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Carbon Removal Technologies

carbon.ycombinator.com

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Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#481

Post by realusername »

super-serial wrote: post #477
realusername wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Part of it is I want to support promising geoengineering solutions because I don't think reducing emissions will be enough in the future. In particular spreading olivine on beaches also reduces ocean acidity and gives nutrients to the base of the ocean food chain. Donating money so that polluting industries can pollute less seems like a bailout to those industries. They should be fined/regulated by their governments…

> Part of it is I want to support promising geoengineering solutions because I don't think reducing emissions will be enough in the future. In particular spreading olivine on beaches also reduces ocean acidity and gives nutrients to the base of the ocean food chain.

We can do both! No need to make a choice. The carbon offsetting schemes in the developing world are currently very cheap because we have all the low hanging fruits available at the moment. When all the very inefficient and easy to replace processes will be replaced, the offsetting schemes will be much more expensive than geoengineering solutions.

> Donating money so that polluting industries can pollute less seems like a bailout to those industries

It's not really how it works (at least not the companies I've looked at). The way it works is you have a more expensive and equivalent way to do things which at the end does release less carbon. It still works in a free market way. For example they engineered cooking stove which are much more efficient but slightly more expensive, they are subsidised by the Co2 offset donations.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#482

Post by njarboe »

btilly wrote: post #431
deialtrous wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we so concerned about ocean acidification from CO2, when past CO2 levels were far higher than now and all of the shellfish species that currently exist lived back then too? Wouldn't it be a good idea to consider the massive quantities of known toxins we pump into the oceans rather than fixating on a red herring?

Your question assumes that the oceans had to have been acidic because CO2 was high. This assumption is wrong. You don't get acidification as long as CO2 levels change slowly enough that it mixes down to the bottom of the ocean and then gets buffered by calcium bicarbonate being dissolved there and mixing back to the top. But this mixing takes place on the scale of a thousand years. This is no big deal for CO2 level c…

Another geo-engineering idea is to speed up this mixing by pumping air deep down into the oceans. Personally (as a PhD geoscientist), I think that taking CO2 out of the air, compressing it to a liquid, and re-injecting it back into the geologic formations that the oil came from in the first place, is the procedure for getting rid of CO2 that is least likely to screw things up even more. It would just go back where it came from (many caveats, but basically can work).

Start raising a tax on CO2 emissions and at the same time start paying people to put it in the ground. Raise the price on both each year and you could reach equilibrium pretty fast. Should have started 20 years ago, but now is better than never. Maybe start at increasing it at $10 dollars a ton/year. $10/ton is about $4 per barrel of oil. If people saw that sequestering CO2 would pay $100 a ton in a decade the research and excitement around the ideas would be huge and likely encourage many breakthroughs. Isolated solar and wind farms extracting CO2 from the air and pumping it underground could be a huge business.

Edit: $10/ton CO2 is more like $4 a barrel than the $2 I originally wrote. Source: https://pyrolysium.org/how-much-co2-produced-by-burning-one-...

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#483

Post by schiffern »

ISL wrote: post #108
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

If you'd like to fund trees, one could start buying land and start protecting trees. Spending that money on intensive lobbying and forest advocacy in rapidly-deforesting countries could have an impact, too. The trick, of course, is that neither of these techniques compound for the individual nor a startup. They are pure charity for the planet.

>The trick, of course, is that neither of these techniques compound for the individual nor a startup. They are pure charity for the planet.

"Doesn't concentrate wealth exponentially; BZZT rejected!"

At some point, we apparently forgot that wealth/power inequality itself massively contributes to environmental problems.

* If you have no political power, you can't defend yourself and your land from pollution.

* If a large portion of the society has no political power, a large portion of the society cannot defend themselves and their land from pollution.

* In a society with extreme wealth, the price mechanism can't "kick in" to protect increasingly-scarce renewable resources (ie saving a species from extinction). Donella Meadows gives a much better explanation than I can, using fisheries as an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg&t=18m48s

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#484

Post by njarboe »

intended wrote: post #357
beat wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Why do you think the plastic production has much to do with CO2 emissions? While it takes energy to produce the oil and transform it into plastic, if that energy is CO2 free, producing plastic won't put CO2 into the atmosphere. Unless there is some trick to plastic manufacturing that requires blasts CO2 into the air like steel production does that I am not aware of.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#485

Post by giarc »

Is anyone aware of measures of public acceptance of carbon removal vs carbon reduction (emit less)?

My thoughts are that people may be more willing to invest in carbon removal as it allows them to continue to live their same life. They see it as "I can continue to pollute since we can just remove the CO2." Similar to how some people may view eating and dieting... "I can eat bad now, I'll just go on a diet later."

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#486

Post by schiffern »

recusancy wrote: post #114
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.

Unfortunately there's no profit motive for this.

Where's the profit in global eco-suicide?

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#487

Post by atupis »

Tossrock wrote: post #317
philipkglass wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon sequestration is a nice side benefit, but wood-into-durable-products can absorb only a small fraction of present anthropogenic CO2 emissions. We're emitting about 37 billion tonnes of CO2 per year at present (10 billion tonnes of carbon) and wood is about 50% carbon. To offset a quarter of human CO2 emissions, we'd need to turn about 5 billion tonnes of wood per year into long-lasting buildings and other manuf…

I see what you're saying, but that doesn't actually strike me as too crazy of a goal. 0.8 is 16% of 5, and 6x-ing an industry seems within reach, given sufficient incentives.

Also concrete industry produces huge amounts co2 so chancing concrete to less co2 intense options helps lot.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#488

Post by Farradfahren »

super-serial wrote: post #477
realusername wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Part of it is I want to support promising geoengineering solutions because I don't think reducing emissions will be enough in the future. In particular spreading olivine on beaches also reduces ocean acidity and gives nutrients to the base of the ocean food chain. Donating money so that polluting industries can pollute less seems like a bailout to those industries. They should be fined/regulated by their governments…

Globalization means that every industry can wiggle out of every regulation- there is always somebody more desperate. So the argument for regulation is also a argument against free trade. You can not have both.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#489

Post by profalseidol »

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…

Nuclear Diamonds[0], sounds cool. Pretty sure this will the most viable as the 1% will surely want to get their hands on this because of Conspicuous consumption [1].

[0] https://climitigation.org/nuclear-diamonds/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspicuous_consumption

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#490

Post by schiffern »

spyckie2 wrote: post #469
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 w…

> 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.

I see the old "[technological] man's burden" is as magnanimous as ever. ;)

Why is the rest of the world desperately poor? It's absurd to imagine that it's because the free enterprise West wants to help that 90%, but is held back by... anti-growth activists. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality colonialism (aka stealing from that 90%) never ended, it just got better PR and privatization.

> Redistribution only comes through bloodshed.

Agreed, and most of the wealth redistribution in the world today is upward (as 'the rich getting richer' implies). Since we're having the consequent bloodshed anyway, why not redistribute wealth in the other direction to maximize hedonic good?

Warren Buffett put it best: "There's class warfare all right, but it's my class — the rich class — that's making war, and we're winning."

> At least with technology you can build it through hard work, effort, and ingenuity.

...implying[1] technology doesn't cause bloodshed. Talk about a skewed perspective!

Just to arbitrarily pick a (hardly unique) example, what do Amazonian tribespeople think of technology? What have their experiences been? https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/uncontacted-trib...

Why was that gold suddenly economical to prospect/mine? Technology.

How were these people massacred so efficiently? Technology.

Why was there such an enormous power imbalance between these two populations? Technology.

"Technology" may look fine-and-dandy to the person behind the keyboard (especially for those who personify it by unconsciously imagining that 'technology' pays their salary), but never forget that all our technological artifacts were ripped out of the ground at some point, typically after using third-world government corruption to steal the land from its former inhabitants. We're merely rich enough that we can push that devastation "far, far away."

[1] or perhaps I'm misinterpreting, and you're just saying that technology brings hard work in addition to bloodshed?

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