The US just invested more than $1 billion into carbon removal / The move represents a big step in the effort to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere—and slow down climate change.::undefined
Everyone here is mad that we’re doing this as if this is the only thing we’re doing. This… nor any of the other things suggested here… are either/or strategies. They’re all AND strategies.
People just wanna removed.
Celebrate everything that is done to help slow down climate change and encourage more.
The problem is, that this technology is already being used to greenwash fossil fuels. There’s a gas power plant currently running that got subsidies and good press for building a CCS facility next to the power plant. Something like 1% of the emissions were actually sequestered, but millions were wasted.
If these subsidies are actually tied to reasonable requirements, I’m all in. History shows, though, that this is usually not the case.
Part of the problem with new technologies is that they’re inherently less efficient than the same technologies once they’ve been further developed. And the problem with that is that it takes millions of dollars develop and deploy new technologies.
This was once the biggest argument against solar and wind. It was expensive and markedly less efficient than coal. However, solar and wind are now pretty good and continuing to get better. All because people were willing to invest the many millions of dollars to develop those technologies.
This is almost always the argument with new technologies. But to make the argument that it’s a good reason to stop investing in a wide variety of technologies that could literally help save the world is shortsighted.
You completely missed my point.
This technology is currently used to greenwash fossil fuels. With tax payer money.
That is, you pay taxes, that are paid to big oil and gas firms to pollute the planet even further. The CCS is just window dressing. It does nothing. And that’s what I’m afraid will happen again.
CCS only makes sense, if the CO2 is actually pulled out of the carbon cycle. Otherwise it’s fraud.
It is not “fraud” and it very much does something. Even if all it does is offset a few fossil fuel plants… that is still offsetting those plants.
In a good faith system? This would still be the route. You need power NOW. So if you can set these up, you can offset the existing fossil fuel plants while you set up renewables and actual green energy. At which point, these facilities are now attempting to undo past work or just offset other sources of carbon.
And in our existing bad faith system? We obviously can’t stop here. But this is still buying us time to… continue to do nothing. But this is at least something and calling it “fraud” and saying “it does nothing” is… well, to steal some overly antagonistic language: fraud.
Or, you simply invest the money in renewables and shut down the fossil plants. Cheaper, quicker, better.
Full agreement.
But selling that to idiots who actively want the world to suffer is a big lift and has been for decades.
A less effective delaying action is not fraud
Yes, I did completely miss your point. However, I think these are two different issues. One is that oil companies are benefiting from our tax system and using carbon capture for good PR. The other is that we are trying a variety of things to help reduce the effects of climate change and one of those things is carbon capture. Oil companies using using carbon capture to gain good favor doesn’t preclude it from being a potentially helpful process.
But it’s not helping, that’s my point!
Fossil companies emit more CO2 because of this technology. That’s not helpful.
It’s a regulatory problem, but let’s be honest, regulations are hardly written against major companies.
But you cannot escape the tyranny of the second law of thermodynamics. It will always be more efficient to not release the carbon in the first place.
I agree. But we are not there yet. And there is already a lot of carbon in the air.
The other thing many people miss is that the article is ONLY about these specific DoE DAC hubs but other private ones already exist. ExxonMobile is running one in Wyoming.
Tallgrass Energy is building another one in Wyoming.
Those are just the private ones I’m aware of in my own state, which has a climate commitment of being carbon negative by 2050.
Wow, more than a billion! Remind me again, how much does one single Lockheed Martin F-35 cost? How much money did the NYPD cost in police misconduct settlements last year? And how much did the pentagon just lose last time it was audited?
Here you go: F-35 costs $80m. NYPD 2022 payouts $121m. Pentagon failed its audit by at least a couple hundred billion out of 3 trillion budget, though technically that isn’t money lost, that is the total records that auditors weren’t able to access during the audit.
It’s a technological antisolution.
Just noticed your username–did you write that post? If so, nice work
I did. Thanks so much!
People should keep in mind that even if we stop adding more carbon into the atmosphere today it still wouldn’t stop climate change because all the carbon we’ve put there already isn’t going anywhere. To truly stop and reverse climate change requires carbon capture in one way or another. It’s something we have to do.
We’re sooooo far from even thinking about reversing climate change that this argument, though valid, sounds very misplaced. If can’t even get my friends, who are otherwise smart and decent people, to consider not eating meat.
Try slow changes for them first. Impossible burgers are actually very tasty! And if seasoned well, taste pretty close to the real thing. Maybe convince them to do a day off meat per month at first, with these burgers to replace it.
Meat in vats has also made some real strides recently, not quite a polished product yet, but once it is I suspect that agriculture will rapidly switch, because it’s so much cheaper to make than growing and slaughtering animals. I expect the cow/chicken/pig/goat population to plummet in the next couple decades, much the same way that the horse population did in the early 20th century. We’ll stop eating them directly. We’ll keep them as pets. Some people already do keep them as pets.
Spay and neuter your cats and dogs people!
… Which is more reason to invest in carbon capture.
Ok we get it your vegan.
*you’re
Ok we get it you like Grammer and your ;) a vegan…
Believe me, I am not trying to point out that I am vegan. It’s not like I am building a name for myself. I only use this handle on the fediverse.
However, I do like to point out that we’re screwing the planet and the animals with our behavior. Sometimes people listen, instead of trying to put me in a box or becoming defensive. That has a small chance of making the world just a tiny bit better.
And if you really must put me in a box, then you can put me in a box with other well educated people who also happen to have some basic understanding of grammar. I don’t love grammar at all by the way. It’s not my field.
Carbon capture is a fucking scam, always has been.
This just funnels more money into big oil.
- Let big oil pollute the everloving fuck of the planet.
- Tax the peasants to fund carbon capture theatre.
- Tear gas the protestors so they die quietly in their own homes.
- Profit???
Direct carbon capture is a scam. Alternatives like biochar, enhanced basalt weathering, and reforesting are definitely not.
The article says it’s direct air capture. So everything I said about this being a scam is true.
You made a generalized statement about carbon capture, which is unfortunately absolutely a necessary step we need to take.
I recall the biggest direct air capture facility ever made in like, Norway?, only being able to capture about a few seconds worth of our yearly carbon output lol
They rather should’ve planted a bunch of trees
I agree that planting trees is generally good, but doing so can’t sequester the amount of carbon released by humans since the start of the industrial revolution. We need other avenues to do that. If we returned forests back to how they were 100,000 years ago (untouched by modern humans) the new trees that would grow wouldn’t be able to soak up the CO2 released. Returning the forests to that state with the current world population isn’t feasible either as we need some of that land for agriculture.
I get your sentiment, but we’re beyond a ‘plant trees’ solution.
Amen, only angle I can see someone disagreeing with is trees becoming a potential bank of carbon to be fed back into the atmosphere via fuel for wildfires.
I so wish there were better ways to control forest fires.
Forest fires do contribute to CO2 emissions, but naturally occurring forest fires are part of the carbon sequestration cycle. The ash, and charcoal leftover from forest fires trap carbon and provide for nutrients for the next forest.
It’s not great to have half a continent burn at once, but regular, controlled fires are a net sink for carbon.
Agreed! I was just mentioning the only negative angle I could see, still a net positive!
But even if they do die, if you always make sure to have enough trees alive, it’ll be a net zero.
Also, I’m wondering that no company has started investigating to bury trees into abandoned coal mines yet. Like, take one, give back one for using a few hundred thousand years later.
How would a company make money by dumping trees in holes?
It should be a government effort to do something like this. At least planting trees, no need to cut them for decades anyway. We would need an insane amount of tress for that to work too, basically as many as we burned as oil since the industrial era…
There’s this concept of CO2 trading in europe. Basically a very dirty compania buys certificates from cleaner ones (or CO2 negative companies, like that hypothetical tree burying company). These allow dirtycorp. to pollute the air, while giving clean Inc. the ability and the monetary resources to pull CO2 from the air.
Interesting! In Canada we have a carbon tax, which incentivize companies to pollute less, but does not help companies that are carbon-negative. I like the european way better; but as I stated, it requires governments to manage this, as these certificates are a fictous constraint anyway.
We’ve been doing that too. The US has more trees now then it did a hundred years ago.
Or moss. Moss is betterThat’s not what that article says. At all.
As mentioned in the article, moss is pretty good at pulling particulates out of the air and “cleaning” it in that sense.
But trying to get CO2 out of the air isn’t the same. Trees are very effective at this because they have a lot of mass and density and are largely carbon themselves. When we talk about “carbon sequestering”, we’re generally talking things like trees because that carbon from the air has to go somewhere and having a huge dense chunk of carbon is basically the most efficient natural method.
Moss is good at removing other particles, but trees are generally still better at carbon sequestering and CO2 removal.
Semi related: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/187327/how-plants-carbon-affects-their-response/
TL;DR - if you want to suck up a lot of CO2, you basically want a massive plant. Moss isn’t one of them.
My bad, sorry and thanks for correcting me
Why don’t we just simply throw every big oil exec into life in prison. That’d solve so many issues. Fuck em, they’re straight evil.
I prefer we send the corporations to Texas, and execute them. Not the CEOs and boards, throw them in jail. Execute the corporation by seizing all assets in the US, freezing all corporate accounts, and turning them into public utilities that are government owned, and operated either as a nonprofit, or all profits go to The sovereign fund of Humanity, which will be devoted to the establishment of global UBI.
Start with the oil companies, and see how many other corporations fall in line.
Stop threatening me with a good time
From an industry standpoint everything the article says at the end as a critique is correct. We should be playing moneyball, those fans that draw in the particles would be an additional toll on the power grid.
Instead spend the money on removing the emission sources and modernizing our grid/reducing fuel emissions. After weve exhausted low hanging fruit there we’ll have to throw money at offset tech.
I suppose we’ll have to get the tech made eventually but there’s just so much to be reworked on our grids as is.
We’re past the reducing emissions stage.
We need to BOTH cut emissions, and find a way to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere to get to a healthy planet. Not all the CO2 traps are going to be the right way to do it, but we need to research and figure out how to sustainably pull CO2 out, stop methane emissions, switch to a carbon free grid, and… everything else.
We are not beyond the emissions reduction stage and will not be until the grid is 100% renewable or other emissions free energy powered.
Switching to clean energy is emissions reduction. Imo should be our #1 priority because we’re not reducing power demand without massive societal change.
Instead spend the money on removing the emission sources and modernizing our grid/reducing fuel emissions.
These things are not exclusive they are complimentary.; things like CarbonCapture’s Project Bison show how this can work.
They will buy power from Solar / Wind farms which causes energy suppliers to build more of them. They use the power to run their DAC and Carbon Sequestration Wells. Their plants are modular so as more power becomes available and the tech matures they add more modules. They’re supposed to start operating later this year and when it does it will be removing three times more CO2 from the atmosphere than the worlds next largest plant.
That kind of project results in CO2 capture and accelerates the shift away from fossil fuels.
We are past the point of either / or, we need and solutions if we are going to fix this problem in the required time frame.
I agree, however as much as I wish our governments would do both - they won’t. At least not This is why I said we should be playing money ball. I don’t disagree with anything you said.
I think the additionallity to the grid as these renewables come online is great…but if they only cover the energy to run them then they’re not expanding the grid for everyone else. This emissions continue. I agree it incentvizes renewable builds but only if it powers more of the grid vs just being dedicated to the wells.
We’re headed towards a world where corps are incentvizes to buy up all the clean energy on the market and leave consumers with the fossile fuels right now. We just don’t have enough clean or renewable energy to power everything and demand is only increasing.
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.
I’m fine with that. If it gets jobs, gets more political support, and gets carbon out of the air… I’m all for it.
Awesome. But we need more effort to clean up our oceans and reduce the waste and plastic pumped into them by mega corporations.
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The ocean also absorbs CO2 and produces half of our oxygen. Pollution is fucking that up.
We don’t save the ocean, we don’t get to breathe.
Wasn’t carbon removal an unproven concept? I feel like I watched Climate Town discuss it in one episode, talking about it never actually hitting any meaningful % thresholds…
Of course it’s a scam, we have millions of polluting sources a few CO2 removal sites could never counter act that. Sure it helps but it is a band aid on a gunshot wound.
I’m on my phone so it’s tricky too properly cite these sources but some back of the napkin math:
Global annual CO2 production is about 37 billion metric tons. About 27% of that by weight is just carbon. That’s like 10 billion metric tons in just the carbon part of what is being put into the atmosphere each year by people.
The global annual production of cement, one of the most used construction materials in human history, is estimated to be about 4 billion metric tons.
If you had a magic machine that could pull carbon out of the air, remove the oxygen from it, store it in a pure form, you would have to now find some place to store two and a half times the mass of all the cement the world produces each year.
That would be just a break even on carbon. The energy costs for any kind of real life machine or infrastructure to do that would necessarily be extraordinary.
If this device was powered by magically consuming thermal energy from the area around it, the heat demands would change the climate faster than the carbon being pulled out of the air.
My point is, we make just produce too much carbon. Way way way too much.
I can’t get the article to open. Is this going to worthwhile carbon capturing or is it going to be like that South American sequestration plant which just opened that will take 168,000 years to remove just the carbon we generated in 2022?
Worked for the Titanic!
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