The article puts it up as a question about whether this practice is worthwhile since the only logical solution to climate change is to de-carbonize. Personally I think that question isn’t very nuanced, certainly de-carbonizing 100’a of tons from the atmosphere from just this one plant is a small net positive. Can’t let it be an excuse to keep rolling coal in your F750’a but I’m still in favor of sucking as much carbon out of the air as we can.
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A guy in india is also removing carbon… by planting trees for decades now.
The right way!
Sadly not really. It’s basically impossible to offset our CO2 emissions with trees unless we cut those trees down, store them underground like nuclear waste, plant new trees and repeat that a few times.
This is just because we produce too much co2, not because it’s not the best way. We should reduce co2 production and increase transformation via photosynthesis
That’s complete bullshit.
Where do you think oil even comes from? It’s mostly dead plants.
The idea that trees or other plants ‘release’ all their CO2 back into the atmosphere when they die is a load of bullshit and needs to stop being perpetuated.
Carbon capture has had trillions and decades and still can’t reach reasonable efficiency rates. Certainly real world performance is nowhere near what it would need to be to make a contribution to the environment.
The companies investing in CCS are the companies mining fossil fuels and natural gas. They are using CCS to divert funding away from renewables and to greenwash their current mining operations. In most cases the material captured is used in further mining operations. Like a 2xdmg to the environment bonus.
This is different than the carbon sequestration that fossil fuel companies pushed so that they could get billions of government dollars. This is the same company that built the direct air capture plant in Iceland. Carbon removable from the air will be necessary to bring us back to pre industrial levels and needs to be researched. As long as it is using green energy and requires little maintenance like it is in Iceland, it is carbon negative.
To prevent exceeding the 1.5 celsius increase, we need to triple the current uptake of renewables. I can extinguish a candle and say its carbon negative, however it’s not really going to help. We can look at other carbon reducing technology after the immediate requirement for renewable installations. I’m all for that, but right now, it’s just taking money time and resources away from renewables when we can’t afford any delay.
Carbon offset is a scam.
A scam that unfortunately becomes less of a scam over time 😞
Id expect it to be cheaper to have pools of water and try to cultivate algae blooms then scoop it all into barrels and bury it than to run this technology.
The problem is not carbon, it’s CO2. They are 2 very different things. Carbon is fine, carbon is literally life, CO2 has to be transformed in some other carbon-based substances, otherwise capturing it is literally doing nothing on the big scale.
Unless they are converting the captured CO2, this thing is useless overall.
Newspapers, companies and politicians should stop talking about carbon. It is confusing and plain wrong. No one needs de carbonization of anything, we need transformation of CO2
Yes, it is not feasible; it costs more to extract it from the air than the benefit obtained from burning it, and then it still needs to be stored for at least a few hundred years in solid or gas form. Otherwise, it goes right back into the atmosphere and the effect will be null. We looked at a similar concept at my university, and the professor said, I quote, “Whoever comes up with these bullshit solutions does not really understand how climate change or physics works; it is not a solution to our problem.” We also had a project like this in my city where they captured it just to sell it to a greenhouse, which releases it back into the atmosphere, so the concentration stays the same and, de facto, they have removed zero carbon from the air because it basically goes right back into the atmosphere. Actual solutions exist, but they are expensive and extensive; people will start implementing them in, let’s say, 70-120 years from now, right around when we start feeling the full effects of rapid human-induced climate change.
Then why try?
I hate excuses like this it doesn’t work right now so then why bother. The right brothers bothered to try even though their first plane only could go a short distance and now they can do laps around the world. Look at electric cars just over decade ago they had short range and long charging times. Now you can get 100 miles in 15min or so with rapid chargers. The road to the future is paved with failure we had make terrible cars, awful lightbulbs, shitty refrigerators, crappy computers and endless failed dead end inventions to get where we are now. And we know we have to do some thing about the climate. So we better start throwing all sorts of shit on the wall to see what sticks. Becuse we are gonna find a lot of ways not to do it before we find the right way.
Then why try?
The problem here is that ‘trying’ means funneling money to for-profit companies that aren’t actually going to solve the issue.
It’s very important that people like you believe their bullshit without a second thought because it makes them more money with less effort.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The case for investing in Africa is heightened by the disproportionate impacts of climate change, such as extreme drought and flooding, on African nations that have contributed little to the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“There’s a real need for safeguards on where these projects are taking place,” said Ugbaad Kosar, the director of environmental justice at Carbon180, a climate nonprofit that advocates for equitable carbon removal.
The plant, projected to be completed by 2028, will be built in the Great Rift Valley, an intercontinental depression rich in deep basalt formations that extends across Kenya from Tanzania and onward to Ethiopia.
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, a professor of philosophy specializing in climate justice at Georgetown University, said he was skeptical that the project would benefit Kenyans over protecting the companies’ bottom lines.
Whether the technology is helpful or harmful, most experts agree that direct air capture is limited by massive price tags, heavy energy requirements and lack of scalability.
Julie Gosalvez, chief marketing officer of Climeworks, said judging the potential of a technology based on its current efficiency is not right, adding that the company plans to bring their net carbon removal into the billions of metric tons over the next few decades.
The original article contains 936 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Oh, I see, someone is milking funds in Africa as well.
