It's becoming much cheaper to suck carbon dioxide from the air

[lava]

Just like that, except solid wood all the way down.

[RickMycroft]

I hope they keep working on it.

Rising carbon dioxide levels are turning rice and fish into junk food | CBC...

[smulder]

@lava

could otherwise be used to provide decent shelter for millions of people

But that would undermine the “value” of the shelter that already exists! /s

[anon30760835]

@Jorpho

The obvious question is, how does this compare to planting a bunch of fast-growing trees?

a less obvious questions is how does this compare to not cutting down a bunch of trees to make room to plant those trees?

[lava]

@smulder

But that would undermine the “value” of the shelter that already exists! /s

Yes, I get that. Because reducing suffering would undermine the value of not having to suffer one little bit.

[tekna2007]

A short podcast interview with Prof. David Keith, the author of the paper and research we’re talking about here.

As It Happens: Thursday Edition | CBC Radio

[KathyPartdeux]

[eraserbones]

@Remainz

So if i fly London to Dubai and create 1 ton of carbon how does a flight on 100 passengers create 100 tones of carbon when I guess the plane and passengers and the fuel will weigh less than that?

There are at least two things going on here. First, when you burn carbon you combine it with oxygen, hence ‘CO2’. Carbon has an atomic weight of about 12, oxygen about 17. So for every 12 grams of carbon you burn, you produce 12+17+17=46 grams of carbon dioxide – almost 4x as much waste as you started out with in fuel.

The other thing that comes up specifically in the case of jet travel is ‘radiative forcing’ which as far as I can tell is a fancy way of saying “polluting up there is a lot worse than polluting down here.” Often emission calculations for jet travel include a penalty multiplier because jets are uniquely harmful.

https://www.treehugger.com/aviation/what-the-heck-is-radiative-forcing-why-should-my-aviation-carbon-offset-include-it.html

[Remainz]

thanks for that.

[wait_really]

@Amstrad

So you’re saying my grandpa who massively overbuilt everything was ahead of the curve on this carbon sequestration thing?

As long as 16 on center remains the standard we’re still massively overbuilding things.

Advanced House Framing

[sarc]

meooow

poo poo post must be sent to the expanse

[Urbanacus]

@KathyPartdeux

Plant shellfish. Calcium Carbonate. Get a nice meal out of it too.

Being done.

Billion Oyster Project

If this was already said explicitIy I missed it. The reason why using renewable fuels to turn the captured carbon into a low carbon transportation fuel is an improvement is that it creates transport fuel without digging up more fossil carbon. We do not yet have electric commercial aviation.

[Ryuthrowsstuff]

Shellfish arent good at sequestering carbon. They don’t make calcium carbonate they collect and utilize What’s already disolved in the water. Higher disolved co2 levels that go with global warming shift the pH of ocean water. Thinning shells. Driving shellfish stocks down. There’s some effect on availability of disolved calcium carbonate levels in ocean water from global warming and well.

They’re quite good at removing other things from waterways. But where that’s a serious problem the shellfish often end up inedible until things are cleaned up enough.

It’s phytoplankton and algae that are the major carbon sink for our oceans. Bigger, faster, all round better than trees.

[57Lh7m5gq2f04iR]

@Keith_McClary

not cumulative

Energy is energy, and it has to go somewhere. Greenhouse gasses reflect the heat and prevent it from radiating into space. The rate at which the planet can radiate excess heat is determined by atmospheric composition, so by changing that composition in a way that lowers that rate of radiation. It doesn’t matter if that heat comes from the sun, the earth’s core, or burning millions of gallons of oil a day, heat is heat and the planet can only shed it at a certain rate, a rate which we’re lowering by polluting the atmosphere.

So while it may be considerably less than the amount of heat which the sun bombards us with, it’s still a factor. It’s still eating away at the planet’s overall heat dissipation capacity, which raises the average temperatures regardless of the heat’s source.

[57Lh7m5gq2f04iR]

@notthatmia

If we are burning oil and coal to provide the energy to do the capturing, of course yeah. But remember that the law of thermodynamics only applies to closed systems. Energy from solar or nukes is effectively outside the system as far as CO2 is concerned.

No energy is outside of the system, and I don’t know what would have given you that impression. We’re releasing heat that was previously stored. It doesn’t matter if it happens in a nuclear bomb or a coal plant or in the heart of the sun, heat is heat, and once it’s on the planet, it’s “inside the system.” The planet can only radiate so much heat back into space, anything beyond that is going to result in temperatures to go up, so those millions of gallons of oil we burn every day absolutely are having an effect both in terms of atmospheric composition as well as acting as an additional source of heat to warm the planet.

@notthatmia

Well, if they work it will provide more time to phase in the path to lower CO2 emissions with less economic disruption. I can’t argue with that.

Ensuring the survival of the human race should not be contingent on whether or not it requires a lot of green pieces of paper that we’ve decided to intangibly imbue with power and value. This is one of the few cases where it really will be all or nothing, we all live, or we all die. The planet is habitable for humans or it is not.

@notthatmia

I really want to see some citations here. There are a lot of links I could post showing that in most of the developed world, fertility rates are dropping to replacement level or below.

The thing you need to remember is that just because the growth rate has gone down doesn’t mean we aren’t producing new people at an unsustainable rate. We went from 2.5 billion people in 1950 to 6 billion in 2000. Between 2000 and 2016 we added another billion and a half, and even with the slowing rate of population growth we’re still looking at close to ten billion people by 2050.

The supposition of both of these sources is that slowing population growth is bad. It’s not. 240% population growth in 50 years isn’t good, staggeringly unsustainable.

[Keith_McClary]

@57Lh7m5gq2f04iR

No energy is outside of the system, and I don’t know what would have given you that impression. We’re releasing heat that was previously stored. It doesn’t matter if it happens in a nuclear bomb or a coal plant or in the heart of the sun, heat is heat, and once it’s on the planet, it’s “inside the system.” The planet can only radiate so much heat back into space, anything beyond that is going to result in temperatures to go up

No, it’s like when I use an electric stove in my house (assuming no heating, AC or ventilation). The house will warm up a bit, but within a few hours it will be the the same temperature as if I had not used the stove. It is not cumulative.

[wait_really]

@57Lh7m5gq2f04iR

No energy is outside of the system, and I don’t know what would have given you that impression. We’re releasing heat that was previously stored. It doesn’t matter if it happens in a nuclear bomb or a coal plant or in the heart of the sun, heat is heat, and once it’s on the planet, it’s “inside the system.” The planet can only radiate so much heat back into space, anything beyond that is going to result in temperatures to go up,

This so much this. Any “closed” system is really an arbitrary means of taking measure of the components and interactions within, there is no “closed” system in reality.

@57Lh7m5gq2f04iR

Ensuring the survival of the human race should not be contingent on whether or not it requires a lot of green pieces of paper that we’ve decided to intangibly imbue with power and value

The following is a pretty good synthesis of these two lines of thinking imo

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/

[57Lh7m5gq2f04iR]

Where does that heat go? Everything goes somewhere.

[notthatmia]

So are you saying that if we could build and operate large scale CO2 scrubbers in such a way that no CO2 (or a trivially small amount by comparison) was input to the process, that there would be no net benefit to do so? Because that’s what it sounds like you are saying.

If you are a person who is not only opposed to GHG emissions but opposed to energy production in general, then I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

@57Lh7m5gq2f04iR

Ensuring the survival of the human race should not be contingent on whether or not it requires a lot of green pieces of paper that we’ve decided to intangibly imbue with power and value.

Since I am fairly confident that I will always have access to enough affordable energy to heat my house, to cook my meals, to purify my water, and to get my kids to medical care (which may involve things like CT scanners and operating rooms), I suppose that I can agree with you that money is not part of the equation.

[Urbanacus]

@Ryuthrowsstuff

It’s phytoplankton and algae that are the major carbon sink for our oceans. Bigger, faster, all round better than trees.

There’s an idea floating around to seed the ocean with iron powder to create a carbon sinking algae bloom.

Fertilizing the Ocean with Iron

I’m frustrated with the people who are opposed to anything that can help sequester carbon because it “might” cause people to think that we don’t need to reduce emissions. That’s stupid, we need to do it all, the situation is dire! Sandy missed flooding my home a mile from the water by inches.