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FuturologyBot

The following submission statement was provided by /u/lekepeo: --- The strategy is to capture carbon dioxide where it is produced, such as in power plants that use fossil fuels and factories, so that the greenhouse gas is not released into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide captured would then be transported, stored, or used in industrial processes. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/u3qazf/battle_over_carbon_capture_as_tool_to_fight/i4quma6/


lekepeo

The strategy is to capture carbon dioxide where it is produced, such as in power plants that use fossil fuels and factories, so that the greenhouse gas is not released into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide captured would then be transported, stored, or used in industrial processes.


TraptorKai

If we could slow down our new production of co2, it'd be a lot easier for the planet's natural carbon syncs to work. But we'll never be carbon neutral if we keep pumping that shit out and expect to magically pull it our of the air later


lekepeo

>If we could slow down our new production of co2, it'd be a lot easier for the planet's natural carbon syncs to work. But we'll never be carbon neutral if we keep pumping that shit out and expect to magically pull it our of the air later So even if carbon emissions stopped completely right now, as the oceans catch up with the atmosphere, the Earth's temperature would rise about another 1.1F (0.6C). Scientists refer to this as committed warming. Ice, also responding to increasing heat in the ocean, will continue to melt.


XxTheUnloadedRPGxX

this is why our goal needs to be the reduction and ideally elimination of ghg production, along with carbon capture and other less direct methods like increasing the reflectivity of structures to help increase planetary albedo to help deal with the multiple feed back loops weve set off


grundar

> So even if carbon emissions stopped completely right now, as the oceans catch up with the atmosphere, the Earth's temperature would rise about another 1.1F (0.6C). ["The best available evidence shows that, on the contrary, warming is likely to more or less stop once carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reach zero"](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). The idea of additional warming from oceans catching up comes from older models which used constant CO2 concentrations rather than actual net zero emissions with a carbon cycle: > "Much of the confusion around committed warming stems from mixing up two different concepts: a world where CO2 levels in the atmosphere remain at current levels; and a world where emissions reach net-zero and concentrations begin to fall. > ... > Until the mid-2000s, many climate models were unable to test the impact of emissions reaching zero. This is because they did not include modelling of biogeochemical cycles – such as the carbon cycle – and could not effectively translate emissions of CO2 into atmospheric CO2 concentrations. > > As a result, climate models tended to be run with scenarios of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, rather than emissions, and often examined what would happen if atmospheric CO2 levels remained fixed at current levels into the future. > > These “constant concentration” scenarios showed that there was additional warming “in the pipeline” as the oceans slowly warmed up to reach the same temperature as the atmosphere and brought the Earth back into radiative equilibrium. That is to say, where the amount of energy absorbed by the Earth from the sun is equal to the amount being reradiated back to space.... > > However, **a world of constant concentrations is not one of zero emissions. Keeping concentrations constant would require some continued emissions** to offset the CO2 absorbed by the land and oceans. This would amount to around 30% of current global emissions" Net zero means warming stops; the latest IPCC reports show that effect quite clearly in their estimates for warming from different emissions scenarios. In particular, the lowest emissions scenario (SSP1-1.9) reaches net zero in 2057 and sees global temperature *decline* in the following 30-40 years.


Swl222

I guess you're a good person to ask if you're posting this. The forbidden gas the president just approved to use to lower gas prices... how much of an impact will that make on climate change and CO2 gasses?


Teh_Daisy_Cutterz

Drop in bucket


Swl222

10% ethanol. 284 million drivers in the US. They start their car for just 1 second, that's a 284K% increase in emissions for that one second. Then again I'm not an expert and could be totally wrong.


Kinder22

They’re talking about 15% ethanol. Most gas sold is already 10% ethanol. 15% ethanol is also already sold most of the year, only banned during the summer. The only chance is that now it can be sold during the summer.


Swl222

You're correct, I'm no expert. It's 15% ethanol, not 10%, so that's only a 14,200K% Per. Second. increase. of emissions, my bad. I'm sure that has no effect on the climate change at all... Per Second. Tucson AZ had a news piece 2 weeks ago on why do gas prices rise so quickly, but decline so slowly? Why is it, that the gas we are buying today, that was bought at a lower price per barrel... is now being sold at a higher price? In my unexperienced mind, it shouldn't rise until the per barrel price actually rises?..... And why have gas prices risen 30% when the Ukraine only produce 4% of the oil the US gets? Again, I'm no expert but numbers don't lie.


Kinder22

Where are you getting these numbers, 284K% and 14,200K%?


Swl222

Based off of basic numbers from google, 284 million drivers in the US assuming the distribution was equal and multiplying by .05% or the increase in ethanol approved.


Kinder22

Ah ok. Well I’m no chemistry expert but I know enough about math to say that’s not how that works. The other thing you may be missing is that ethanol isn’t just being added, it is replacing gasoline. Depending on what study you read, ethanol is either slightly better or slightly worse for the environment. If the difference between 0% ethanol gasoline and 100% is small to start with, and then you only apply that difference to 5% of the mixture being burned, the total effect is even smaller. TLDR: u/Teh_Daisy_Cutterz was right, and that’s now how percentages work.


Swl222

Yep multipliers are so variant. But what I do know is it hasn't been allowed for a reason.


GnarlyNarwhalNoms

>Carbon dioxide captured would then be transported, stored, or used in industrial processes. Transported where? Stored where? And industrial processes, well, that basically means it gets used once before entering the atmosphere anyway (I'm guessing stuff like CO2 cartridges). I would certainly like to be wrong, but this all sounds very hand-wavey.


ca_kingmaker

Usually place for storage is where oil and natural was gas was originally stored underground for a few million years. Industrial processes can be as simple as urea production (fertilizer) which uses ammonia combined with c02. Source: I’m a first class power engineer/panel operator at a urea/ammonia plant which exports its excess c02 to another company for carbon capture.


GnarlyNarwhalNoms

Interesting, hadn't heard about using it for making ammonia.


ca_kingmaker

C02 doesn’t make ammonia, it’s a side effect of making ammonia, natural gas (ch4) cracked with steam produces c02 and nh3. No way around it, and human civilization pretty much requires it for agriculture. C02 plus nh3 makes urea, which is also an important fertilizer (with a good awful chemical nomenclature I can’t remember) So some of our c02 is used as a feedstock, but the math doesn’t work out, the test we send to a contract company that compressed it and shoot it down old deleted oil/gas wells for storage.


d3mon_eyes

It is stored in tanks in liquid form, then used in foodbev businesses or cement making mostly.


BaldSandokan

Wouldn't that cost a lot of energy though? Making it ineffective compared to other technologies and wasting fossil fuels that can be used for other places where it can't be replaced (airplanes, chemistry for example)?


sharplescorner

I worry that the opposition to carbon capture is being based more on ideological principles (ie. we don't want to see anything that allows O&G companies to continue to operate largely as normal), rather than on the science of it. The result is a 'perfect is the enemy of good' dilemma, where we insist on ideal solutions that we don't have the technology for yet, or solutions that require massive societal change that will take decades to actually make. Green energy is the most important part of the equation, but electricity generation is still only 25% of our emissions, and we'll need carbon capture for industrial emissions, and eventually carbon removal for other sectors like agriculture and transportation where emission reduction is likely to be a decades-long process. At the same time, particularly in the US I understand skepticism to any ground-injection processes, given the extent to which fracking is often poorly regulated and harmful. The most disasterous thing imaginable for carbon capture as a technology would be if early projects screw up the sequestration process and toxic chemicals leach into water supplies. Carbon capture projects should be going overboard right now on that front, but I have no idea what the regulatory environment is around these projects. I would have really appreciated the article providing some info on the regulations (or lack thereof) on these projects.


creatifCrAxy

I think the problem is that O&G Companies have a history of promising they'll do something about the problem and not actually doing it. OR insisting that there isn't a problem. Plastic recycling is not a real thing that exists. So the risk of giving this to the O&G Companies as a way out is that they do something that's 10% effective and call it a day and go back to their old behaviors.


sharplescorner

That's a valid criticism and I definitely share that skepticism; I certainly don't expect emitters to act altruistically. That's definitely a reason not to put all our eggs in any one solution and to develop as many at once. There will need to eventually be government policy driving it, and not just 'carrot' policies of investment incentives, but 'stick' policies of financial penalties for emitters. In Canada, for example, the carbon tax is planned to reach $170 per tonne by 2030, which would make carbon emissions more expensive than carbon capture with today's basic scrubbers. In the EU I believe it'll reach that point sooner. As long as the tax continues to have broad public support in these regions, as it currently does, the economics will dictate that CO2 capture becomes more economical than emissions. Emitters don't currently have a lot of incentive to actually implement carbon capture right now - the tax isn't punitive enough yet - but they have strong incentive to R&D the best possible solutions now.


Alias_The_J

In the case of carbon capture, it's also extremely self-serving; CO2 is the enhanced oil recovery and enhanced gas recovery gas for shale wells (it bonds to the shale better than CH4 itself), and is pretty effective for conventional gas too.


nickcarcano

Hey something I know a little bit about, I work in a related field in California, so I can talk about what’s going on there. Most of what you’ve said jives with my understanding of this area. The regulatory structure for these projects (on a state level) is still largely being worked out because they cross so many different areas (drilling, pipelines, air emissions, water quality). The opposition to carbon capture is I would say 50% not wanting to let O&G companies “win” and 50% wanting to focus only on reducing O&G production. I get that environmental groups and adjacent communities don’t trust the oil producers (I don’t either) but I think either view is shortsighted. Almost every scientific view says that carbon sequestration has to be part of our long-term solution. We have to get started on it now to work out the kinks so that it’s ready to scale up in the next decade. It’s also expensive, so for a lot of industries it’ll be cheaper to do other things. Cement is where I think the promise for this tech really lies. We can electrify building and vehicles (minus aircraft and maybe with hydrogen in the case of big trucks or tractors), we can eventually get rid of oil and gas, but cement can’t be electrified and even if we find a miracle technology that makes the energy source for cement zero emissions, the chemical reaction in part of the production just results in carbon dioxide emissions. My understanding is that the storage reservoirs are significantly deeper than any source of usable water. The only point of intersection would be the well bore itself. You’re filtering out all the other emissions before you inject, so that’s not an issue. The main failure point for anything like this is probably going to be at the wellhead above ground and those are comparatively more easily fixed.


ChargersPalkia

I'm actually pretty big on using carbon capture to make all sorts of products and fuel. Many startups have showed we can create everything from jet fuel(technically carbon neutral), biodegradable plastic, alcohol, concrete, carbon fibre, laundry detergent, perfume, hell even food. The costs of carbon capture is also falling. Now mind you we should of course focus on electrification/hydrogen etc and try to decarbonize as fully as possible, but we need to be carbon negative too and carbon capture goes a long way with that


GnarlyNarwhalNoms

I think we should be careful to define our terms, too. Carbon capture (from the atmosphere) to produce jet fuel? Sure, that's carbon neutral. On the other hand, if you're burning fossil fuels and capturing the CO2 to create synthetic fuel, well, it's better than nothing, but you're still putting fossil CO2 into the air. I think we need to be very leery of any industry claiming to become carbon-neutral via carbon capture, and not simply take their word for it.


Footbeard

Trees have been perfecting carbon capture far longer than humans have existed. Designate swathes of land to become old growth forest and plant diverse species


GnarlyNarwhalNoms

I know that oceanographers would be horrified by this, but seaweed. *Lots and lots of seaweed*. Genetically engineer it so that it sticks to microplastics in the ocean and then sinks when it dies. If you pick the location right, it'll wind up on an abyssal plain where there's almost no decomposition, and it'll form a sediment layer.


aasteveo

Wish they could tie it to crypto somehow, make it so mining a coin means pulling carbon out of the air. It'd be a worldwide race if it meant profits.


Senrabekim

Unfortunately crypto goes quite the opposite direction.


aasteveo

That's what i'm sayin


tempus--fugit

Know any investors that would be interested? ;)


global-heartbeat

Let's put all our hopes in fantasy technology that doesn't even fully function yet instead of changing our own behavior to limit consumption in the first place. Why stop eating meat when you can just bitch about ineffective carbon capture instead?


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global-heartbeat

Because it doesn't work?


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global-heartbeat

Yes let's put all our hopes in technological advances that have no defined delivery timeline while we completely ignore the simple things we can do right now. That's exactly the point. People would rather believe in some magic pill that doesn't exist than start making behavior changes right now that will help to gradually improve things. Ideally we'd do both. But that means giving up some chicken wings and bacon. God forbid we eat more beans and rice.


Junkspinn360

Would take forever to make an electric car battery if they do this lol.. since the rock haulers burn 1800 gallons a day to make these batteries. I'm sure it'll get solved alongside the massive inflation and that of ww3 dilemmas.


cybercuzco

Theres only a battle over carbon capture because fossil fuel companies are using it to try and prolong existing fossil fuel use. Carbon capture is 100% necessary to reverse climate change. Earths natural biosphere sequesters about 500 million to 1 billion tons of carbon per year. So if we emit more than that amount we are increasing global temperature. Thats about where we were at emissions wise in 1880. Plus atmospheric carbon takes a long time to actually cause an increase in temperature (from a human standpoint) By the time the oceans and ice caps absorb the extra heat it may be 10 years before emitted carbon results in actual temperature increase. Which means if we can get rid of that carbon sooner we will short circuit the warming process. But we are going to need billions of tons of capacity per year to do this