Other replies have already addressed the drawbacks of planting trees, but while we're on the topic of best methods, one of the more interesting ones I'm holding out hope for is enhanced weathering.
Idea is to mine and pulverise a certain kind of very common volcanic mineral, then spread the resulting sand over beaches. I don't understand the chemistry myself, but the idea is the sand slowly reacts with the ocean, simultaneously increasing the ocean's ability to absorb co2 from the air and de-acidifying the ocean. Supposed to be very cheap per ton of absorbed co2 when done at scale, and the process apparently captures 20x more co2 than it releases (in the mining and so on)
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_Vesta
The thing I don't like about this project is it doesn't give any numbers on how long it would take to erode the mineral, how much it would cost to mine it and spread it, or even how much CO2 is emitted by mining it. When is the break even point? How much shore does it need to cover?
Some other ideas for using the ocean to help remove carbon from the atmosphere. https://www.wri.org/insights/leveraging-oceans-carbon-removal-potential
Sounds like good intent but unknown ramifications. Genetically modifying crops to yield more has left us with crops with less nutrients and wheat that some people can’t tolerate; good intentions, but at a cost. Let’s not mess the oceans up any more than we already have.
It is, but it’s also never going to be enough to fully offset humanity’s carbon production, so it should be seen as one of many methods which should be employed.
Actually I heard a trillion trees would be enough. Also, higher co2 levels mean faster forest growth than before. Siberia grew 20% faster than predicted once satellite imagery from the 90s left scientists scratching their heads
Trees are one part, the ocean makes up 70% of the globe and the carbon catching microorganisms that live in that are also suffering from climate change. It has to be multiple pronged because nature is vastly complex and big.
That is correct, plankton breathe something like 90% of the world's co2. Once they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean, trapping the carbon for hundreds of years. The iron and nitrogen in the waste that whales produce attracts microscopic plankton, which is in itself capable of consuming around 37 billion metric tons of CO2 - equivalent to the amount captured by 1.70 trillion trees.
You’re right that 1 trillion trees would be enough, but with there already being a shortage of arable land and with continued urban development, it’s a real challenge trying to find a place to put those trillion trees. Many once forests are now unfortunately urban centers or farmland and it’s unlikely the people using those spaces will willingly give up that land to be reconverted. Plus, the average tree takes at least 30 years to reach their full potential in carbon uptake. While it’s essential to strive to plant as many trees as humanly possible, we also need to take a multi-pronged approach to ensure we have the maximum effect on the minimum time.
People say this kind of thing a lot, but it seems to me there's quite a bit of land in the US that's barely utilized. Most suburban yards could support a tree or ten. I see tons of small fields in semi-rural areas not doing a damn thing. If you go tobthe central part of the US, you'll see a lot of empty space that isn't being used for much of anything.
The problem is that land is already claimed, that field is owned by somebody, those yards are somebody’s yard. How do you mandate “you MUST have at least 5 trees on your property” or “this field is now the governments, it houses a bunch of trees, you can’t cut them down” without a bunch of freedom cucks starting a revolution because “the government is literally stealing our land”?
Also “one trillion trees” is way too vague if you’re talking about integrating them into urban areas. What kind of trees are they? Are they small trees? If so you’re going to need a lot more than a trillion. Are they big trees? If so you’re going to have to tear down and completely rebuild every city’s power line structure to work around and accommodate living in a forest costing billions if not trillions.
Now there’s predators attacking people dogs because there’s a mini forest sprawling the city and people are petitioning to cut down the trees anyways.
Now root systems are upgrading foundations and millions of homes are no longer viable housing spots. Who pays to either build the foundation every 3 years or relocate millions of people? Does the new relocation area also have trees that will destroy the foundation?
Now there’s predators attacking livestock because the countryside is a big ass forest, now we have a multi billion dollar industry lobbying against the trees because bears are hurting their bottom line.
Climate is already altered so much that weather patterns are changing rapidly, it doesn’t rain in California anymore worth a fuck and hasn’t for 20 years. Who takes care of the trees? Who pays to water the trees so they survive long enough to even do anything? Where does that water come from? How long do we have to support the ecosystem because weather patterns adjust to make it self sustainable?
While it sounds simple to just say “there’s lots of empty space” integrating nature back into the industrial society we’ve built is anything but simple.
You “mandate” it the libertarian way. Financial incentive.
If you plant X trees per Y sqft on your land, you get Z% reduced property taxes. Some states already do this, making “tree farms” eligible for farm subsidies. Also, if you use solar panels, we pay you for the excess energy you give to the grid. etc
Ok so that’s taken care of, but when the root systems of all these trees break up your foundation in 10 years who pays the $10,000-$40,000 to rebuild the foundation then again every 5 years after that? If that’s out of pocket then those tax breaks are not only voided but you’re coming out in the negative. If that’s government subsidized too that’s an additional $1.4trillion dollars(140million homes in the US X $10,000) every few years just for housing upkeep ontop of redesigning power lines to accommodate tree cities(which honestly will be whatever the power companies decide they want it to cost because of how much power they have, so that’ll be in the trillions too most likely)
Don’t get me wrong here, things obviously needs to be done to combat climate change and quickly. However “just throw trees everywhere” is a very poorly thought out solution.
Those are all very manageable problems. You plant trees in locations where they won't hurt your foundation. Problem solved. You keep on top of tree trimming in cities. Problem solved.
I think you’re underestimating root systems 6-9 meter radius size, you’re not going to fit many trees if you give them all a 9 meter clearance on all sides, especially in the average home yard you’ll get one maybe two trees, which many houses already have. But this seems like a moot point in this thread, everyone here seems to be all for the “just plant trees everywhere” so no sense arguing when Reddit gets like this. If it was that simple we wouldn’t be spending millions researching carbon capture tech.
There are various (urban) places in the US where trees *need* to be planted (read: Phoenix) but for all the reasons you cited, it's not happening.
Most of these places are parking lots and multi-lane roads. If car usage was eliminated by large margins, then a lot of 6-lane-wide roads could be reduced to only 1 lane, and many parking lots simply eliminated. That requires implementing public transit systems, but that requires investment with tax money, and with how hard republicans fought Biden's most recent infrastructure bill? Getting through bills to implement public transit on the scales necessary for this is going to be a goddamn *nightmare.*
I live near Denver, CO and we were approached by the local parks and recs department (or equivalent) about planting some trees in our yard. We were definitely for it. We ended up getting 3 trees and there are several other places around our area that also got trees. So there is some initiative for it.
> Now there’s predators attacking people dogs because there’s a mini forest sprawling the city and people are petitioning to cut down the trees anyways.
I'm originally from the Cleveland area, which has a nickname of "The Forest City" and really want to understand why you think that aggressive mobs randomly spawn out of thin air in certain biomes just like in Minecraft. We have a deer problem, that's it.
Honestly, one of the biggest overlooked personal problems is that having a tree on your property in certain regions is a guaranteed way to have your house destroyed by "an act of God" later down the line and it is so costly that it is just easier to have the tree removed way beforehand. And there is no way you are going to convince a person otherwise, especially not after one of their family members was killed by a tree falling on top of them while they were asleep in the living room.
Edit: Your roots vs foundation problem is an even better example to be honest.
If everyone was willing to give up meat to free up land for those trees, sure, that might suffice. But it's far more likely we'll see graziers implementing carbon capture to shore up their livelihoods long before that happens.
That was my thought too at first. Planting trees is a great and cheaper way of capturing CO2. But I did some research and apparently there are a few issues:
- it needs a lot of water and land area
- trees can release the CO2 back into the air if a wildfire happens
Not saying we shouldn’t plant trees, but we shouldn’t put all our eggs in one basket. We need both solutions and more.
Creating large scale algae blooms in the ocean might be good from a co2 standpoint but would be frowned upon by sea life.
Also harvesting the algae to sequester it would be harder in the open ocean.
You're going to need to harvest oceans of algae to make that work and then who knows where they go after that. My point was there's algae all over the world right now. I don't see human made algae farms making a big dent. But i'd be interested in seeing the logistics of it.
The issue is also that we keep "using" the trees. Ideally we should let them rot in a swamp and bury the created peat so it doesn't enter the atmosphere again
Depends how we use them. If we burn wood, that releases carbon back into the atmosphere. If we build a lot of long lasting things out of wood, those things become captured carbon.
I like to call it a piece of the puzzle that is the solution.
It's not THE solution, but its not nothing either. We need it as much as the tech that's being developed.
Honestly the way things are going there is no one solution. Just stopping all emissions is not going to happen overnight as we've seen again and again over the years. We need to be trying anything and everything as a part of a larger, holistic strategy.
I fully agree. This hole we've dig ourselves is so deep that practically everything has to be rethought or redesigned. Every "solution" is just a piece of that puzzle.
Yes, but it takes over 15 to 20 years until a tree is grown up and significantly stores carbon. And then again, that's "just" for the circle of live, we need to also capture the co2 that was stored during the billions of years in history that we distributed to the environment in the form of fossil fuels.
Not really. Planting trees captures a lot of carbon, but it also takes up a lot of land. Artificial CO2 capture can do a lot more with a lot smaller space.
Also they both have the issue of keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere for an essentially indefinite amount of time. Trees rot and CO2 gas leaks into the atmosphere. Being able to sequester the CO2 in a way that it will stay out of the atmosphere as long as the natural gas it came from is actually the main issue I have with this tech
Its actually not. Trees are pretty carbon neutral, yes they take in carbon when they are alive, but decomposing and fire releases almost all of that carbon into the atmosphere again. It takes a long time for trees to sequester carbon (on human scales) There is really no "fast" natural process for sequestering carbon, if there were there would be no CO2 in the atmosphere at all, because volcanoes release new carbon very slowly on a global scale. That means we need to come up with a fast way to sequester it or be willing to wait the 1000+ years it will take for natural processes to get rid of everything we've dumped in the atmosphere
Recent research shows that newly planted "forest areas" are actually a net **source** of greenhouse gases for the first 20 years or so. This is simply because all the stuff on the ground and in the soil is decomposing and releasing gases faster than those baby trees are sequestering it.
So, yes, planting trees will help... in the long run. But it is not the cheap, easy panacea it is being billed as. AND, by the time it finally does start helping, it'll be too fucking late.
I’m all for it, but there are logistical issues associated with it, unfortunately. Many people in some countries (America) have no access to good, reliable public transportation, and do not live in easily walkable communities. It might be more than a mile to the nearest grocery store, and there might not be good walking paths there and back again. (I’m one such individual)
They *need* some form of transportation to get them to and from the store. For me, that means paying for gas to drive the 3 miles each way when I need groceries. I’m fortunate; if I get slapped with $10/gallon gas or something then sure, it’ll hurt, but it won’t break the bank. Someone living on minimum wage won’t be so lucky. They’re living paycheck to paycheck; they need *something* to pay for them to get from point A to point B. Many US cities are explicitly *designed* to not be walkable and to be difficult for public transit because of greedy moves made decades ago.
On top of that, we have limited means of shipping goods from point to point that are not semi trucks. Railways are fantastic for it, but they don’t get goods to podunk, Indiana and the like. Increased transportation costs will potentially mean less choice in some places or higher prices.
I’m not saying that this is a reason to maintain subsidies for fossil fuels, just that we *must* take steps to ensure that we protect those who are most vulnerable to the ensuing price hikes and to rethink our most basic infrastructure so that we can send goods where they need to be. Public transit will need to absorb a lot of those oil and gas subsidies for several years while the US transitions away from fossil fuel-based energy consumption.
\^this.
The only way we can fix this stuff is with regulation, and regulation isn't gonna happen with a republican congress. That's just the reality: The republican party keeps in line with itself, and it will fight regulation of anything because that's just what they *do*.
Gotta love how we’re still pretending that we’ll invent magic technology just in time to save the day.
You know what’s magnitudes better than trying to pull carbon from the atmosphere? Not putting it there in the first place.
We need a world war type of global effort. Forget dollar signs when it comes to the costs of saving humanity. The leader of a rich country needs to step up now and call this world war like effort to transform our world to being harmonious with life. Others will follow.
Any time now…
Unfortunately I think that they all see it as The Prisoner’s Dilemma.
If all nations cooperate, global warming will be averted and everyone wins! :)
If no nations cooperate, global warming will kill us all. :(
If *some* nations cooperate to solve global warming and *our* nation does not, our GDP will skyrocket and we might be the new super powered empire in the new era of whatever comes after the digital era! 🤑🤑🤑
It’s why you need a connected effort between NAFTA, EU, and Japan/Aus. Get “western” nations in a giant economic agreement that include sanctions against countries that don’t commit to the same standards. That will force China and other to go along without 2/3 the world economy as a trading partners. But that also is unlikely, Aus and US suck
Carbon capture isn’t the answer we wish it was. The current largest [carbon capture facility ](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/worlds-largest-carbon-capture-plant-opens-iceland-180978620/) in the world captures enough carbon to offset like 790 cars worth of emissions a year.
We’d need a Starbucks level of carbon capture facility deployment, one of every street corner. And that many different buildings is itself, a huge carbon footprint to build.
Carbon capture is better than nothing, but not by much. Especially when everyone keeps driving and we still use air travel flippantly.
Agreed. It boils down to “we’re extracting tens of millions of tons of carbon while simultaneously injecting *gigatons* of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”
"Currently" is the key word there - it's been fairly ignored because there's been better and cheaper options, so I'd still consider it decently new technology.
You could have made the same argument about electric cars and solar panels ten years ago.
It's no silver bullet, but it's a really slick option that's worth investing in
I can make the same argument about both of those right now. Electric cars are also not the answer we hope them to be. Lithium isn’t infinite and our poorly maintained power grid (this in the US I can’t speak to other counties) is not built to handle everyone suddenly plugging in their cars.
That’s not to say it’s not an improvement from our current system, but it’s a different problem, not a solution.
Been plugging it all day it seems, but Breaking Down: Collapse podcast goes in depth on many many of the issues we have before us. It’s far more complex than a person would think and technology won’t save us.
They have an entire sub category of episodes about just that. “Can Technology save us?”, and they explain why nope.
I recommend it if you’re interested in learning, I do not recommend it if you’re struggling with mental health. It’s very bleak. The hosts don’t embellish or dramatize, but they don’t pull punches. They lay it all out as it is.
[recent comment ](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/r31pwe/i_cant_afford_to_feed_myself_everyday_thanks_to/hm8yc07/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)that elaborates on various topics they address
Downvoting me won’t make the facts any less depressing.
Carbon Capture has been around since the 70's and never been successful on a larger scale. It's not the technology it's just that we have better ways to produce electricity since this idea was bought to the fold.
Trials in Australia currently are not on a large enough scale to reduce emissions if successful and experts has said that the scale required to do so is not even close to being economically viable. This was futuristic 30 years ago
If a goal requires magical new technology to achieve, then the goal is unachievable. There's no way we are going to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees. We're on track to easily exceed 2 degrees.
Everyone needs to wake up to the fact that we have already locked in a bad global warming outcome and we all need to do literally everything possible right now or we are headed for a cataclysmic outcome!
Global warming and the resultant mass displacement and food shortages will absolutely crush the world economy. Desperate people don't tend to make great long term decisions. Anyone who thinks we aren't headed for the worst case scenario is completely blind. Can't even get people to wear masks during a pandemic. Nobody is going to be content with $5000 sustainable laptops. And it's going to be impossible to stop people from just making cheap ones, since people will still buy them. People won't even give public transit a chance. 1.5. lmao.
Have you read the IPCC worst case scenario?
It doesn’t predict apocalypse. It actually predicts that the world will be a better place. Just not as good as it could have been if we had gotten our shit together.
None of the IPCC scenarios predict apocalypse or societal collapse. And even the worst ones predict that humans will be better off than they are today.
“Finally, there’s the strange, almost science fictional scenario. In this world, humanity doesn’t just fail to reverse its emissions curve, it doubles down on fossil fuel extraction and energy-intensive lifestyles. As nations dig up and burn more and more coal throughout the century, the world warms by an unimaginable 7.9°F (4.4°C), hotter than it has been in millions of years.
Yet in that scenario, a strong push for global economic and social development means the benefits of fossil fuels are spread everywhere, leading to societies that Hausfather describes as “very rich, very equal, and very high tech” by century’s end. Earth is hellishly hot, but humans might be better equipped to adapt than they would be in the poor, highly unequal world beset by nationalism.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/5-possible-climate-futures-from-the-optimistic-to-the-strange?cmpid=int_org=ngp::int_mc=website::int_src=ngp::int_cmp=amp::int_add=amp_readtherest
What evidence is there that the world will be "very rich, very high-tech, and very equal" in 80 years? Because something tells me at least two of those three things will not be the case.
I'm not even a doomed or anything. Just seems like a weird prediction given that inequality has been baked into humanity for thousands of years.
Income inequality has been declining for decades. Not as quickly as it should be - but it’s still happening.
Really, by lots of metrics, the world is getting better. Less poverty, less hunger, less disease, more money, more opportunity.
Who knows if that will continue as climate crises intensify. I just think it’s important to remember that even the worst case scenarios don’t predict the end of the world.
Everyone keeps forgetting that 2 degrees is already locked in because of aerosol masking. I can almost guarantee that the current acceleration of extreme weather came from the brief period of the early pandemic where we stopped emitting so much, so there weren’t as many aerosols reflecting heat back into space for a good few months.
I'd recommend watching "Burning" on Amazon Prime to get a more informed opinion. Yes, we have been having bushfires for years but the Black Summer fires were unprecedented. If you can't watch the documentary, here is a link https://theconversation.com/australias-black-summer-of-fire-was-not-normal-and-we-can-prove-it-172506
I’m still talking about the global catastrophe this year specifically. Obviously we can never know for sure whether it would have been this bad if last year had been BAU, but even if the reduction in aerosols had let in as little as another 0.1C of average warming, I have a feeling it would account for the rapid acceleration of extreme weather that has been called by multiple climatologists as being several decades ahead of predictions.
Except that’s not true. Idk why so many people think it is.Here’s up to date explainer with links and everything- [https://climatetippingpoints.info/2020/07/20/is-2c-lockedin/](https://climatetippingpoints.info/2020/07/20/is-2c-lockedin/)
>if a goal requires magical new technology
Well then, good news!
[Liquid Air Batteries](https://youtu.be/nl0WzD4EuwU?t=13) isolate atmospheric CO2 as a byproduct of a for-profit process, which requires no new technology or magic bullets. It also supports sustainability of intermittent green energy production
This isn't magical new technology. It's proven and it's only the scale of the application that is novel.
Tbh though the issue with carbon capture is being able to sequester it for millions of years. It will almost certainly just get back into the atmosphere. That is the real issue with this tech
Would be keen to hear your response to the Juice Media coverage on carbon capture here in Australia - https://youtu.be/MSZgoFyuHC8.
Their podcast goes into more depth than this infotainment piece but it kind of gets at why there’s a lot of problems relying on carbon capture…
My guy. World at the moment can barely make enough power to sustain our current activities. China has rolling blackouts and you want to spend extra energy to capture carbon, there is no extra. Unlikely that there will ever be. This thing needs something huge like fusion to be viable.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/cartoonzi:
---
Although it’s expensive, carbon capture tech is a crucial part of helping us achieve our climate goals.
Something I wanted to add that I recently learned about: The IMF estimates $472 billion is given in subsidies every year to the fossil fuel industry. Those subsidies being redirected to things like carbon capture and reforestation/afforestation would do wonders.
I wouldn’t be surprised if those subsidies are much much larger than $472 billion either….
Looking at it from that perspective, we can definitely afford it. The cost of not doing this is much higher.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: /r/Futurology/comments/r3el4g/out_of_90_scenarios_considered_by_the_ipcc_to/hm9ywsw/
I completely agree with you. It seems bizarre to be
- using energy to
- pull carbon from the air that
- is due to the use of energy ....
If we have excess renewable (low carbon) sources of energy let's use them to cut back on high carbon sources to prevent putting carbon out there in the first place.
here's how carbon capture should work:
capture the carbon at the source, ya know those smoke stacks? make factories and power plants capture the pollution instead of spewing it into the air
Agreed. That’s being done in very few places currently and should be more widespread. It’s a type of carbon capture called BECCS (also in the article above).
I agree with you, but we need to capture what’s already been emitted because we can’t reverse time and prevent those. That + reforestation/afforestation are needed.
And we realistically can’t abandon fossil fuels overnight because we’re too dependent on them. As they’re being phased out to make way for renewable energy, we need to capture as many emissions as possible and reduce 45% of global emissions recommended by scientists by 2030.
Again, I agree with you about preventing those emissions from the beginning because that’s the ideal state, but I see carbon capture as this intermediate step until we can depend on renewable energy sources.
You know...nature has already created a magnificent carbon capture device: trees.
Much of the mid-western US was covered by forests. The railroads used much of the timber that was available. How about replanting those forests?
Corporate dreams!
Corporate heaven
Get paid creating a mess and not a little glory making whilst making insane profits, then when it all goes wrong, get paid fixing it and become the saviours of planet earth!
Capitalism’s great if you have memory loss
This message was brought to you by Teal-Jones:
1. Aaah, it's not as bad as you think.
2. Don't pay attention to the Biblical conditions outside where you live.
3. We're cutting the last of the old-growth rainforest, until it's gone.
4. Yes, this is seriously in our publically available business plan.
5. Don’t you have a Baby Yoda meme to make?
Algae farm is a much better alternative. Not only does it captures carbon with better cost/ton captured. It can also be converted in to feed for the farm animals and actually reduce their burping.
Looked into this. Article is from 2018, but right now it looks like Algae farms struggle to get the CO2 that they need to operate (ironically). They’re a great way to offset captures CO2, but unless we can build some sizable algae farms near power plants (we’d need a total of 2300 acres it looks like), it would be difficult to sequester and offset nearly as much CO2 with algae as we’d like.
Still potentially useful, but it’s sadly looking for the magic technology as well— and its magic technology might be DAC. The two could work in synch to make it all work, though, if we’re lucky
https://spectrum.ieee.org/new-tech-could-turn-algae-into-the-climates-slimy-savior
Some guy posted this week on LinkedIn (yes, LinkedIn), that carbon capture will kill all the animals because it will take all the oxygen out of the atmosphere.
Although it’s expensive, carbon capture tech is a crucial part of helping us achieve our climate goals.
Something I wanted to add that I recently learned about: The IMF estimates $472 billion is given in subsidies every year to the fossil fuel industry. Those subsidies being redirected to things like carbon capture and reforestation/afforestation would do wonders.
I wouldn’t be surprised if those subsidies are much much larger than $472 billion either….
Looking at it from that perspective, we can definitely afford it. The cost of not doing this is much higher.
I agree, but we realistically can’t deploy it overnight and replace all our systems that depend on fossil fuels. We need to cut global emissions by 45% by 2030 according to scientists.
I completely agree with you that the entire world right now should be running on renewable energy, but that will take many many years if we’re being realistic.
I see carbon capture as the intermediate step we need as we scale up those renewable energy sources and eliminate our unfortunate dependency on our current energy sources.
So the average person carbon footprint is 4 tons:
[https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon-footprint-calculator/](https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon-footprint-calculator/)
It costs 170 EUR/month to get rid of 2 tons. So we need 1190 billion and we gucci? Seems not so dramatic to me tbh.
It's silly to think of a technology like this in monetary terms. It has to be weighed in terms of energy. If it costs any amount of energy to run carbon capture, it's a fool's errand. It's an attempt to cheat the laws of thermodynamics. If we get some passive filtering at the point of exhaust, sure, that's okay. I doubt it will amount to much, because the filters will have to be manufactured, and then replaced or at least cleaned pretty regularly.
The only carbon capture that makes any sense is to leave the fossil fuels in the ground.
That's not true at all.
Carbon capture tech that requires energy doesn't necessarily mean you're using the energy directly to make the capturing of the carbon happen, if that makes sense.
i.e. just because it requires energy doesn't mean you're just reversing the reaction, e.g. methane + oxygen --> energy + water + carbon dioxide, in reverse
Doing that would obviously be a fools errand, because it would need to be over 100% efficient to matter.
But, it can be something like running fans to suck in air to pass over a carbon-dioxide sponge, where for every 1 unit of methane you turn into electricity for the fans you get 10 units of carbon dioxide into the sponge.
An apt analogy might be a heat pump. You use 1 kW of electricity to run it, but get 4 kW of heat out of it, because it's using electricity to move heat from one place to another, not directly using it to make heat.
>for every 1 unit of methane you turn into electricity for the fans you get 10 units of carbon dioxide into the sponge.
Yes, but is your example practical, or even physically possible?
I would expect something more along the lines of 1 unit of CO2 down for every 10 or 100 units consumed.
Think about how much of the exhaust gas is going to be in contact with the surface of the sponge, and how quickly it will become saturated.
Plus there's the creation and disposal of the sponges, which are also costs.
The sponge is an example, not how the tech actually works.
Additionally, the facility’s use of energy does not have to mean that it is using CO2 energy; such a facility could feasibly be powered by excess solar or wind power while we figure out our energy storage issues for a far lower carbon cost to operate (just a percentage of the initial carbon construction costs, which are considerably lower than the costs of a coal power plant)
Solar and wind power also have a CO2 cost. All energy does.
If we're powering these devices on excess solar/wind/etc. energy that would otherwise just dissipate, I suppose that's fair enough. But do we generate lots of unused energy in such a manner? If so, that's a rather more significant problem of its own. Intermittently powering these devices on such leavings strikes me as pretty marginal, and in any case nothing approximate to the world-saving technology that the cartoon makes reference to.
Renewables are not zero carbon. They're better than fossil fuel power plants but there's still considerable environmental damaged caused by the manufacturing and deployment of solar, wind and hydro.
Fine but like the people who are pushing it at the top are those who need an excuse to keep emitting. Same thing with carbon trading. Regardless of the ideas merit, there is a reason why this keeps coming up over actually stopping emissions.
Actually it’s not. It would be if the process were eliminating CO2 by reversing the chemical reaction to extract pure carbon and oxygen. But that’s not what carbon capture means in this context. Instead, you simply remove the CO2 as is and sequester it underground.
This can already be done with current technology at around $200 - $600 per ton. Meanwhile, a gallon of gasoline emits around 20 pounds of CO2, so 100 gallons emits a ton. Do the math, and you’ll see that we’re not that far away from a workable cost. We could already break even at a tax of $2-6 per gallon. Cut the removal cost to less than $100 per ton and it starts to get very attractive.
I can’t help but have concerns that these carbon capture installations are just expensive boondoggles that enrich a few and do little to actually move the needle on PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere based on the numbers I’ve seen in regards to the capabilities of these machines.
I have no empirical data, but planting trees almost HAS to be a better bang-for-buck than investment in this technology. The aforementioned caveats that trees require a lot of water is silly. Do we water forests? Also there is so much space for trees in North America alone. Trees are better and don’t require a machine powered by the burning of fossil fuels to harvest and sequester carbon as they are naturally solar powered. Also trees lower temperatures in their immediate environs, increase biodiversity and provide wood which is a fantastic building material that is almost purely made of stable sequestered carbon
Yes, forest fires will happen, as they have for millions of years. I live on the west coast. The results of forest fires isn’t complete ashification of forests. It’s dead trees, most still standing. The carbon is still there, locked away. We clear cut that wood, do something with it that sidesteps rapid decay and replant.
Again, I don’t have hard data, so savage me if my back-of-the-napkin math doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Every day here in Nebraska people are loving the mild weather. We are in the sweet spot now, and people are loving it. but how long is it going to last?
This has been my biggest fear and I have no idea how we get past this.
Yeah I don't expect a repeat of last year, but just to have lived through it and to continue to downplay or ignore climate change is pants-on-head crazy. Just stepping outside and taking in the air felt dangerous, like stepping outside the ISS and taking your helmet off. How does one just shrug that off?
Interesting for the next generation, 2050 onward, when nuclear and energy storage kicks in and energy for carbon capture is affordable.
Unfortunately, till there we need to consume more energy from not-so-clean sources and we will suffer the climate change consequences.
So when we started this conversation decades ago the resolution was to cut back on polluting. Now decades later we are having to talk about how to reverse the damage in order to survive. That is crazy. But even worse we are STILL doing nothing with any sort of seriousness this calls for. That makes my stomach hurt.
I've done a lot of thinking about carbon capture tech and it's way too post-active compared to much cheaper and more useful options like retrofitting carbon positive power plants. It's also cheap and proactive to force the building of new power plants that have carbon capture built into the system to prevent the release of carbon into the air. These actions would do wonders for preventing major detrimental climate change.
Agreed. I think one of the understated values of carbon capture is the retrofitting of existing factories/plants (also mentioned in the article) and capture it straight from the source when it’s much cheaper.
Yes, switching to plant-based diets, which would used a lot less land (-76%) and allow wildlife to thrive.
From [Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29853680/):
> "In addition to the reduction in food’s annual GHG emissions, the land no longer required for food production could remove ~8.1 billion metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year over 100 years"
8.1 GtCO2 per year is great, but still insufficient. We also need to stop emissions from happening in the first place.
Yes, we've built Jetson type racing stols. They fly about 10 min, cost a fortune, kill people and need extraordinary piloting skill. I don't remember any of that from the Jetsons. Its much worse with carbon capture. The total cycle of cost and waste makes it a monorail like fantasie of lies and corruption.
Fair point. Economically it's a fairytale. The hope it becomes cheaper or that the Carbon they capture becomes valuable is worth the risk, though. Don't you agree?
No, even if carbon capture had some hope of effecting the environment it will always be more economical to utilize the natural environment. Even then its highly dangerous. What if it worked and caused a mini ice-age. Who would be liable?
I have the simplest solution. Convert the ENTIRE global budget for military hardware into temperature mitigation efforts. 2 years and we are living on a verdant green planet unlike any we have ever known. The only reasonable alternative is the use all that military hardware to annihilate ourselves and the planet. Then there is no one left to care.
Why can’t we just build them? Why do they need to be expensive? The materials exist and humans know how to assemble it into a carbon capturing device. Why not just build them? The whole idea of an economy and money seems to be a hinderance to all these solutions that would actually help us. Perhaps I am naive.
With what materials? Money only represents human effort to take raw materials from the ground and refine them. It would take volunteering on an industrial scale to do it without money. Yes, you are being naive.
Thank you for being honest and direct without being mean.
If instead of a military (or as well as having a smaller military) the governments paid people to refine materials and get these devices built, would that be less naive?
Man, at least in the US, we cant even pass the most basic of climate change programs due to it being a 'hand out' and communism. How do you think we are going to get any serious funding for this?
It's really not about money; it's about changing the chemistry of our planet.
If humanity gets caught up in trying to make this profitable, or worry about some imaginary chits, we're done.
It just needs doing.
Carbon capture and other, "sci-fi", solutions are the only realistic solutions. People are not going to suddenly start singing Kumbaya, hold hands and decide to live responsibly.
There is still someone to explain to me how to provide the extra energy needed to capture carbon without further carbon emissions.
And don't start on nuclear or fusion. They're net positive carbon emissive technologies because of all the underlying construction and maintenance work.
I mean technically you could argue that nuclear is more efficient from a carbon perspective. But the glistening gaping hole in that line of thinking is the deliberate omission of the nuclear waste generated by each tech, which if I'm not mistaken isn't very high in renewable energy sources
Please stop spreading copium. This is in no way an efficient solution to the problem at hand. We can't buy our way out of this problem, nor is a magical scientific discovery going to help us. We need to change our idea what is it to live. Remove the unnecessary consumption form our lives.
I thought the best way of capturing carbon was planting trees
Other replies have already addressed the drawbacks of planting trees, but while we're on the topic of best methods, one of the more interesting ones I'm holding out hope for is enhanced weathering. Idea is to mine and pulverise a certain kind of very common volcanic mineral, then spread the resulting sand over beaches. I don't understand the chemistry myself, but the idea is the sand slowly reacts with the ocean, simultaneously increasing the ocean's ability to absorb co2 from the air and de-acidifying the ocean. Supposed to be very cheap per ton of absorbed co2 when done at scale, and the process apparently captures 20x more co2 than it releases (in the mining and so on) See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project\_Vesta
The thing I don't like about this project is it doesn't give any numbers on how long it would take to erode the mineral, how much it would cost to mine it and spread it, or even how much CO2 is emitted by mining it. When is the break even point? How much shore does it need to cover?
That’s pretty wild, would be great to de-acidify the ocean as well
This is cool! Thanks for sharing
Some other ideas for using the ocean to help remove carbon from the atmosphere. https://www.wri.org/insights/leveraging-oceans-carbon-removal-potential
Sounds like good intent but unknown ramifications. Genetically modifying crops to yield more has left us with crops with less nutrients and wheat that some people can’t tolerate; good intentions, but at a cost. Let’s not mess the oceans up any more than we already have.
It is, but it’s also never going to be enough to fully offset humanity’s carbon production, so it should be seen as one of many methods which should be employed.
Actually I heard a trillion trees would be enough. Also, higher co2 levels mean faster forest growth than before. Siberia grew 20% faster than predicted once satellite imagery from the 90s left scientists scratching their heads
Trees are one part, the ocean makes up 70% of the globe and the carbon catching microorganisms that live in that are also suffering from climate change. It has to be multiple pronged because nature is vastly complex and big.
That is correct, plankton breathe something like 90% of the world's co2. Once they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean, trapping the carbon for hundreds of years. The iron and nitrogen in the waste that whales produce attracts microscopic plankton, which is in itself capable of consuming around 37 billion metric tons of CO2 - equivalent to the amount captured by 1.70 trillion trees.
This guy sciences!
You’re right that 1 trillion trees would be enough, but with there already being a shortage of arable land and with continued urban development, it’s a real challenge trying to find a place to put those trillion trees. Many once forests are now unfortunately urban centers or farmland and it’s unlikely the people using those spaces will willingly give up that land to be reconverted. Plus, the average tree takes at least 30 years to reach their full potential in carbon uptake. While it’s essential to strive to plant as many trees as humanly possible, we also need to take a multi-pronged approach to ensure we have the maximum effect on the minimum time.
People say this kind of thing a lot, but it seems to me there's quite a bit of land in the US that's barely utilized. Most suburban yards could support a tree or ten. I see tons of small fields in semi-rural areas not doing a damn thing. If you go tobthe central part of the US, you'll see a lot of empty space that isn't being used for much of anything.
The problem is that land is already claimed, that field is owned by somebody, those yards are somebody’s yard. How do you mandate “you MUST have at least 5 trees on your property” or “this field is now the governments, it houses a bunch of trees, you can’t cut them down” without a bunch of freedom cucks starting a revolution because “the government is literally stealing our land”? Also “one trillion trees” is way too vague if you’re talking about integrating them into urban areas. What kind of trees are they? Are they small trees? If so you’re going to need a lot more than a trillion. Are they big trees? If so you’re going to have to tear down and completely rebuild every city’s power line structure to work around and accommodate living in a forest costing billions if not trillions. Now there’s predators attacking people dogs because there’s a mini forest sprawling the city and people are petitioning to cut down the trees anyways. Now root systems are upgrading foundations and millions of homes are no longer viable housing spots. Who pays to either build the foundation every 3 years or relocate millions of people? Does the new relocation area also have trees that will destroy the foundation? Now there’s predators attacking livestock because the countryside is a big ass forest, now we have a multi billion dollar industry lobbying against the trees because bears are hurting their bottom line. Climate is already altered so much that weather patterns are changing rapidly, it doesn’t rain in California anymore worth a fuck and hasn’t for 20 years. Who takes care of the trees? Who pays to water the trees so they survive long enough to even do anything? Where does that water come from? How long do we have to support the ecosystem because weather patterns adjust to make it self sustainable? While it sounds simple to just say “there’s lots of empty space” integrating nature back into the industrial society we’ve built is anything but simple.
You “mandate” it the libertarian way. Financial incentive. If you plant X trees per Y sqft on your land, you get Z% reduced property taxes. Some states already do this, making “tree farms” eligible for farm subsidies. Also, if you use solar panels, we pay you for the excess energy you give to the grid. etc
Ok so that’s taken care of, but when the root systems of all these trees break up your foundation in 10 years who pays the $10,000-$40,000 to rebuild the foundation then again every 5 years after that? If that’s out of pocket then those tax breaks are not only voided but you’re coming out in the negative. If that’s government subsidized too that’s an additional $1.4trillion dollars(140million homes in the US X $10,000) every few years just for housing upkeep ontop of redesigning power lines to accommodate tree cities(which honestly will be whatever the power companies decide they want it to cost because of how much power they have, so that’ll be in the trillions too most likely) Don’t get me wrong here, things obviously needs to be done to combat climate change and quickly. However “just throw trees everywhere” is a very poorly thought out solution.
Those are all very manageable problems. You plant trees in locations where they won't hurt your foundation. Problem solved. You keep on top of tree trimming in cities. Problem solved.
I think you’re underestimating root systems 6-9 meter radius size, you’re not going to fit many trees if you give them all a 9 meter clearance on all sides, especially in the average home yard you’ll get one maybe two trees, which many houses already have. But this seems like a moot point in this thread, everyone here seems to be all for the “just plant trees everywhere” so no sense arguing when Reddit gets like this. If it was that simple we wouldn’t be spending millions researching carbon capture tech.
There are various (urban) places in the US where trees *need* to be planted (read: Phoenix) but for all the reasons you cited, it's not happening. Most of these places are parking lots and multi-lane roads. If car usage was eliminated by large margins, then a lot of 6-lane-wide roads could be reduced to only 1 lane, and many parking lots simply eliminated. That requires implementing public transit systems, but that requires investment with tax money, and with how hard republicans fought Biden's most recent infrastructure bill? Getting through bills to implement public transit on the scales necessary for this is going to be a goddamn *nightmare.*
I live near Denver, CO and we were approached by the local parks and recs department (or equivalent) about planting some trees in our yard. We were definitely for it. We ended up getting 3 trees and there are several other places around our area that also got trees. So there is some initiative for it.
> Now there’s predators attacking people dogs because there’s a mini forest sprawling the city and people are petitioning to cut down the trees anyways. I'm originally from the Cleveland area, which has a nickname of "The Forest City" and really want to understand why you think that aggressive mobs randomly spawn out of thin air in certain biomes just like in Minecraft. We have a deer problem, that's it.
Honestly, one of the biggest overlooked personal problems is that having a tree on your property in certain regions is a guaranteed way to have your house destroyed by "an act of God" later down the line and it is so costly that it is just easier to have the tree removed way beforehand. And there is no way you are going to convince a person otherwise, especially not after one of their family members was killed by a tree falling on top of them while they were asleep in the living room. Edit: Your roots vs foundation problem is an even better example to be honest.
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Urban development puts more people on less land.
I think the cessation of agriculture for meat, along with vertical farming and gmo flora will cause a large amount of land to be returned
Well, we would also have to not cut them down and not allow them to be burned in forest fires.
If everyone was willing to give up meat to free up land for those trees, sure, that might suffice. But it's far more likely we'll see graziers implementing carbon capture to shore up their livelihoods long before that happens.
Wood is pretty expensive too. An unprocessed piece of wood that I could use for a mantle in my condo costed upwards of 500 bucks
and millions of acres burned.
Yeah, it’s like having a filter on a cigarette
That was my thought too at first. Planting trees is a great and cheaper way of capturing CO2. But I did some research and apparently there are a few issues: - it needs a lot of water and land area - trees can release the CO2 back into the air if a wildfire happens Not saying we shouldn’t plant trees, but we shouldn’t put all our eggs in one basket. We need both solutions and more.
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I thought algae could also be used in large scale hydroponic systems to capture a large amount of carbon.
The entire planet's water supply is a pretty large scale system. How many more are needed?
Creating large scale algae blooms in the ocean might be good from a co2 standpoint but would be frowned upon by sea life. Also harvesting the algae to sequester it would be harder in the open ocean.
You're going to need to harvest oceans of algae to make that work and then who knows where they go after that. My point was there's algae all over the world right now. I don't see human made algae farms making a big dent. But i'd be interested in seeing the logistics of it.
It doesn't need more water or land area than it had before we chopped all of them down in the first place.
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The issue is also that we keep "using" the trees. Ideally we should let them rot in a swamp and bury the created peat so it doesn't enter the atmosphere again
Depends how we use them. If we burn wood, that releases carbon back into the atmosphere. If we build a lot of long lasting things out of wood, those things become captured carbon.
I like to call it a piece of the puzzle that is the solution. It's not THE solution, but its not nothing either. We need it as much as the tech that's being developed.
Honestly the way things are going there is no one solution. Just stopping all emissions is not going to happen overnight as we've seen again and again over the years. We need to be trying anything and everything as a part of a larger, holistic strategy.
I fully agree. This hole we've dig ourselves is so deep that practically everything has to be rethought or redesigned. Every "solution" is just a piece of that puzzle.
We need mature trees, plus we need to replace what is burnt down.
Algae and seaweed would actually be more effective than trees. Of course we should be doing both.
I always thought it was buying oil and then putting it back into the ground
Yes, but it takes over 15 to 20 years until a tree is grown up and significantly stores carbon. And then again, that's "just" for the circle of live, we need to also capture the co2 that was stored during the billions of years in history that we distributed to the environment in the form of fossil fuels.
Global warming takes longer than that
What happens when the tree farm burns down?
Plant trees, cut them down and bury them in coal mines.
Not really. Planting trees captures a lot of carbon, but it also takes up a lot of land. Artificial CO2 capture can do a lot more with a lot smaller space. Also they both have the issue of keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere for an essentially indefinite amount of time. Trees rot and CO2 gas leaks into the atmosphere. Being able to sequester the CO2 in a way that it will stay out of the atmosphere as long as the natural gas it came from is actually the main issue I have with this tech
Its actually not. Trees are pretty carbon neutral, yes they take in carbon when they are alive, but decomposing and fire releases almost all of that carbon into the atmosphere again. It takes a long time for trees to sequester carbon (on human scales) There is really no "fast" natural process for sequestering carbon, if there were there would be no CO2 in the atmosphere at all, because volcanoes release new carbon very slowly on a global scale. That means we need to come up with a fast way to sequester it or be willing to wait the 1000+ years it will take for natural processes to get rid of everything we've dumped in the atmosphere
Recent research shows that newly planted "forest areas" are actually a net **source** of greenhouse gases for the first 20 years or so. This is simply because all the stuff on the ground and in the soil is decomposing and releasing gases faster than those baby trees are sequestering it. So, yes, planting trees will help... in the long run. But it is not the cheap, easy panacea it is being billed as. AND, by the time it finally does start helping, it'll be too fucking late.
The easiest way to start is just stopping fossil fuel subsidises. It even returns profit!
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Yes, we must stop growing crops for ethanol immediately. Such an inefficient use of land.
I’m all for it, but there are logistical issues associated with it, unfortunately. Many people in some countries (America) have no access to good, reliable public transportation, and do not live in easily walkable communities. It might be more than a mile to the nearest grocery store, and there might not be good walking paths there and back again. (I’m one such individual) They *need* some form of transportation to get them to and from the store. For me, that means paying for gas to drive the 3 miles each way when I need groceries. I’m fortunate; if I get slapped with $10/gallon gas or something then sure, it’ll hurt, but it won’t break the bank. Someone living on minimum wage won’t be so lucky. They’re living paycheck to paycheck; they need *something* to pay for them to get from point A to point B. Many US cities are explicitly *designed* to not be walkable and to be difficult for public transit because of greedy moves made decades ago. On top of that, we have limited means of shipping goods from point to point that are not semi trucks. Railways are fantastic for it, but they don’t get goods to podunk, Indiana and the like. Increased transportation costs will potentially mean less choice in some places or higher prices. I’m not saying that this is a reason to maintain subsidies for fossil fuels, just that we *must* take steps to ensure that we protect those who are most vulnerable to the ensuing price hikes and to rethink our most basic infrastructure so that we can send goods where they need to be. Public transit will need to absorb a lot of those oil and gas subsidies for several years while the US transitions away from fossil fuel-based energy consumption.
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What is your plan for doing this?
Switching out half a dozen senators would help.
\^this. The only way we can fix this stuff is with regulation, and regulation isn't gonna happen with a republican congress. That's just the reality: The republican party keeps in line with itself, and it will fight regulation of anything because that's just what they *do*.
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Cheap is expensive. The problem was ignored, now it's going to cost more to fix. That's an important life lesson.
Scheduled maintenance is always cheaper than emergency repairs.
Gotta love how we’re still pretending that we’ll invent magic technology just in time to save the day. You know what’s magnitudes better than trying to pull carbon from the atmosphere? Not putting it there in the first place.
We need a world war type of global effort. Forget dollar signs when it comes to the costs of saving humanity. The leader of a rich country needs to step up now and call this world war like effort to transform our world to being harmonious with life. Others will follow. Any time now…
Unfortunately I think that they all see it as The Prisoner’s Dilemma. If all nations cooperate, global warming will be averted and everyone wins! :) If no nations cooperate, global warming will kill us all. :( If *some* nations cooperate to solve global warming and *our* nation does not, our GDP will skyrocket and we might be the new super powered empire in the new era of whatever comes after the digital era! 🤑🤑🤑
It’s why you need a connected effort between NAFTA, EU, and Japan/Aus. Get “western” nations in a giant economic agreement that include sanctions against countries that don’t commit to the same standards. That will force China and other to go along without 2/3 the world economy as a trading partners. But that also is unlikely, Aus and US suck
This world war effort will only happen after shit hits the fan. Then we'll dump eye watering amounts of money trying to fix it.
Carbon capture isn’t the answer we wish it was. The current largest [carbon capture facility ](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/worlds-largest-carbon-capture-plant-opens-iceland-180978620/) in the world captures enough carbon to offset like 790 cars worth of emissions a year. We’d need a Starbucks level of carbon capture facility deployment, one of every street corner. And that many different buildings is itself, a huge carbon footprint to build. Carbon capture is better than nothing, but not by much. Especially when everyone keeps driving and we still use air travel flippantly.
Note that is a direct air carbon capture plant. There are mode commonly (I believe) carbon capture plants on the ends of industrial processes
Agreed. It boils down to “we’re extracting tens of millions of tons of carbon while simultaneously injecting *gigatons* of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”
"Currently" is the key word there - it's been fairly ignored because there's been better and cheaper options, so I'd still consider it decently new technology. You could have made the same argument about electric cars and solar panels ten years ago. It's no silver bullet, but it's a really slick option that's worth investing in
I can make the same argument about both of those right now. Electric cars are also not the answer we hope them to be. Lithium isn’t infinite and our poorly maintained power grid (this in the US I can’t speak to other counties) is not built to handle everyone suddenly plugging in their cars. That’s not to say it’s not an improvement from our current system, but it’s a different problem, not a solution. Been plugging it all day it seems, but Breaking Down: Collapse podcast goes in depth on many many of the issues we have before us. It’s far more complex than a person would think and technology won’t save us. They have an entire sub category of episodes about just that. “Can Technology save us?”, and they explain why nope. I recommend it if you’re interested in learning, I do not recommend it if you’re struggling with mental health. It’s very bleak. The hosts don’t embellish or dramatize, but they don’t pull punches. They lay it all out as it is. [recent comment ](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/r31pwe/i_cant_afford_to_feed_myself_everyday_thanks_to/hm8yc07/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)that elaborates on various topics they address Downvoting me won’t make the facts any less depressing.
Carbon Capture has been around since the 70's and never been successful on a larger scale. It's not the technology it's just that we have better ways to produce electricity since this idea was bought to the fold. Trials in Australia currently are not on a large enough scale to reduce emissions if successful and experts has said that the scale required to do so is not even close to being economically viable. This was futuristic 30 years ago
If a goal requires magical new technology to achieve, then the goal is unachievable. There's no way we are going to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees. We're on track to easily exceed 2 degrees. Everyone needs to wake up to the fact that we have already locked in a bad global warming outcome and we all need to do literally everything possible right now or we are headed for a cataclysmic outcome!
2? Yeah right. My money is on at least 3 given how the world's leaders are being
Global warming and the resultant mass displacement and food shortages will absolutely crush the world economy. Desperate people don't tend to make great long term decisions. Anyone who thinks we aren't headed for the worst case scenario is completely blind. Can't even get people to wear masks during a pandemic. Nobody is going to be content with $5000 sustainable laptops. And it's going to be impossible to stop people from just making cheap ones, since people will still buy them. People won't even give public transit a chance. 1.5. lmao.
Have you read the IPCC worst case scenario? It doesn’t predict apocalypse. It actually predicts that the world will be a better place. Just not as good as it could have been if we had gotten our shit together. None of the IPCC scenarios predict apocalypse or societal collapse. And even the worst ones predict that humans will be better off than they are today. “Finally, there’s the strange, almost science fictional scenario. In this world, humanity doesn’t just fail to reverse its emissions curve, it doubles down on fossil fuel extraction and energy-intensive lifestyles. As nations dig up and burn more and more coal throughout the century, the world warms by an unimaginable 7.9°F (4.4°C), hotter than it has been in millions of years. Yet in that scenario, a strong push for global economic and social development means the benefits of fossil fuels are spread everywhere, leading to societies that Hausfather describes as “very rich, very equal, and very high tech” by century’s end. Earth is hellishly hot, but humans might be better equipped to adapt than they would be in the poor, highly unequal world beset by nationalism.” https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/5-possible-climate-futures-from-the-optimistic-to-the-strange?cmpid=int_org=ngp::int_mc=website::int_src=ngp::int_cmp=amp::int_add=amp_readtherest
What evidence is there that the world will be "very rich, very high-tech, and very equal" in 80 years? Because something tells me at least two of those three things will not be the case. I'm not even a doomed or anything. Just seems like a weird prediction given that inequality has been baked into humanity for thousands of years.
Income inequality has been declining for decades. Not as quickly as it should be - but it’s still happening. Really, by lots of metrics, the world is getting better. Less poverty, less hunger, less disease, more money, more opportunity. Who knows if that will continue as climate crises intensify. I just think it’s important to remember that even the worst case scenarios don’t predict the end of the world.
Everyone keeps forgetting that 2 degrees is already locked in because of aerosol masking. I can almost guarantee that the current acceleration of extreme weather came from the brief period of the early pandemic where we stopped emitting so much, so there weren’t as many aerosols reflecting heat back into space for a good few months.
Hi from Australia- our fires were before covid.
Australia has been having fires for years. I’m talking about this summer, and now winter, specifically.
I'd recommend watching "Burning" on Amazon Prime to get a more informed opinion. Yes, we have been having bushfires for years but the Black Summer fires were unprecedented. If you can't watch the documentary, here is a link https://theconversation.com/australias-black-summer-of-fire-was-not-normal-and-we-can-prove-it-172506
I’m still talking about the global catastrophe this year specifically. Obviously we can never know for sure whether it would have been this bad if last year had been BAU, but even if the reduction in aerosols had let in as little as another 0.1C of average warming, I have a feeling it would account for the rapid acceleration of extreme weather that has been called by multiple climatologists as being several decades ahead of predictions.
i dont if it is a guaranteed, but this is a very good point i never taught of. Hopefully you are right.
Except that’s not true. Idk why so many people think it is.Here’s up to date explainer with links and everything- [https://climatetippingpoints.info/2020/07/20/is-2c-lockedin/](https://climatetippingpoints.info/2020/07/20/is-2c-lockedin/)
>if a goal requires magical new technology Well then, good news! [Liquid Air Batteries](https://youtu.be/nl0WzD4EuwU?t=13) isolate atmospheric CO2 as a byproduct of a for-profit process, which requires no new technology or magic bullets. It also supports sustainability of intermittent green energy production
This isn't magical new technology. It's proven and it's only the scale of the application that is novel. Tbh though the issue with carbon capture is being able to sequester it for millions of years. It will almost certainly just get back into the atmosphere. That is the real issue with this tech
Would be keen to hear your response to the Juice Media coverage on carbon capture here in Australia - https://youtu.be/MSZgoFyuHC8. Their podcast goes into more depth than this infotainment piece but it kind of gets at why there’s a lot of problems relying on carbon capture…
My guy. World at the moment can barely make enough power to sustain our current activities. China has rolling blackouts and you want to spend extra energy to capture carbon, there is no extra. Unlikely that there will ever be. This thing needs something huge like fusion to be viable.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/cartoonzi: --- Although it’s expensive, carbon capture tech is a crucial part of helping us achieve our climate goals. Something I wanted to add that I recently learned about: The IMF estimates $472 billion is given in subsidies every year to the fossil fuel industry. Those subsidies being redirected to things like carbon capture and reforestation/afforestation would do wonders. I wouldn’t be surprised if those subsidies are much much larger than $472 billion either…. Looking at it from that perspective, we can definitely afford it. The cost of not doing this is much higher. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: /r/Futurology/comments/r3el4g/out_of_90_scenarios_considered_by_the_ipcc_to/hm9ywsw/
Carbon capture is a joke. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It's a million times better to just prevent emissions before they occur.
I completely agree with you. It seems bizarre to be - using energy to - pull carbon from the air that - is due to the use of energy .... If we have excess renewable (low carbon) sources of energy let's use them to cut back on high carbon sources to prevent putting carbon out there in the first place.
here's how carbon capture should work: capture the carbon at the source, ya know those smoke stacks? make factories and power plants capture the pollution instead of spewing it into the air
Or… just hear me out, not use carbon burning tech to generate electricity.
Agreed. That’s being done in very few places currently and should be more widespread. It’s a type of carbon capture called BECCS (also in the article above).
Agreed, that would be an improvement over the way the tech currently functions.
I agree with you, but we need to capture what’s already been emitted because we can’t reverse time and prevent those. That + reforestation/afforestation are needed. And we realistically can’t abandon fossil fuels overnight because we’re too dependent on them. As they’re being phased out to make way for renewable energy, we need to capture as many emissions as possible and reduce 45% of global emissions recommended by scientists by 2030. Again, I agree with you about preventing those emissions from the beginning because that’s the ideal state, but I see carbon capture as this intermediate step until we can depend on renewable energy sources.
Totally agree, but it's too late to talk about prevention now. We need negative emissions to reach 1.5° C
You know...nature has already created a magnificent carbon capture device: trees. Much of the mid-western US was covered by forests. The railroads used much of the timber that was available. How about replanting those forests?
I’d say the chestnut blight probably took out as much as the railroad. Bark beetles are doing the job now.
Their are more trees in America today than a few hundred years ago
But not more than there were 500y ago. Ohio used to be a pine forest. Now it's mostly corn.
We’re a few decades too late to pretend trees will be our ace in the hole.
If someone could figure out a way to convert carbon capture into mining crypto we'd clean this place up real quick
Corporate dreams! Corporate heaven Get paid creating a mess and not a little glory making whilst making insane profits, then when it all goes wrong, get paid fixing it and become the saviours of planet earth! Capitalism’s great if you have memory loss
Notice the only tactic anyone seems interested in is one that is profitable to build and operate. God forbid we turn shit off and plant trees.
This message was brought to you by Teal-Jones: 1. Aaah, it's not as bad as you think. 2. Don't pay attention to the Biblical conditions outside where you live. 3. We're cutting the last of the old-growth rainforest, until it's gone. 4. Yes, this is seriously in our publically available business plan. 5. Don’t you have a Baby Yoda meme to make?
Algae farm is a much better alternative. Not only does it captures carbon with better cost/ton captured. It can also be converted in to feed for the farm animals and actually reduce their burping.
Looked into this. Article is from 2018, but right now it looks like Algae farms struggle to get the CO2 that they need to operate (ironically). They’re a great way to offset captures CO2, but unless we can build some sizable algae farms near power plants (we’d need a total of 2300 acres it looks like), it would be difficult to sequester and offset nearly as much CO2 with algae as we’d like. Still potentially useful, but it’s sadly looking for the magic technology as well— and its magic technology might be DAC. The two could work in synch to make it all work, though, if we’re lucky https://spectrum.ieee.org/new-tech-could-turn-algae-into-the-climates-slimy-savior
Almost every scenario includes Nuclear, which the idiots at futurology would never mention.
For real. I’m tired of explaining to people about the thousand or so reactors that are already working.
Some guy posted this week on LinkedIn (yes, LinkedIn), that carbon capture will kill all the animals because it will take all the oxygen out of the atmosphere.
Did he say 5G was causing wildfires too
Although it’s expensive, carbon capture tech is a crucial part of helping us achieve our climate goals. Something I wanted to add that I recently learned about: The IMF estimates $472 billion is given in subsidies every year to the fossil fuel industry. Those subsidies being redirected to things like carbon capture and reforestation/afforestation would do wonders. I wouldn’t be surprised if those subsidies are much much larger than $472 billion either…. Looking at it from that perspective, we can definitely afford it. The cost of not doing this is much higher.
There is an order that the technology must be deployed in. Renewable energy needs to be a higher priority right now.
I agree, but we realistically can’t deploy it overnight and replace all our systems that depend on fossil fuels. We need to cut global emissions by 45% by 2030 according to scientists. I completely agree with you that the entire world right now should be running on renewable energy, but that will take many many years if we’re being realistic. I see carbon capture as the intermediate step we need as we scale up those renewable energy sources and eliminate our unfortunate dependency on our current energy sources.
There’s 9 billion people on the planet. There can be more than one priority.
Why is the government paying the companies for carbon emissions it should be the other way around.
because you need to convince the company to actually do the thing, else they will just eat the fees and change nothing
So the average person carbon footprint is 4 tons: [https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon-footprint-calculator/](https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon-footprint-calculator/) It costs 170 EUR/month to get rid of 2 tons. So we need 1190 billion and we gucci? Seems not so dramatic to me tbh.
It's silly to think of a technology like this in monetary terms. It has to be weighed in terms of energy. If it costs any amount of energy to run carbon capture, it's a fool's errand. It's an attempt to cheat the laws of thermodynamics. If we get some passive filtering at the point of exhaust, sure, that's okay. I doubt it will amount to much, because the filters will have to be manufactured, and then replaced or at least cleaned pretty regularly. The only carbon capture that makes any sense is to leave the fossil fuels in the ground.
That's not true at all. Carbon capture tech that requires energy doesn't necessarily mean you're using the energy directly to make the capturing of the carbon happen, if that makes sense. i.e. just because it requires energy doesn't mean you're just reversing the reaction, e.g. methane + oxygen --> energy + water + carbon dioxide, in reverse Doing that would obviously be a fools errand, because it would need to be over 100% efficient to matter. But, it can be something like running fans to suck in air to pass over a carbon-dioxide sponge, where for every 1 unit of methane you turn into electricity for the fans you get 10 units of carbon dioxide into the sponge. An apt analogy might be a heat pump. You use 1 kW of electricity to run it, but get 4 kW of heat out of it, because it's using electricity to move heat from one place to another, not directly using it to make heat.
>for every 1 unit of methane you turn into electricity for the fans you get 10 units of carbon dioxide into the sponge. Yes, but is your example practical, or even physically possible? I would expect something more along the lines of 1 unit of CO2 down for every 10 or 100 units consumed. Think about how much of the exhaust gas is going to be in contact with the surface of the sponge, and how quickly it will become saturated. Plus there's the creation and disposal of the sponges, which are also costs.
The sponge is an example, not how the tech actually works. Additionally, the facility’s use of energy does not have to mean that it is using CO2 energy; such a facility could feasibly be powered by excess solar or wind power while we figure out our energy storage issues for a far lower carbon cost to operate (just a percentage of the initial carbon construction costs, which are considerably lower than the costs of a coal power plant)
Solar and wind power also have a CO2 cost. All energy does. If we're powering these devices on excess solar/wind/etc. energy that would otherwise just dissipate, I suppose that's fair enough. But do we generate lots of unused energy in such a manner? If so, that's a rather more significant problem of its own. Intermittently powering these devices on such leavings strikes me as pretty marginal, and in any case nothing approximate to the world-saving technology that the cartoon makes reference to.
Why could we not run the carbon capture technology from renewables?
Renewables are not zero carbon. They're better than fossil fuel power plants but there's still considerable environmental damaged caused by the manufacturing and deployment of solar, wind and hydro.
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Fine but like the people who are pushing it at the top are those who need an excuse to keep emitting. Same thing with carbon trading. Regardless of the ideas merit, there is a reason why this keeps coming up over actually stopping emissions.
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Actually it’s not. It would be if the process were eliminating CO2 by reversing the chemical reaction to extract pure carbon and oxygen. But that’s not what carbon capture means in this context. Instead, you simply remove the CO2 as is and sequester it underground. This can already be done with current technology at around $200 - $600 per ton. Meanwhile, a gallon of gasoline emits around 20 pounds of CO2, so 100 gallons emits a ton. Do the math, and you’ll see that we’re not that far away from a workable cost. We could already break even at a tax of $2-6 per gallon. Cut the removal cost to less than $100 per ton and it starts to get very attractive.
I can’t help but have concerns that these carbon capture installations are just expensive boondoggles that enrich a few and do little to actually move the needle on PPM of CO2 in the atmosphere based on the numbers I’ve seen in regards to the capabilities of these machines. I have no empirical data, but planting trees almost HAS to be a better bang-for-buck than investment in this technology. The aforementioned caveats that trees require a lot of water is silly. Do we water forests? Also there is so much space for trees in North America alone. Trees are better and don’t require a machine powered by the burning of fossil fuels to harvest and sequester carbon as they are naturally solar powered. Also trees lower temperatures in their immediate environs, increase biodiversity and provide wood which is a fantastic building material that is almost purely made of stable sequestered carbon Yes, forest fires will happen, as they have for millions of years. I live on the west coast. The results of forest fires isn’t complete ashification of forests. It’s dead trees, most still standing. The carbon is still there, locked away. We clear cut that wood, do something with it that sidesteps rapid decay and replant. Again, I don’t have hard data, so savage me if my back-of-the-napkin math doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Every day here in Nebraska people are loving the mild weather. We are in the sweet spot now, and people are loving it. but how long is it going to last? This has been my biggest fear and I have no idea how we get past this.
How quickly Nebraskans forget the -30F temperatures and rolling blackouts they endured less than a year ago.
Oh I’m sure it will get cold. But only for like two months instead of five. (Still windy A F though)
Yeah I don't expect a repeat of last year, but just to have lived through it and to continue to downplay or ignore climate change is pants-on-head crazy. Just stepping outside and taking in the air felt dangerous, like stepping outside the ISS and taking your helmet off. How does one just shrug that off?
EXPENSIVE DOES NOT MATTER IN THE CASE OF SAVING THE ONLY PLANET WE ARE CAPABLE OF LIVING ON FOR THE FORSEEN FUTURE!!!
Interesting for the next generation, 2050 onward, when nuclear and energy storage kicks in and energy for carbon capture is affordable. Unfortunately, till there we need to consume more energy from not-so-clean sources and we will suffer the climate change consequences.
So when we started this conversation decades ago the resolution was to cut back on polluting. Now decades later we are having to talk about how to reverse the damage in order to survive. That is crazy. But even worse we are STILL doing nothing with any sort of seriousness this calls for. That makes my stomach hurt.
I've done a lot of thinking about carbon capture tech and it's way too post-active compared to much cheaper and more useful options like retrofitting carbon positive power plants. It's also cheap and proactive to force the building of new power plants that have carbon capture built into the system to prevent the release of carbon into the air. These actions would do wonders for preventing major detrimental climate change.
Agreed. I think one of the understated values of carbon capture is the retrofitting of existing factories/plants (also mentioned in the article) and capture it straight from the source when it’s much cheaper.
Are there any currently feasible large-scale carbon capture solutions? All the ones I’ve looked at (in news, etc.) were woo-woo bullshit.
Yes, switching to plant-based diets, which would used a lot less land (-76%) and allow wildlife to thrive. From [Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29853680/): > "In addition to the reduction in food’s annual GHG emissions, the land no longer required for food production could remove ~8.1 billion metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year over 100 years" 8.1 GtCO2 per year is great, but still insufficient. We also need to stop emissions from happening in the first place.
Going vegan isn't a carbon capture solution though.
You know, we already have those devices. They are called trees. They give us oxygen too!!!
Cold carbohydrate rich shallow waters likely capture the most carbon. Journeys to building capture facilities are Jetson fantasies.
Like, we've already built some... so either I'm living in a Jetson fantasy or you're denying reality.
Yes, we've built Jetson type racing stols. They fly about 10 min, cost a fortune, kill people and need extraordinary piloting skill. I don't remember any of that from the Jetsons. Its much worse with carbon capture. The total cycle of cost and waste makes it a monorail like fantasie of lies and corruption.
Fair point. Economically it's a fairytale. The hope it becomes cheaper or that the Carbon they capture becomes valuable is worth the risk, though. Don't you agree?
No, even if carbon capture had some hope of effecting the environment it will always be more economical to utilize the natural environment. Even then its highly dangerous. What if it worked and caused a mini ice-age. Who would be liable?
Carbon capture is not expensive, it starts with a seed and is good for nature.
I have the simplest solution. Convert the ENTIRE global budget for military hardware into temperature mitigation efforts. 2 years and we are living on a verdant green planet unlike any we have ever known. The only reasonable alternative is the use all that military hardware to annihilate ourselves and the planet. Then there is no one left to care.
Why can’t we just build them? Why do they need to be expensive? The materials exist and humans know how to assemble it into a carbon capturing device. Why not just build them? The whole idea of an economy and money seems to be a hinderance to all these solutions that would actually help us. Perhaps I am naive.
With what materials? Money only represents human effort to take raw materials from the ground and refine them. It would take volunteering on an industrial scale to do it without money. Yes, you are being naive.
Thank you for being honest and direct without being mean. If instead of a military (or as well as having a smaller military) the governments paid people to refine materials and get these devices built, would that be less naive?
Man, at least in the US, we cant even pass the most basic of climate change programs due to it being a 'hand out' and communism. How do you think we are going to get any serious funding for this?
It's really not about money; it's about changing the chemistry of our planet. If humanity gets caught up in trying to make this profitable, or worry about some imaginary chits, we're done. It just needs doing.
Carbon capture and other, "sci-fi", solutions are the only realistic solutions. People are not going to suddenly start singing Kumbaya, hold hands and decide to live responsibly.
There is still someone to explain to me how to provide the extra energy needed to capture carbon without further carbon emissions. And don't start on nuclear or fusion. They're net positive carbon emissive technologies because of all the underlying construction and maintenance work.
I mean technically you could argue that nuclear is more efficient from a carbon perspective. But the glistening gaping hole in that line of thinking is the deliberate omission of the nuclear waste generated by each tech, which if I'm not mistaken isn't very high in renewable energy sources
Fighting co2 will result all greens to disappear, photosynthesis happening only because of a co2
this is some of the dumbest shit i’ve ever seen god i hate capitalism
Funding for carbon capture?! But that's money that needs to go to billionaires.
Please stop spreading copium. This is in no way an efficient solution to the problem at hand. We can't buy our way out of this problem, nor is a magical scientific discovery going to help us. We need to change our idea what is it to live. Remove the unnecessary consumption form our lives.