Have to agree with all the scepticism. Even if this does work, it’s just going to end up being used as an excuse to allow continued pollution rather than the clean up measure it should be.
It’s a stupid game to play, and should not be considered our long term strategy… then again, right now the long term strategy seems to be kicking the can down the road, so this might be better than nothing.
I think finding a renewable way of producing hydrocarbons for fuel is pretty valuable though — if these carbon vacuums can eventually be used to essentially turn solar into hydrocarbons, that’s pretty useful.
Hydrocarbons are, unfortunately, a really great way of storing energy Although hydrogen and batteries are great, stuff like fast transcontinental flights are tough to achieve without the use of jet fuel.
It is valuable, but at the moment it’s like we’ve got a hole in our boat and we’re just throwing the water back out with a bucket. Essentially useless in the long-term without plugging up the hole!
I fully agree with Al Gore on this one. It’s not a solution at all and just provides an excuse to keep using carbon based fuel, just like the Germans and their e-fuel. Not saying it doesn’t have any useful real world application, but you’re deluded if you think this will ever be enough to continue using fossil fuels.
For example it could work very well in fighting smog if applied on an industrial scale, but it still is just a sorry excuse to whitewash carbon based fuels.
But every green tech can be used as an excuse. Like oil companies have built solar and wind farms and then claim that they are green.
End of the day we still need this kind of tech. If we stop pumping green house gasses into the air today we are still dealing with climate change because of the enormous amount we have put into the air. And trees alone will not scrub the air fast enough. And the amount of CO2 absorbing biomass we can add per year is probably not sufficient.
I posted this when I saw this on another community:
This is honestly probably more of a transition jobs program for oil workers and something designed to get a few extra votes in Congress. One of the projects is in my state (Louisiana) and the politicians all stressed how it’s creating jobs in the oil producing Southwest part of the state. And the other project is in East Texas. The companies even pinky swore that at least 10% of their workforce would be former oil workers.
In the end, I see this a low risk, high reward experiment that, while obviously used for greenwashing, also builds support for a green economy in places where oil jobs are the middle class ones.
I also could see this being a way to create specialized carbon-based fuels after the transition. Hopefully, it gets cheaper than drilling and can supply whatever “fossil” fuels are still around. (The world’s militaries probably aren’t gonna switch to green hydrogen and renewables by 2040.)
This is a bit like giving serial rapists jobs watching after victims of sexual assault.
The shit states shouldn’t profit from the mess they made.
Tax the states/corporations responsible, maybe give some back to workers.
Kids who died of asthma aren’t getting anything out of this deal, why should oil states?
I agree. Outlaw petroleum extraction and then just nuke the areas that have the petroleum workers. Blame the nukes on Russia or China. No more industry, no jobs to worry about. [brushed dust off hands] Done and done.
/s
If you nuked half of Texas, how could you tell which half is which?
I guess one side would have somewhat fewer epic assholes.
I see this more as an attempt to sway voters who are motivated by their jobs to vote for oil friendly politicians.
Louisiana doesn’t benefit from the fucking oil industry bribing politicians, raising sea levels, industrializing coastal areas, and giving people cancer. The companies aren’t even based here. We’re just cursed to be next to Texas.
And Texans also don’t benefit from being a corrupt petrostate. The natural resource curse is real.
This just in…
GOP leaders have pushed through a measure outlawing all forms of vacuum cleaners.
Doing anything but actually solve the problem. Amazing.
Actually this solves a very important problem. If we stop all pollution and carbon emissions today the earth will still be heated up significantly for the next thousand years or so. Enough that life will be more than uncomfortable, we’ll have massive water shortages, widespread desertification, and wholesale extinctions of many plants and animals.
We need carbon sequestration if we want to control the damage already done.
I would love to see some actual numbers on how much greenhouse gasses we release in the process of carbon sequestration. If we’re using carbon energy sources that emit more than they capture then we’re making the problem worse. I kind of doubt the US is going to use solar, wind, nuclear, and hydro to sequester carbon right now.
By definition it isn’t carbon sequestration if the grams CO2 equivalent (gCO2e) isn’t negative after a full lifecycle study. Lifecycle studies are somewhat contentious as you might imagine since they try to encompass so much in one number, but generally studies agree that the major proposals are strongly negative.
You can read more about that here for a few of the more likely candidates. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration#Geologic_carbon_sequestration
By definition it isn’t carbon sequestration if the grams CO2 equivalent (gCO2e) isn’t negative after a full lifecycle study.
I think that should be the definition, but looking at the wikipedia page that you shared, it doesn’t seem to be. At least not by:
- IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: “The process of storing carbon in a carbon pool”
- United States Geological Survey (USGS): Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide
There’s no notion that it has to be have a net negative CO impact, which is exactly what I assume businesses and politicians rely on. They can say “we’re putting away carbon”, which is technically true, but they don’t have to say how much carbon was used in order to do so.
IMO, until at least the carbon cost of sequestration is reported instead of just the monetary cost, the contracts aren’t worth the paper they are written on.
Yeah this is a weird thing. It’s okay as a patch, but it also has to come with or even after an actual cure.
Plus I hope we use a space ship that transforms into a mega maid.
But what if she goes from suck to blow!?
Btw fuck paywalls, https://archive.ph/Yc5CS
I would rather them just spend 1.2 billion planting trees. Just plant a shitload of trees, that’s it.
Planting trees has a very minimal impact on the climate in the long term.
How efficient at sinking carbon are trees? As in, once the tree decomposes, the carbon gets largely released back into the air.
But yeah, “shitload of trees” + “some way of storing them at end of life that doesn’t result in carbon back into the atmosphere” seems like a pretty solid plan.
Trees are some of the best carbon sinks there are. Far greater than any artificial ones we have so far. Trees last a long time, and when they die you can just plant more.
The real issue is that trees take a long time to get to their maximum sink potential, and require a LOT of water, nutrients, and excellent soil to get there.
The ocean is the best. But we keep messing that up as well.
Trees are great. Except they love to burn. Either as a fuel, or as part of the forest fire.
That’s why I hate when the corporations do carbon offseting by planting trees.
Yeah what’s the percentage of all trees burning up? That’s kind of a dumb take.
I mean have you been reading the news lately about the multiple massive wildfires throughout the world?
Yes and with a 3rd of the Amazon chopped down. What do we have? Still a fuck ton of trees and need for a fuck ton more.
I don’t want to sound like a fatalist, but there is actually no upper limit.
This is a massive waste and is effectively a subsidy for the fossil fuel industry. There are already existing laws for battery and electronics manufacturers to be responsible for their waste. Why isn’t the fossil fuel industry responsible for paying to clean up its waste (CO2)?
The technology sucks too (no pun intended), even carbon capture at source isn’t that efficient when the concentrations are high. Trying to capture CO2 from air where is around 400 parts per million (0.04%) is a complete waste of time and money.
For those interested, these guys have done the math. Using Exxon’s target for future cost of this technology ($100/tonne which is already 1/10th of todays costs, $1000/tonne), it will cost $3.6 trillion a year to absorb how much CO2 we produce. More if we want CO2 levels to come down.
The only effective way to combat CO2 is to stop digging up fossil fuels.
That’s mental
I never thought we’d get to the point of Oxygen Not Included being akin to real life.
Is there sound science to this? Or is this a entity profiting off of a pipe dream?
In this case, it’d be a pipeline dream.
Are you here all week? 😁
You know it; try the bartender and tip your veal.
That just sounds like literal greenwashing
Neo liberalism is destroying our world and they prefer to spend billions to create more machines and tech stuff than give a step back in economical growth and plant trees. There is no sense at infinite economic growth in a planet with finite resources. There is one thing in nature that follow that same pattern and is called CANCER.
Or we could stop buying cheap chinese shit and build out bike & public transport infrastructure.
