

Can Sucking CO2 Out of the Atmosphere Really Work? - ryan_j_naughton
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/531346/can-sucking-co2-out-of-the-atmosphere-really-work/

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aetherson
His scheme seems to be, "We can pay for sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere by
selling the CO2." Okay, reasonable enough, but just a quick question: doesn't
the sold CO2 just get dumped back in the atmosphere?

He suggests that industrial CO2 is used to rejuvenate oil wells, carbonate
beverages, and juice up commercial greenhouses. Of those, carbonated beverages
CERTAINLY release all their CO2 back into the atmosphere in a time-frame of at
most years and probably weeks. I assume that some percentage of the CO2 used
in commercial greenhouses is turned into, well, plants (though most plants
pretty quickly decay and release their CO2 back into the atmosphere, with the
exception perhaps of some woods), but I'd guess that 90%+ of it goes back into
the atmosphere. I'm not sure how much of the gas stays underground for decades
in the case of pumping CO2 into an oil well.

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LanceH
Where does the CO2 in carbonated beverages come from currently? Is it
something produced which would now be displaced resulting in a net reduction?
If we're producing CO2 as the product, we could lower that amount by recycling
already produced CO2.

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yongjik
Carbonated beverages are a red herring. This page[1] says a can of soda has
2.2g of CO2. If every single person in the world (population 7.125B) drinks 10
cans of coke every day for a year, we will be using 63 Mt of CO2.

Mankind emitted 33615 Mt of CO2 in 2010[2].

[1] [http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/9067/what-is-
th...](http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/9067/what-is-the-carbon-
dioxide-content-of-a-soda-can-or-bottle) [2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions)

(Edit: sorry I at first miscalculated the result to be 6.3 Mt.)

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LanceH
I only intended to point out it is possible to reduce CO2 emissions by
recycling it, even it the end product releases the same amount of CO2.

I don't know that we produce CO2 for CO2, or where the numbers lie. Just that
the prior post said it gets released anyway, so how can it be an improvement?

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otterley
We already have free self-replicating devices that do just that: plants. Just
add water.

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IgorPartola
The oceans are the largest carbon sinks currently:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sink](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sink).
My professor in college predicted that at some point we'll start building
highly efficient CO2 sinks out of specific types of plankton and dumping them
into the oceans to float around and offset our bad CO2 behavior.

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JTon
Dump them into the ocean? That's a bit of a scary thought. Not only tinkering
with the oceans ecological balance, but also the idea of our genetically
engineered plankton spawning out of the control. I'd prefer to keep them in
controlled environments.

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maxerickson
Iron fertilization
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization)
) is a little less likely to spiral out of control, and once discontinued
should stop having an effect in relatively short order. I've brought it up to
people and had them say such large scale experiments are too scary to carry
out, but we are already engaged in a CO2 experiment of that scale (without
much ability to cease the input).

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bduerst
>once discontinued should stop having an effect in relatively short order

Not even close. The largest iron fertilization "experiment" to date was done
by Russ George with just 100 tonnes off the Pacific coast of Canada in 2012.

It's now 2014 and the salmon population has quadrupled from the algal bloom.
We don't know what sort of impact iron fertilization at scale will have on the
ecosystem.

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maxerickson
Consider that you could have provided more information without trying to pin
down what I was thinking (or could've asked what I was thinking). I've tried
several different ways to say that, this one seems the least whiny.

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bduerst
What?

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maxerickson
"relatively short" is a pretty fuzzy statement, saying it's "Not even close."
invites me to try to argue about what I was thinking when I wrote it (ooh
fun), and it isn't all that necessary to your point.

~~~
bduerst
Yes it is, but I have a feeling you're still going to be bitter and worm your
way into contonuing to patronize.

~~~
maxerickson
I was trying to express frustration (I think unnecessary argumentation often
damages discussions here), but I take your point, such things can come across
poorly.

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cratermoon
The sticking point seems to be the energy required to process the CO2. How to
get that energy in a way that doesn't produce more CO2 than is captured seems
like a hard problem, approaching a violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

Perhaps the reason he's gotten little interest so far is that he hasn't shown
his process to be CO2-negative, and the experts are skeptical of what might
amount to a very complicated version of yet another perpetual motion machine.

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chc
I don't think nuclear, solar, wind or hydro plants produce much CO2.

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AnthonyMouse
The whole premise of carbon capture is that we're still burning fossil fuels.
If the world literally eliminated 100% of carbon emissions then biological
carbon sinks (plants) would eventually restore the natural equilibrium, the
problem is we're burning more carbon than they can keep up with.

Using nuclear power to sequester carbon is useless if someone else is still
using carbon to power their air conditioner or whatever, you would do better
to just use the nuclear power to run the air conditioner.

~~~
bdamm
There are lots of good reasons to burn carbon to produce energy. What we need
is a carbon tax that goes to operations such as these, bound to the waste
energy from nuclear or solar plants, for example. That way the carbon
emissions can be offset by the carbon intake.

Maybe we could burn all the carbon we wanted, at a rate even far exceeding the
rate we make carbon emissions today, if those emissions were balanced with
large-scale carbon removal. If that carbon removal produced fuel, that would
be fine - the balance would be a lot closer to zero, and more importantly, we
could have a control on the acceptable carbon in the atmosphere.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
There is no "burn all the carbon we wanted" regardless of climate change
because we're eventually going to run out of cheap oil. The cost of recovering
it will eventually exceed the cost of renewable energy. The problem is that
waiting until that point to stop burning oil and coal would do catastrophic
damage to the planet.

The thing that makes much better sense is to have a carbon tax and use the
money to subsidize non-fossil energy on a per KWh basis, and set the amount
such that it makes non-fossil energy cheaper. Do that and the market would
sort it out in short order.

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bdamm
We are in complete agreement in that the way out of the current mess is a
world-scale governmental movement to assert policy change that at least tries
to solve the problem of human created environmental change, and carbon dioxide
specifically.

I don't think we will run out of "cheap" oil though, since oil can be produced
from coal and coal is hugely abundant. I agree that waiting for oil to become
more expensive than renewables before investing in renewables, or in other
words expecting free market dynamics to solve the problem, is not going to
work.

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swartkrans
Given that we need to stop emitting carbon into the air within the next few
decades to avoid predictions for disaster, I think we should do whatever we
can? Energy companies make a great deal of money, and they have a social
responsibility to not drive up pollution. It's not just at the infrastructure
level, people can also drive less and eat less meat.

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ganzuul
I emit carbon each time I exhale. But I would not be surprised if I'm
surrounded by sentient vegetables.

The debate about climate change is much more productive. Eventually someone
has to realize we have to stop mistreating the ocean.

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gdilla
don't trees and plants do this? Could'nt we just plant more. Especially on top
of buildings?

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dogpa
We could try it! You can do a home experiment with a bottle, some baking soda
and vinegar maybe, a lamp and a thermometer to demonstrate how adding CO2
increases the temperature.

Scares the holy-bejeebers out of the kids.

