The US just invested more than $1 billion into carbon removal / The move represents a big step in the effort to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere—and slow down climate change.::undefined
Everyone here is mad that we’re doing this as if this is the only thing we’re doing. This… nor any of the other things suggested here… are either/or strategies. They’re all AND strategies.
People just wanna bitch.
Celebrate everything that is done to help slow down climate change and encourage more.
It’s a technological antisolution.
This is honestly probably more of a transition jobs program for oil workers and something designed to get a few extra votes in Congress. One of the projects is in my state (Louisiana) and the politicians all stressed how it’s creating jobs in the oil producing Southwest part of the state. And the other project is in East Texas. The companies even pinky swore that at least 10% of their workforce would be former oil workers.
Wasn’t carbon removal an unproven concept? I feel like I watched Climate Town discuss it in one episode, talking about it never actually hitting any meaningful % thresholds…
Just Google CO2 Removal Unproven and scroll past the fossil fuel sponsored articles on top to see multiple reputable sources treating it as basically a tech scam.
Of course it’s a scam, we have millions of polluting sources a few CO2 removal sites could never counter act that. Sure it helps but it is a band aid on a gunshot wound.
I’m on my phone so it’s tricky too properly cite these sources but some back of the napkin math:
Global annual CO2 production is about 37 billion metric tons. About 27% of that by weight is just carbon. That’s like 10 billion metric tons in just the carbon part of what is being put into the atmosphere each year by people.
The global annual production of cement, one of the most used construction materials in human history, is estimated to be about 4 billion metric tons.
If you had a magic machine that could pull carbon out of the air, remove the oxygen from it, store it in a pure form, you would have to now find some place to store two and a half times the mass of all the cement the world produces each year.
That would be just a break even on carbon. The energy costs for any kind of real life machine or infrastructure to do that would necessarily be extraordinary.
If this device was powered by magically consuming thermal energy from the area around it, the heat demands would change the climate faster than the carbon being pulled out of the air.
My point is, we make just produce too much carbon. Way way way too much.
Awesome. But we need more effort to clean up our oceans and reduce the waste and plastic pumped into them by mega corporations.
That is a completely different problem
The ocean also absorbs CO2 and produces half of our oxygen. Pollution is fucking that up.
We don’t save the ocean, we don’t get to breathe.
From an industry standpoint everything the article says at the end as a critique is correct. We should be playing moneyball, those fans that draw in the particles would be an additional toll on the power grid.
Instead spend the money on removing the emission sources and modernizing our grid/reducing fuel emissions. After weve exhausted low hanging fruit there we’ll have to throw money at offset tech.
I suppose we’ll have to get the tech made eventually but there’s just so much to be reworked on our grids as is.
We’re past the reducing emissions stage.
We need to BOTH cut emissions, and find a way to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere to get to a healthy planet. Not all the CO2 traps are going to be the right way to do it, but we need to research and figure out how to sustainably pull CO2 out, stop methane emissions, switch to a carbon free grid, and… everything else.
We are not beyond the emissions reduction stage and will not be until the grid is 100% renewable or other emissions free energy powered.
Switching to clean energy is emissions reduction. Imo should be our #1 priority because we’re not reducing power demand without massive societal change.
Worked for the Titanic!
The US should have asked me. I’ve got loads of shit ideas to spend money on.
