• grue@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    9 months ago

    It should be blatantly obvious just from basic thermodynamics that carbon capture cannot ever possibly be cheaper than not burning the fossil fuels in the first place.

  • doctorcrimson@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    9 months ago

    I think Carbon Capture is a legitimate and respectable area of research, but it’s fuckall for any practical use today or tomorrow and it should never be treated as a replacement for emission goals or the maintenance of critical ecosystems.

    • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      9 months ago

      Carbon capture is 100% useless until the day that we completely stop using carbon energy sources.

      Even if you use solar panels, that energy would better be used directly.

      • doctorcrimson@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        9 months ago

        There is a lot of things wrong with your statement but first and foremost is that Carbon Neutral is no longer a solution for our problems. Without a way to alleviate and regulate emissions already in the atmosphere the Human Race is still on a death march if it stopped producing today, much moreso 30 years from today. In addition to that, the sale of power to consumers can just increase consumption, and the infrastructure to move power and store power where it is needed is not necessarily there so for example Iceland’s Geothermal powered Carbfix may not be efficient on paper compared to magically selling the power off to a far off place: it is still an optimal nearly lossless solution given their circumstances.

        • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          9 months ago

          No, my statement is perfect correct.

          Starting carbon capture while there is still fossil fuel power generation is stupid at best. If you do it for research, sure, go nuts. Anything beyond is just making shit worse.

          If you have the energy and no where to get it to, that might be the one exception, perhaps but that’s it.

          If you do carbon capture with energy from CO2 power then you’re literally making it worse trying to make it better. If you use non CO2 power you’re still doing it wrong because of losses, that power would be better used to avoid others using CO2, you’d be more energy efficient that way.

          My point is that there are multiple companies currently doing carbon capture and its just stupid, its another one of those “look at me being smart! Pay me money!” schemes that want government money that would be better spent on replacing CO2 power sources instead.

          • doctorcrimson@lemmy.today
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            9 months ago

            The “one exception” just described the vast majority of the operations. There is no using the power to avoid using CO2 because that’s not how the power market works at all. If prices go down, consumption goes up. If you think some Carbon Capture facilities are a net zero effect aside from collecting data then that’s fine, if you think they’re a dumb thing to be spending resources on then that is fine, but you’re absolutely not correct to say it’s more efficient to put all that energy into a giant capitalist grid.

            • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              9 months ago

              I’m not saying that at all, I’m saying that it’s literally throwing a bucket of water on the floor and then mopping it up. Better not throw the bucket on the floor to begin with

              • doctorcrimson@lemmy.today
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                9 months ago

                Okay well the reality is people have been throwing water on the floor for 20 years and you don’t want us to clean it up.

                • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  9 months ago

                  No.

                  People have been throwing water on the floor for 200 years now, since the start of the industrial revolution, and right now a huge hose is connected to an enormous water tap and that hose dumps all the water straight on the floor.

                  You want to take a mop on that, I say that the mop is make ng it worse, because I need you to help me get rid of that hose.

                  Once the hose is gone, please by all means, mop away, we will need it, I fully agree. But while that hose is dumping water, I need you ) that is, the entire world) to first focus on stopping the water flow.

                  Edit: and just so you understand the severity of the situation: even if we spend 5-70% of the worlds energy budget on mopping 24/7, we’ll likely be mopping for the next CENTURIES to get rid of all the extra CO2 we dumped for the past 200 years.

      • frezik@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        9 months ago

        We will almost certainly need to remove carbon already in the atmosphere. Yes, we can wish getting serious about climate change one or two decades ago would have made that unnecessary, but we’re stuck with this choice now. Short of replacing every single carbon producing device tomorrow, that’s where we’re at.

        • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          9 months ago

          Yes we are and because of those choices back then, we are fucked. The next generations will be fucked worse with each generation. It will take centuries to clean this shit up if we actively work on it and spend over 50% of our energy budget on cleaning. If we do nothing it might never recover and be the end of us…

  • stoy@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    9 months ago

    Carbon capture will only work if the capturing and storage of said carbon uses less energy than it took to release said carbon.

    So far I have yet to see that.

  • vivadanang@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    9 months ago

    Yup. And they’ve been working on it for 20 years, and have yet to illustrate any scale that would effect the problem.

  • mhague@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    Search results are dependant on who is searching. But still:

    When you use DuckDuckGo the first result is wikipedia.

    When you use Google the first results are corporations.

    When you use Bing the first result is a corporation, then Wikipedia.

    Brave search gives an AI summary of carbon capture, an investment page, one of the corp pages, and then a breakdown on why ‘carbon capture’ is a misleading tactic.

    Edit: All this to say, maybe stop using Google.

  • TheSlad@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    9 months ago

    Carbon capture, Carbon footprint, Carbon offsetting…

    All things invented by oil and gas corporations to greenwash themselves in the public eye while they destroy the planet.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      9 months ago

      Good old offsetting.

      Where it’s OK to cheat on your wife, as long as you slip 5 quid to a guy in another country, and he’ll tell you he’s stayed celibate.

  • Mossy Feathers (They/Them)@pawb.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    9 months ago

    Okay? And how are we supposed to deal with the emissions currently in the atmosphere? Even if we abandon all technologies that generate greenhouse gases overnight, we still have shit in the atmosphere warming the planet.

    The most compelling strategy I’ve heard is biochar. You immolate organic matter in a medium like nitrogen so you don’t get carbon dioxide, and then you bury the char or use it as fertilizer. The char is relatively stable so shouldn’t create much in the way of carbon dioxide once it’s formed, and because you make it in an oxygen-less atmosphere you don’t get more greenhouse gases from making it.

    • bentropy@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      9 months ago

      Absolutely, I also think Biochar is very promising as one way to recapture atmospheric CO2 and to compensate further emissions.

      While I understood the production process to be a little different, the benefits of Biochar can’t be ignored.

      • low in energy consumption
      • low in recourse cost
      • very good scalable
      • no hidden science or process
      • the stored carbon can be used as a soil amendment
      • Mossy Feathers (They/Them)@pawb.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        9 months ago

        The process may be a bit more complex than I understood, but my understanding is that the gist of it is to “burn” plant stuff in a way that doesn’t create carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. One way of doing that is to use a chamber flooded with nitrogen or similar inert gas. No oxygen means carbon can’t bind to two oxygen atoms to create carbon dioxide.

        • Surdon@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          9 months ago

          I’m confused, how can you ‘burn’ anything without oxygen? Burn literally means to oxidize

  • Track_Shovel@slrpnk.netM
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    9 months ago

    Hey, look at us, we are planting 2 bn trees that are ALL THE SAME.

    None of the methods they present as solutions are even close to being viable. The ones that do look promising, however, are where they bind the CO2 to tailings.

      • MxM111@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        9 months ago

        You seriously need to ask? You do not want to actually understand how it may work, how much it may cost, how realistic it is? And instead you would use “energy companies = bad” and if they also want to participate in carbon capture, then it is ALL you need to know and reject the idea simply based on this. You do not see this as binary??

        • thisfro@slrpnk.net
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          9 months ago

          Companies = bad

          Or a bit more nuanced: Under a capitalist system, the first order of business is to make money. That does not have to be bad a priori, but with the given scenario of carbon capture, the meme points out the fact, that it is mostly greenwashing. Does that mean carbon capture is bad? No. Is it the best way to tackle climate change? Absolutely not. Does it make them money and delay actual action to combat the climate crisis? Yes.

          But that wouldn’t be a meme, would it?

          • MxM111@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            9 months ago

            Making a meme does not mean that you have to do it as a one-bit stupidity. That’s not a valid excuse.

            There is no single technology that will tackle climate change, it will/does require combined approach and carbon capture quite possible have a role there to play too. And as for companies making money, they do make monies on solar, wind, electrical cars, and they will make money on carbon capture, hopefully. If there is no money to be made, then it would be a very good indication that the idea is dead on arrival.