, as we agreed, can be 100% carbon-neutral).
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