
UK launches program to explore removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere - DamonHD
https://www.carbonbrief.org/uk-launches-world-first-research-programme-into-negative-emissions
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chris_va
BECCS is probably the most realistic option:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-
energy_with_carbon_capture...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-
energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage)

... because removing carbon from 99% pure flue gas is a lot easier than
removing carbon at 400PPM from the atmosphere.

Even if every bit of farmland on the planet was growing sugarcane for BECCS,
we still would only pull ~9GT/y out of the atmosphere, on par with our current
net emissions.

Of course, solving climate change is not actually a difficult problem. A
$50/ton carbon tax would make all of these things profitable, including CCS on
existing natural gas plants.

(source: climate R&D group)

~~~
credit_guy
What is your take on phytoplankton?

~~~
chris_va
Unfortunately I am not the right person to ask on phytoplankton, but the main
concern I have is about geologic stability. Noteably the ​percentage of the
bloom that actually stays out of the food chain.

The models for this, when I spoke with some oceanography folks, were still
really fuzzy.

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jameslk
These type of solutions seem like the only reasonable ones to address climate
change. Goals of cutting carbon emissions often tend to be misaligned with
other activities that would be hard to stop en masse, such as everyone still
driving a fossil fuel emitting vehicle, farms using fertilizer to grow their
crops or individuals who want to use their AC because they're hot.

Sure it'd be great if we find alternatives to a majority of things that
contribute to carbon emissions, but then there's the difficulty of getting
everyone to use these alternatives across the board (along with the messy
politics of it) and if you succeed at that, you'll still have to deal with
other countries who aren't going to change their habits. It's essentially a
global game of whack-a-mole. And it needs to happen soon. Some scientists
claim we're already beyond the ability to reverse climate change by
eliminating these activities.

Given what we're up against, it seems far more reasonable to explore ways of
negating our emissions, terraforming the planet or trying to find a way to
live on a far less hospital earth. I'm all for continuing our march towards a
globally smaller carbon footprint, but it should be done concurrently while we
try to address the sobering possibility that it might not be enough.

~~~
spodek
> _These type of solutions seem like the only reasonable ones to address
> climate change_

Equally important:

\- Reducing consumption (which, in my experience, _increases_ happiness)

\- Having fewer babies

~~~
virmundi
But who and how will you limit the babies? For example, babies from the Middle
East will outpace European babies by a large number. Should Europe limit
immigrants' ability to conceive? If so, how? Would you force sterilization?
Would you trade money for sterilization? This general idea is fraught with
moral problems.

~~~
virmundi
Why the down votes? Would some people say why they are against talking about
how the human population could enforce the idea of limiting itself? Given that
it goes against the core biological imperative, I don't think I'm wrong in
asking this.

~~~
beobab
You are not wrong in asking this, but the way you asked led people to believe
that you are against such a thing, and people who object to what they perceive
as your belief will down-vote you.

As Scott Adams has so rightly pointed out, we are victims of our bias, and it
is very difficult to think coherently on an emotive subject like this.

------
titojankowski
Any ideas what kind of DIY experiments I could do to replicate/outperform them
on carbon sequestration? If they're the first group in the world to work on
it, I imagine there's a lot of potential for hackers to fiddle. I have access
to hardware lab and biohacker lab.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
They're _far_ from the first group to work on it. Just for a sense of scale,
the International Energy Agency (IEA) oversees the Greenhouse Gas Control
Technologies conference (GHGT) which has been going since 1997. It's the main
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) conference, held every other year, with more
than a thousand people attending.

As one concrete example of companies working on direct capture from air, ETH
Zürich has a spinoff/startup called Climeworks, who have alredy built machines
that do this. They started in 2009 and did e.g. a $3 million series B round
back in 2014. Currently assembling their first large-scale plant AFAIK. (No
affiliation to the project. I'm not really a believer in direct air capture
myself, I don't think we'll ever see the cost become low enough for large
scale adoption. US DoE has estimated the cost will be around 6x the cost of
capture from e.g. natural gas powerplants, so I think it makes much more sense
to focus on that.)

~~~
titojankowski
[http://www.climeworks.com](http://www.climeworks.com)

Cool company, and a serious looking machine, thanks for sharing!

I also like what they're up to at OakBio:
[http://www.oakbio.com](http://www.oakbio.com)

tito@impossiblelabs.io

------
dTal
The question that always springs to my mind when "brute force" solutions are
brought up is: with what energy? Separating C from O2 inherently takes a bunch
of energy, same as reacting them releases a bunch; it's the whole reason we're
in this mess. Often the answer is handwaved as "renewables", but then you've
pulled a fast one: if you have enough renewable energy to undo the damage done
by fossil fuels, you have enough to replace fossil fuels entirely and then
some. If we're postulating magic energy sources, far better to use them
directly than to try and offset the continued burning of carbon.

~~~
diafygi
I work in cleantech, and the smart people working on carbon capture and
conversion (Opus12, etc.) are assuming renewable prices will drop to the point
where they can use excess power to run the catalyst reactions needed.

Unlike the grid, carbon capture power doesn't need to be dispatchable. So you
don't need to worry about the intermittemcy of solar and wind.

The same strategy is true for water desalination. They can run the plants
whenever there is cheap power.

~~~
dTal
So, I'm not saying it's a bad idea, necessarily; but since it all boils down
to power, at that point aren't you basically just using atmospheric carbon as
a... battery?

Especially if you compressed your sequestered carbon into nifty charcoal
bricks and burned them for fuel, instead of wasting all that effort digging up
coal...

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patall
"Worlds first" seems to be exaggerated [1]. Nevertheless this may become very
interesting as power2gas becomes commercially feasable with cheap solar power
like the 2.4ct/kWh farms in Dubai. Transporting gas from the farm to the user
and transporting CO_2 back might be one option, carbon capture another.

[1] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2091214-first-
commercia...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2091214-first-commercial-
carbon-capture-plant-set-to-open-in-switzerland/)

------
n1000
Well, photosynthesis has been deployed some million years ago and works rather
well. Stop deforestation, manage forest wisely and start using wood again. 1
m3 wood = 1 ton of CO2 sequestered.

~~~
stouset
Wood isn't an effective means of sequestration unless you also bury it.

And it isn't going to fix things in terms of sheer volume either. We've cut
down forests _and_ burnt fossil fuels. Replenishing forests only reversed the
effects of the former and doesn't account for the carbon released via the
latter.

~~~
schiffern
>Wood isn't an effective means of sequestration unless you also bury it.

This is patently false.

 _Yes_ each individual tree is only a temporary store (with a half-life
somewhere around 100 years), but that's ok because the forest as a whole is
continually generating trees, and sequester CO2 in the form of soil. Trees
also create conditions that protect that soil from erosion and re-emission
(protection from wind, rain, and evaporation).

The total anthropogenic CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution works
out to only 30 tonnes of carbon per hectare, which is a few inches of topsoil
or a few additional trees per hectare. It's easy to soak up that much carbon
just in biomass on the surface.

Even in farmland the addition of selected "farmer's trees" (carub, honey
locust, acacia, leucaena) can be used. These are selected species of tree that
actually _increase_ yield when planted into a field at 20-30/acre, despite
casting some shade on the crops. These trees typically have deep roots that
harvest minerals and recycle nutrients that would otherwise leach down to the
aquifer, and their root system can coexist with crops right up to the butt of
the tree. The nutrients are dropped as mulch, and they also make nutritious
pods for animal feed.

~~~
david-given
...plus, if you're careful, you get to use the wood for things. Obviously you
can't burn it, but sequestered carbon remains just as sequestered if you build
buildings out of it than if you left it in the forest --- frequently better,
because preserved structural wood doesn't rot as quickly as a dead tree in the
forest.

Of course, you still need a lot of trees. The internets say that a rough rule
of thumb for the amount of carbon in a tree is about a tonne. Therefore, given
current carbon emissions of about 10^10 tonnes a year you'd need to plant more
trees than that --- every year. (And then wait multiple decades. This isn't a
short term solution.)

As you say, another reason to plant them is for local benefit. You don't
mention that trees also regulate the local microclimate; they tend to make
rain, for example. When Cyprus was deforested, it got a lot drier. I knew
someone who was working to try and reforest a lot of it with the explicit goal
of trying to fix some of the water supply issues; I don't know if they got
anywhere. And, of course, they're just nice to be around.

Recent research show that there are about 10^12 trees in the world.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/09/02/43691905...](http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/09/02/436919052/tree-
counter-is-astonished-by-how-many-trees-there-are)

~~~
schiffern
>You don't mention that trees also regulate the local microclimate; they tend
to make rain, for example.

Good point. I'm usually so eager to mention that, too!

Trees regulate not only the microclimate, but the macroclimate as well.
Isotopic analysis shows that about 80% of all terrestrial rainfall is caused
by transpiration from trees and other plants. Trees essentially act as a giant
inland irrigation network, using solar power to transport water via the
airstream to power the water cycle.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11983](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11983)

So trees cause rain. This explains why deforestation causes desertification. I
would also recommend the excellent Greening the Desert documentary for an
example of the reverse process.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcZS7arcgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcZS7arcgk)

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gosheroo
This couldn't come too soon. We need to start developing the geoengineering
knowledge to address climate problems, including problems we don't know about
yet.

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aries1980
They should ban diesel cars and cabs first and restrict trucks off the roads
during rush hours. I can barely breathe when I cycle in Central London.

~~~
azernik
The particulate pollution that makes city air unhealthy is a totally different
issue from carbon pollution and climate change.

~~~
DamonHD
Burning less, eg in engines and heating stoves, would very much help both.

~~~
gonzo41
Those are things that should happen anyway. But no joke the world is not in a
good place with how things are presently regarding climate change.

Two parts of carbon pollution are difficult. 1\. It's a diffuse source
pollution problem. You can look a coal fire plant, and yes these are great
contributers but so are cows and just general agriculture. Emissions come from
everywhere!

2\. dealing with gaseous carbon pollution is also tricky because its up high
and CO2 is reasonably stable. If we are going to try and filter air from the
atmosphere we are probably going to have to either look at biological
sequestration solutions ie. algae etc or energy expensive options to break
down the carbon.

And conservation of mass being what it is we are going to end up with a lot of
waste to store.

And that article talks about 8 million pounds....oh well.

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spraak
The world adopting a vegan diet would stop the production of a huge majority
of greenhouse gases

~~~
virmundi
Only if you kill all cows. Or most farmed animals. I'd be interested in
numbers around emissions created by now trying to produce enough produce for
the world.

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tonyedgecombe
If people stopped eating beef and dairy then farmers wouldn't be breeding
cows.

~~~
virmundi
You still have a left over population. Are you going to destroy whole species?
You would need to cull all of the domesticated animals to remove their impact.
Otherwise you don't solve the problem or have ferrel chickens and cows roaming
about causing havoc on the environment.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
We "cull" all the domesticated animals every couple of years already. If we
really wanted to handle this we would just stop breeding new stock.

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louithethrid
Dear god, there i was investing all my money in land that would become future
coastal - and or harbour property depending on a flood prognosis map for 2050.
And now i have to reverse all this. Does anyone need farmland near the upper
missisippi? Upriver London? Florida Inland hills? [http://geology.com/sea-
level-rise/](http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/) Come on people, i got a sale
going on here. Dont get wet feet now, and leave me out here to dry.

Making the world a wetter place

