
Climate Engineers Sucking Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-05/the-climate-engineers-sucking-co2-from-the-atmosphere-and-making-money-doing-it
======
Tade0
There's one significant thing they're achieving here: putting a price on CO2
in the atmosphere.

Some of the resistance to action on climate change comes from the notion that
the cost is unknown, which in turn stems from the fact, that to date there was
no scalable way to undo the emissions.

Now that a way has been demonstrated emitters can choose whether they want to
reduce their emissions or undo them(assuming the right legislation forcing
them to do so is in place). I believe most will go with the former option
until it stops being economical.

~~~
mac01021
The cost of undoing the emissions only sets the price on CO2 emissions if that
cost is lower than the cost of enduring the damage associated with not undoing
them.

The cost of enduring those damages may be (and probably is) immeasurably
large. But unless we're starting from some kind of reasonable estimate of the
cost of the damage, however approximate, it can't be right to say that these
guys are setting the price on atmospheric CO2.

~~~
Tade0
> The cost of enduring those damages may be (and probably is) immeasurably
> large.

This is what I'm getting at. There's resistance because we're not giving any
specific numbers, only saying that they're "probably very high". This is far
from a convincing argument.

With this technology we can instead say: "Ok, so clearing a tonne of CO2
emissions from the atmosphere is going to cost $X. These are going to be your
additional expenses in the foreseeable future."

~~~
mannigfaltig
[deleted]

~~~
SubiculumCode
The idea is to price CO2 emissions by the cost of CO2 scrubbing. Then a law
would be set in place requiring measurement of CO2 emissions - CO2 scrubbed,
which is then multiplied by industry median cost of scrubbing, which would be
then taxed.

------
intended
I find that the idea of "climate engineers" and "geo engineering" has markers
which will make it appeal to the same people currently peddling climate
denial.

My running bet/prediction is that

1) the imbroglio in America on climate denial will continue,

2) most of the world will feel happy that they are doing less than it should,
but more than the stat

3) Eventually someone will sell the idea of !!GEO ENGINEERING!! to the same
people they feed all sorts of Denialism.

This will sell well because it has "WE'LL MAKE THE WORLD GREAT AGAIN! WITH
HARD WORK AND GUMPTION", and will of course be subsidized by the Government so
it will have "JOB CREATION!" written all over it. I could write a satirical Ad
for it today, and be assured that its twin will play for real in 20 years.

While this comes across as deeply cynical (it isn't cynical enough), it's
based on the debacle that is Environmental Protection, from before I started
reading news papers in the 1980s.

The news today may be dominated by what America is doing, but lets not forget
that it was and still is a MASSIVE uphill struggle to get people to care for
decades.

And I am ignoring the effects of funding into Climate Denialism , and FUD
campaigns.

In the end people are going to always choose themselves over the environment.

In a world where clean coal can be marketed, "Climate Engineering" sounds like
an entire industry waiting to be born.

sorry, I wish I had something more optimistic to say.

~~~
gadders
I think a lot of global warming activists/campaigners hate the idea of a
technological solution as it won't allow them to tackle things like "global
inequality" which they see as important as fixing global warming itself.

~~~
intended
Oh don't get me wrong. I think that global warming activists have lost, and
that the end goal for the planet is set.

I'm not campaigning, I'm cooking near the fire.

I make assumptions about the world, and in the end I realized the best way for
me to hold myself honest, is to make a prediction and then see how it pans
out.

This is one of the predictions I am confident enough about that I can moan
about it on HN.

I hope I am wrong, that either some technique is actually found where pumping
MORE heat into a heat engine makes it cooler, or people ditch the idea.

But this is not about conservation or global warming campaigning. I think the
ship has sailed on that one.

This is just a prediction about a new product.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _that either some technique is actually found where pumping MORE heat into a
> heat engine makes it cooler, or people ditch the idea_

It's not the waste heat that's killing us. Sure, given enough energy usage,
just the generated heat would become a problem for the planet, but we're far
from there. Like hundreds of years far, at minimum. Right now we're fighting
with the heat insulation we inadvertently wrapped ourselves in.

~~~
intended
Hey thats a nice distinction, thanks. you arr correct.

------
myrloc
I'm a fan of the Climeworks concept, but the article and the Climeworks
website fail to address the obvious question: what's the net sum of CO2
collected to CO2 created in creating the energy needed to power their plants?

~~~
monk_e_boy
50 tonnes a year per machine doesn't sound much, compared to just growing
bamboo or something similar.

~~~
ghshephard
"Each year, a hectare of Moso bamboo absorbs 5.1 tons of carbon"

[http://inesad.edu.bo/developmentroast/2013/05/what-can-
bambo...](http://inesad.edu.bo/developmentroast/2013/05/what-can-bamboo-do-
about-co2/)

You would need 10 Hectares of land to equal one of these machine. Sounds
reasonably impressive to me. Even more impressive if the climework "tonne" is
2200 pounds and the bamboo ton is just 1000 pounds.

~~~
Tade0
There goes my genius idea to grow bamboo and turn it into charcoal to trap
carbon.

------
vonnik
There are basically two approaches to geo-engineering, and they both have
unpredictable consequences:

* reflect sunlight back into space through "albedo modification", either by spraying sulfates high in the stratosphere to mimic a volcano, or by conducting cloud whitening. complication: it will affect precipitation patterns, and allows the CO2 buildup to continue, meaning a sudden cessation would produce wrenching warming. it also does not slow ocean acidification.

* suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. also known as carbon sequestration. That's what Climeworks is doing, but their method is not the only approach. What they've built is a kind of chemical tree. Another approach is to create algae blooms by seeding the ocean with iron filings, since iron is often the limiting parameter to algal growth. algae: the amazon of the sea. a joker named Russ George dumped a tanker of iron into the northern Pacific a few years ago to show this could be effective, but his experiment was poorly designed. carbon sequestration does not address the underlying cause. but we are losing the battle against the underlying cause, which is basically our addiction to economic growth driven by fossil fuels, and existing carbon in the atmosphere will continue to warm the planet for many decades to come, even we switch entirely to clean energy today. so it's likely that humanity will have to combine carbon sequestration with clean energy to avert even worse climate change.

[http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/03/geoengineerin...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/03/geoengineering-
caldeira-climate-change/)

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170724105044.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170724105044.htm)

[http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/iron-dumping-leaves-
geoe...](http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/iron-dumping-leaves-geoengineers-
with-egg-on-their-faces-me-too-15147)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/07/re-
engi...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/07/re-engineering-
the-earth/307552/)

~~~
collyw
Serious question. Why not just plant a shit load more trees?

~~~
dalbasal
Costs at scale, mostly. Algea grows faster and doesn't require land.

~~~
bamboozled
Honestly, how expensive is it to plant trees?

I'm sure a LOT of people would be interested in volunteering for that and
while the military is not fighting people they could be fighting climate
change, with trees!

------
legulere
> Working around the clock, each capture plant can vacuum about 50 tons of CO₂
> from the atmosphere a year, Wurzbacher says.

For a comparison the per capita CO₂ emissions per capita in the US are 20
tons. With an average household size of 2.58 you would need one of those
plants + CO₂ storage facilities per household.

~~~
Tade0
Or, given that the world annual CO2 emissions are around ~400*10^9 tonnes,
there should exist one for literally every human being.

------
godshatter
Each capture plant takes 50 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere per year. We are
putting roughly 40 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere per year. That's
only 800 million capture plants needed, or roughly 44 million customers
similar to the one they have lined up (using 900 tons per year).

Every little bit helps, and I'm glad they are making money doing this, but
it's not a viable solution to the problem as a whole. They also didn't say
what powers the turbines in their capture plants.

------
dalbasal
These sorts of ideas are in a weird place. To many who are actively seeking
better performance in our carbon reduction efforts, ideas like this could be
seen as a threat to those efforts.

ATM, the debate is (1)"is the carbon-climate problem real?" and (2) "If so,
how do we reduce carbon emissions?". "Climate Engineering" would complicate 2
a lot, probably splitting political support.

Politically, they open the door to continued or increased carbon emmissions
today. They let us avoid addressing the "root cause." This is all regardless
of timelines or progress. Just the existence of the idea in public debate
might be enough to swing the opinion balance.

I imagine there are some who would ideally like to keep geoengineering as a
quite Plan B so as not to disturb current efforts, but that's not really
possible.

Overall, I think these ideas (if actually viable) will inevitably enter the
discourse in the long term. We are _already_ engineering in some sense. We
have models and targets for both carbon and temperature. IE, we want to take
control (to a small extent) of the climate. That's engineering, and engineers
always look for more tools eventually.

~~~
dogma1138
There is no debate and no climate scientist sees this as a threat. Reduction
is needed but it won't cut it its too late for natural carbon sequestering at
its normal pace. People who work on reduction also often work on sequestering
and if not do not see these efforts as a threat to any of their work.

~~~
dalbasal
Sure there's a debate. We're debating and discussing right now.

~~~
dogma1138
For the most part we aren't climate scientists, there is absolutely no debate
about carbon emissions and climate change.

------
enugu
Wouldnt it be cheaper to first capture CO_2 from the output of coal plants and
other industries where it is in concentrated form? Also, economies of scale.
Once we bring those down,we would still have to deal with decentralized
sources like cars(electric cars and renewables can help), container ships, and
the meat industry.

~~~
titojankowski
Agreed - check out Opus12 for an example of point-source capture:
[https://www.opus-12.com](https://www.opus-12.com)

Would be relevant to get Climeworks' perspective on the question of point
source vs atmospheric carbon dioxide.

------
jtraffic
For some reason I thought the runaway in temps will come from water vapor from
melting permafrost, which is starting now. In other words, the CO2 ship has
sailed, no?

~~~
irukavina
My hope is that this study is correct:
[https://m.phys.org/news/2017-08-hydrate-gun-
hypothesis.html](https://m.phys.org/news/2017-08-hydrate-gun-hypothesis.html)

------
mac01021
> Working around the clock, each capture plant can vacuum about 50 tons of CO₂
> from the atmosphere a year, Wurzbacher says.

And then from [[https://www.co2.earth/global-
co2-emissions](https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions)]:

> Global carbon (C) emissions from fossil fuel use were 9.795 gigatonnes (Gt)
> in 2014 (or 35.9 GtCO2 of carbon dioxide).

This doesn't seem like a great solution to me.

------
tryingagainbro
dumb question: say they take xxxx tons from somewhere in Switzerland. How long
does it take for the air to mix with the rest so the co2 is averaged
worldwide?

This looks like a great thing. The state can tax emissions and force emitters
to pay such carbon gathering companies to become carbon neutral. You release
xxxxx tons a years, show that you sequestered at least the same or pay a tax.

You could also have a Bill Gates type donate all his money to a such company.
Or the government can fund them. If this works, it's just a matter of cash and
we have it /can find it.

~~~
titojankowski
How long does it take for air to mix worldwide?

I visited NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii last month. It's one of the
key global sites where carbon dioxide is monitored. The scientist giving the
tour answered this, and I believe it was on the order of a few weeks for
mixing to occur.

Here's a visualization that starts to answer your question:
[https://amp.livescience.com/48798-carbon-dioxide-global-
comp...](https://amp.livescience.com/48798-carbon-dioxide-global-computer-
model.html)

I would love a more detailed answer to this question as well.

(I visited the Mauna Loa Ovservatory because of our open source project to
track carbon dioxide worldwide: [https://gitter.im/giving-a-fuck-about-
climate-change/Lobby](https://gitter.im/giving-a-fuck-about-climate-
change/Lobby) [http://carbondoomsday.com](http://carbondoomsday.com))

~~~
mturmon
That is a nice link (showing global CO2 estimates in 2006). It illustrates how
turbulence mixes the atmosphere at global scales.

The video mentions that better measurements will result from the OCO-2
mission, which launched in the meantime and has been measuring CO2 in ~3km^2
footprints across the globe since 2014. A result is:

[https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4514](https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4514)

which shows vertically-resolved CO2. Both videos make it clear that CO2 is
generally well-mixed both horizontally and vertically in the atmosphere, with
the exception of Northern vs Southern hemisphere. I believe CO2 emissions from
China, for example, take on the order of a week to propagate across the
Pacific and reach the Western US.

------
program_whiz
People seem upset that this is working? Maybe because this provides a solution
to the problem that doesn't mean we have to fundamentally change society, or
bring down the 1st world, or say that "America was the bad guy to ignore all
the EU regulations".

~~~
anotherbrownguy
\- CO2 is plant food. Indoor growers supplement CO2 levels up to 1500 ppm
(after which they say that there is not much return) to enhance growth. There
is no reason to remove it from the atmosphere.

\- Supposedly CO2 is also a green house gas that helps earth trap some heat
from the sun. The link between how much heat CO2 captures based on the
concentration is very difficult to find, suggesting that the link is not very
strong and propaganda driven "climate science" deliberately doesn't want
anyone to know. My guess is that it is very weak at best which is why they
supplement the theory with heating will cause water vapor concentration to
rise, which is also a green house gas, which will cause snowball effect. This
could be tested in a controlled greenhouse but most probably it didn't turn
out to be favorable for the propaganda so the research has not been published.

\- Climate has been changing throughout the history of the earth and there are
no known consistent patterns that we have been able to model which can help us
predict anything, not that we have seen working at least. Overall though, it
has been cooling and there is no reason that it will not continue to do so in
the long run.

\- The causal relation between CO2 levels and global temperatures has not only
not been established, but it is impossible to establish because of large
number of factors affecting it and affecting each other. The best we can get
is some kind of correlation but even that hasn't been consistent over time.
They keep adding more explanations to anomalies to pretend that they know what
is going on but it's obvious that they just don't want to accept it. Max Plank
said "Science advances one funeral at a time", but it seems increased life
expectancy will keep "climate science" going for a while.

So, yeah some people may be upset that people are touting this solution to a
problem that doesn't exist.

~~~
mikeash
[https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/)

~~~
anotherbrownguy
That's all nice and good, except it assumes that CO2 emissions is the cause of
warming and no such causality has been established.

~~~
mikeash
A single chart can't possibly explain the entirety of climate change. I was
just addressing your points that climate change in the past is like what we're
seeing now and that the current trend is cooling.

~~~
anotherbrownguy
It's very convenient to start from the ice age and show how it's warming up.
Here is a much longer timeline:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png)

~~~
mikeash
What do you think is the correct staring point? Obviously if you go back far
enough the earth was just a hot ball of lava, and temperatures have been below
that ever since.

Showing that temperatures have been relatively steady for a big chunk of human
history/prehistory and then suddenly started shooting up right when we started
burning mass quantities of fossil fuels seems most relevant to me.

~~~
anotherbrownguy
>relatively steady for a big chunk of human history/prehistory

Please refer to the linked graph again. Homo sapiens evolved around 200k years
ago. You can see endless spikes during and before that time. Climate has been
relatively "steady" for ~10k years after it recovered from an ice age. If the
latest is due to "human activities", what about all the countless spikes which
have occurred forever?

~~~
mikeash
When was the last spike that was this fast?

~~~
anotherbrownguy
The current data is the only recorded data that we have which is why we can
see it fine grained enough to know how "fast" it is. All the previous
temperatures are speculations and it is impossible to know if the rise and
fall has been this fast or way much faster.

Anyways, the fact of the matter is, all the climate studies have shown us is
that climate is very unpredictable. All of the predictions based on various
modeling of historical climate data have failed. And the reason is simple. The
climate system is too chaotic. A butterfly flapping its wings can lead to a
hurricane... or not, but nobody can predict it based on the observation of the
butterfly or all the events in all parts of the world for that matter. Even if
we had those data points of all butterflies flapping wings and all koalas
farting, it would be impossible to compute what would happen in a very long
time from now (a year or decades or centuries). Anyone who tells you otherwise
is a snake oil salesman and it's pathetic to see reasonable people fall for
this nonsense.

The reason it is still popular despite easy debunking is because why people
fall for this has nothing to do with science. There was negligible data and
climate models in the 70s and 80s but there was no less enthusiasm in people
who wanted to shut down big corporations for "harming the environment". All of
the "science" people reference now came very recently and not without
organized effort to "prove" that it is the case while silencing and
threatening anyone who disagrees by using ecoterrorist organizations and
political slamming.

The main idea behind the religious following of climate change narrative comes
from the fact that certain people are rich and they somehow should be doing
something bad to be that rich, and being rich is bad so they should be
departed of their money. That is all there is to it.

------
traviswingo
I've always imagined blimps floating around and filtering our air above all
the major cities and places where air pollution/CO2 density is worst. Does
anyone have any reasoning as to why this isn't really being done?

~~~
chadgeidel
The magnitude of the emissions. We are putting tens of billions of tons of CO2
in the atmosphere per year. Even assuming the filtering process is very
efficient (net-carbon negative) where do we store that in the blimp? How many
blimps would we need?

As a thought experiment - look at the average car - a Toyota Camry for
example. That car emits 206 grams per kilometer. Over the course of the car's
lifetime (about 200 thousand kilometers or so) that's 41 thousand kilograms of
CO2. For one family car.

------
knowThySelfx
Do they have plans to remove Methane and NOx. Methane emissions have increased
and we are seeing weather changes. One shouldn't forget CO2 is also needed in
the atmosphere.

~~~
marcosdumay
You don't need to remove those. You just need to make sure they get them wet,
so entropy can follow its inexorable path.

~~~
knowThySelfx
Getting wet alright, Irma probably does it.

------
rdl
I wonder how much use CO2 extracted from the air has. Greenhouse CO2
supplementation sounds interesting but I assume there are cheaper ways to
produce CO2 already.

~~~
Reason077
Presumably, most of the captured CO2 eventually ends up back in the atmosphere
anyway - either through leakage, or eventual decomposition of the greenhouse
plants being grown.

But it's still a net gain if the CO2 would otherwise have come from fossil-
derived sources?

~~~
andyjohnson0
Some work has been done on mineralising extracted CO2, ending-up with a stable
form that doesn't return to the atmosphere. For example: "... use electrolysis
or heat to split common salt, sodium chloride, into hydrochloric acid and
caustic soda, then react the soda with the carbon dioxide to make
bicarbonate." [1]

The obvious question is whether this can be done in an energy neutral way.
Either way its just a fix: we need to stop putting the CO2 into the atmosphere
in the first place.

[1] [https://www.theengineer.co.uk/issues/25-april-2011/solid-
as-...](https://www.theengineer.co.uk/issues/25-april-2011/solid-as-a-rock-
mineralising-carbon-dioxide/)

~~~
rbanffy
> is whether this can be done in an energy neutral way

Wind, PV and waves can be employed for this. You don't need a constant supply
and can control capture rate to match available energy.

For many uses, renewables like these are already perfect.

------
adrianN
Is this cheaper than growing wood and turning it into charcoal? That doesn't
take energy (in fact you get some out), it only takes time and land.

~~~
anotherbrownguy
I have a better alternative: growing excess food and dumping it on the ground.

~~~
maxerickson
Char takes a lot longer to rot. So the carbon is pulled out of the short
cycle.

------
blkhawk
wow - <sarcasm>This technology is the future</sarcasm> \- as per the article
each plant sequesters about 11 Cars worth of CO2 each year. Since there are
currently about 1.015 billion motor vehicles (lets assume those are cars) we
would only need 93 million of these things - how much energy do they use and
can they suck more CO2 running them causes?

------
ribfeast
> quickly bonded over their shared loves for mountain climbing and beer

Didn't realize that was so unusual in Switzerland.

