Carbon Removal Technologies
carbon.ycombinator.com
Carbon Removal Technologies
1–10 of 682 posts
Re: Carbon Removal Technologies
#2We 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.
Re: Carbon Removal Technologies
#3This is awesome! Some people don't like having a Plan B along these lines because they think it distracts with the standard approach of emission reduction. In reality, for something this important (i.e. Keter level destruction event) we should pursue all threads simultaneously.
"If we don't act soon, we'll end up in "Phase 3" and be too late for both of these strategies to work." In fact, let's at least start brainstorming about plans to deal with Phase 3, too.
The topic of desert flooding has been thought about quite a bit, e.g. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Sea and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project.
Re: Carbon Removal Technologies
#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 purpose is to stand in a museum, one day, as a testament to how blindly we charged into the apocalypse. I only hope that museum's curated by our children, and not whatever species finds our remains.
For a good, hard look at why I believe this, read Naomi Klein's "This Changes Everything," and Peter Frase's "Four Futures."
If you're daring enough, you can follow those with Nancy Isenberg's "White Trash," and Barbara Ehrenreich's "Dancing in the Streets" and "Witches, Midwives, & Nurses" for a deep look at how and how long we've been going wrong.
If that all doesn't make you straight up suicidal (let alone quit maintaining your startup pyramid scheme), I have more reading suggestions for how to turn this ship around.
Re: Carbon Removal Technologies
#5Can 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-effective to block the sun? Would polar blockers be enough to cool the planet as a whole and stop warming, or would multiple sunshades spread around the globe be better?
Also, generally, what about increasing cloud cover in general? Wouldn't this reap a huge reward for cooling the planet? I know it doesn't remove gasses and prevent ocean acidification, however it may help with heat-related issues.
Re: Carbon Removal Technologies
#6We 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.
I guess trees could be planted more creatively. There is one particular situation where I think they should cut down / or move trees, and that is when trees are near power lines: it's basically a matter of time of when the tree falls down and the local power company has to fix the power line and the local population has to deal with the disruption in power.
Maybe there is a good business in finding a good way to truly move old trees, so that we aren't forced to cut them down?
Re: Carbon Removal Technologies
#7This is awesome! Some people don't like having a Plan B along these lines because they think it distracts with the standard approach of emission reduction. In reality, for something this important (i.e. Keter level destruction event) we should pursue all threads simultaneously. "If we don't act soon, we'll end up in "Phase 3" and be too late for both of these strategies to work." In fact, let's at least start brainst…
It's been interesting to watch my own thinking evolve:
20 years ago: "I'm sure technology will figure out how to reduce emissions. Sequestering tech is neat, but will only take off if the end product is itself useful in bulk"
10 years ago: "Sequestering tech will take too long and has too many potential complications to rely on, we need to get serious about reduction."
Now: "We're screwed and it's only a matter of how much people end up suffering. I'm very skeptical of sequestering tech, but we need anything that works"
Re: Carbon Removal Technologies
#8This is awesome! Some people don't like having a Plan B along these lines because they think it distracts with the standard approach of emission reduction. In reality, for something this important (i.e. Keter level destruction event) we should pursue all threads simultaneously. "If we don't act soon, we'll end up in "Phase 3" and be too late for both of these strategies to work." In fact, let's at least start brainst…
>standard approach of emission reduction
With how well that's been going, I'm wondering why they even need a plan b...
Re: Carbon Removal Technologies
#9I'm quite impressed by this presentation. There is a tremendous amount of content here to excite some different audiences about opportunities for planet scale changes.
I'm super concerned about externalities for any sort of geo-engineering, but we are going to get some externalities of the present course anyway.
Re: Carbon Removal Technologies
#10That was an amazing read. The fun thing, is that I started the draft of a quite similar post a couple of weeks ago. That's a great example of definite optimism. The fact that the post mentions but doesn't expand on outer-space solutions it's a bummer.