I didn't read the article but I did scan it and I saw this...
Oil and gas companies lobbied for the direct air capture money to be included in the law, arguing that the world could continue to burn fossil fuels if it had a way to clean up their planet-warming pollution.
I would like 1.2 billion dollars to investigate the effect of slaughtering exxon executives on the emission of greenhouse gasses. Our thesis is that if we kill enough exxon executives the rate of greenhouse gas emission will slow.
That’s only helpful after you stop burning fossil fuels, you absolute dipshits. It’s hardly a thing that exists at all, but even if we did manage to invent it it would take more energy to take a ton of carbon out of the air than is produced by burning fossil fuels that produce that ton of carbon. If you’re still using fossil fuels for energy, direct capture just makes things worse
By some of the experimental prototypes, it’s something like 2/3 of the CO2 absorption is just the power to run it and the remaining third is removing extant CO2. People here are overly skeptical about the capabilities as a reaction to liberal media’s over enthusiasm, which prevents finding the real dunks:
- current experimental CO2 capture uses quaternary ammonia, which smells like rotting fish and will prevent DAC systems from being installed in population centers (or at least near rich people)
- the proposed site for this is in Wyoming, where all of those industrial emissions definitely come from
You say that, but when the federal government does an execution it ends up costing something like $2M.
Most bourgeoisie do the same crimes, legal fees don't need to be duplicated much
All the prison contractors need to get their slice of the blood pie before anything can move forward
IIRC a lot of that is the cost of the legal system and because they insist on using absolutely barbarous and ineffective methods. The guillotine is as fool-proof as it gets, and there will be no lengthy trials for billionaires.
600 billionaire for 1.2 billion dollars is a decent deal, since their imaginary capital (stocks, etc.) would mostly devalue but they do still have material holdings that can be taken.
externalization of abstract/hidden costs is a major problem with the liberal logic of private property. the value contained within a unit of oil isn't just the labor power used to extract/refine it, but also the labor power necessary to deal with the consequences of its use. the consequences are experienced on a social level but ownership and profit on a personal/corporate level.
That means they’ll stop polluting so it can work right?
That means they’ll stop polluting so it can work, right?
Law of thermodynamics? Never heard of it, sounds like leftist propaganda to me
"The degrowth left is unable to imagine a radical alternative because of their capitalist realism"
The laws of thermodynamics would only be an issue if we were trying to convert CO2 back into oxygen and carbon. Even if you were using fossil fuel power, there's no (thermodynamics issue) with the idea that it would take less energy to capture CO2 and store it somewhere than the CO2 released in that energy's production.
there's no (thermodynamics issue) with the idea that it would take less energy to capture CO2 and store it somewhere than the CO2 released in that energy's production.
That's the issue, we don't have the technology to do that at scale, the law of thermodynamics looks far away at a micro level, but at the macro it teleports behind you and sucker punches you
It's all about scalability and its relationship to the law
I'd be less skeptical if they were proposing to do this by retrofitting carbon capture onto industrial plants, major electrical generators, and IC engines. but expecting it work by just exposing it to the atmosphere I think underscores a misunderstanding of just how much air there is and how much time it would take to make an appreciable dent on the excess CO2.
Builds all of their factories there, then gets those goods shipped back to them, THEN have the nerve to blame pollution on China.
Maybe that's why the right wants to oppress women, so they stop holding up so damn much of it
I love running the air conditioner and the heater at the same time too
The Energy Department projects that together the two plants will create 4,800 jobs and remove more than two million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking half a million gasoline-powered cars off the road.
Are gasoline powered commuter vehicles really at the center of the climate problem? I was under the impression that most emissions came from the commercial and military sectors.
Hot take: Scrubbing carbon out of the air is good, and we should absolutely be learning how to practically deploy that technology. It may not pan out, but we’d be fools not to pursue it. You can do lots with carbon dioxide if you have enough clean energy, including synthesize non-fossil carbon fuels. When draft animals and water mills powered the most advanced human industries, the technological implications of fossil fuel combustion were unthinkably distant. It is not impossible that we stand in a similar position in relation to the implications of fusion power. Techno-optimism can be used as a conservative political force, but the optimism itself is not always unwarranted. If people are able to develop useful and helpful technologies under capitalism within the imperial core, the technologies themselves can be useful despite the social relations driving their development.
The Energy Department projects that together the two plants will create 4,800 jobs and remove more than two million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking half a million gasoline-powered cars off the road.
I looked it up and about 50 billion tons of CO2 are released each year. They're patting themselves on their backs for their plan to reduce CO2 emissions by a whole 0.04%. Climate change has been solved, everyone!
Ha that’s actually a lot higher than I’d have guessed. The Times’s centering of personal vehicles in their explanation both exaggerates the direct impact of this project, and perpetuates the narrative of climate change being a crisis of people’s personal habits.
And they're 100% going to use this as an excuse to not scale back the burning of fossil fuels in the slightest. Because they'll try literally anything else before going after capital.
Edit: wait nvm, they already directly said that lmao
Oil and gas companies lobbied for the direct air capture money to be included in the law, arguing that the world could continue to burn fossil fuels if it had a way to clean up their planet-warming pollution.
dammit where's our guillotine emojis when you need them
I think on the Internet we call that “mask off”. Notice that they use the term “fossil fuels” instead of “carbon fuels”. They have no vision of participating in an energy revolution that replaces fossil fuels. I could swear there was a trans flag guillotine emoji.
Are gasoline powered commuter vehicles really at the center of the climate problem? I was under the impression that most emissions came from the commercial and military sectors.
The thing is there isn’t really any “center” of the climate problem. It’s a billion different things. Just about every part of the global economy is at least a little bit underwritten by fossil fuels.
Yeah the commercial and military sectors contribute a lot, but not overwhelmingly so, and also “commercial” isn’t even that useful of a category since it groups a lot of different things together (it could mean production of anything from medical equipment to children’s toys).
This has a good chart showing how diffuse it all is: https://www.vox.com/2014/10/22/18093114/where-do-greenhouse-gas-emissions-come-from
yeah carbon capture is good as long its not literally powered by fossils, the real challenge is fighting for it to be sequestered, not 'neutrally' re-released, or to drive/excuse further expansion of fossil industries
but this initiative probably will be firmly on the side of doing those bad things, and probably hooked to a coal plant for maximum irony
What's the difference between fossil fuels and "non-fossil carbon fuels"? Is there some other way to get energy out of carbon than combustion? Also how does carbon factor into fusion tech, when IIRC fusion uses hydrogen as fuel (technically deuterium and tritium)?
We can store energy as fuel by using catalysts to make methanol from CO2 and hydrogen. The methanol burns fine, but it can be further catalyzed into gasoline. Right now most free hydrogen is made by burning natural gas, and a lot of CO2 is generated by burning fossil fuels. But it’s possible to obtain hydrogen though water electrolysis, and CO2 from the atmosphere. These processes of non-fossil carbon fuel synthesis take lots and lots of energy.
Looking at the lithium battery phenomenon from mine to landfill, it doesn’t seem to me that it’s a very good idea to use that technology for vehicles. Lead acid batteries are great for fork trucks, where the extra weight is a feature rather than a drawback. Grid electric is just better than everything else if you’re in the grid. For things like tractors, rural service vehicles, logging equipment, etc., The superior energy density of carbon fuel just makes it really practical. Also internal combustion engines are made of easily recyclable metals, and our infrastructure for recycling those metals is already in place.
I work in food processing, not in the energy sector. I’m not a futurist hype guy or a chemical engineer. But I find this stuff really really interesting, and it’s my admittedly inexpert opinion that non-fossil carbon fuel combustion has a place in a future where earth’s climate is managed socially.
Btw we already have a massive amount of internal combustion vehicles laying around, but the capitalist auto industry would much rather sell you an entire new vehicle than convert an old one to use another fuel/energy source.
Invest in sky vacuums
