I sit in a hot office and think about this. I am not sure where to ask. I am genuinely curious. I have seen a breakdown of building solar panels to power the earth 2x over in order to recapture carbon equal to the rate it is being produced, but then areas of the earth that were reflective are now absorbtive of heat…
From another thread on the subject -
Literally all ideas about carbon capture are quickly revealed to be cynical greenwashing if you think about one simple thing: how much CO2 do we need to store to offset global emissions?
The answer is that we need to store almost 40B tonnes of CO2, or around 10B tonnes of C if we break that down, every year. That’s something on the order of 1500 great pyramids of Giza (which weighs 6M tonnes) worth of carbon every year.
Basically, whatever method you dream up of, it’s gonna need to account for this
To be fair, carbon capture does not have to entirely offset all of global emissions to be useful, it only does if you’re trying to use it as a single solution to climate change by itself. But if you were using it to augment a reduction in emissions you’d need less of it, or if you do eventually reach net zero global emissions someday, but want to slowly reduce carbon already there to bring the world back to the temperatures that used to exist, you could do so more slowly as a long term project.
I agree that the quantity is mind bogglingly big, but I think that good brainstorming starts by not shooting early ideas down, but after all the ideas are out, evaluation can begin.
Here is some general optimism jn the face of “greenwashing”. I think that human knowledge is fractal, and if any human stares at a single part, they can zoom in enough to see the gaps in knowledge. And those gaps in knowledge are “low hanging fruit” for whatever profession or passion project you are in.
It’s not an alternative to producing less of the damn stuff. But it can be turned into a useful material, not just stored. Ideally one that can replace, or reduce the carbon footprint of, materials like steel (~2B tons/year) and cement {~4B tons per year).
Something like this: Carbon capture process produces hydrogen and construction materials
Not necessarily exactly that, I have no idea if this one can live up to its promise. The hydrogen by-product has the potential to be extremely useful as a clean fuel but that depends on whether they can eliminate leaks during production.
CEO must hold all meetings in a room filled with all the CO2 and other pollutants they produced that quarter.
We’re going to need a bigger room.
Seems like a waste after the first meeting.
We can use the same room for every company
No waste, don’t want to end up in the meeting room for it.
The only silly amd serious easy solution, don’t produce CO2 when not needed.
People in the west don’t need a new smart phone every 6 months, don’t need a new car every 4 year, don’t need new clothes every year just to follow fasion.
Repair what needs repairing, use what you have and still works, don’t buy new just because some sales idiot tells you it’s better. At this moment we have huge waves of replacement of goods that function perfectly, but a new one is slightly more economic with the energy, ignoring the energy that is needed for production and transport. In the west we consume waste, not use products to their maximum potential.
Good news! Us westerners are too poor to do anything like that anymore anyway.
Most are, and still fall in the trap of replacing when repair would be cheaper in the long run. I still miss my 33 yo car that got totalled.
The YouTube video “the story of stuff” describes how the great depression was caused by people buying things once, and once the idea of buy the same thing every few years then trash it became a thing, well the economy keeps rolling
Even if we stop 100% of all co2 production today, we may have a lot of hard times ahead until the co2 gets recaptured somehow.
A lesson taught over and over to me is rich people fomo - if you don’t “invest” in personal productivity, then you will be poor and irrelevant pretty soon then you will get sick and poor people don’t live well when health gives a jackhammer to the face.
I am not as bad as you describe, but I may be more consuming than I could be as I try to maximize wealth.
I thought it was because of
- massive tarrifs that were rolled out worldwide
- crop failures in the southwest
- bank failures
- a stock market crash
I didn’t know it was because of toaster buying habits.
“Ending, not mending” -BNW
One time, and I wasn’t even high, I was thinking we could build solar panels that power machines that pull CO2 from the atmosphere and build solid bricks of graphite that could be used to build buildings or whatever. Then I realized I had basically reinvented the tree.
This is doable but the barrier to entry is high: a large-scale industrial carbon capture machine costs $750 million.
Edit: graphite is used in batteries manufacturing
Very little is used and it’s cheap and easy to get. Most of the carbon ideas ignore how insanely cheap carbon sources of a particular form are. Even most types of wood that are used are worth so little money hauling it around unfinished isn’t profitable.
To me, at least, we need to just treat this like a tax. A certain amount of money we all pay each year to pull carbon out of the air. If at some point someone figures out a use for all this stuff, pretty cool, in the meantime just pile it up.
Start planting trees. Keep planting trees. Allow forests to grow and build soil. The natural rot of deadfalls and other plant matter will not come close to the energy costs of burying things.
Figure out what species of kind of bamboo grows the fastest, grow a shitton of it, bury and seal it in old coal mines
Had a similar thought. Not necessarily bamboo, but whatever plant offers the best time to carbon captured ratio. Then stash it in old mines (salt mines ideally), and flood the mines for additional assurance that decomposition won’t happen. It doesn’t scale well, I think, because you’re dependent on the right conditions for storage, and creating storage places artificially doesn’t sound like it would be very effective.
I find out about biochar recently, pyrolize anything(usually woody matter) and you can use it as an amendment to soil as it’s high surface area holds water, nutrients and is a “hotel” for fungi and bacteria. It can also be used to absorb fertilizer runoff into rivers. You don’t necessarily have to dump it into a mine. Because it’s stable carbon it stays for 100s to 1000s years. Check out Terra pretta.
I think it’s best if done locally. I just dig a cone pit and throw it in my compost.
throw it in pig shit = long term fertilizer Add it to cattle feed and reduce methane farts
I’ve run across the term biochar a few times recently, but didn’t think anything of it. Thanks for prompting me to look into it seriously!
A huge ring in the ocean, probably built of ice.
Hoists are used to dredge up nutrient rich sediment from the ocean floor, and mix them with surface water within the ring.
Grow some weedy oligotrophoc plant or algae on the surface, and collect it.
It’s then sunk down to the cold seafloor where it won’t decompose, so the carbon is captured.
You can grow the ring by using solar stills to create fresh water from salt, and since it has a higher freezing temp, just dump it on the ring after sailing to colder waters. You move around slowly via planned currents and big ol sails.
You could cheaply build many of these and they could be mostly autonomous.
You could cheaply build many of these
X - doubt
My idea is a stationary High altitude blimps that collect CO2 and break it into pure Carbon. As the carbon collects, the weight lowers the blimp, then the pure Carbon is collected to be used in industrial processes, with the O2 going into the air.
It’s like a high-altitute tree, that uses the sun to break down CO2, giving us the carbon to make into Nanotubes to build better batteries.
I like this idea!
Some wiki links to demonstrate proof of concept:
Ill go first.
Water has “carbonic acid” dissolved in it always aka carbon dioxide holding potential. (It is why distilled water never has a pH of a perfect 7 in a open air environment) set up a filter in the ocean that separates high density carbon from the acid next to a renewable power source like a wind turbine. Concentrate the carbon into something to stick on a tugboat, and store it somewhere that it won’t turn to a gas again.
Put it on Mars!
Three words: adjustable space mirrors.
Sewage has a lot of carbon. Separate sewage like we do ewaste and store the tonnes of carbon. Let plants and other food get from the air.
