
We need to take CO2 out of the sky – an overview of climate tech - sethbannon
https://www.orbuch.com/carbon-removal/
======
acd
We need to stop consuming like there is no tomorrow. This is driven by
advertisement convincing consumers they should buy products they may not need.
Secondly we need to make products which lasts a life time. I see root cause
that we need to remodel the economy from market economy consumerism to a
circular sustainable economy. Most current economists is saying expand expand
expand, but that increases co2 levels due to increased energy consumption of
manufacturing which we cannot sustain. Thus we must use things which are long
term sustainable and circulate and repair these things.

Remove co2 out of the sky is also a good thing. The best thing I can think of
then is to lower the temperature of the earth because then the oceans will act
as a Co2 buffer sink. Think like carbon beverage, when you cool cans during
production for putting carbon in them you cool them. If you heat a can they
release stored co2. The same process with the oceans but at a much bigger
scale.

~~~
philbarr
How would this "circular sustainable economy" work?

People tend to think of there being only two versions of the economy available
- the government tells us what stuff to make, or free markets determine what
we make.

We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies to
make things re-usable. Currently the only way to make more money is to make
and sell more stuff.

~~~
edanm
> People tend to think of there being only two versions of the economy
> available - the government tells us what stuff to make, or free markets
> determine what we make.

Then people are wrong. Almost no economy is purely one of the other - even the
most "free market" economies have lots of government regulation, government
spending makes up huge parts of their economy, etc.

> We would need a way of incentivising re-use, and of incentivising companies
> to make things re-usable. Currently the only way to make more money is to
> make and sell more stuff.

Totally doable in a completely free market way. You tax externalities.

This is basic stuff - economists generally agree that if you set up a carbon
tax, people will use less carbon.

~~~
philbarr
The OP implied there was a third way. I didn't mean only one way or another.

------
ComputerGuru
What the article leaves to the conclusion is what needs to be stated up front
and center: it's virtually impossible to do this efficiently, cheaply, or
effectively because there's _so little_ CO2 in the air, meaning

a) adding even a little bit more greatly affects the CO2 levels b) with a
global ppm of ~400, it basically means that you need to filter 2500 molecules
of air to get a single molecule of CO2, and that's assuming perfect binding
and effectiveness. There is no magic powder we can mix that'll cause CO2 to
precipitate out of the atmosphere and fall to the ground like snow; it's a
grueling _energy intensive_ process to filter that out of the air around us.

~~~
privateSFacct
It only has to do it cheaply now because there is NO COST to putting CO2 into
the air.

Why are people surprised that if something is free (pumping CO2 into air)
demand for it is high?

You are telling me that doing a charge of let's say $10 - $100/ton of CO2
wouldn't have a DRAMATIC impact on emissions? Is $10 - $100/ton too little for
a supposed climate emergency?

There is so much funding and lawmaking and finger pointing and shaming - but
still - dumping CO2 into the atmosphere if free and dumping remains high and
people pretend to be surprised.

On energy: CA curtails (turns off) solar (and wind) power because there is not
enough demand. In 2019 CA had 921,000 MWhs of curtailment.

Let's start by charging something for CO2 emissions.

~~~
threeseed
You mean a Carbon Tax ?

The tax that applies to every single business, every single product, every
single process, everything. The one that causes every single vested interest
to come out of the woodwork and join together to make it politically toxic.

We tried this in Australia. It has killed every government that even dared to
discuss it. And politically it is utterly impossible to defend e.g. "Carbon
tax that raises power prices for pensioners".

~~~
baq
don't call it tax, call it carbon dividend and give the collected money away
to citizens.

~~~
lukifer
This is the secret. The average citizen would actually come out ahead
financially, making it a progressive tax, as opposed to the de-facto
_regressive_ taxes that have received popular opposition in other attempts.

"The Largest Public Statement of Economists in History":
[https://clcouncil.org/economists-
statement/](https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/)

~~~
sampo
> The average citizen would actually come out ahead financially

For a while. But if the carbon tax works and society switches to clean energy,
then there is no more emissions and no more dividends pay to the citizens.

~~~
lukifer
I suspect there will be _always_ be use cases for fossil fuels; for instance,
even when 99% of all cars are electric, I wouldn't want to deny auto
enthusiasts muscle cars and the like, if they're willing to pay for the
societal externality. The carbon tax can continue to go up to cover these
cases.

Moreover, I think the same model can apply to other negative externalities
(aka, Pigovian Tax [0]). But to the extent that the public will someday
complain that their carbon dividend is going down: (a) I call that a good
problem to have, and (b) because the collective action problem now points the
other direction, there's no individual incentive to over-consume such that the
dividend goes up again.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax)

------
anonsivalley652
Net negative emissions must be a global goal within 5 years because this is a
_climate change emergency._ It doesn't mean _no emissions,_ it means deeply
_net negative._ Even going crazy to get to zero emissions, it doesn't change
the inconvenient fact that an excess of GHGs are already in the air.
Sequestration (CCS) and solar shades (SRM) are the primary, big-$tretch
approaches that are most readily-apparent to moderating insolation. CCS seems
much more doable than sending a giant blackout curtain into space or spraying
tons of SO2 into the air to return as acid rain.

Here's the thing about CCS: direct air capture is like a junior engineer's
naive, brute-force solution because it's way too expensive and not scalable
for the several teratons that need to be sequestered.

Bio CCS remediation approaches are superior because they use biology to do
more of the work for less resources. Kelp, phytoplankton (including ferrous
seeding) and other ocean-based CC are the natural solutions to lock-up carbon.
There's a massive kelp forest right now off the Yucatan in Mexico stretching
nearly to Africa. Harvesting, expanding and fertilizing such an ecosystem with
an army of specialized ships seems like a better plan for tackling it. Such a
plan would still require assuring the Sequestration in CCS such that biomass
sinks to deep ocean trenches OR harvesting, compacting and pumping
underground. If we can manage and offset GHGs down to a sane level at some
point in the future, then it should be an immutable prime-directive that GHGs
cannot be emitted without first purchasing or accomplishing an equivalent
assured CCS.

PS: As luck would have it, I happen to subscribe to several climatology and
related academics on various video platforms, including Paul Beckwith, who
does a good job of summarizing the latest research and underscoring events and
trends. EDIT: [https://paulbeckwith.net](https://paulbeckwith.net)

~~~
galangalalgol
Ferrous sulphate seeding also produces kelp mats much more reflective of light
than water is.

------
AncientTree
My biggest concern about CO2 is the cognitive impact it has on humans - at
levels 800ppm and higher, mental performance is impacted. It will take a while
for the atmosphere to reach this level (hopefully it never does), but it is
common inside houses and offices. As atmospheric CO2 rises, it becomes more
difficult to ventilate buildings, and human mental performance degrades.

In terms of geoengineering, it seems like these two are our best bets:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection)
to prevent runaway warming. As a side effect, the dispersed sunlight helps
plant growth. Solar power generation is negatively impacted though.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization)
to sequester CO2. As a side effect, marine life and fish stocks would be
boosted by the greater plankton food supply.

In any case it seems absolutely bonkers that we are still selling fossil-
fueled-vehicles and building coal power plants when we clearly have the
technology and capability to replace both of them.

~~~
cs02rm0
Have you got a reference for the 800ppm bit? Not being provocative - it'd be
genuinely useful to me.

~~~
AncientTree
There are multiple studies on the issue, and another user linked to Wikipedia.

I'd personally recommend buying a CO2 monitor:
[https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32887534678.html?spm=a2g0o.p...](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32887534678.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.ad21e803I1BRqT&algo_pvid=a6f15dbf-97bc-4346-a5f3-9efd5a46e35e&algo_expid=a6f15dbf-97bc-4346-a5f3-9efd5a46e35e-0&btsid=0ab50f0815827071300405942e7277&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_)

------
jokoon
I don't like those sorts of articles because they dismiss the idea of reducing
CO2 emissions, while only talking about hypothetical technologies.

I don't think it's a good idea to wait for such undeveloped technology to
mature, because the clock is already ticking. It is still much more important
to reduce emissions now.

What would be much better, for example, is developing smaller cars. I would
rather see society organize for a voluntary reduction of co2, because
capturing co2 seems like scientifically too fastidious.

Also, I'm european and I tend to be very pessimistic when looking at US co2
emissions per capita.

~~~
phtrivier
I think the author actually agrees with you, per the article itself:

    
    
      "there are two general approaches to keep warming to below a certain level:
    
      - Reducing emissions
      - Removing previous emissions from the sky
    
      If you remember one thing from this piece, it should be that we need to do both. 
      Gone are the days where optimistic emissions reductions kept us below a 2-degree warming target."

~~~
jokoon
Except reducing emissions seems much more doable, safe and simple. It's just
politically difficult. I have little hope that technology will be able to
capture co2 in a manner that will be sufficient.

I don't like those sorts of techs because people will brandish them as a
solution, while it's highly unlikely they will help at all.

~~~
HunOL
Changing minds and habits of billions of people is more simple and feasible?
For me it's ridiculous. Any technological solution looks way better for me.

~~~
jokoon
if no solutions is available and food security is threatened, minds and habits
don't matter.

------
tempestn
I'm interested to see what comes of this:
[https://projectvesta.org/](https://projectvesta.org/)

~~~
ProjectVesta
Hi thanks for the mention! We are available to answer any questions. And we'll
have a new version of the website out soon with some updates.

~~~
tempestn
Thanks. I actually just took a look around there and was disappointed there
wasn't a 'News' section or something like that, so glad to hear there will be
updates soon!

I do have one other question: is there any chance you'll partner with a
Canadian charity, or other ex-US charities for that matter, to accept tax-free
donations from other countries?

------
the6threplicant
One of the problems I see with CO2 sequestration is that it will be a nice way
for companies to suck at the teat of taxpayers the world over.

I'm sure Halliburton-like companies have a 3 step plan to be right at the
front of the money firehose when governments are forced to reduce CO2 or face
even bigger costs (both financially and politically) in the coming decades.

~~~
hnarn
This assumes that the only way a project like this could be pulled off would
be for the state to open a "money firehose" and spray it onto buckets held by
private corporations. Is there any reason it couldn't, in theory, be a state
controlled venture? Especially for something as seemingly basic as "planting
trees", I don't see where the corporate expertise comes in that the state
could never replicate.

"The state will handle this" is not only a legitimate structure in
totalitarian dictatorships, it's used across the developed western world for
most public services.

------
tito
Check out Ryan's Negative Emissions reading list:
[https://www.orbuch.com/nets-reading-list](https://www.orbuch.com/nets-
reading-list)

"Carbon Removal 101":
[http://bit.ly/carbonremoval-101](http://bit.ly/carbonremoval-101) (I helped
write this one)

Covers a reading list, accelerators, conveners, platforms, newsletters, and
funders.

Index of startups working on negative emissions:
[http://www.airminers.org](http://www.airminers.org)

~~~
tito
A friend suggested sharing "Carbon Removal 101" on coda.io, so here's a link:
[https://coda.io/d/Carbon-Removal-Reading-
List_dpKG8YbDWIn/Ca...](https://coda.io/d/Carbon-Removal-Reading-
List_dpKG8YbDWIn/Carbon-Removal-101_susMs#_luX2T)

------
pstrateman

      1. Plant trees
      2. Cut down trees
      3. Sink trees to the bottom of a great lake

~~~
nullc
If you do the math, this essentially doesn't work out. :( Trees are far too
slow, even if you have a good way to lock up the carbon once the trees capture
it.

For an intuitive understanding, consider: Our surplus of CO2 comes (mostly)
from burning fossil fuel that took millions of years for the original plant
life to accumulate.

~~~
sliken
Yes, but forests capture carbon quickly until the average age of the trees
starts increasing. So zero to 50 years is good, but after that things really
slow down. The amount of wood becomes relatively constant.

So slowly, very slowly leaves fall/get eaten by bugs, break down, and get
absorbed by new trees. But there is a net gain, just a very slow one. Then
things like continents collide, mountain ranges come and go, and significant
biomass gets buried and under pressure and time turns into oil/gas.

So for scale we could cut down all trees and bury it and take 638 gigatonnes
out of our ecosystem. Not sure of the average tree age, but assuming it was
replanted we could likely repeat that every 20-30 years.

The annual oil consumption looks to be around 36 billion barrels. Each weighs
around 300 pounds. If my conversion is right that's about 4.9 Gigatonne.

So burying all trees every 30 years would be about 21.2 gigatonne a year or
enough to offset all oil consumption _AND_ decrease our current levels to pre-
industrial levels.

Or we could just use less oil.

~~~
nullc
Consider the scale of what you're describing now: cutting down and burying all
trees on earth every 30 years.

We could certainly _burn_ all of them every 30 years, but that wouldn't help.
The figure you need is the marginal capture after the emissions from the
process.

Wikipedia says our current emissions from fossil fules and cement production
is estimated at 10GtC (not absurd compared to your numbers, since you count
only crude oil).

So restating, if somehow without adding any new carbon buried _all_ the
vegetation on earth every 30 years, we'd remove 21 GtC per year or a net
reduction of 11. To get back to pre-industrial levels it would still take 34
years even ignoring the >1000 GtC currently in the ocean surface that would
come out of solution and fight the reduction. (I have no idea how to setup the
diff eqs for solving for the ocean contributions...)

The fact that an emission free removal and replacement of _all_ vegetation of
earth would still take a long time is basically my point around "planting
trees" not being a sufficient plan. :)

Not that planting trees is bad, but solving this is going to take some mixture
of reduction and magic (presumably both the political and technological kind).

~~~
sliken
Heh, well I just wanted an idea on scale. It doesn't take millions of years,
but less than 100.

Certainly it wouldn't likely be 100% every 30 years, but 3.3% every year. As
far as geo-engineering significant climate change this looks like one of the
easier approaches actually.

Of course it's much more feasible with the continued migration towards solar,
wind, hydro, and related.

Sadly I think Nuclear got the short end of the stick for mostly political
reasons. Things like putting a nuke plant in a known tsunami zone, without
protection, because of political lobbying.

So all in all, agreed.

------
shafyy
One danger of promoting carbon sequestration is that people might think that
they can emit as much as they want, since its' going to be removed from the
atmosphere anyways. More dangerous yet, lobbies pushing this way of thinking
to the public and trying to get away with more emissions: "Yes we are
extracting oil, but we also spend X$ each year for carbon sequestration.

This is a little bit how these lobbies have been pushing changing personal
habits "turn of the water while brushing your teeth, don't use plastic
straws". Or also CO2 compensation (or absolution as I call it).

Not to say that we shouldn't invest in sequestration, but just need to be
careful with the phrasing. This article does a good job, saying BOTH need to
happen (reduction of emission and sequestration).

------
LatteLazy
We need to do lots of things. But we are not going to. Discussing the tech
ignores that this is fundamentally a political and economic problem...

~~~
snarf21
I agree. We need to move to more renewables like solar but that is just for
the future, burning less CO2 in 30 years from now. The warming will continue
to happen, technology can't stop it. The population will grow to 9B but the
global growth rate keeps dropping. This planet can't support that many people,
no matter how clean we use energy. Look at all the water resources and food
resources we are burning and the biodiversity we are killing so people can eat
and make a living. It feels like 4B is about as much as we can sustain. The
population will continue to drop and the places where the birth rate is high,
we need education and empowerment of women to drive the birth rate down to
more western rates. This is where we should be spending money, not a machine
to pull CO2 out of the air. Nature already knows how to do that quite
efficiently but it will take time. We'll have a few hundred years of
consequences but it will eventually fix itself.

------
Hermel
I’m paying Climeworks 1000$ to remove a ton of CO2 every month. Not very cost
effective, but a start.

~~~
adrianN
You could pay $100 and buy two tons of coal every month and $900 to bury it
somewhere.

~~~
paulcarroty
Buying coal isn't effective by design - you'll only encourage market to
produce more & more coal.

~~~
adrianN
You raise the price for people who want to burn it.

------
nnq
Look, it's cool that we consider all these fancy solutions, _but we had and
still have a more obvious solution of pricing-externalities into things_ \- _a
proper carbon-tax and recycling-taxes for plastics high enough to make them
undesirable, increase gas (and coal) prices enough to make electric everything
look cheap and maybe even nuclear power look cheaper in the new comparison!_

Stop pending the argument that "it's politically impossible / toxic / whatever
/ unenforceable etc.", that's a dumb argument.

 _Just take politics out of the equation! Or more precisely, take "democratic
choice" out of this particular policy decision!_

If countries amend their constitutions to disallow any party or individual not
in support of this to even be part of any election, then this particular
aspect would simply not appear in political campaigns. Have "dark room" deals
in most countries of the world put this into place and move on.

And once the major international players are on board, for any country not
playing the same game, just kindly point the missiles at them!

 _In the end, most national governments would approve of such taxation because
they 'll have the opportunity to formulate it in their own terms and slightly
increase national budgets (maybe investing a bit more in the military and
gaining an advantage over their neighbors that don't do it... ugly but any
incentive in the right direction helps). And multinational corporations would
also not mind it much if it's done across the board, without favoring
anyone... and actually corporations could be "hired to enforce the tax" in
more advanced schemas, offering opportunities to profit while punishing
misbehaving countries._

~~~
tehjoker
"Just take politics out of the equation! Or more precisely, take "democratic
choice" out of this particular policy decision!"

This is such a scary sentence! The problem of climate change has been cause
precisely by a lack of democracy. The military, the large oil refiners, the
design of our infrastructure has been deeply affected by corporate priorities
at the expense of a manipulated populace. We have climate denial in the US in
large part because of corporate propaganda (and the fact that if people's oil
sector jobs disappear there's no organized democratic approach to help them,
they're at the mercy of the private sector).

Furthermore, real democracy would include all the people affected by climate
change that didn't cause it! The people of the Marshal islands should
certainly have a say in how we approach this problem. Saying we don't need
democracy is an extremely America centric approach.

In the circles I'm in, we talk a lot about eco-facsism, which is the way the
ecological crisis will be used to promote fascist policies with a green tinge.
These include blaming immigrants, cracking down on poor people, and denying
democracy in favor of the technocratic actors who caused the problem in the
first place.

We need the opposite! We need complete renewal of democracy and democratic
practice in order to solve these problems. This idea scares the powerful
because solving this crisis necessarily requires democratic control of major
parts of the economy, which is a threat to the existing beneficiaries of the
economic system.

~~~
nnq
You don't have "democratic choice" for "how to better improve effectiveness of
racial segregation", or how to better "discipline unruly women"... we know
that some things like discrimination and violence are _BAD_ , so we've written
into law that _they are not allowed._

 _In all the civilized world we 've taken certain really BAD options off-the-
political-democratic-choice menu, because we don't want them to even be
considered!_

Maybe we can do the same with things that are are really bad for the
environment, like _not having eco-externalities priced into things!_ This can
be done _without killing democracy as a whole._ You cut a finger to save the
whole organism! Maybe we should start seeing the environment as an extension
of our bodies and treat violence against it similarly to how we treat physical
violence - take it off the f menu!

Not doing this would only make things worse and, yeah, sooner or later some
"(pseudo)eco-fascist" group would spring up and find groups to blame (for the
f-up resulting from people not acting because they couldn't find a
democratically-acceptable solution) and manage to sell hate well enough to get
in power. And at that point everyone will be double-screwed: you'll have
wrecked environment + "eco"-fascists!

------
beefield
TL;DR: We need dirt cheap energy.

It would have a couple of benefits: First CCS would be feasible. Second if
(non-fossil) energy is dirt cheap, nobody bothers digging fossil energy
sources from ground. Third, there are always more fun things available when
energy is cheap vs when energy is expensive) So, keep on pushing solar and try
to make nuclear competitive with something like small modular reactors, they
are pretty much only ones with massive enough potential to properly disrupt
energy markets.

~~~
newyankee
I mean if so called wonder materials like Graphene can actually be harnessed
to make new generation ultra cheap solar cells may be something might happen.

What we need actually is a Global Manhattan project which focuses on something
like the 100 most promising approaches and builds and tests prototypes. This
should be funded both by Govts. and the rich individuals. I think sharing of
intellectual property can do a lot of good in solving the Carbon free energy
conundrum and then getting it cheap enough for everything else. My guess is
that a project like this can deliver solution(s) 10-20 years before free
market will.

------
dd36
If only bitcoin worked in reverse...

------
unixhero
/Meta

Why are there two climate tech on the upvoted list on Hacker News. What causes
topics to trend like this? Are they being cherry picked?

That's okay, I'm trying to understand here.

------
baq
recommended related reading:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azolla_event)

"The event coincides precisely with a catastrophic decline in carbon dioxide
levels, which fell from 3500 ppm in the early Eocene to 650 ppm during this
event."

~~~
kuu
This event lasted for "800,000 years", based in the article.

~~~
baq
exactly correct - compared to our situation where we have to get ~5% of it
done in ~30 years, we're in trouble.

~~~
Hitton
There is about 400 ppm of carbon dioxide in atmosphere now.

------
neilwilson
Mandating 100% carbon scrubbers on power stations should be the first step.
Let’s stop putting it into the air first

------
ouid
why do they get to start the annual temperature anomaly graph at around -.3 in
1900.

~~~
lopmotr
It's not a quantity that has any natural zero, nor is time (year since
Jesus?). So you can start it wherever you want.

~~~
ouid
that's not true at all. We're trying to measure the human impact on global
temperature. The natural zero is whatever our best guess for the temperature
would be without human intervention.

~~~
lopmotr
If it was constant, I'd agree, but the natural temperature was always changing
and whatever it would have been today will also be changing. So you'd be
graphing a different quantity, f(t) = temperature(t) - natural_temperature(t).
From such a graph, you wouldn't be able to tell if a change was a change in
the actual temperature or just a change in the predicted natural temperature.
A predicted natural cooling would look the same as a human-caused warming.

~~~
ouid
This is already the case.

------
petre
Just pump air into ponds of algae/kelp or grow Azolla on the surface. Feed it
with fertilizer runoff that's otherwise thrown into the rivers, seas, oceans.
No need to build expensive solutions to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

~~~
snaptravisty
that sounds like an expensive solution. I can't napkin math any of this since
I don't know how much CO2 you could extract along with the other engineering
and logistical problems:

* which areas are suitable

* how much energy is required

* how much area of land is required.

I hesitate to give credibility to any answer that starts with 'just... [do
this thing]'.

If you have any references I'd be curious to learn more

~~~
petre
[http://theazollafoundation.org/azollas-uses/as-a-
co2-sequest...](http://theazollafoundation.org/azollas-uses/as-a-
co2-sequester/)

------
ykevinator
Fox news tells me it's all a hoax, who to believe?

------
sebastianconcpt
If we do we kill al the plants. Genius.

~~~
sebastianconcpt
Well, I'm Freeman Dyson's team.

Reference:
[https://e360.yale.edu/features/freeman_dyson_takes_on_the_cl...](https://e360.yale.edu/features/freeman_dyson_takes_on_the_climate_establishment)

------
jiri
Or, we should just get used to live with more CO2 in the air.

~~~
xornor
Or, have less people producing waste everywhere.

~~~
aforwardslash
That won't remove the co2 already in the air. And we also produce gases that
alleviate warming, not only greenhouse effect ones. Stopping all emissions
_today_ would probably result in a temperature increase, not a drop. The facts
are, there is no magic today to capture the co2 in the air. To reverse the
process, you'd need at least to put the same amount of energy as the one
dissipated when co2 was released. So, imagine producing at least the same
amount of energy of burni g 100years of fossil fuels.

------
Phenix88be
Article like this make me so depressed.

The conclusion is always (from my point of vue) : we are fucked.

We need a magic device that will remove gigatons of CO2 out of the atmosphere
in less than 30 years and we need it to do it without using energy or
consuming rare material. And you can't do much with CO2 at the end.

~~~
lopmotr
Before you get too worried, remember that positive stories about climate
change are politically forbidden in most mainstream publications. You're only
getting the gloomy side of it.

The harm it will do is still finite and not even really known. Maybe we can
just suck it up and suffer the consequences? Do you have an idea of how bad it
will really be? Worse than World War II? Worse than communism? Worse than the
Spanish Flu? All that stuff happened in the same century and killed close to
10% of the earth's entire population! Yet somehow we're doing great.

------
symplee
I empathize with people who are trying to help by reducing their footprint.
Though I fear it'll all be in vain when a machine is invented that can suck a
lifetime's worth of frugality out of the air in a fraction of a second.

~~~
roel_v
The article links to a website where you can calculate your footprint, and buy
offsets in various programs to negate that footprint (projectwren.com). It
would cost me USD 17 / month to offset my (larger than average for my country)
footprint. Why do I even bother with my reusable coffee cup and paper straws
for that kind of money? I just don't understand. If an extra charge of $10 /
month for everyone in Europe would 'solve' the problem, why don't we do it?

~~~
lacker
You’re probably correct that your reusable cup and paper straws are
ineffective mechanisms for preventing climate change.

~~~
lorenzhs
Reducing the use of disposable plastics isn't supposed to prevent climate
change, it's about reducing the amount of trash. While any trash that you put
in the bin in a western country is highly unlikely to end up in the world's
oceans, it still sends a signal against ubiquitous single-use products. That
the two are so often treated as one is really unfortunate. Because if people
actually cared about reducing their individual carbon emissions, they'd have
to give up things like flying and eating meat, not disposable plastics. But
that involves actual changes in behaviour, so it's not exactly popular and
many people find the mere suggestion offensive.

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maerF0x0
Why do we always phrase it as changing the climate instead of facing that it's
an energy balance issue? Too much energy is entering the earth and getting
trapped.

We can solve it by letting less enter, or otherwise sinking some of it.
Consider if we stored the excess energy as chemical energy? or reflected some
fraction of the energy back out away from us?

reducing consumption is a failing project and the greener technology gets the
more people increase their consumption in a compensatory way (Heat – George
Monbiot) ...

~~~
millstone
"Energy balance" isn't the right diagnosis because the energy balance has not
changed significantly: the sun is and has forever been the dominant energy
source in climate terms.

Broad-spectrum sunlight hits the earth, and is later emitted as infrared. CO2
is transparent to UV, but absorbs infrared. So global warming is a consequence
of the fact that the major fossil fuel emission is opaque to a wavelength of
light emitted by the sunlit earth.

"Letting less enter", "stored the excess energy", and "reflected some
fraction" are all huge engineering solutions to the global warming crisis. And
I support them all! But space mirrors and geo-scale energy sinks are sci-fi,
they will not save us any time soon.

Reducing consumption buys time. Switching to renewables buys time too. Maybe
you use renewable biofuels and capture the CO2 emissions: now your car is
carbon negative, without launching a space mirror!

~~~
Ono-Sendai
It's absolutely an energy balance issue. The Earth is heating up, because it's
radiating away less energy than its receiving.

