Carbon Removal Technologies • Hacker News Board

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#621

Post by JBReefer » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

rexpop wrote: post #532

hodgesrm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If someone can figure out how to make money to reverse climate change, that will be the end of climate change. The whole problem is that it's hugely expensive and only impacts each of us a tiny tiny bit _today_

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#622

Post by astrodust » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #388

philipkglass wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal consumption has already peaked in the USA, France, UK, Canada, (probably) China, and a number of other countries. Emissions intensity and absolute emissions from the electricity sector has already peaked in multiple countries. The cost of electrifying automobiles and generating low-emissions renewable electricity is much lower than a generation ago. On the other hand, global fossil fuel use has not peaked yet. G…

On the other hand, global fossil fuel use has not peaked yet. Global population has not peaked yet. Indeed, but if solar power is now the preferred energy source, solar power could be being used for all new energy need as well as help us cut back on fossil fuel's original usage. But it's not. That's a world-killing problem. What we're out of is laize faire options. Neither sequestering nor dramatic winding down of fo…

> Sadly, that seems unlikely.

Although it seems unlikely today, a military coalition to enforce stricter emissions standards may be something that comes together in the future.

Unfortunately the only parties interested in winding down fossil fuel use are Europe and China. If Europe is further disrupted by the infusion of right-wing politics, that might leave China going it alone.

At some point this will tip from "wouldn't it be nice" to "this is a battle for survival". A tactical strike on coal plants or other sources of egregious carbon emission seems ridiculous today, but it might be no different than striking a nuclear weapons lab is, something that's got the potential to cause immense harm that needs to be eliminated.

That's not a bright future at all.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#623

Post by adamsea » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

bskinny129 wrote: post #398

adamsea wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your app eventually meant to turn a profit, and if so how? Or, are you doing this on a nonprofit basis and planning to keep it as such?

I believe a business model helps align incentives and increases potential scale. Certainly things can evolve, but the plan is no cut from users and charge businesses a markup to balance employee commute and flights. Hopefully can make it in the businesses self-interest where they see a return on their small investment in terms of employee satisfaction and retention.

I certainly agree a business model can do those things, and sometimes does.

I could see companies such as Patagonia, who have a strong reputation for prioritizing sustainability, potentially being interested in a service like that.

It seems tricky though to align the interests of your users, your customers (businesses, the ones who will actually be paying you) and the environment.

Which is not to doubt your intent, but is why I am skeptical of market-based approaches to solve a problem which is of the type (a problem of the commons) that governments can be good at (if they choose to be) and businesses struggle with.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#624

Post by cbkeller » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #554

cbkeller wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geologist here. Can't speak to the economics, but there's no shortage of mineable olivine, mostly in areas where mantle lithosphere that was formerly below oceanic or island arc crust has been "obducted" on the continental crust and thrust up to the surface (the mantle is mostly olivine). These are called ophiolites, and they're not uncommon in places where you used to have a destructive plate boundary: https://en.wi…

Google says there’s 2.996×10^12 tons of carbon in the atmosphere. I’m guestimating we have about 1/3 of that which needs to be pulled out to correct for emissions to this point. Do we have access to that amount of olivine? Thank you so much for your comment! Edit-As to pricing, if olivine is a common byproduct of other activities and generally common in that sense then obtaining 1 ton of olivine is the cost to move i…

Yes! Just to pick one famous ophiolite, the peridotites of the Semail ophiolite in Oman are perhaps 300km * 50km * 5km from a quick look at some maps and cross sections [1], so 75000 km3 at 3300 kg/m3 comes out to about 2.5E17 kg or 2.5 E14 metric tons. So that's just one ophiolite and we've got a few orders of magnitude to spare.

If for any reason ophiolites weren't enough, there's places at slow-spreading ridges where it's peridotite all the way from the ocean floor to the outer core, albeit expensive to mine.

In short, we would run out of CO2 before we run out of olivine.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1144/gsjgs.151.3.0555

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#625

Post by 0xfaded » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

realusername wrote: post #465

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

Just FYI, CO2 credits may not be removing CO2 from the atmosphere in the way you expect.

For example, since methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, one can generate CO2 credits by finding a natural methane leak and igniting it.

While yes, it needs to be done to reduce the greenhouse effect, this is just addressing one of the runaway effects. Removal and reduction technologies are needed to move our individual footprints towards zero.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#626

Post by strainer » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:12 PM UTC

Eddh wrote: post #614

strainer wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came across those videos before and noticed the main speaker has been giving talks for many years claiming he has transformed the fertility and productivity of multiple cattle farms in the course of research, by simply increasing cattle density and intensity. Alas if there were truth to the idea, Allan Savory would not need to promote it - he could own or have franchised thousands of farms by now. The purported enh…

The doubts about the technique seems warranted. On the other hand there is a simple reason why it might be true : if large herds destroyed the herbs on which these herds depend on, they would die off. So from an evolutionary point of view, it makes a lot of sense for large herds to fertilize soil. They NEED grass to thrive.

There are few simple rules to count on. The stability of grasslands depends on circumstances, usually including a range of herbivores to prevent forestation. Mega-fauna, like mammoths used to contribute to grove and prairie creation by eating trees, before humans dominated.

I wrote this to dereke in another comment, I think it is relevant to understanding the present situation: > Two hundred years ago about 60% of the earth surface was covered in mature and native forest. The figure is less than 30% today. Most of the worlds fertile crops are grown on deforested land, on the soil which native forests developed through ecological diversity and lack of erosion. Most of the grasslands which are used for grazing, don't have the soil quality to support demanding crops.

https://www.britannica.com/science/deforestation

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#627

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#628

Post by igor47 » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:41 PM UTC

deialtrous wrote: post #567

bloaf wrote: post #422

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All models are wrong. Some are useful. Basically every organization that has looked at the issue and built a serious model has reached the same conclusion. From early studies done by engineers at oil and gas companies, to research undertaken by skeptics, the message is the same: we're not in Kansas anymore, and we're running out of time to turn around. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of...

Which organizations are those? Ones that are funded based on how much hysteria they whip up to justify stealing from people? I don't care about organizations opinions or statements, I care about the math. When the math is clearly incorrect, and we keep being told the world is ending because the incorrect math says so, there's a problem. Climate hysterians hate Monckton, and rage about how evil and wrong he is because…

reference on monckton for others: https://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton_Myths_arg.htm

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#629

Post by matznerd » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

drankula3 wrote: post #289

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…

> 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?

Hi, yes it does appear possible to not only increase the mining capacity, but that doing so will actually bring the price down to around $10-$12/ton. To do the total sequestration of anthropogenic (human-caused) CO2 release per year with olivine, it would require approx ~7km^3 of rock (23 gigatons or billion tons). This is compared to the ~10km^3 of oil equivalents we retrieve from the earth each year. And the ~20 gt of construction minerals mined each year. There are individual mines (for other types of materials) that have excavated volumes of greater than ~25 km^3.

To bring the planets atmospheric CO2 concentrations back to pre-industrial levels would likely require around 30-50 new olivine mines globally. The good news though is that olivine is extremely common, making up 80% of the mantle. Almost every country has olivine/dunite deposits, and so countries with cheap labor and lack of other viable export commodities would be ideal places to open mines, which would also help create jobs for them (and ones that actually help the planet).

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#630

Post by matznerd » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

cbkeller wrote: post #432

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?

Geologist here. Can't speak to the economics, but there's no shortage of mineable olivine, mostly in areas where mantle lithosphere that was formerly below oceanic or island arc crust has been "obducted" on the continental crust and thrust up to the surface (the mantle is mostly olivine). These are called ophiolites, and they're not uncommon in places where you used to have a destructive plate boundary: https://en.wi…

Hi! You are correct in how common it is. We will be utilizing forsterite (MgSi4O2), the magnesium-rich form of olivine. We are looking to mine large dunite massifs as they are more than 90% olivine and close to the surface. And you are also correct in that these type of deposits are usually found at the base of the ophiolite sequences. :)

If you are interested in getting involved, feel free to msg me!