|
Evil_Greven posted:Fasdar, This is great (my heart is feeling heavy) thanks, somehow I missed this discussion or more than likely it's a surpressed memory. what a time to be alive fellow goons  . Let's all make the most of what we got now
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 00:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 06:22 |
|
|
Saint Fu posted:Are there any viable co2 sequestration technologies other than for use in enhanced oil recovery? Carbon Engineering's got a plant in Calgary that turns atmospheric CO2 into calcium carbonate pellets, and the Global Thermostat project exists. There's also the STEP process, and whatever ends up happening with the teams involved in the Carbon X prize. The problem isn't whether or not the technologies exist, but rather their testing, deployment, and economic consequences. In a perfect world, atmospheric CO2 shifts from being a waste product to a viable, reusable resource, and does so quickly enough that we don't pass through any kind of dark age. That said, I would be very surprised if some kind of aggressive direct-capture technology wasn't part of any hail-Mary geoengineering effort. The Carbon Engineering project is probably the most mature technology out there and the easiest to immediately deploy. bef posted:So I know clathrate gun shenanigans and the proceeding funyuns will be the demise of pretty much everything, but I just saw that Guy McPherson video of him saying we could possibly only have 10 years left o___0 Guy McPherson has some chops, but in his own way, he's as much a denier as any self-professed skeptic. The last time I seriously looked into his research, he was a couple of steps past what other climate scientists considered to be the absolute worst-case scenario, and he cherry-picks data like crazy to support it. I'd say that McPherson is worth keeping an eye on, but he's not even a statistical outlier. He's a doomsday prophet.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 05:17
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:Carbon Engineering's got a plant in Calgary that turns atmospheric CO2 into calcium carbonate pellets, and the Global Thermostat project exists. There's also the STEP process, and whatever ends up happening with the teams involved in the Carbon X prize. The only realistic carbon sequestration will have to be something that works with exponential growth and automatic processes, I.e. a bioengineered self-reproducing algae/bacteria of some sort. It's the only thing that can scale up quickly enough, but is also likely to have some unforeseen consequences. I don't know that anything like this is in the works, but I don't discount the possibility. I also don't find it worthwhile to listen to doomsday prophets, anyone who claims to predict the future in more than trends and general terms is usually making some leaps of faith. This is why it's important to not go all sadbrains at all this environmental stuff but focus on political action, interest groups, fostering awareness and interest in -pragmatic- environmental concerns within your community as well as doing what you feel is best to prepare for the future: Water and food security, greener living, less consumption, more investment in your surroundings, more eco-friendly travel etc.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 08:11
|
|
|
I'm not absolutely certain that Guy is wrong, but none of his arguments are persuasive to me. He does say somewhere in the 10 years thing that it will be pretty obvious before 10 years is up if he's right or wrong.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 18:19
|
|
|
Zudgemud posted:One can significantly boost carbon biomass production in land based plants seemingly without solar and gas diffusion being a bottleneck. I assume something similar could be done with photosynthesizing algae etc. There are lots of funny ways one can bioengineer organisms if you disregard commercial and evolutionarily beneficial traits and couple it with loose regulation. I was under the impression that the main problem with plant-based sequestration is that most of the carbon just goes back into the atmosphere when a plant decays.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 18:29
|
|
|
Flip Yr Wig posted:I was under the impression that the main problem with plant-based sequestration is that most of the carbon just goes back into the atmosphere when a plant decays. Your impression is accurate, because the reason that all this carbon was sequestered in the first place was a bunch of organic material was "sequestered", in this case buried, in an anoxious environment which prevented its decay. But if you provide a similar phenomenon or process for modern biomass solutions, or otherwise capture that carbon in some other useful fashion (plastics, some kind of manufactured good) then you're good to roll. Unless we substantially decarbonize the grid, the non-biomass solutions end up costing more energy, and hence creating more emissions, than they sequester.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 18:37
|
|
|
I don't suppose catapulting massive amounts of ferns into the sun is an option.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 18:46
|
|
|
vermin posted:I don't suppose catapulting massive amounts of ferns into the sun is an option. As opposed to dumping them into the Marianas trench? Not really.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 18:50
|
|
|
The perfect carbon sequestration technique: 1. Plant algae and have them soak up CO2. 2. Harvest algae and and turn them into biochar. 3. Turn the biochar into diamonds. 4. Cover the Arctic Ocean in artificial diamond encrusted sea ice.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 19:50
|
|
|
its really a "simple" question when you think about it... we have to put as much carbon back as we took out. every oil field, every coal mine. trying to put it anywhere else would insanely damaging to that locations environment (just like it was to take out and has been to the atmosphere). I mean if it makes you feel better say we only have to put back like, half. where else but all the oil fields could you store that much liquid carbon? it sure as poo poo can't be gas, the volume math explains itself.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 20:25
|
|
|
If you store it in diamond form, you only need a quarter of the storage space. We could even use it to add a little sparkle to the moon.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 20:44
|
|
|
StabbinHobo posted:its really a "simple" question when you think about it... we have to put as much carbon back as we took out. every oil field, every coal mine. trying to put it anywhere else would insanely damaging to that locations environment (just like it was to take out and has been to the atmosphere). Yup! Conservation of mass still applies at the extremely broad view. That carbon came from somewhere, took a couple hundred million years to end up where we found it, and we've spent... eah, 200 years putting it back in the atmosphere or into extant biomass. we're gonna have to work reeeeal hard. Which is not the least part of why the problem is so fuckin daunting.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 20:46
|
|
|
Flip Yr Wig posted:I was under the impression that the main problem with plant-based sequestration is that most of the carbon just goes back into the atmosphere when a plant decays. This doesn't *necessarily* have to be a problem in and of itself. But it does change the way you have to look at bio based sequstration and then you run into problems... If your algae or whatever are replicating at around the same rate they are dying (i.e. you have a stable living population), then the net carbon emission can be zero. Of course once you realize this, you come to the immediate conclusion that as with any form of sequestration, you ultimately fix only the amount of atmospheric carbon that you permanently store in some condensed form.. You are only removing CO2 so long as the population is growing, and the ultimate amount you remove is proportional to how much algae you grow, and then either keep alive, or capture and sequester somehow before it decays. So if you want to remove X tons of carbon, you need ~X tons of algae biomass added to the earth. The "excess" carbon that humans have released, taking us from ~300ppm to ~400ppm, is around 400 gigatons. The total biomass of the earth is ~600 gigatons.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 21:10
|
|
|
Nice piece of fish posted:The only realistic carbon sequestration will have to be something that works with exponential growth and automatic processes, I.e. a bioengineered self-reproducing algae/bacteria of some sort. It's the only thing that can scale up quickly enough, but is also likely to have some unforeseen consequences. I don't know that anything like this is in the works, but I don't discount the possibility. I've posted about it before, but there are a couple of companies that are working on algae as a next-generation food stock and/or biofuel. One of their big discoveries was that if you raise a crop of spirulina in a darkened container, it will sacrifice biomass in order to utilize dissolved carbon in the local water supply. You could use a spirulina farm as a ocean cleanup method/food source/fuel source.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 22:18
|
|
|
Morbus posted:So if you want to remove X tons of carbon, you need ~X tons of algae biomass added to the earth. The "excess" carbon that humans have released, taking us from ~300ppm to ~400ppm, is around 400 gigatons. The total biomass of the earth is ~600 gigatons. I don't think anyone's seriously suggesting that algae farming would be the only CO2 capture method used. Ideally, you'd be combining it with biochar, biofuels (Daniel Nocera and Pamela Silver's artificial leaf, or CO2/hydrogen blends), artificial stone (mixing olivine into carbon-polluted seawater to make artificial limestone), reforestation, and using the CO2 industrially.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 22:22
|
|
|
Morbus posted:So if you want to remove X tons of carbon, you need ~X tons of algae biomass added to the earth. The "excess" carbon that humans have released, taking us from ~300ppm to ~400ppm, is around 400 gigatons. The total biomass of the earth is ~600 gigatons. cool let's chop down all the trees throw them down a mineshaft and then regrow them, and do this like twice 
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 22:23
|
|
I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
|
blowfish posted:cool let's chop down all the trees throw them down a mineshaft and then regrow them, and do this like twice Also that, although you want to strike "throw them down a mineshaft" and replace it with "varnish the wood, use it to build the cities of tomorrow." https://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2016/01/wood-americas-first-modern-tall-timber-building-rises-minneapolis
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 23:12
|
|
|
OK, hear me out here, I might have something that could overcome current political opposition: Diamond Trump Towers.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 23:15
|
|
|
Discendo Vox posted:OK, hear me out here, I might have something that could overcome current political opposition: 
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 23:34
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:I don't think anyone's seriously suggesting that algae farming would be the only CO2 capture method used. Ideally, you'd be combining it with biochar, biofuels (Daniel Nocera and Pamela Silver's artificial leaf, or CO2/hydrogen blends), artificial stone (mixing olivine into carbon-polluted seawater to make artificial limestone), reforestation, and using the CO2 industrially. I understand, but the bottom line is you have a ~400 GtC problem and you need 400 GtCs of solutions. Thinking in terms of the amount of carbon that needs to be removed puts things in context. Even if algae farming contributes only ~10% to the solution, it still requires a totally unrealistic amount of biomass. Combining algae CO2 capture along with some form of permanent sequestration avoids this problem in principle, but at that point what is the advantage vs direct capture and storage or other schemes? Thinking in terms of GtC budgets is also important because it illustrates just how much carbon has been dug up and pumped into the atmosphere, and how futile it is to conceptualize things in terms purely in terms of emission rates. If you poo poo 300 million years of carbon into the air instantaneously, obviously you cant just stop emitting and then expect things to return to normal on any reasonable timeframe. A significant fraction of the carbon we have emitted we are essentially stuck with for thousands of years. This is why it is so urgent to curb emissions rapidly and aggressively; reaching zero emissions in and of itself won't matter if we live in a 600ppm world by the time it happens. Also, the longer we continue emitting, the more necessary and impractical sequestration becomes if we want to have any hope of a reasonable climate.
|
|
#
?
Mar 31, 2017 23:43
|
|
|
Hmmm. 400 GtC → 4e+17 grams of carbon --(graphite: 2.266 g/cm3)→ ~1.77e+17 cm3 cubes of graphite → ~5.6 km3 of graphite That's approximately 70 of these 1.35 km cubes: http://i.imgur.com/VmpjUPc.mp4 The real question is this: How do we synthesize a 5.6 km* cube of graphite ??? I don't think there's any way back for us. Accretionist fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Apr 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 00:04
|
|
|
Accretionist posted:Hmmm. You have to exploit rich people and their toys. That graphite would make a lot of golf clubs!
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 00:27
|
|
|
Accretionist posted:Hmmm. Two words, friend. Black goo
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 00:31
|
|
|
So I just discovered the thread and am catching up, but what's the general opinion? Are we pretty irrevocably hosed? Because to me it looks like we're pretty irrevocably hosed, but I'm a layman and maybe you people know something I don't.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 00:32
|
|
|
My understanding is that yes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 00:33
|
|
|
Climate Change: What is to be triaged?
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 00:54
|
|
|
Accretionist posted:Hmmm. Diamond. Trump. Towers.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 01:01
|
|
|
Potato Salad posted:Climate Change: What is to be triaged? According to number forty-five the only thing that can be salvaged is Frank Barris on D posted:News from the guinea pig grapevine suggests that whatever it is, we won't know until it's way too late, you see? You see that we're all canaries in the coal mine on this one? rip bob arctor
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 02:23
|
|
|
Crazycryodude posted:So I just discovered the thread and am catching up, but what's the general opinion? Are we pretty irrevocably hosed? Because to me it looks like we're pretty irrevocably hosed, but I'm a layman and maybe you people know something I don't. Basically, the political will does not exist to react to the problem with the immediacy it deserves. A number of interesting technologies and practices exist that could, if implemented on a widespread basis, significantly mitigate the problems we're facing, but we're already to the point where nothing shy of an international moonshot or an actual miracle would prevent some amount of climate upheaval. Even then, "prevent" in this case means we get out ahead of it with an eye towards resilience. The issue is a lot more complicated than "irrevocably hosed." It is, however, entirely likely that our entire way of life will change dramatically in the very near future due to climate change, and the trick is in figuring out how and when. You can expect mass migrations, more destructive weather patterns, flooding as a regular feature of life near coastlines, and rising food prices due to the destruction of arable land. Worst-case scenario: we can't get this under control at all, the oceans acidify to the point where they can't support fish or plankton, the only comfortable areas for humans to live are around the northern latitudes, and life gets very tough very quickly. Humanity probably doesn't go extinct but there'll be a massive global die-back. Best-case scenario: we mobilize to generate and maintain the political will to act, rebuild our entire society around zero-emissions technologies, begin widespread practices to utilize or sequester the excess CO2 in the atmosphere, and everything changes dramatically, down to urban planning and the average person's diet. Also, current free-market capitalism probably gets quietly shot in the back of the head. Morbus posted:This is why it is so urgent to curb emissions rapidly and aggressively; reaching zero emissions in and of itself won't matter if we live in a 600ppm world by the time it happens. Also, the longer we continue emitting, the more necessary and impractical sequestration becomes if we want to have any hope of a reasonable climate. I should clarify here that I wasn't saying that direct-capture/sequestration technology was the only thing we should do or represented a way out of the situation by itself. I was answering somebody's question. There's definitely a role for carbon removal in a zero-carbon future, but yeah, zero emissions is job one.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 02:45
|
|
|
Crazycryodude posted:So I just discovered the thread and am catching up, but what's the general opinion? Are we pretty irrevocably hosed? Because to me it looks like we're pretty irrevocably hosed, but I'm a layman and maybe you people know something I don't. It's pretty bad. It's going to keep getting worse for the next three thousand years or so, possibly ten thousand years. The question now is whether things will get much worse within our lifetimes. The last time this much carbon got into the atmosphere it took the Earth a few million years to recover. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Apr 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 04:50
|
|
|
Wanderer posted:Best-case scenario: we mobilize to generate and maintain the political will to act, rebuild our entire society around zero-emissions technologies, begin widespread practices to utilize or sequester the excess CO2 in the atmosphere, and everything changes dramatically, down to urban planning and the average person's diet. Also, current free-market capitalism probably gets quietly shot in the back of the head. At this point even the best-case scenario involves upheaval, war, famine, natural disaster and refugee crisis. Maybe "only" a decade or two followed by the above. But there is literally no scenario now that avoids the bad poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 04:53
|
|
|
It also depends on where you live on how fast its going to affect you. We are already seeing climate change affecting areas. The conflict in Syria, for example, is largely based on the desertification of farmland.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 05:05
|
|
|
Accretionist posted:Hmmm. It seems the original proposition to compact all human biomass into a giant cube and drop it on New York would be more feasible, and likely more effective in the long term.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 05:21
|
|
|
Furnaceface posted:It also depends on where you live on how fast its going to affect you. We are already seeing climate change affecting areas. The conflict in Syria, for example, is largely based on the desertification of farmland. Current thinking in Sri Lanka (for a specific example I follow) is that agricultural GDP will go noticeably up. Food production, particularly subsistence farming, will take a hit, while luxury and export crops (tea and rubber being the big ones) will have wider cultivation / better yields. I'm sure this economic shift will have no negative effects whatsoever  also large sections of Jaffna will vanish beneath the loving waves, but they're Tamils up there, they're used to cataclysms by this point Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Apr 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 05:28
|
|
|
Accretionist posted:Hmmm. Haha, so that's why aliens make all those black monoliths.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 05:31
|
|
|
That's a lot of pencils for fancy book learning.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 05:33
|
|
|
GreyjoyBastard posted:Current thinking in Sri Lanka (for a specific example I follow) is that agricultural GDP will go noticeably up. Reflecting the historical reality of the Great Famine in Ireland--that Ireland was exporting even more food during the famine than before (because famine on the continent meant great prices for Irish export veggies and the Irish can just eat some lovely potato).
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 05:51
|
|
|
I wasn't gonna go sci-fi dweebery but since people already mentioned diamond-buildings... can anyone with a materials science background tell us what the current state of artificial diamond technology is? I'm sure its off by at least one if not 10 orders of magnitude, I'm just curious what today's actual reality is (y'know, with numbers).
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 14:42
|
|
|
Global production was 900,000 kg annual in 2014. But, since this is an energy intensive process, it costs an order of magnitude more carbon to make one than is being trapped within the diamond itself.
|
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 15:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 06:22 |
|
|
Discendo Vox posted:Diamond. Trump. Towers. Diamond. Trump. Wall. Rime posted:Global production was 900,000 kg annual in 2014. But, since this is an energy intensive process, it costs an order of magnitude more carbon to make one than is being trapped within the diamond itself. Nuclear. Powered. Diamond. Trump. Wall. Factory. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Apr 1, 2017 |
|
#
?
Apr 1, 2017 15:26
|
|