Carbon sucker

[Fake Messiah]

This could solve few problems

[CarveTheFive]

Vice disturbs me with their irresponsible false hope reporting. If it’s not quack cancer cures it’s some variation on the perpetual motion machine.

[Alan V]

This could solve few problems

I've heard about the progress of carbon capture and storage, and even about the progress in creating new fuel from carbon capture, from other reports. It would indeed be wonderful if it was all true.

However, this particular report glossed over at least two important points. First, it claimed that fuel created by this method would cost the same as ordinary fuel. This is highly unlikely anytime soon, if at all. Only if we instituted a carbon tax, or stopped subsidizing fossil fuels and heavily subsidized renewables instead, would that likely happen soon. Second, not all electric cars cost $50,000 as the spokesman said. Prices for batteries have been coming down, and will likely drop much more in the 2020s, at least according to the projections I have read. If that happens, people will replace their internal combustion cars with electric cars over time, because the latter will be cheaper to operate as well as more efficient.

So the economics is very important, though that's not the only issue. There's also a question of timing. We are now at the point that we need to make the transition so quickly, within the next 20 or 30 years, that we will likely have to apply multiple renewable strategies simultaneously, because each will take time to build up. CCS will have to be a part of our efforts, but so will electric cars, wind power, solar power, and many other proven and economic options.

[Mister Agenda]

'Green Crude' would accomplish the same thing, and is closer to being economical; but even it would have to be competing with $200 a barrel crude oil to bring to market in less than a decade.

[Angrboda]

I have to wonder about the efficiency of the process. If it's heavily reliant on carbon neutral electricity, then those alternative energy sources being scaled up dramatically is a necessary precondition of such strategies. I wonder how relevant such technologies will be after that is accomplished. (I also have to wonder if our currrent mix of public and private transportation can be sustainably maintained at its current levels. In spite of alternatives such as this, it seems that changing habits and lifestyles is a more effective policy than focusing on technologies like this. Not saying we should ignore it, but it doesn't seem to have the same wallop as other strategies we might pursue.)

[Dr H]

This could solve few problems

To me, this sounds a lot like an advertisement for this guy's business, rather than a viable scientific proposal.  
I would like to have seen some details of the process:

* How much energy does the process require?  
* Where, exactly, is that energy coming from?  ("Renewable electricity" is pretty vague.)  
* What chemicals are being used, and in what quantities?  
* What is the energy/carbon cost for making, transporting, storing, and disposing of those chemicals?

There are a lot of pollyanna plans around for "solving" things like energy needs and climate change, which never look beyond the immediate process being proposed.   For example, the true impact of solar energy goes beyond simply setting up enough solar panels to replace a coal-fired power plant.   The energy, pollution, and carbon costs of manufacturing the solar panels needs to be considered, as do those factors in the costs of mining, refining, transporting, recycling, and disposing of the exotic materials required.  If your solar farm reduces carbon emissions for a given amount of electricity by 25%, but all of the infrastructure required to put that solar farm in place puts an extra 30% carbon emission into the atmosphere, you've not gained anything.
Yet this sort of detailed analysis seems to be missing from a lot of proposals.

You don't get something for nothing, and pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and converting it to high energy density fuel is an energy-intensive process by any means I can imagine.  Maybe these guys have something new -- maybe.  But it's sure not clear from the video what it might be.

As far as converting vehicles to this new fuel, that concept has been around for decades.  You can convert your gasoline engine car right now to use propane fuel, reducing greenhouse emissions by 30-50%.  People haven't exactly been flocking to this option for a lot of reasons, one of which is that a high-quality conversion will cost you anywhere from $10,000 and up, per vehicle.  
Maybe this guy can do his conversions for much cheaper -- I'd still like to see some numbers.


Most problematic for me it that this approach focuses on only one aspect of the problem, and not the major part:  transportation using internal combustion engines.  While this is not an insignificant issue, it pales beside the contribution of heavy industry, which is where the big impact needs to be made.

Reminds me of the loudly touted move away from incandescent light bulbs.  
The average residential home uses 10-15% of it's electrical demand for lighting.  CFLs reduce that by maybe a third, at best.  LEDs are better, with maybe a 50-60% reduction.  Best case scenario:  by replacing every light bulb in your home with an LED, and replacing all the electronics -- dimmers, timers, etc. -- to those that work with LEDs, you reduce your total electric load by maybe 10%.  And that does reduce carbon emissions, a bit.  

But how much extra carbon was emitted by the many more complex processes involved in making CFL and LED bulbs (compared to the relatively simple incandescents); manufacturing all the new electronics required; in mining and processing the more exotic materials required,;in the more labor intensive manufacturing processes; and in disposing of dead bulbs as hazardous waste?  Rarely mentioned, but we really need to think about these things.

And two other things come to mind:  

1) The average household could have reduced their electric load more if they kept all their incandescent bulbs, and simply set their thermostats one degree lower over the winter months.

2) There are aluminum processing plants -- smelters -- which use more electricity in a week than some small cities use in a year.

So was the major problem really addressed here?
Or was changing all the lightbulbs just a "feel good" home activity, with very limited impact?

Beware the "quick fix".

[Alan V]

So was the major problem really addressed here?
Or was changing all the lightbulbs just a "feel good" home activity, with very limited impact?

Beware the "quick fix".

I agree with your assessment that the short video was more of an advertisement than anything really informative.

However, I don't think anyone ever promised that we would solve global warming by changing our lightbulbs. It was just one small step we could all take immediately. Some people have done the math to make sure it made sense.

The truth of the matter is that we will have to make multiple changes in all sorts of areas to really combat global warming. And many informed people know quite well that we will have to spend a large portion of our remaining carbon budget in building up the infrastructure we will need going forward.

If you are interested in the math, I can recommend the book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming:

https://www.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehe...dpSrc=srch

https://www.drawdown.org/

[Dr H]

So was the major problem really addressed here?
Or was changing all the lightbulbs just a "feel good" home activity, with very limited impact?

Beware the "quick fix".

I agree with your assessment that the short video was more of an advertisement than anything really informative.

However, I don't think anyone ever promised that we would solve global warming by changing our lightbulbs.  It was just one small step we could all take immediately.  Some people have done the math to make sure it made sense.

Well, I did the math -- wrote a paper on it, in fact -- and it didn't make sense.  Quite the opposite:  as incandescents were phased out, most of the light "bulb" supply in the US shifted from domestic production to China.  The Chinese were more than happy to supply our sudden demand for CFLs, by opening more factories and increasing production -- at one point they were building an average a one new coal-fired power plant per week to support the manufacturing boom.  
Too bad we share the same atmosphere as China.

Speaking of China, just came across this:

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/1...arch-shows

That said, I agree that no one sane actually claimed that changing our lightbulbs would solve global warming.  But the plan was aggressively marketed; and manufacturers hugely over-hyped the amount of energy savings CFLs would bring.  I personally know people who smugly patted themselves on the back after converting all their lighting, as having done their part for stoping climate change.  Then they continued to drive their monster trucks, turn the heat up to 78, and the air conditioning down to 60.

The truth of the matter is that we will have to make multiple changes in all sorts of areas to really combat global warming.  And many informed people know quite well that we will have to spend a large portion of our remaining carbon budget in building up the infrastructure we will need going forward.

That I agree with.

We also, however, need to give more serious attention to mitigating the effects of global warming.
Even if we started doing absolutely everything right, tomorrow, it's going to take considerable time to reduce the momentum of the system, much less reverse it.  In the meantime we're likely to see at least 50-100 years of increasing sea levels, shifting growing seasons, etc., and all of the ramifications, thereof.

Maybe some people will be content to sit in their homes on the beach with water up to their arse for 50 years, but I'm thinking most aren't really going to want to deal with that.

If you are interested in the math, I can recommend the book Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming:

https://www.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehe...dpSrc=srch

https://www.drawdown.org/

Thanks; I'll look it up.

[Alan V]

I agree with your assessment that the short video was more of an advertisement than anything really informative.

However, I don't think anyone ever promised that we would solve global warming by changing our lightbulbs.  It was just one small step we could all take immediately.  Some people have done the math to make sure it made sense.

Well, I did the math -- wrote a paper on it, in fact -- and it didn't make sense.  Quite the opposite:  as incandescents were phased out, most of the light "bulb" supply in the US shifted from domestic production to China.  The Chinese were more than happy to supply our sudden demand for CFLs, by opening more factories and increasing production -- at one point they were building an average a one new coal-fired power plant per week to support the manufacturing boom.  
Too bad we share the same atmosphere as China.

Speaking of China, just came across this:

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/18/1...arch-shows

That said, I agree that no one sane actually claimed that changing our lightbulbs would solve global warming.  But the plan was aggressively marketed; and manufacturers hugely over-hyped the amount of energy savings CFLs would bring.  I personally know people who smugly patted themselves on the back after converting all their lighting, as having done their part for stopping climate change.  Then they continued to drive their monster trucks, turn the heat up to 78, and the air conditioning down to 60.

You make several excellent points.  We have to do a lot of different things as quickly as possible to make our transition away from fossil fuels meaningful, and we will no doubt burn a lot of our remaining carbon budget to get there.

A global carbon tax would go a long way to sort such issues out. That would provide incentives for companies to build up manufacturing in the U.S. again.

[Fake Messiah]

To me, this sounds a lot like an advertisement for this guy's business

Well what did you expect? This is the society we live in. It's not like the government has a project trying to solve this problem, it's all left to private entrepreneurs.

As far as converting vehicles to this new fuel, that concept has been around for decades."

Yeah, just look at Brazil.

Reminds me of the loudly touted move away from incandescent light bulbs.

Well, if we are talking about reminiscent things, this reminds me more of the electric car. I remember the last decade there was this documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" (2006) which was about this apparent conspiracy governments have against electric cars which showed people in the industry talking against electric cars and hobby people making their own electric cars that seemed to defy what these serious people were saying. Then I also remember watching in 2009 a German documentary called Strom im Tank - Wo bleibt das Elektroauto? which gathered some CEOs from car companies that all said how electric car is a pipe-dream and won't be viable for decades to come. That, yes, some companies have electric cars but it's all for showrooms and not for practical and let alone public use. And yet it was all already a year after first Tesla car came out - and yet even at that time nobody took it seriously. And even now those established car companies still struggle to offer an electric car that could match Tesla.

So it is hard to say what is going on with this carbon sucking energy. Technically it is possible, but since it is all left to private businesses we more or less have to take their word for it. If you want to be cynical you can be and if you want to be optimistic I guess it is too early. But should this all be abandoned? Or should there be government funded programs that perhaps have bigger chances of developing it?

Are there perhaps some other solutions? Like could Sahara be irrigated using mirror solar energy and planted with new rain-forest? It seems very much so that it was even featured in that new "Cosmos" TV series how some guy during ww1 was going to do it but then they melted his stuff to cannons.

There was also some other segment on Vice and are you optimistic about this?





I mean imagine if this amount of clean energy was available we could suck carbon from air and join it with hydrogen for almost no price at all - but again, it's all left to private businesses to develop.