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]

[Dr H]

[Alan V]

[Fake Messiah]