Have to agree with all the scepticism. Even if this does work, it’s just going to end up being used as an excuse to allow continued pollution rather than the clean up measure it should be.
It’s a stupid game to play, and should not be considered our long term strategy… then again, right now the long term strategy seems to be kicking the can down the road, so this might be better than nothing.
I think finding a renewable way of producing hydrocarbons for fuel is pretty valuable though — if these carbon vacuums can eventually be used to essentially turn solar into hydrocarbons, that’s pretty useful.
Hydrocarbons are, unfortunately, a really great way of storing energy Although hydrogen and batteries are great, stuff like fast transcontinental flights are tough to achieve without the use of jet fuel.
I fully agree with Al Gore on this one. It’s not a solution at all and just provides an excuse to keep using carbon based fuel, just like the Germans and their e-fuel. Not saying it doesn’t have any useful real world application, but you’re deluded if you think this will ever be enough to continue using fossil fuels.
For example it could work very well in fighting smog if applied on an industrial scale, but it still is just a sorry excuse to whitewash carbon based fuels.
But every green tech can be used as an excuse. Like oil companies have built solar and wind farms and then claim that they are green.
End of the day we still need this kind of tech. If we stop pumping green house gasses into the air today we are still dealing with climate change because of the enormous amount we have put into the air. And trees alone will not scrub the air fast enough. And the amount of CO2 absorbing biomass we can add per year is probably not sufficient.
I posted this when I saw this on another community:
This is honestly probably more of a transition jobs program for oil workers and something designed to get a few extra votes in Congress. One of the projects is in my state (Louisiana) and the politicians all stressed how it’s creating jobs in the oil producing Southwest part of the state. And the other project is in East Texas. The companies even pinky swore that at least 10% of their workforce would be former oil workers.
In the end, I see this a low risk, high reward experiment that, while obviously used for greenwashing, also builds support for a green economy in places where oil jobs are the middle class ones.
I also could see this being a way to create specialized carbon-based fuels after the transition. Hopefully, it gets cheaper than drilling and can supply whatever “fossil” fuels are still around. (The world’s militaries probably aren’t gonna switch to green hydrogen and renewables by 2040.)
This is a bit like giving serial rapists jobs watching after victims of sexual assault.
The shit states shouldn’t profit from the mess they made.
Tax the states/corporations responsible, maybe give some back to workers.
Kids who died of asthma aren’t getting anything out of this deal, why should oil states?
I agree. Outlaw petroleum extraction and then just nuke the areas that have the petroleum workers. Blame the nukes on Russia or China. No more industry, no jobs to worry about. [brushed dust off hands] Done and done.
/s
Louisiana doesn’t benefit from the fucking oil industry bribing politicians, raising sea levels, industrializing coastal areas, and giving people cancer. The companies aren’t even based here. We’re just cursed to be next to Texas.
And Texans also don’t benefit from being a corrupt petrostate. The natural resource curse is real.
This just in…
GOP leaders have pushed through a measure outlawing all forms of vacuum cleaners.
Doing anything but actually solve the problem. Amazing.
Actually this solves a very important problem. If we stop all pollution and carbon emissions today the earth will still be heated up significantly for the next thousand years or so. Enough that life will be more than uncomfortable, we’ll have massive water shortages, widespread desertification, and wholesale extinctions of many plants and animals.
We need carbon sequestration if we want to control the damage already done.
I would love to see some actual numbers on how much greenhouse gasses we release in the process of carbon sequestration. If we’re using carbon energy sources that emit more than they capture then we’re making the problem worse. I kind of doubt the US is going to use solar, wind, nuclear, and hydro to sequester carbon right now.
By definition it isn’t carbon sequestration if the grams CO2 equivalent (gCO2e) isn’t negative after a full lifecycle study. Lifecycle studies are somewhat contentious as you might imagine since they try to encompass so much in one number, but generally studies agree that the major proposals are strongly negative.
You can read more about that here for a few of the more likely candidates. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration#Geologic_carbon_sequestration