I can’t wait until they makes these no cost, low-maintenance, and self-replacing. Oh man, just think of how easy it would be to fix our climate issues!
Sorry guys, that’s just the cooler for my new Nvidia card.
Inspiring. Innovating.
Submitted 8 months ago by Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net to aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/761e4fd7-a210-4495-a98e-61276396d3d8.jpeg
Comments
jj4211@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Chivera@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Mechanical forest, because organic forest are too darn archaic
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Only need half a million of them to keep up with current emissions.
For comparison, there are far fewer power plants that release co2. Based on some rough estimates I foind, there are fewer than 10,000 in total plants, most have more than one generator.
And those turn a profit, no one is going to fund half a million capture plants. Building out more solar and wind is insanely more financially prudent. N.
Over building with nuclear power with its massive capital costs makes far more sense than these things.
These solutions always remind of this scene from Futurma. Image
chuckleslord@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Developing this technology isn’t a bad idea, since we’ll need it to reduce damage in the future, but it isn’t the solution we need to be focusing on.
HubertManne@piefed.social 8 months ago
This is how I have felt. I have never come across one of these where they can say it removes for carbon than are put in by a polluting source of electricity. The numbers you point out is also I hate when geoengineering comes up. The number of planes that you have to regularly fly to cloud seed or such and thats if it actually somehow worked and did not have some other bad effect. Its like we can visit these if we are pretty much at 100% not polluting. At that point maybe tech to reduce might make sense. might.
Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Honestly, my staunch conservationists viewpoints aside, tech just isn’t as cheap or as efficient (holistically) as biological systems, or simply not destroying these systems.
All solutions like this do are to highlight my point, and the inherent value ecosystems have. However since plants don’t make the line go up no one gives a shit or wants to look at the writing on the wall
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Fun fact: it isn’t nearly enough and is prohibitively expensive making it never feasible to be enough
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
It’s prohibitively expensive and inefficient, but also it’s a necessary early step in making a way to take carbon out if the carbon cycle that isn’t prohibitively expensive and inefficient.
verdi@feddit.org 8 months ago
I’ll just leave this here in case people are actually falling for this scam. Planting trees is orders of magnitude cheaper and more effective…
Zexks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I remember when people said the same of electric cars and grid scale solar and wind.
absentbird@lemmy.world 8 months ago
But planting trees doesn’t provide transportation or electricity, it does pull CO2 directly from the atmosphere though. In this case you can compare the capture technology to trees planted on the same area of land and see which one is better land use for the same purpose.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Trees very quickly stop being effective though. As soon as they die, they return all that captured CO2 back into the atmosphere
You’d also joined to plant billions of trees just to keep up with current CO2 emissions, let alone all part emissions
Basically, to convert all CO2 from the atmosphere into oxygen you’ll need to spend the same amount of energy as you got out of it by burning fossil fuels. With losses included, you can triple that. Add to that the energy required to gather the CO2 and the e energy required to safely store it and you can easily quadruple it
So basically take all the energy we’ve generated since the industrial revolution, quadruple that, and that will be the amount of energy we’ll need to spend to remove the CO2 from our atmosphere. If for the next, say, 200 years we stop emitting CO2 and double our output, we spend 50% of the world’s power on CO2 scrubbing, we’d end up with a clean atmosphere. That is being generous
Planting a few trees won’t do anything at all
Planting entire forests the size of larger countries would do little
We opened Pandora’s box and it’ll cost us centuries to close it
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
You’re right about most of this, but the carbon doesn’t return to the atmosphere “as soon as they die”.
lime@feddit.nu 8 months ago
planting trees also only works for carbon capture if you don’t cut them down until they have lived their entire natural lives, which is not the way it’s done anywhere.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Even if you let them fully mature they will eventually breakdown because that’s what trees do and then all that stored carbon will return to the atmosphere. This carbon capture is mostly fruitless as the amount of carbon they store is negligible compared to how much we are adding to the atmosphere but if they are turning it into “rock” which is likely just graphite that would take carbon out of the carbon cycle and actually sequester it. which we desperately need to do to offset the ridiculous amount sequestered carbon we are adding to the atmosphere
chuckleslord@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Explain that one to me. The tree is made of carbon, storing the tree somewhere outside the carbon cycle would reduce the amount of carbon. Why would they need to be fully mature?
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Entirely different use cases. Planting trees makes a deeper reservoir to store carbon, but it doesn’t take that carbon out of the carbon cycle. There is still more carbon than the carbon cycle evolved to handle. We need to do both, and also stop bringing more carbon from outside the carbon cycle into it.
Lightfire228@pawb.social 8 months ago
Carbon capture is the inverse of burning hydrocarbons (fossil fuels). You have to dump energy (from the grid) into a chemical processes that “refine” the air back into concentrated carbon
The only way this thermodynamically is viable is with a surplus of carbon neutral energy
So either nuclear, or fusion
olafurp@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Don’t count solar out, the growth trajectory is looking like it’ll supply most of the world’s electricity in a couple of decades. Solar will be the MVP that makes all these inefficient energy uses more viable.
davidagain@lemmy.world 8 months ago
(There’s no way solar or wind generate enough energy, for several decades at least)
Only because it’s not being built, so really very very very misleading.
In sunny places like the southern parts of the USA, if you took the land footprint of a typical nuclear power station and covered it with solar panels with regular sized walkways in between, you generate pretty much the same power output, but with none of the toxic nuclear waste.
If you put a used EV battery under every 40-80 of them now you have 24 hour instantly responsive power.
Onshore wind power is the cheapest way of generating electricity, by some margin.
Guess why we’re not doing all this. Is it the cost? Of course not! It’s far more expensive to build a nuclear power plant. Is it the output? Of course not! Is it the environmental impact? Of course not! Is it the political lobbying and online FUD from vested interests in the power industry? Bingo bingo bingo! Of course it is!
resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They put all the trees in a tree museum.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Trees do not permenantly sequester carbon, they act as a reservoir. If we cover the entire land area of the earth in amazon rainforest, it’ll sequester like 150 years worth of our carbon emissions. After that, there would be no more land left to plant trees on, and we would be back to where we are now. The only solution is to simultaneously stop bringing carbon from outside the carbon cycle into the carbon cycle, and also remove the carbon that we’ve already brought in.
misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
You could fell them and pile them up, then replant. We need to stop bringing more in sure, but we also need to sequester what was already brought. But it took 100 years to get here, so surely it will take longer to get back.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Wood rots and wood burns. Felling the trees and piling them up does not remove the carbon from the carbon cycle, at best it’s kicking the can down the road
buzz86us@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The easier way would be to fully legalize Hemp
LodeMike@lemmy.today 8 months ago
How so?
buzz86us@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It absorbs a ton of C02, and grows in 90 days. Plus it can replace plastics, make fabrics, building materials, insulation etc
porksnort@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Direct air capture is a scam. It requires energy that comes from somewhere else. Capturing CO2 requires energy, it’s basic physics/chemistry.
Nothing about it makes sense excpet as an expensive boondoggle and a distraction for correcting the root causes of climate change.
regedit@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
We need a study to determine how much energy is released from burning billionaires. That’s the only way these things might be carbon-neutral!
porksnort@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Finally, someone who gets it!
ronigami@lemmy.world 8 months ago
So what if it required 1 watt?
You have to do actual math to determine if it’s worth it, not just write it off because it requires energy.
porksnort@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
The more you spend, the more you save!
The math has been done to death. CO2 capture requires energy input and doesn’t yield any. This is basic stuff.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
That energy can come from somewhere that doesn’t produce more carbon than this sequesters. Solar, wind, nuclear. Obviously we need to stop burning fossil fuels, but also we need to turn the carbon we’ve already produced back into a form that won’t find its way back into the air.
4am@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Cmon bro
They’re building nuclear plants for AI, you think they’re gonna build what, wind farms to run a DAC plant? They just basically made it unaffordable to put solar on your own home, do you think they won’t be like “lol build a natural gas power plant to run it”
Nothing gets done if the Saudis don’t win.
porksnort@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
It can, but it isn’t and it won’t. DAC is a scam and a distraction until fossil fuels are out of the equation. It is a false hope, a glamour, to keep us from addressing the root causes.
treadful@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
That article’s only real point is that we shouldn’t pin our hopes entirely on sequestration. Nothing about it being invalid or “a scam.”
Basically summed up in these two paragraphs:
On the one hand, putting more money into carbon removal will help scale up—and drive down the cost of—technologies that will be needed in the future.
On the other hand, the growing excitement around these technologies could feed unrealistic expectations about how much we can rely on carbon removal, and thus how much nations and corporations can carry on emitting over the crucial coming decades. Market demands are also likely to steer attention toward cheaper solutions that are not as reliable or long-lasting.
Carbon sequestration is likely to play a part in becoming carbon negative, and deserves to be explored.
porksnort@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Until fossil fuels are not a part of the energy equation, DAC is a band-aid where a tourniquet is required. Sure do research, but DAC will never work while we are burning fossil fuels for energy. It doesn’t even make economic sense.
Jason2357@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
This will only ever make sense when we have carbon neutral energy that is “too cheap to meter.” So, like, nuclear fusion, or solar panels become cheaper than tar roofs. In other words, these systems will make sense after climate change is solved. lol.
porksnort@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Exactly.
TheWeirdestCunt@lemmy.today 8 months ago
everyone seems to be jumping on how shit of an idea this is and that we just need more trees, but the point of this is that they can directly sequester the carbon back into the ground. Yes you can plant a lot of trees but when those trees die and rot away the carbon just ends up straight back in the atmosphere, you need to actually bury it to stop it re-entering the atmosphere again.
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Go look up how much CO2 is actually in the air. Then look up how much air exists in the atmosphere. Then, finally, look up how much air these things are capable of filtering out.
Then you will see why this is a scam.
AA5B@lemmy.world 8 months ago
One of the many problems is at least in the US, it tends to be used for fracking …… storing it under ground to pump more oil
Armok_the_bunny@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Some of the carbon might return to the atmosphere via rot, but far more of it would be put into the soil or trapped in lumber. Besides, the solution is extremely cheap and effectively self replacing, just let new trees grow as old ones die.
newthrowaway20@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Some trees can continue to grow for hundreds to thousands of years before just dying and rotting away. I don’t see the carbon capture machines lasting that long without steady power and maintenance.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
And when they rot away, that carbon is released back into the atmosphere. Hundreds or thousands of years isn’t nearly enough, we need to take it out of the carbon cycle permanently. These particular machines will last maybe a couple of years, and will probably generate hundreds of times more carbon in their construction and maintainence than they’ll sequester, but it’s a necessary first step. It’s not possible to put the carbon back in the ground where it belongs at a viable cost and energy expenditure without building these machines first.
MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Forests: are we a joke to you?
Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
I like that the headline calls them DAC plants
Plants
Plants
Plants
Just fucking plant plants holy shit
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Forests are a reservoir, they do not remove carbon from the carbon cycle. The only actual solution is to stop bringing carbon from outside the carbon cycle into the carbon cycle, while also removing the carbon we’ve already added. Natural phenomena cannot permanently sequester carbon, this is something humans will have to construct
Ioughttamow@fedia.io 8 months ago
Trees are socialist scum, I’ve heard they can even share resources via root and mycelium systems. Clearly false, because science can’t help but lie, but DISGUSTING nonetheless
iAvicenna@lemmy.world 8 months ago
what would be really funny is if they cut down some trees to place these lol
betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m not a huge fan of this approach.
Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Now reunite Mythbusters and stack like 30 seconds of freeway traffic worth of cars facing it. Go.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 8 months ago
My first act as president would be to create a cabinet-level Department of Myth Busting, headed by Adam savage and headquartered at the James Randi Laboratories.
karashta@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
It can’t even look cool. God this timeline sucks.
BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 8 months ago
It would probably take decades to offset its own carbon footprint, let alone making it negative. And then it would need to actually be significant.
Just plant trees and restore carbon sinks you fucking techno fascists.kokesh@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Only if we should have natural solution to this problem… Let’s fuck up the planet even more by producing more shit. How about planting trees and stopping the deforestation.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Planting trees is only a temporary carbon hold. Also, it takes like 200 trees to offset the carbon for a years worth of driving from a single car.
I do have strong doubts about the usefulness of these fans, though.
Jason2357@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Neither trees nor these can help much if fossil fuels continue to be burned at increasing rates.
kokesh@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That’s for sure. But as I don’t see people going away from fossil fuels anytime soon, we have to at least make it less terrible. EVs aren’t an answer, as making the batteries fucks up the nature a lot, wind power takes more energy to build than it will return in it’s lifetime and the machines will haunt us after they are decommissioned. I live in northern Sweden and because people in south aren’t too keen to look at those ugly things, they place it around their colony, the north. So we have new roads in forests, trees are being cut fo huge wind farms screwing up our ecosystem and being transported up here mostly from Denmark. Everyone trying to minimize their impact is currently at least a dim path forward. People are against nuclear, but if properly executed, it is currently the cleanest energy we have. Let’s hope cold fusion comes quick.
piyuv@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Planting trees doesn’t produce revenue for billionaires and shareholders. This does. Ergo we must produce expensive, over engineered machines to replace trees. Bees are next.
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Trees are inefficient too but we actually already know what we need to do to ramp up the efficiency of the photosynthesis process in trees with genetic tinkering.
The bigger problem is that we have reached a point where trees aren’t enough anymore. The oceans have acidified. There’s just too much co2 to capture at this point.
Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Looks like your get the post title
TribblesBestFriend@startrek.website 8 months ago
Also this plant are (with the latest technology) really less efficient than trees, like 60-70% less efficient IIRC.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Yeah, and the Wright Flyer could only travel like 30 yards. A 10 megabyte hard drive used to fill an entire room. You can’t build a better machine without building the worse ones first
SebaDC@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Moron
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Total waste of fuckin resources
Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Correct, but tech bros get rich so that’s all that matters, right?
omgboom@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
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