Not saying carbon capture will never work, but so far, well…
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@liiwi @renardboy @thomasfuchs sorry, this is also a Gatorade joke.
@shadows @liiwi @renardboy @thomasfuchs I have recently come back from the Alps, and the largest glacier has been reduced by half. There are huge cracks in the mountains growing millimetre by millimetre as the support from the ice disappears. It is heartbreaking

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@renardboy @thomasfuchs this is what I keep wondering. Best I can figure is we release the carbon to get energy in one place then use energy to store it in another place. I am not a scientist. I just don’t understand how it actually balances out except at a superficial level.
@shadows @renardboy @thomasfuchs it doesn't. we have to stop emitting.
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@thomasfuchs I'll say it then: carbon capture and storage will never work.
Storing it as a gas underground makes no sense whatsoever.
Converting it to other forms takes more energy than we get from turning it into a gas in the first place.
I can always be proven wrong but as things are I am 100% confident that the way forward is to treat it as a laughable form of greenwashing by the most evil lobbies on the planet.
Carbon capture works pretty darn good, when PLANTS AND SOIL get to do it...
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Not saying carbon capture will never work, but so far, well…
@thomasfuchs one of the best solutions for carbon capture is to build out of wood instead of concrete.
Producing cement uses a lot of energy and is one of the largest sources of CO₂, while building with wood is not only more energy efficient but also stores carbon and makes buildings easier to recycle.
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Carbon capture works pretty darn good, when PLANTS AND SOIL get to do it...
@violetmadder @thomasfuchs Absolutely true, but we can't increase that meaningfully, so relying on that as a solution to the increased emissions since the industrial revolution makes no sense whatsoever.
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@renardboy @thomasfuchs this is what I keep wondering. Best I can figure is we release the carbon to get energy in one place then use energy to store it in another place. I am not a scientist. I just don’t understand how it actually balances out except at a superficial level.
@shadows @thomasfuchs If we use renewables to re-sequester carbon dioxide, what we should be doing is use those renewables to displace fossil fuels in the first place.
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@renardboy we’re gonna need it eventually to fix the damage that’s already been done (i.e. even if we somehow manage to stop CO2 emissions).
but I’ve no idea what it will take.
the only thing other than “more trees” that I’ve seen that maybe goes into the right direction is building materials, e.g. concrete; but obviously even if that’s done on a large scale it’s not going to make a huge dent.
@thomasfuchs The first part, before anything else, is to eliminate use of fossil fuels. There is no amount of effort we can invest in sequestration that would not be better invested in reducing fossil fuel use in the first place.
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Not saying carbon capture will never work, but so far, well…
@thomasfuchs
\o/ -
My provincial government (a long-ago captured petro-state) has doubled down on CCS as the “solution” … it pays for them and the industry to “invest” $M to be allowed to increase extraction and maximize their yacht money before it all collapses and they run off to leave us with the clean up.
@DavidM_yeg @thomasfuchs Man, fuck these guys so much.
I seriously cannot understand how someone can be so twisted as to pawn off our children's future like that.
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@shadows @liiwi @renardboy @thomasfuchs I have recently come back from the Alps, and the largest glacier has been reduced by half. There are huge cracks in the mountains growing millimetre by millimetre as the support from the ice disappears. It is heartbreaking

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Not saying carbon capture will never work, but so far, well…
Obviously...
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@thomasfuchs I'll say it then: carbon capture and storage will never work.
Storing it as a gas underground makes no sense whatsoever.
Converting it to other forms takes more energy than we get from turning it into a gas in the first place.
I can always be proven wrong but as things are I am 100% confident that the way forward is to treat it as a laughable form of greenwashing by the most evil lobbies on the planet.
@renardboy
It will never be profitable whatsoever but I think we need to capture and convert it. And invest the energy. It's the best method to make sure this is not getting back into the atmosphere.I don't see it as a valuable business, more like a necessity to keep us all alive.
@thomasfuchs -
@renardboy
It will never be profitable whatsoever but I think we need to capture and convert it. And invest the energy. It's the best method to make sure this is not getting back into the atmosphere.I don't see it as a valuable business, more like a necessity to keep us all alive.
@thomasfuchs@momo @thomasfuchs Perhaps. To this end I'd say gassify biomass in retorts, use the creosote as a wood preservative for railroad ties and such, use the gas for fuel, and crush the charcoal to use it as soil amendment.
But before biomass as fuel can even be considered we must reduce our energy use by like an order of magnitude.
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Not saying carbon capture will never work, but so far, well…
@thomasfuchs this is a great chart, do you have a link to the source?
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@thomasfuchs yeah I'm all for cleaning up the atmosphere and ideally as fast as possible but it boggles the mind people prioritise it over *stopping setting it on fire*
@zbrown @thomasfuchs and it'll be orders of magnitude more expensive to cleanup later, if even possible, not burning it is incredibly economical.
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@thomasfuchs one of the best solutions for carbon capture is to build out of wood instead of concrete.
Producing cement uses a lot of energy and is one of the largest sources of CO₂, while building with wood is not only more energy efficient but also stores carbon and makes buildings easier to recycle.
There are a lot of really exciting things happening and all it took was a planetary catastrophe taken to the brink, a petroclass revealed as pedophiles and leeches, an empire brought to its knees by its own hubris, and 40-50C days all over the world, 30 days a year.
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Not saying carbon capture will never work, but so far, well…
@thomasfuchs the solar panel one is in ACX's "sigmoid misidentification hall of shame" https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-sigmoids-wont-save-you
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@thomasfuchs The first part, before anything else, is to eliminate use of fossil fuels. There is no amount of effort we can invest in sequestration that would not be better invested in reducing fossil fuel use in the first place.
@renardboy @thomasfuchs yes this.
Stop pissing on the floor before trying to make a robot cleaning fast enough that the piss doesn't stain the floor
We really did good when we replaced and reworked the CFC gases everywhere we could, and with strong incentives (legal and monetary). And now that some solutions are technically in reach, but only need to be deployed at scale + stopping the ancient. The LAST people to be followed should be the oil industry
(I'm glossing over some hard industries reliant on oil, but on the energy front, nuclear, wind, solar could replace most of the 80% of oil to be burned) -
Not saying carbon capture will never work, but so far, well…
@thomasfuchs "You are justified to keep going" graph they all pray will take off.
vs
"You can be replaced" graph they are afraid of and keep trying to minimize.
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Anyway we need both at some point, but solar (and wind, etc) is way more important for now because it directly replaces emissions.
Hopefully we figure out the other part eventually.
@thomasfuchs And electrifying everything. Transport, heatpumps, etc. - much more energy efficient.