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Carbon Removal Technologies

carbon.ycombinator.com

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Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#461

Post by 8bitsrule »

philipkglass wrote: post #116
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…

To stay below 2 degrees of warming via CO2 curtailment alone, serious curtailment would have had to start a generation ago. I wish that we had acted with urgency then, but we didn't. Now we need curtailment and active interventions.

One active intervention would be a permanent individual gasoline-rationing program. No sells, no trades, decreasing allotments year-by-year. Thus encouraging -planned- driving, -smaller- vehicles.

The world needs to declare a WAR ON CO2 and put it on a war-time footing. Further considerations of tinkering around with an environment we've already de-stabilized only shows we haven't learned our lesson. We don't know enough to know what's safe... except the way things were.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#462

Post by strainer »

PeterisP wrote: post #263
francisofascii wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does anyone know why this isn't happening more? Surely there are plenty of super wealthy tech titans, Hollywood stars, etc. that care about climate change. They could buy up rural land that is suitable for forestry and start planting trees, or prevent deforestation. Even small time donors could make an impact. Land in the US is cheap, right? What am I missing?

Land isn't that cheap compared to the (not that large) effect, especially if we want that effect to be meaningful in the short term. Buying land and planting trees there will cost something like $2000 per acre and retain something like one ton of CO2 per acre per year (an order of magnitude estimate - depending on details both the cost and CO2 effect can be very different). Industrial carbon capture at power plants c…

>Industrial carbon capture at power plants can do that for something like 70$ per ton.

And then you have a lot of captured carbon dioxide on your hands - next big cost is the storage/conversion.

IPCC summary on cost of forest sequestration :

> Estimates of the private costs of sequestration range from about US$0.10-US$100/tC, which are modest compared with many of the energy alternatives (see Table 3.9 and Figure 4.9). Additionally, it should be noted that most forest projects have positive non-market benefits, thus increasing their social worth

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=171#fig...

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#463

Post by ghosthamlet »

ciconia wrote: post #452

Whatever the solution is to global warming and the looming ecological crisis, I don't believe it lies in more technology. The only viable solution in my opinion is for people to realise that our planet's resources are finite and that we need to accept this fact. AS others here have stated, moving from a growth-based economy to a sustainable one is the only way forward. Sustainability and technological startups are di…

If world will end next week, we should just stop global growth, stop all the unnecessary human events, stop all the unnecessary producing, go home with families, only do the most necessary things. For earth, for human beings, for ourself, it will be enough and worth.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#464

Post by njarboe »

joe_the_user wrote: post #456
philipkglass wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's harder to out-compete fossil projects that have already been built, already paid off their capital costs, and incur just operational costs going forward. Some of those fossil projects (like Saudi oil fields that cost only $10/barrel) are not going to be economically forced into early retirement by any foreseeable lower-emissions energy source. Note that there is also quite a bit of already-built fossil capa…

Since that intervention may arrive late-or-never in different nations, it's one of the reasons that I believe active carbon dioxide removal measures will be necessary in addition to emissions reduction efforts. Both regulating carbon emissions and active carbon dioxide removal measures will, in the end, come down to some state or world body acting in a coordinated way to push money at this problem. It seems like peop…

If most countries decide to use basic regulation but, say, Russia, does not, then the other countries could use active removal to offset the Russian emissions. Not likely a world body is forcing Russia to do anything (although if Europe stopped using their gas, they would have a lot less power).

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#465

Post by realusername »

super-serial wrote: post #458
matznerd wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's awesome - I would be one of the people who would pay $400 to be carbon neutral each year. You should think big and do a Kickstarter with $25 gifts up to $5k gifts... For $400 I want a t-shirt that says "I'm carbon neutral. Do you have the rocks to become carbon neutral too?" with a pic of olivine rocks and your website url.

You can already compensate your Co2 online and it's not that expensive. Generally the companies are replacing very inefficient processes in developing countries.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#466

Post by neolefty »

ciconia wrote: post #452

Whatever the solution is to global warming and the looming ecological crisis, I don't believe it lies in more technology. The only viable solution in my opinion is for people to realise that our planet's resources are finite and that we need to accept this fact. AS others here have stated, moving from a growth-based economy to a sustainable one is the only way forward. Sustainability and technological startups are di…

That's a fundamental debate that is worth having!

On the other side of the argument: US economic growth has decoupled from CO2 output in the last few years — industrial output & productivity has risen steadily while CO2 emissions have remained basically flat.

Scenarios I can see:

1. Reduce our economy by a factor of 10-100 — probably our population as well. Only way that can happen quickly is a catastrophe unparalleled in history.

2. Improve our technology to be carbon-neutral, retain the same population, maybe even improve our standard of living in the process.

The question is: is 2. possible? If it is, I prefer it. If it isn't, that really sucks, and there's merit to the anti-natalist strategy. I happen to think it is possible though — technology and policy and effort can get us to a sustainable energy economy.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#467

Post by intended »

greglindahl wrote: post #416
intended wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Sara…

So if I buy a car that has much better gas mileage, my quality of life is lowered? If I buy a product that has less packaging, so there's less waste, my quality of life is lowered? If I take up bicycling, and as a result drive less, is my quality of life lowered? If the hotel I stay at starts using containers of soap instead of single-use packets, is my quality of life lowered?

Those are all options and choices for a small fraction of humans at what is effectively the top of the pyramid.

In each case, those are choices made out of ZERO economic pressure. You can do that TODAY, without the need of us discussing carbon capture costs.

However, most people DOMT exercise that choice, either through necessity or preference.

For all of those people, an increase in oil prices mean that they have to choose between working and living in an affordable place. It means more Money out of the monthly budget which is not available for other things.

This is economically defined as a reduction in their quality of life.

Do consider that, For most of humanity, food, water, medicine, clothes are decisions separated by razor sharp margins. Owning a car is a distant dream.

Simply - If the cost of everything went up, and you thus has less disposable income to use, then your quality of life by definition has dropped.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#468

Post by anonuser123456 »

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…

The problem with carbon taxes are the incentives to cheat. The US is probably being the 'most honest' by simply saying we won't implement them. In China and India they would simply misreport their emissions and not pay the tax. And of course, you can't hit the carbon targets w/out getting India & China on board.

In the absence of a world governing body with teeth (e.g. space aliens with a death ray), you can't enforce a carbon tax.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#469

Post by spyckie2 »

ciconia wrote: post #452

Whatever the solution is to global warming and the looming ecological crisis, I don't believe it lies in more technology. The only viable solution in my opinion is for people to realise that our planet's resources are finite and that we need to accept this fact. AS others here have stated, moving from a growth-based economy to a sustainable one is the only way forward. Sustainability and technological startups are di…

Wow, this is really skewed towards the 1%, even if you meant it the other way.

You do know that the global middle class yearly income is 1-3k a year, right? That's probably less than a typical American food budget.

It's fine if you want the US to stop growing. But the rest of the world would desperately like to grow more. And that's 90% of the world's population.

It's also naive to think it's easier to redistribute wealth globally than it is to create technology. Redistribution only comes through bloodshed. At least with technology you can build it through hard work, effort, and ingenuity.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#470

Post by schiffern »

gustaf wrote: post #72
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.

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

>most forest owners in the world don't know or don't have incentive to care

So why limit yourself to existing forests?

Instead of flooding deserts (using energy-intensive/land-intensive/wealth concentrating desalinization), we can re-green those same deserts[1], which restarts the "atmospheric river" that brings water to the interiors of continents. Isotopic analysis has revealed that trees powers the water cycle (by recycling rainfall that would otherwise flow off into the ocean) and causes 80% of Earth's terrestrial rainfall.[2] Compared to desalination this is far less costly (downside being, it's harder for Nestle et al. to profit off it).

Yes Virginia, rain literally comes from trees! This partly explains why deforestation leads to desertification.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcZS7arcgk

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11983

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