Carbon Removal Technologies • Hacker News Board

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#351

Post by zinclozenge » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:26 PM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #334

bbojan wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grassland, if properly managed, can sequester more carbon than a forest. This is related to the (unintuitive) fact that grasses are more efficient producers of organic matter than trees. Joel Salatin has done some great work related to this and collected decades worth of data. So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. But we don't, it's easier to s…

> So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. I want this desperately to be true as someone who loves meat but everything I've read tells me it's not. There is definitely a nice symbiotic relationship that exists between cows grazing and grasslands but it is significantly more expensive to raise animals this way, and you can raise significantly fewer…

I might be pedantic, but methane is a carbon atom and 4 hydrogen atoms. I assume you meant carbon dioxide.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#352

Post by akie » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:26 PM UTC

csense wrote: post #320

The ocean phytoplankton technology sounds like it has the potential to screw the planet up worse than the climate change issues it's trying to solve. Massive, self-replicating system of genetically engineered bacteria? I'm certainly no marine biologist, but I'm pretty sure phytoplankton are a super important part of the world's ecosystem. Suddenly massively increasing the number of them that exist in the open ocean s…

Yes, thank you for pointing this out. Biological systems are huge & interconnected, and changing one component will invariably affect the others — probably in unforeseen ways.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#353

Post by gibsonf1 » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:28 PM UTC

Given that every global warming/climate change prediction has been wrong so far, why would it make sense to believe the same political entity making predictions now? If you plug in the data from 10 years ago into any climate model, the prediction for now is wildly wrong.

A more prudent approach, in terms of believing that a prediction for the future may happen, would be to plug the data from a decade or more ago into a model and see if it accurately predicts now. If not, reject that model, try to do a root source analysis to find out what's actually happening, and try again.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#354

Post by intended » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:28 PM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #196

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.

Do all methods of curtailing CO2 emissions lower people's quality of life?

Yes or they don’t work.

I’ve spent way to much time as lay man trying to penetrate Econ speak to get the issue, but the crux seems to be this:

Currently markets and goods don’t price the cost of economic damage into products.

So plastics are cheap as hell because they don’t reflect clean up costs.

This means we have plastic straws which are so cheap on a per unit basis, that you can sell 100s in a single bundle.

Saran Wrap, packaging plastic, tooth brushes, phones, pens, toothpicks, mugs, wires, buttons, and billions of other items are extremely cheap.

Now imagine if ALL of them went up by a small amount.

Then recall, that for the developing world the difference between a 0.01 cent plastic cost and 0.05, is an increase in packaging cost for cheap goods like single use detergent sachets, or single use shampoo packets.

Of course, this will directly reduce usage of those goods, which is the intended purpose, but the fact is that those goods being cheap means people can grow faster without worrying about the issues which arise.

Carbon curtailment is fundamentally energy consumptive. We will spend more energy to capture carbon. We would have to create a system which is carbon negative in itself (after power and maintenance costs are calculated), and then pay for the whole thing,

Taxing goods to price externalities is probably the most efficient way to achieve it.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#355

Post by christophclarke » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:30 PM UTC

peacetreefrog wrote: post #257

Good. More and more, reducing GHG gas emissions politically or through any sort of international agreement looks like a pipe dream. I think Kyoto is a good example. Take (liberal and environmentally enlightened) Canada -- their Kyoto target was 6% reduction (compared to 1990 levels) in emissions by 2012. Did they come close to meeting it? No, instead they were on track to be 25% over their 1990 emissions and dropped…

The issue with the Kyoto Protocols (and most multilateral agreements) is that there is no recourse from the international community for leaving the agreement. The only enforcement is for members, and there is no penalty against not being a member or real economic benefits for being a member.

There is a place for international agreements, but only if structured properly and flexible enough to change with the timescale they are meant to mature in.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#356

Post by gibsonf1 » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:33 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #58

An elephant in the room not being discussed here are the propaganda networks that are persuading voters and preventing any kind of government action on climate. Disrupting these propaganda businesses is another necessary angle of attack for preventing climate change catastrophe.

Do you have a reference for a single climate model prediction that's come true? In most other areas dealing with science, if the theory does not predict the reality, then the validity of the theory is questioned.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#357

Post by intended » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:33 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #227

BeefySwain wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For first world countries? Sure. For developing countries, we are talking mass starvation and death. I guess that could be considered "lowering people's quality of life" though.

The global rate of extreme poverty has dropped from 29% 20 years ago to less than 9% today. You need a solid argument for how these actions would reverse the incredible drop in poverty and start us in the other direction, not just the usual factually wrong conventional wisdom.

Extrme poverty is a razors edge from just poverty, and that growth has been driven by magic substances like plastic.

A classic example of economic growth innovation in price sensitive India is the single use detergent sachet- each of those represents an improvement in cleanliness and hygiene for people who couldn’t afford it before.

Now increase the cost of plastic, even marginally and that change reverberates down the product chain.

Everything from medicine packaging, to Saran Wrap to those single use sachets change in price.

However, the correct point is that if we don’t do anything, what will happen to that number? Is it truly conceivable that climate change will not send more people into poverty eventually?

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#358

Post by andrewflnr » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

theothermkn wrote: post #350

drankula3 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Raw olivine is currently ~$20-$25/ton and the average us person puts out 15-20 tons of CO2/year. Globe-scale carbon sequestration would increase demand for olivine massively. Would mining operations be able to scale appropriately without prices going through the roof?

> Globe-scale carbon sequestration would increase demand for olivine massively. I ask too much, I know, but first-semester freshman macroeconomic comments drive me nuts. As demand increases, and as production rises to meet it, the entire economics of the production chain changes. Purchases amortize more quickly. Processes improve. Infrastructure gets more fully utilized. The effects of mass production are felt all th…

That might be why GP was asking a question rather than making an assertion.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#359

Post by biglenny » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:36 PM UTC

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #288

jbattle wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that we've "done well" because natural gas generation has come online like crazy and proves more economical than coal and INCIDENTALLY cleaner to burn. I'm not sure how long (absent intelligent policy) til we hit peak natural gas and the balance naturally shifts back towards dirty energy sources. I.e. policy helps, but economics had as much to do with it

Fracked gas is about as bad as or dirtier than coal.

Yeah - no.

Coal CO2 emissions are almost double natgas' [1]. While it is true that natgas is mainly CH4, a highly potent GG, its atmospheric lifetime is about 8 yrs. Further, the only way the methane would be getting into the air is via leaks in upstream/midstream processes. Today, hardly any of this leaks (EPA estimates leak rate of 1.4%).

Now addressing fracking, the drilling and fracturing process are the cause of little to no environmental impact/damage. The culprit is wastewater injection. This is the unknown, and while the EPA found no evidence of widespread or systemic pollution of water resources due to the fracking process (which includes WWI before the well is capped), it did highlight the potential in several stages of production for contamination to occur.

Now that said, the damage natgas causes, from E&P (especially) to burn, pales in comparison to coal's at any stage.

I think it would be beneficial for HN users to spend some time in the energy industry before making baseless claims.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#360

Post by graeme » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 10:36 PM UTC

astrodust wrote: post #182

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.

A 4°C increase in temperature will lower people's quality of life a whole lot more than any minor inconvenience you'll have to endure in the short term. If the government had any backbone at all they'd rally people around the idea of committing to it and getting it done. In World War II people lowered their "quality of life" to support the cause. It can be done.

This is true, but I fear the time horizons are too long for mass human psychology. WWII was a short term emergency. That seems to be what springs people to action.

Incentives are another way. I still think a global carbon tax agreement would be a good idea: companies work together to implement carbon taxes and cut income taxes or a local equivalent. That helps eliminat the problem of production offshoring to cheaper carbon areas, and gived incentives to alternatives.

Actually making carbon economically unviable with our psychology works, obviously. I really, really hope we can figure out something else cheaper.

Finally, if we had a carbon sequestering method with no major side effects and clear costs, it would be psychologically easier to charge fossil burning industries and activities the cost of the CO2 emitted. Eg a fee of $30 per ton if that's the cost of sequestering. Of course, you'd need a way to measure the carbon impact of the sequestering, to make sure that process wasn't indirectly emitting carbon.

Reducing would also be highly useful, and I hope we will, but enpirically we don't seem to be built for it without some mechanism like what I described above. It's terrifying and dispiriting and I hope we figure out a way to work around our broken mass psychology.