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Carbon Removal Technologies

carbon.ycombinator.com

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Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#531

Post by rogergr3 »

Hi, there's a lot of interest comments in this thread, we have found, in our own experience, is that now we have a much create of push at all levels than we used to from individuals to governments even though the latest is still being to slow. We believe that the future looks much better in brighten, that we are still on time to move from phase 2 back to (the improbable) phase 0 and we are working to make this happen and will continue until the job is done. :D

We believe though there is still a lot to be done, and not just in CO2 capture, but in air pollution in general.

Here's the website: http://http://www.pureairindustries.com/

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#532

Post by rexpop »

hodgesrm wrote: post #31
rexpop wrote: post #4

...are stupid even to contemplate while we're still increasing carbon emissions. If you actually cared about the impact — and weren't just cynically cashing in on environmentalism's recapitulated caché — you'd be shorting big markets. The biggest threat to the world is unbridled capitalism, which VC's like you are incapable of abandoning. May as well ask a fish to bicycle. This post is a pitiable joke, whose highest…

> I have more reading suggestions for how to turn this ship around. Meanwhile your post is putting down people who are doing actual work to fix the problem. I for one am delighted to see people committing resources to solving real problems instead of developing worthless mobile phone apps. That gives me hope our species will get through global warming.

More like people who are doing actual work to capitalize on the problem.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#533

Post by rexpop »

JBReefer wrote: post #127
rexpop wrote: post #4

...are stupid even to contemplate while we're still increasing carbon emissions. If you actually cared about the impact — and weren't just cynically cashing in on environmentalism's recapitulated caché — you'd be shorting big markets. The biggest threat to the world is unbridled capitalism, which VC's like you are incapable of abandoning. May as well ask a fish to bicycle. This post is a pitiable joke, whose highest…

This doesn't sound relevant to carbon fixation: "Witches, Midwives, & Nurses, first published by the Feminist Press in 1973, is an essential book about the corruption of the medical establishment and its historic roots in witch hunters. In this new edition, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English have written an entirely new chapter that delves into the current fascination with and controversies about witches, exposin…

Forgive my penchant for lateral thinking; English & Ehrenreich's book makes strong points about the development of "professionalism" and industry, two pillars of the pathological substrate making our survival, as another commenter put it, "politically impossible."

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#534

Post by hnhg »

doon123 wrote: post #503
super-serial wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'll pay $400 to be carbon neutral!? Why don't you just stop eating meat, stop driving, stop whatever else that you do and have a smaller carbon footprint naturally, instead of living a carbon lavish life and paying some money to be called carbon neutral. Its like bribing your way out of jail after you have done the crime. [EDIT]: removed expletives

You can make the same point in a less aggressive manner.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#535

Post by rexpop »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #49
rexpop wrote: post #4

...are stupid even to contemplate while we're still increasing carbon emissions. If you actually cared about the impact — and weren't just cynically cashing in on environmentalism's recapitulated caché — you'd be shorting big markets. The biggest threat to the world is unbridled capitalism, which VC's like you are incapable of abandoning. May as well ask a fish to bicycle. This post is a pitiable joke, whose highest…

The only way we're going to turn this ship around is by telling people that there's money to be made somewhere else. If you ask a world full of the rich and those who want to be that they have to turn away from money you're not going to have an audience. Telling us to read 5+ books to appropriately educate ourselves on why the system is doomed and how to fix it isn't going to reach the masses, and certainly not those…

I didn't realize you were a masses. If you don't have time to read two books, how did you get a job in the technology industry?

I'm sick of you lazy techies. Grow up and read a damn book.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#536

Post by elihu »

natosaichek wrote: post #13
WhompingWindows wrote: post #5

Can we discuss space sunshades? Assuming the cost of getting freight to orbit goes down substantially as companies like SpaceX ramp up launches, what's the limiting parameter on some sort of sunshade over the north and/or south pole? Is it indeed the cost of launching the sunshade, or are there other factors at play which make the space sunshade unrealistic? What materials would be reflective and resilient and cost-e…

Anything you can do in space would be cheaper on earth. So rather than shading the pole by spreading ~100,000 sq. km of material in orbit, instead ask why we wouldn't spread the same shade cloth / reflective mylar etc. on the surface of the earth. Then you realize how much of a colossal project it is and how completely impractical is is.

I don't know about that; land is expensive and inhabited by plants and animals, and you have to deal with wind. In space, there are other problems but at least you're probably not getting in anyone's way. You might also be able to use a much smaller shade, as it can be parked in L1 where it's always shading the Earth, and you don't have to deal with some of the reflected light diffusing through the atmosphere and not actually making it back out into space.

That said, I think the usual objection to the space mirror approach is that you can get the same result much cheaper by spreading a cloud of tiny reflective particles into the upper atmosphere. (I've heard of proposals that would just mandate some additive to the fuel used by large passenger aircraft.)

Making the sky 1% hazier is kind of uninspiring (especially when compared to giant orbital mirrors, which could also act as death-rays if aligned and focused properly), but if it's cheap and is likely to work, then maybe it's worth a try.

(Unfortunately none of these options is that they don't do anything about ocean acidification.)

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#537

Post by markvdb »

leni536 wrote: post #521
doon123 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll pay $400 to be carbon neutral!? Why don't you just stop eating meat, stop driving, stop whatever else that you do and have a smaller carbon footprint naturally, instead of living a carbon lavish life and paying some money to be called carbon neutral. Its like bribing your way out of jail after you have done the crime. [EDIT]: removed expletives

While I don't agree with the tone, $400 implies the average CO2 emission in the US (16 tons/capita/year) which is fairly high. I wonder how much an individual can lower their own contribution.

It takes a lot of mental bandwidth to think about lowering your own CO² emission. Still useful in terms of awareness though! Less driving and flying, less meat, low cost/high reward home energy efficiency improvements, ... are quite obvious ways.

It's important though not to overlook the effect of investing in other people's carbon efficiency instead. A piece of anecdotal evidence. I willingly spent ~25000€ extra on my Belgium home's energy efficiency. One year later, I end up living in Latvia, where many places don't even have simple radiators valves. When their appartments with city heating get too hot in winter, they just open the window at -30°C! Imagine spending just 5000€ on my home, and the rest offering free radiator valves installations in Latvia -- or other even more efficient schemes of course!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#538

Post by linuxkerneldev »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #468
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 enforc…

> 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.

Uhm, is there some data backing up your claim that we are honest and that China and India are dishonest. I mean, we really should think twice about accusing other countries of dishonesty after our whole weapons of mass destruction invasion debacle, various wars, regime changes, our "intelligence" services, rendition, Vietnam...

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#539

Post by elihu »

Retric wrote: post #285
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anything that blocks that much light is going to be a huge solar sail and need a lot of station keeping. The only reason ionic propulsion might be considered is the they are already going to be solar panels. If you make a large chunk of them from solar panels you then have crazy energy for space based industry and plenty of energy for ionic propulsion. Also, with that much mass in orbit you are going to want some way…

Supposing you can re-orient parts of the "huge solar sail" then wouldn't it become rather like the sail of a ship or the wing of a plane, and be usable as a control surface for maneuvering?

I'd imagine that in the neighborhood of L1 you would try to find some equilibrium point a little closer in to the sun so that the force of the solar wind matches gravitational pull to the sun. If you start drifting in to the sun, you expose more surface area, and if you're drifting towards the Earth, you re-orient the sail to absorb less solar wind.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#540

Post by superkuh »

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…

Unfortunately ocean fertilization efforts are limited by phosphorus. And even in simulations where the entire phosphorus content of the ocean was "magically" replenished every year for the max amount of biomass possible it only slightly delayed air CO2 levels by about a decade and didn't significantly impact ocean CO2 levels.
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