Anthropogenic Climate Change

Elon Musk has announced that he is donating $100 million toward a prize for "best carbon capture technology". This appears to be a teaser for an announcement coming next week.

Leaving aside our feelings for Musk himself, do we think this could come to something? It's a lot of money.

I still don't see how such a thing could become cost effective. I mean, solar panels generate power and so money. How do you get money out of carbon capture?

Maybe if you could convert the carbon into something useful that also lasts a long time?

The idea is a good one, and it's certainly a better way to spend money than on his idiotic colonization fantasy, but I'm not sure if he'll award it well.

Still, it's a good move.

X3 Get governments/the UN to pay you to engage in carbon capture and/or sell carbon capture machines to people who’d like the address climate change?

Also, depending on where the money is coming from it might not be a profit-driven endeavour.

While I applauded this, I will admit to snickering at a response I saw suggesting that someone send him a tree.

That’s a good point actually, a CO 2 to Oxygen conversion machine could be used not just to get rid of CO 2 but also produce Oxygen in a controlled environment where it can be easily converted into space fuel.

Edited by Silasw on Jan 22nd 2021 at 8:08:08 PM

'xcept for the part that CO₂ -> O₂ is an endothermic reaction so it consumes energy and thus money. And it's mandated by the laws of nature so it can't be innovated away. And I don't think that "someone else will pay" makes an effective financing strategy.

Edited by SeptimusHeap on Jan 22nd 2021 at 9:13:50 PM

“Someone will want to pay me to do it” is behind a lot financial strategy, so I wouldn’t say it’s inherently unreasonable.

It's widely believed that some form of direct carbon capture is necessary to mitigate climate change at this point. We simply don't have enough time to wait for governments to cut emissions nor any assurance that even drastic and immediate cuts would slow things down quickly enough.

As for who would pay for it, if we can develop cost-effective methods, there might be a lot of takers.

Well, to deploy at scale will certainly require government underwriting, but I can see private support for the research and development phase. But a question: I thought carbon sequestration technology was well understood?

I've seen some videos about making a cement substitute with the carbon I think?

Edited by alekos23 on Jan 22nd 2021 at 2:10:30 PM

Not an expert, but AFAIK most existing methods involve taking the carbon byproducts from large fossil fuel/hydrocarbon facilities and either 1) injecting them into suitable underground spaces (like vacant natural gas veins) or 2) chemically processing them into inert liquid byproducts. There's a lot of space to innovate there, from picking up carbon emission from a wider range of sources to generating profitable end products as an incentive for large-scale adoption.

That sounds like it might prevent or reduce new carbon from reaching the environment, but I think we need a method for actively removing carbon already released into the atmosphere, in order to slow or reverse global warming.

Would the captured carbon be usable as biochar or other kinds of fertilizer, or am I missing something?

If we're referring to the concept in general, then there are many potential uses for the carbon. If we're referring to Musk's offer, which we should be finding out more about this week, I don't think he is specifying what exactly should be done with it.

I've already seen some research trying to create jet fuel out of CO2, which is promising. Depending on how energy-intensive the conversion process is, it could possibly help commercial air travel become a carbon-neutral industry.

Edited by danime91 on Jan 26th 2021 at 7:09:35 AM

We already know how to create hydrogen and methane (natural gas) from air and water. Hydrogen (H₂) production just requires water electrolysis, which is energy intensive, and then you need to compress and store the hydrogen, which costs even more energy. Methane (CH₄) is produced by catalyzing hydrogen and carbon dioxide in the Sabatier process, also costing energy, but it's less difficult to store.

Jet fuel is basically kerosene, a more complex hydrocarbon molecule. We know how to synthesize it (with significant energy input), so it's not completely unreasonable to think that this could become a sustainable process. It's also really easy to store.

Interestingly, the chemical composition of kerosene is not precisely defined because it can come from a variety of sources with different carbon and hydrogen fractions. From a quick search it ranges from C₁₂H₂₆ to C₁₅H₃₂.

All of this implies a vast expansion of renewable energy supply that we can then turn around and put into fuel synthesis.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 26th 2021 at 10:37:08 AM

Sorry, did the law of conservation of energy get suspended when I wasn't looking? CO₂ isn't going to become a source of energy anywhere soon. It may become a carrier of energy if you want to use electricity to create jet fuel out of it, sure, but not a source thereof.

Increased tropical cyclone risk to coasts because of coastward shifts in tropical cyclone paths.

The energy to do this would come from renewable sources. That's the core idea.

The reason that's a thing is because of the difficulty of designing an efficient electrical aircraft. If we wean ourselves off of mining more fossil fuels, then the fuel we still need could come from captured carbon.

Edited by DeMarquis on Feb 2nd 2021 at 10:44:40 AM

Reuters: Elon Musk puts up $100 million for global carbon reduction competition

Remember that we were promised more details of this plan in February? Well, it looks like it's going to be run by XPrize. Full details will be released April 22 and the contest will run through Earth Day, 2025.

Eighteen months into the contest, the top fifteen teams will receive $1 million each. Upon completion, the first, second, and third place teams will get $50, $20, and $10 million respectively.

I'm cautiously positive, this could be a worthy endeavor.

The eternal pessimist over here thinks that most findings will either be unfeasible or dangerous.

A somewhat different tack: A study that examines how the UK Committee on Climate Change - an advisory body on climate change - influences public policy. Apparently it ain't a mere rubber stamp.

Inspired by the aforementioned XPrize announcement, Joe Scott, of the famous YouTube channel Joe Scott, discusses 7 Ways To Pull Carbon From The Atmosphere, along with the pitfalls of each.

Before starting, he notes that many people oppose carbon capture because they think it'll be a license for fossil fuel companies to ignore the problems they're causing, and while there's some truth to this, we need to both reduce emissions and increase capture.

• Planting trees: The Earth can support a lot more trees than we currently have, but it'll take decades for them to grow, they'll use a lot of that land we kind of want for other things, they'll transpire a lot of water vapor (a warming effect), and they'll decrease the Earth's albedo (a warming effect). Oh, and we're busy killing trees, not growing more, so that's a thing.
• Cover crops: As part of good farming practices, cover crops sequester carbon in the topsoil. Problem is that we're starting from behind much like trees.
• Enhanced rock weathering: Pulverize silicate rocks and spread them over topsoil. They absorb carbon dioxide and enrich the soil; the runoff may help with ocean acidification. Problem is that this requires a large amount of energy to break up and distribute basalt and its long-term effects are uncertain. And it's super expensive. Mineralization in general is a promising sequestration idea.
• Seaweed and algae: Promoting the spread of ocean surface plants could lock enormous amounts of carbon away; it can also be used as biofuel. There are concerns about the effects it can have on ocean ecosystems. Bioreactor algae is an even more efficient sequestration technique and can give us raw material for things like plastics.
  • Deep ocean sequestration: Pump CO₂ into the ocean depths, forming "lakes" of dissolved carbon dioxide. This is an aside in the video and I have no idea how we'd pull something like that off.
• Direct air carbon capture: We've seen prototypes of these capture devices that look like racks of air conditioners. Many companies are working on these. While energy consumption is the main problem, there are some new techniques under development that could dramatically improve the efficiency.
• Biomass with carbon capture and sequestration: While CCS in general is a mitigation technique, BCCS involves a combination of biomass fuel with CCS to be net carbon negative. There are concerns about how environmentally friendly it is.
• Carbon-absorbing construction materials: Cement is the killer here, responsible for 8 percent of global emissions all by itself. New types of cement are under development that either use carbon dioxide as a binding agent or are made of silicates that naturally absorb it.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 1st 2021 at 8:23:23 AM

Imma comment on some points:

• Well, decrease albedo rather than increase, but yeah. I've written a lengthy Wikipedia article about what happened the last time the Sahara wasn't a desert so I'll defer folks to that. One particular problem is that in some parts of the world (the Americas, mainly) a Green Sahara leads to drought and expanded tropical wetlands lead to higher methane emissions.
• Same as above, essentially.
• Seems like it'd be unfeasible for energetic reasons. Even if it is, I want to see some research on the implications.
• I believe that this is known as "deliberate iron fertilization" or somesuch.
  • I'd imagine stability might be an issue. Plus you are pumping stuff underwater so there is the energetic limit again.
• Again with the energetic aspect. Besides, I am concerned about what would happen if too much carbon dioxide were to be removed.
• That sounds like a more complicated version of #1 and #2
• That's not a sequestration measure since the lime is obtained from carbonates by releasing the carbon dioxide bound in them; thus it can only compensate for that emission source, and only partially so.

Miami Says It Can Adapt to Rising Seas. Not Everyone Is Convinced. Now I know that people don't retreat in the face of sea level rise, but Venice was planned from the get-go to be in water whereas here you are doing it after the fact and what about hurricanes?