Carbon Removal Technologies • Hacker News Board

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#61

Post by gingerbread-man » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:07 PM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #41

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…

> An obvious step towards reducing CO2 emissions in the US would be raising taxes on gasoline. It seems we are past the luxury of looking for incentives to reduce CO2 emissions. It's about reducing CO2 emissions right now , no proxy allowed, no IFTTT schemes. There might be a bare minimum amount of CO2 allowed, it's fixed. We could monetize that but it doesn't matter. We can't go beyond that amount.

> There might be a bare minimum amount of CO2 allowed, it's fixed.

I'm not sure I understand, are you suggesting an individual "carbon-quota" as a more radical way of slashing emissions than the "incentives" of a carbon tax? Depending on the tax rate, a carbon tax could produce reasonably expeditious results.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#62

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:07 PM UTC

narrator wrote: post #35

It seems global warming politic's main focus is to implement a global carbon tax in one form or another. Proceeds from the tax are administered by a supra-national government. That's how the Paris accord worked and very credible global warming authorities said was the only solution to global warming. Does this company have a business model of being the recipients of the global carbon tax?

> that's how the Paris accord worked

No, it isn't. The Paris accord was a non-binding document that tried to put in place a framework for coming up with solutions.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#63

Post by jf- » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

Here’s my crazy idea: nuclear powered high pressure differential centrifugation.

Under centrifugal force fluids separate into bands based on mass. The same principle as oil and water separating under gravity. Use giant centrifuges to spin compressed air until it separates into bands, then extract the bands corresponding to greenhouse gasses.

I don’t know the energy requirements for this or if there is a better way of doing it. But if you’re looking for blue sky thinking, that’s what I’ve got.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#64

Post by Tuna-Fish » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:08 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #26

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…

Because the earth is effectively a black body it cools down at T in kelvin^4. This means you need to block a huge amount of energy ~2% of the sun to get around global warming. Sticking something at L1 looks elegant, but you cant just toss junk there it needs serious station keeping making it far more expensive than many assume. PS: Unfortunately, as a side effect you reduce the energy of all plant life by ~2% solar p…

Earth-Sol L1 is probably a bad place for a solar shade. That's where a solar shade of any given size is the most efficient, but the cost of getting it there is much more than the cost of having more, less efficient ones.

A better choice is something akin to a semi-sun-synchronous Molniya-style-orbit. That is, orbit that is somewhat highly elliptical (so a satellite on it spends most of it's time near apogee, and zips through the perigee relatively quickly), and which precesses so that the apogee is always between the earth and the sun.

A satellite on such an orbit can easily spend >70% of it's time between the earth and the sun, and you could send many satellites there for a similar cost to putting just one to Earth-Sun L1.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#65

Post by jseliger » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #41

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…

> An obvious step towards reducing CO2 emissions in the US would be raising taxes on gasoline. It seems we are past the luxury of looking for incentives to reduce CO2 emissions. It's about reducing CO2 emissions right now , no proxy allowed, no IFTTT schemes. There might be a bare minimum amount of CO2 allowed, it's fixed. We could monetize that but it doesn't matter. We can't go beyond that amount.

More importantly, while the grandparent poster is right about carbon taxes (and I support them), they require coordinated political action that is not happening right now in the United States. Again: let me reiterate that I agree they should happen, but the current dominant political party does not support them.

So the YC question is: What can be done outside of American politics?

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#66

Post by idoh » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:11 PM UTC

jf- wrote: post #63

Here’s my crazy idea: nuclear powered high pressure differential centrifugation. Under centrifugal force fluids separate into bands based on mass. The same principle as oil and water separating under gravity. Use giant centrifuges to spin compressed air until it separates into bands, then extract the bands corresponding to greenhouse gasses. I don’t know the energy requirements for this or if there is a better way of…

What do you do with the CO2 once you've isolated it?

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#67

Post by pkhagah » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

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.

At the timescale and costs needed to combat climate change, trees will be prohibitively expensive(land, fresh water) and slow. If reducing global carbon with plants was easy, governments wouldn't probably be complaining about protocols, solutions for almost 3 decades starting with Kyoto discussions. Can we stop mentioning planting trees as ultimate solution everytime carbon capture research comes up?

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#68

Post by LinuxBender » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

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…

What impact would sun-shades have on agriculture?

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#69

Post by jasaloo » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

I'm encouraged by the full-scope approach this report takes, though I get very worried about technological fundamentalism, the idea that we might possibly engineer our way out of the worst effects of climate change. Don't get me wrong, we might, but do we really want the reality it gives us on the other side?

Charles Eisenstein, a prescient thinker on this topic (and others), has advocated for our reconnection and renewed stewardship to/of the earth. That might sound a bit new-agey to some, but after reading his recent book, he made some compelling points:

- mainstream environmentalism has taken a reductionist approach by almost solely dedicating itself to emissions reduction (it has also made the movement vulnerable to climate-change deniers, who are (at least partially) correct in that emissions cannot account for ALL of our environmental issues... e.g. bees dying off has likely nothing to do with carbon emissions, yet the culprit is often vaguely referred to by many activists as "climate change" which has become synonymous with "carbon emissions")

- while reducing our emissions is unquestionably critical, we need to widen our focus to include the following, which are equally if not more important: restoring water cycles, considerate reforestation/halting deforestation, ending pesticide use (which is likely a primary driver of insect die-off, causing catastrophic disruptions in global food chains and biodiversity, both of which are critical to nature's ability to heal itself), and last but not least:

- regenerative, no-till agriculture (versus till-intensive, soil-eroding industrialized agriculture) is an effective tool for restoring these systems, and it also acts a stunningly powerful carbon-sink (by some estimates, if my memory serves me correctly, we could reduce current emissions enormously by converting only 10% of our global industrialized, mono-crop farmland to regenerative, no-till farmland, which IMO is a small endeavor when compared to the tech-intensive and potentially world-altering prospects of massive carbon-sucking machines or injecting aerosols into the atmosphere to induce artificial cooling)

For anyone interested, his recent book is "Climate: A new story." It was the most meditative and thought-provoking collection of ideas that I've read on the state of the environment and climate. It's also incredibly hopeful without being blindly optimistic. In fact, it's rooted in a deep sense of awareness, not just of the many existential ecological crises we face, but of the new mindset we must adopt if we are to truly heal our planet.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#70

Post by jf- » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

idoh wrote: post #66

jf- wrote: post #63

Here’s my crazy idea: nuclear powered high pressure differential centrifugation. Under centrifugal force fluids separate into bands based on mass. The same principle as oil and water separating under gravity. Use giant centrifuges to spin compressed air until it separates into bands, then extract the bands corresponding to greenhouse gasses. I don’t know the energy requirements for this or if there is a better way of…

What do you do with the CO2 once you've isolated it?

Put it through a process to solidify it. You may be able to extract other useful gasses from the air to help with this. If the end result were stable, either put it in landfill or use it as fuel, so it becomes an energy reservoir. Then it’s closed loop, the energy is generated by nuclear and expressed via the expenditure of the manufactured fuel and subsequent recapture.