I sit in a hot office and think about this. I am not sure where to ask. I am genuinely curious. I have seen a breakdown of building solar panels to power the earth 2x over in order to recapture carbon equal to the rate it is being produced, but then areas of the earth that were reflective are now absorbtive of heat…

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
    171·
    2 years ago

    From another thread on the subject -

    Literally all ideas about carbon capture are quickly revealed to be cynical greenwashing if you think about one simple thing: how much CO2 do we need to store to offset global emissions?

    The answer is that we need to store almost 40B tonnes of CO2, or around 10B tonnes of C if we break that down, every year. That’s something on the order of 1500 great pyramids of Giza (which weighs 6M tonnes) worth of carbon every year.

    Basically, whatever method you dream up of, it’s gonna need to account for this

    • AdminWorker@lemmy.caOP
      51·
      2 years ago

      I agree that the quantity is mind bogglingly big, but I think that good brainstorming starts by not shooting early ideas down, but after all the ideas are out, evaluation can begin.

      Here is some general optimism jn the face of “greenwashing”. I think that human knowledge is fractal, and if any human stares at a single part, they can zoom in enough to see the gaps in knowledge. And those gaps in knowledge are “low hanging fruit” for whatever profession or passion project you are in.

    • JoBo@feddit.uk
      1·
      2 years ago

      It’s not an alternative to producing less of the damn stuff. But it can be turned into a useful material, not just stored. Ideally one that can replace, or reduce the carbon footprint of, materials like steel (~2B tons/year) and cement {~4B tons per year).

      Something like this: Carbon capture process produces hydrogen and construction materials

      Not necessarily exactly that, I have no idea if this one can live up to its promise. The hydrogen by-product has the potential to be extremely useful as a clean fuel but that depends on whether they can eliminate leaks during production.