Can We Really Stop Climate Change By 'Capturing' Carbon? (vox.com)

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The recently-ratified Paris Climate Accord calls on countries to keep the rise in average global temperatures under 2 degrees Celsius (a threshold which would bring extreme weather, water shortages and reduced agricultural production). But a recent article on Vox warns that "the world has to zero out net carbon emissions...for a good chance of avoiding 2 degrees, by around 2065. After that, emissions have to go negative... We are betting our species' future on our ability to bury carbon."

That's why everyone's watching the W.A. Parish Generating Station in Texas, which came online this week -- on schedule, and under budget. "The plant will use a newly installed system to capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide created during combustion."
Alas, Slashdot reader Dan Drollette brings bad news from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: To fight climate change with carbon capture and storage technology, we'd have to complete one new carbon capture facility every working day for the next 70 years. It's better to switch to a diet of energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables, rather than rely on this technology as a kind of emergency planetary liposuction.

Comments

Here's my idea

[Anonymous Coward]

What if we make private space-based internet of things 3D printers from asteroids to capture the carbon?

I think we can then let the free market sort it out.

Re:Here's my idea

[michael_wojcik]

What if we make private space-based internet of things 3D printers from asteroids to capture the carbon?

I don't see how this could work, unless perhaps we leverage machine learning with big data in the gig economy to mount those 3D printers on self-driving cars, running over solar roadways. Then you'd have something.

You would think science could help

[elrous0]

I just wish there were some way to genetically modify a plant that could suck CO2 out of the air and turn it into oxygen or something else harmless. You think with all our knowledge, someone could figure out how to make something like that.

Re:You would think science could help

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, now you just need to match the rate at which we're sucking carbon out of the ground and releasing it into the atmosphere.

Re:You would think science could help

[MightyMartian]

Exactly. There's only so much carbon plants can fix. The idea that photosynthesizing organisms just magically fix unlimited amounts of CO2 emissions is absurd, but it's the sort of mindless Heartland Institute-created meme that the pseudo-skeptics throw around, because it saves them from having to ever actually understand the science.

Re:You would think science could help

[PopeRatzo]

just wish there were some way to genetically modify a plant that could suck CO2 out of the air and turn it into oxygen or something else harmless.

That could work, except you'd have to convince the energy industry not to kill the motherfucking plant so it can drill and frack.

https://www.scientificamerican...

Re:You would think science could help

[aardvarkjoe]

Dream on. Next you'll be wanting us to make it solar powered and turn the excess carbon into building material.

Re:You would think science could help

[elrous0]

No, let's not over-engineer it. We need to start with baby steps.

Re:You would think science could help

[HornWumpus]

They can fix plenty of carbon, atmospheric carbon levels are going down almost half the year (the northern hemisphere having more land). There is no way to stop them from releasing it again when decomposing.

Cellulose to fuel might eventually work, it just takes a breakthrough. Fixes everything. If you have cheap cellulose to fuel, you can sequester carbon by pumping hydrocarbons/alcohols down disposal wells and we can all drive turbocharged V-10 roadsters.

Re:You would think science could help

[Dr_Barnowl]

The thing about plants... is they're cheap. They're the only self-replicating nanotech factories we've got at present, and hey, they just happen to use atmospheric carbon as one of their raw materials.

There are people who think seeding algal blooms in the ocean will help. As long as they don't decay and make methane, that is.

Re:You would think science could help

[Dr_Barnowl]

Sorry, but this opinion is misinformed.

Rainforests are carbon-neutral. They're a festering sea of life and they emit as much carbon as they absorb.

Of course, that's no reason to ignore them or burn them all down. They play a very important role in climate regulation, and are a literal hothouse of interesting lifeforms with lots of interesting molecules in them. But carbon sinks, they are not.

Re:You would think science could help

[Pharmboy]

Yes, because everyone know, you have to mow down thousands of acres of trees to build a platform and processing area that is smaller than one acre in size...

Oh that's right, you basically don't destroy any trees to frack. Very empty headed logic, or you just don't understand the science behind drilling.

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

Absolutely useless. Where do you think that all the carbon we're pumping into the atmosphere by burning coal came from? Plants.

Planting trees today doesn't permanently remove carbon - the Fort McMurray fire earlier this year represents 10% of all Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. Burying it won't work either - it will just rot and produce methane - more than an order of magnitude worse as a greenhouse gas.

The only solution, both short and long term, is to stop burning stuff.

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

Cellulose to fuel won't work. What do you think cellulose is? C6-H10-O5 You'll just be putting all that carbon back into the atmosphere as CO2.

Re:You would think science could help

[myowntrueself]

Exactly. There's only so much carbon plants can fix. The idea that photosynthesizing organisms just magically fix unlimited amounts of CO2 emissions is absurd, but it's the sort of mindless Heartland Institute-created meme that the pseudo-skeptics throw around, because it saves them from having to ever actually understand the science.

The thing is, it seems pretty clear that Planet Earth used to support much more lush plant and animal life than it does today.

If you look at the evidence of growth rate of hadrosaurs, for example, they grew extremely fast and went on very long migrations after a season of growth after hatching. They put on huge amounts of bulk very fast, way faster than anything alive today. They were herbivores. There must have been a LOT of very fast growing vegetation to support these huge herds of fast growing herbivores. Its like the Serengeti but bigger and faster; wildebeest are similar but smaller and go on a shorter migration. And they are fueled and bulked out by very special conditions involving very special volcanic fertilization of the grass they feed on.

When you look at plants, the bulk of what you are looking at is carbon that was sucked out of the atmosphere and is inflated with water. The only way to get very fast growth of huge amounts of plants is with lots of CO2 and fresh water.

I get the feeling that the Earth that the human race has 'grown up with', the Earth that we think is 'normal' is carbon-starved relative to its state in the past. 'Normal' is just a relative term. The 'normal' of the world the hadrosaurs inhabited was very different from this. Our 'normal' isn't the only one. The world of the hadrosaurs changed and could no longer support them. Our world will change and maybe won't be able to support us, this is inevitable whether its because of something we do or because of natural changes; the Earth changes and changes drastically. But it'll almost certainly support life. Live on Earth has survived almost being frozen into a snowball, almost being paved with volcanic eruptions and being hit with asteroids a couple of times.

Look at the big picture. We tend to look at just the last 5000 years and think thats what Earth is SUPPOSED to be like. Before that, for example, the Sahara Desert was lush and green; there is a remnant population of crocodiles in the middle of that desert.

We cannot count on maintaining the planet how it is now, not even with advanced future tech. What we should focus on is being adaptable, like most of the other life on this planet.

This meme did not come from a Heartland Institute.

Re:You would think science could help

[HornWumpus]

Duh, how long ago did that carbon get pulled out of the atmosphere? If the answer is less than millions of years it's carbon neutral.

Cellulose ag waste is INXS (and always will be). It currently releases it's CO2, just not in a very useful way.

If you have cheap Cellulose based fuel, you can pump the excess into disposal wells.

Re:You would think science could help

[vikingpower]

This is simultaneously one of the most stupid and the most insidious arguments for burning more fossil fuels I've ever read. Sheesh, dude, who pays you ? Tar Sands of Alberta, Inc. ?

Re:You would think science could help

[jellomizer]

Good luck. Genetic Engineering is the other boogy man.
You have the conservatives denying global warming. And the liberals fear mongering genetic engineering.

I remember a decade ago they came up with a biodegradable plastic made from genetically engineered corn. The environmentalist protested against it because it was GMO.

True environmentalism is understanding the consequences of the choices and choosing the best option to solve the biggest problem.
There is no magical solution. Just picking the best trade off.
Back in the 1900's gasoline was chosen for car fuel for environmental reasons. High energy per quantity low price. Allowed cars to replace horses who provided environmental problems that were causing a lot of people to get ill.

Re:You would think science could help

[Goragoth]

And nobody claims that global warming is a threat to life on Earth. For the biosphere in general it's probably great. Hell, it's not even a threat to human life on the planet, we are an adaptable species and global warming won't be enough to drive us to extinction. The danger of global warming is to human civilisation as it exists right now - it will cause coastal metropolises to flood and will mess with agriculture in many places. Nobody (who has an actual clue anyway) is worried about the end of the world here but that doesn't mean the consequences cannot be truly catastrophic.

Re:You would think science could help

[mspohr]

The problem is that Sapiens won't be able to adapt to the climate changes in store. Cockroaches, maybe.
We could try to be like cockroaches.

Re:You would think science could help

[tinkerton]

There may be value in the idea that the planet doesn't have to be worse off for being warmer, in a stable long term situation, but if you change things quickly that's going to have dramatic consequences which you're completely disregarding.
To take the simplest example, there's 80m of water stocked in ice. How fast it melts makes a very large difference. Or biotopes. If they change very slowly, species adapt. If they change too fast all you've got is extinction.

Re:You would think science could help

[jareth-0205]

You may think that, got very little to do with what has happened though.

http://www.xkcd.com/1732/

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

Duh, how long ago did that carbon get pulled out of the atmosphere? If the answer is less than millions of years it's carbon neutral.

It was more than a million years - more like 300 million or more. It's called the carboniferous period for a reason.

So "duh" right back at you. Didn't you learn this in grade school?

Re:You would think science could help

[myowntrueself]

There may be value in the idea that the planet doesn't have to be worse off for being warmer, in a stable long term situation, but if you change things quickly that's going to have dramatic consequences which you're completely disregarding.
To take the simplest example, there's 80m of water stocked in ice. How fast it melts makes a very large difference. Or biotopes. If they change very slowly, species adapt. If they change too fast all you've got is extinction.

I'm not going to dig out the links but, if you are interested, look at the CO2 ppm in the pliocene and look at the age of the Great Barrier Reef, the sea level changes and (presumably) ocean acidity changes its dealt with.

But yes, if things shift to much warmer and then quickly back to cooler its very hard for the ecosystem to adapt. That may be another reason to, instead of trying to reverse whats going on, to roll with it!

Re:You would think science could help

[myowntrueself]

And nobody claims that global warming is a threat to life on Earth. For the biosphere in general it's probably great. Hell, it's not even a threat to human life on the planet, we are an adaptable species and global warming won't be enough to drive us to extinction. The danger of global warming is to human civilisation as it exists right now - it will cause coastal metropolises to flood and will mess with agriculture in many places. Nobody (who has an actual clue anyway) is worried about the end of the world here but that doesn't mean the consequences cannot be truly catastrophic.

My emphasis. Things change, its one of the great constants.

Theres the old story of the emperor who wanted his wise men to come up with something which, if he's happy and looks at it will make him sad and if he's sad and looks at it will make him happy. The solution was a ring inscribed "This, too, shall pass."

Re:You would think science could help

[myowntrueself]

The problem is that Sapiens won't be able to adapt to the climate changes in store. Cockroaches, maybe.
We could try to be like cockroaches.

I'd be very surprised if we couldn't adapt if we tried to adapt instead of trying to hide from the reality that the world changes.

Re:You would think science could help

[MightyMartian]

Except much of what is going on right now has to do with the amount of CO2 released over the last three hundred years. Trying to talk about global climate over hundreds of millions of years and referring to certain periods as if they represented the norm is absurd. It's almost as if you're cherry picking epochs of higher global temperatures, and because it suits your underlying argument that we should just merely adapt, to declare those are normal.

You understand, I hope, that what we call civilization, with urban living and agriculture, can only exist within certain parameters. Where you try to use less arable land, like, say, southern California, you need to find water from somewhere else, and then you need to fertilize the hell out of the soil, creating a vicious cycle of salinization of soil, more nitrates, and so forth, not to mention creating massive algal blooms off the coast.

The real bread baskets of the world. not just the tomato and almond farms, but the actual parts of the world where staple grain crops are growing, rely heavily on precipitation, either in the form of rain belts, or in places like India, on snow fall and glaciation in the mountains. When those rain belts start to shift, and that's what is happening now, areas now currently arable will become ever less so, which means more areas will end up in the vicious cycle southern California is in. It could also lead to new water wars as regions with plentiful water basically have it stolen as was done to farmers in the 1920s and 1930s to provide water to farms on what amounted to semi-arid and arid zones (desert). And what happens if the rain belts shift even further. What happens if all that precipitation that feeds the US's breadbasket in the Midwest suddenly moves northward, and ends up in Canada? Now you're talking about fucking with the single most important aspect of any civilization; its food supply, a food supply suddenly under a foreign nation's control.

And spare me the desalination line. It's incredibly energy intensive, which makes it only really useful for human consumption, and far too expensive for the kind of large scale agriculture that is typical North America and Europe, not to mention you have to get rid of the salt, which can, in large concentrations, prove as toxic as any industrial chemical.

Re:You would think science could help

[Ichijo]

We cannot count on maintaining the planet how it is now, not even with advanced future tech. What we should focus on is being adaptable, like most of the other life on this planet.

Putting all of your eggs into one basket is an unwise strategy. In addition to trying to become more adaptable as a species, why not also try to limit the damage?

Re:You would think science could help

[thegarbz]

I get the feeling that the Earth that the human race has 'grown up with', the Earth that we think is 'normal' is carbon-starved relative to its state in the past.

If only scientists would have studied exactly that.

Re: You would think science could help

[Anonymous Coward]

But the climate change democrats such as ny governor Cuomo have hundreds of miles of highway medians where trees could easily grow (and do in some places along the highway ) will this reverse global warming ? No, not on its own but it would be one small easy step that does not require heavy taxation . And would further reduce global warming because you would not have to send out fossil fuel powered mowers to mow the grass that is no growing Some of the far left tax and control crowd uses global warming to push through tax plans they wanted to push through anyway .

Re: You would think science could help

[ChunderDownunder]

Has anyone marketed one of these biochar machines as an ultra efficient cooking stove?

The problem with BBQs is not burying the coals in the backyard but the smoke that wafts up the chimney into the atmosphere. Solve that problem and you've got an off-grid heating and cooking mechanism.

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

It's extremely relevant to any discussion of when coal seams were first formed. Go fuck yourself.

Re:You would think science could help

[myowntrueself]

We cannot count on maintaining the planet how it is now, not even with advanced future tech. What we should focus on is being adaptable, like most of the other life on this planet.

Putting all of your eggs into one basket is an unwise strategy. In addition to trying to become more adaptable as a species, why not also try to limit the damage?

You mean like by colonizing mars and the moon?

Re:You would think science could help

[myowntrueself]

The thing is that as climate changes the precipitation belts shift as well. Thats possibly what happened to the Sahara. There was a much later and similar shift in the Cape Verde islands which is near the Sahara where, in living memory, the rain just stopped.

Being adaptable means shifting production (and population) around as the climate changes, something which is sadly thwarted by the modern concept of the nation. So if the precipitation that produces the grain harvests of the USA shift north to Canada, that shouldn't be a disaster, it should be something which we as a species can adapt to by moving around the face of the planet. Its only a disaster for the entrenched powers that like to divide and conquer us by creating artificial structures like USA and Canada.

Survival is going to mean discarding a lot of our short term and fairly new concepts.

Re:You would think science could help

[pixelpusher220]

except poster wasn't talking about coal at all. Talking about taking cellulose from living plants and turning it into fuel.

Re:You would think science could help

[pixelpusher220]

"Survival is going to mean discarding a lot of our short term and fairly new concepts." everything you've ever known is included in this statement.

Climate does change...over very very long periods of time. right now it's changing over very very short periods do directly to our actions.

You're basically saying that brick buildings should be 'adaptable' to the motion of an earthquake. The current ecosystems are the buildings and our carbon emissions are the quake. They aren't going to 'adapt' at the rate required for the inputs because the simply aren't designed for it.

Re:You would think science could help

[myowntrueself]

"Survival is going to mean discarding a lot of our short term and fairly new concepts."

everything you've ever known is included in this statement.

Climate does change...over very very long periods of time. right now it's changing over very very short periods do directly to our actions.

I'm pretty sure climate can change faster than you are giving it credit for. Its not geological time. A few hundred or thousand years.

Re:You would think science could help

[bheerssen]

Right? I'll bet he even wants to be able to burn it and have the resulting energy be, at worst, carbon neutral.

Re:You would think science could help

[Applehu Akbar]

It's a pity we still don't have hadrosaurs today. To find mammals that grow that.fast and that big, you have to put in banks of slot machines.

Re: You would think science could help

[Applehu Akbar]

Any biochar produced is net carbon taken out of the atmosphere, irrespective of how much smoke goes up the chimney.

Re:You would think science could help

[CaptainLard]

I'm talking about adapting to whats going on and not sticking our heads in the sand.

The world changes, deal with it or die off. Thats the message we get clear and strong from the fossil record.

Great! Lets start with figuring out how to deal with mass human migrations including the 40% or so (that's 3 Billion if you're counting) that live within a hundred miles of a coastline. Whats the latest word on immigration these days. I hear its a hot topic in all manner of elections and referendums and such. Everyone must be presenting their well reasoned plans on how to handle a shitload of immigrants right?

The world changes, deal with it or die off.

I agree that that will happen. Looking around it appears humans are not prone to "deal with it"

Re:You would think science could help

[myowntrueself]

The world changes, deal with it or die off.

I agree that that will happen. Looking around it appears humans are not prone to "deal with it"

That is the real problem. Part of it is that people want things to stay as they are. Yet things cannot stay as they are. People tend to ignore inconvenient facts like that.

Re:You would think science could help

[BlueStrat]

You mean like by colonizing mars and the moon?

Um, no? Sci-fi dreams of adolescent adults are not reality, OK?

The same was said by Luddites like you about powered flight, sending men to the Moon, and just about every other major human accomplishment.

Nice to see someone keeping up traditions and all I suppose, though I'd question your choice of the particular tradition you've apparently chosen to keep up.

Hell, we went to the Moon almost a half-century ago with on-board computers less powerful than a toaster at Walmart, ffs! It's not a lack of technical ability it's lack of desire!

Humans need new frontiers, unexplored and unclaimed lands to explore and to migrate to when conditions where they are become intolerable for any number of reasons including the political, ideological, and religious, aside from reasons like overpopulation/disaster/etc.

If there are no frontiers to provide a safety-valve role for humans then, as population densities increase and governments grow and become ever more controlling, intrusive, and authoritarian, people begin to act like too many rats crowded into a limited space. They attack each other and the cultural/societal/political/ideological systems they feel are oppressing them (correctly or not).

If there were more, and more-accessible, 'frontiers' there would be far fewer wars and human conflict of all sorts. Not to mention that would also mean simulataneously creating the ability to move many of the most polluting and climate-altering activities almost totally off of the planet.

Strat

Re: You would think science could help

[pixelpusher220]

Oh it certainly can change rapidly...it's just exceptionally rare. We have quite good historical records showing this. Humans have developed during a period with even more exceptionally stable climate. So massive quick change is even more a danger to us.

Re:You would think science could help

[h33t l4x0r]

So "duh" right back at you. Didn't you learn this in grade school?

Be honest though, you just googled this right?

Re:You would think science could help

[Ichijo]

You mean like by colonizing mars and the moon?

That won't make a difference. Every human you remove from the planet makes room for another human, and then you're right back where you started.

Re:You would think science could help

[Citizen of Earth]

And nobody claims that global warming is a threat to life on Earth.

You must be deaf to the shrill tones of every environmental activist. I envy you.

Re:You would think science could help

[ilguido]

Climate does change...over very very long periods of time. right now it's changing over very very short periods do directly to our actions.

I think this is just the direct result of smoothing/filtering past data. There is not evidence that past climate changed slowly and steadily, on the contrary there are studies that shows that climate can change swiftly. I remember to have seen in the '90s, so before all the mainstream fuss about climate change, a study about beetles found in peat bogs, that suggested that different beetles species alternate with other beetle species (that dwell in different climates) in short spans of times, a few decades.

From my point of view, I look at all these quasi-linear climate models very suspiciously.

Re:You would think science could help

[tinkerton]

As reasons go, that's not enough reason. It is true that the 'green' approach to climate warming is what you can call the lowmetabolic approach: slow everything down. But that tends to weaken your ability to respond to the changes. If the economies are good, you can build dikes and adapt to climate. If economies are slow you don't adapt well. so to some extent humanity may be better off by increasing their metabolism. Especially the poor countries. Nature doesn't have that option though.
My main point was that the speed of the change matters, there's a difference between warming up slowly or quickly, and the easy fatalism of doing nothing likes to ignore that,

Re:You would think science could help

[drinkypoo]

Planting trees today doesn't permanently remove carbon - [...] The only solution, both short and long term, is to stop burning stuff

If you plant trees, cut them down, and make stuff out of them, you are sequestering carbon. I would actually advocate for bamboo, because it grows much faster.

Re:You would think science could help

[drinkypoo]

The thing is, it seems pretty clear that Planet Earth used to support much more lush plant and animal life than it does today.

It also used to not support humans.

Re:You would think science could help

[HornWumpus]

I don't think I need to pile on at this point. Reading is fundamental.

Perhaps the cellulose identified as coal?

Re: You would think science could help

[WarJolt]

California has had regular decade long drought. It's not an affect of global warming despite what most of my fellow Californian think. Mother nature isn't homeostatic. Also when the levees break in these coastal towns they think it's so unusual, but the water was there to begin with. If see level rise is inevitable we will fight back. This mass migration thing are bullshit. There are plenty of places under sea level and humans have built massive structures to live there. California has deverted tons of water and is bringing desalination plants back online to keep the status quo. We humans are increasingly stubborn when faced with weather change. I see no reason why we won't be successful with climate change.

Re:You would think science could help

[pixelpusher220]

Glad you agree with me that it 'can' change fast.

"From my point of view, I look at all these quasi-linear climate models very suspiciously."

From what 'point of view'/on what grounds?

Re:You would think science could help

[RockDoctor]

There must have been a LOT of very fast growing vegetation to support these huge herds of fast growing herbivores.

Somewhat shaky ground here. There are three main items of evidence for estimating the size of "herds" of herbivorous dinosaurs - the occasional mass footprint ichnofossil traces ; mass-death sites ; and mass nesting sites. Unless you know better, the largest group of multiple trails of sub-parallel morphospecies-similar footprint traces of which I'm aware is for a herd of about 30 conspecifics (obviously, for most ichnofossils we don't have exact knowledge of the trace-maker species, which is why we have to work with morphospecies). For mass-death sites, whether they're lahar, ashfall, or flood deposits, it is not proven that the trapped animals normally lived together. They may as well have been multiple separate "herds" which were driven together into a death trap trying to escape a more widespread event.

Performing population estimates where 99% of your population leaves no traces of it's existence is difficult.

Wouldn't "flocks" be a better description for hadrosaur or sauropod social groups? Since they're more closely related to flocks of birds than herds of sheep?

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

The poster was saying that if the coal was less than a million years old, it didn't count. Try to follow along next time (yes, I'm in a bad mood. My dog died 2 days ago).

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

>The only solution, both short and long term, is to stop burning stuff.

So basically you are advocating either the death of the majority of our species

Yep. And the longer we don't act, the more of a mess it will be when the crunch hits, and the less likely that it will be reversable in time to save the species. There is no other solution. Even nuclear only has enough supplies to meet needs for a century at our rate of increase in demand.

Don't act, and billions of people die. Wars have always been fought over resources - territory, food, land, water, minerals, etc. That isn't going to change, and along with war is pestilence, famine, and the pale rider - death.

Humans are at the top of the food chain for one reason - try to find any other species that commits aggressive acts on the scale we do.

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

Come off it - we're not all products of the American education system.

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

So you make a house out of trees. The house burns. You're no further ahead. Or you build a bridge. If you don't tear it down and dispose of it at some point, that bridge will collapse into the rive, the timbers will rot, and that will produce methane, 25 to 100x worse than CO2. Hydro projects that flood forested valleys are a huge contributor to greenhouse gas.

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

Reading is fundamental. So is writing, and you obviously failed. You wrote:

Duh, how long ago did that carbon get pulled out of the atmosphere? If the answer is less than millions of years it's carbon neutral.

It was way more than millions of years, so it's not carbon neutral. Give it up.

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

Already been thought of. Trees are a bulky way to store carbon by burying in a mine, and burying them at too shallow a depth just means they rot and produce methane.

Re:You would think science could help

[h33t l4x0r]

Um, unless you're a paleontologist you don't have this stuff memorized and you know it.

Re:You would think science could help

[pixelpusher220]

Sorry your dog died :(

What he said perhaps wasn't exactly direct, but "less than a million years old" references using cellulose for fuel not coal. Yes coal of any kind isn't going to be carbon neutral as the time frame is too long.

Using actual plants, whether tree/sawdust, shrubs, switchgrass, etc is still orders of magnitude better for the environment since you're using carbon removed from the atmosphere extremely recently and from sources that we, conceivably, could renew.

The scale needed for that is significant and possibly not practical, but as the poster was saying, IF, we can get cheap cellulose to fuel it raises a significant option in the goal of carbon neutral energy sources.

Re:You would think science could help

[rtb61]

You don't have to destroy trees to frack if your fracking sites (plural, many times plural) if you frack in the desert. I you frack in a forest you have to tear down a whole bunch of trees. To create access roads, a bunch of trees gone, one to each fracking site. By the way those fracking sites, don't let the slime lie to youm make believe like it is one site, oh no, absolutely not one site. Fracking has very limited range and as such hundreds even thousands even ten of thousands are required to frack an entire field. Those bloody liars always make it sound like one well, so bloody wrong at minimum hundreds are required to tap a very small field. This is why the earthquakes, why the huge amount of water pollution, it is not one site affecting a particular environment zone but thousands. Each and every one with it's risk of an undiscovered fracture that releases the pollutant into the once potable water supply. They know full well, they are lying about the consequences of fracking, no better proof the the laws they wrote to exempt themselves from polluting the environment, they knew, they positively knew there would be major problems, hence they paid corrupt politicians for that law (otherwise why spend that money).

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

Actually, I did. I was a science freak in grade school. Read everything I could get my hands on. So yes, I knew that coal was laid down hundreds of millions of years ago. But this was also all covered in 1st year High School Geography class, along with adiabatic cooling for cloud formation, the different types of rocks and how they are formed, etc. Grade school covered things like experiments with oxidation of iron and other fun stuff (which I took further by passing large currents though aluminium foll to watch it burn baby burn with a bang).

I guess your country has a shitty education system if they don't teach basic science.

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

Also, you're exhibit one (among millions) that the US education system is broken.

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

No, he referred specifically to COAL. Here

Duh, how long ago did that carbon get pulled out of the atmosphere? If the answer is less than millions of years it's carbon neutral.

His cellulose argument was totally unrelated bs that he threw in because obviously he didn't know that coal seams formed hundreds of millions of years ago, and play an important role in our understanding of evolution through the fossil outlines embedded in them, means that this is someone whose opinion is useless because it lacks basic knowledge of the subject matter - which is the carbon cycle.

And thanks about my dog. Had him for 13 years. Last week I was talking to someone else out walking their old dog, and I said that he probably wouldn't last the winter. He might have a week, a month, whatever, but he's an OLD dog, even if he doesn't act like it. He didn't even have a week. Just was no longer able to stand up without help, refused all food, but at least he didn't linger and suffer.

This will be the first time in decades that I haven't had at least one large dog. And he was smart - I was able to teach him how to be a guide dog without even a harness, which came in handy a year later when I lost my vision for a few months. He was 8 when he learned, so yes, you can teach an old dog new tricks. The idea that they have to be started as puppies is demonstrably bs.

Re:You would think science could help

[h33t l4x0r]

You just don't know when to quit, do you? Your claim is that all your grade school classmates can identify the carboniferous period within a few million years? Go ahead and call them, we'll wait.

Re:You would think science could help

[david_thornley]

The thing about the last 5K years is that that's when civilization happened, and a heck of a lot of changes because of it. Slow changes happen, and we deal with them. It's harder to deal with rapid change, which is what we're seeing now.

I'm not saying the last 5K years are what the planet is supposed to be like. I'm saying that that's what we've adapted to, and rapid changes are going to have bad effects, even if they wind up being better in the long run if they ever stabilize.

Re:You would think science could help

[david_thornley]

Partly because, no matter what we do to this planet, it's going to be by far the most habitable planet in the System. Look at what it's got. It's got water, right there, and the temperature keeps a lot of it liquid at all times. There's plenty of oxygen in the air where we can just get it and breathe it. It's even got magnetic shielding. These things aren't going away in the next few million years, and they put Earth way ahead of the competition.

Re:You would think science could help

[WrongMonkey]

There are still substantially amounts of unsettled frontier right here on Earth. From Antarctica to the Gobi desert. There are still hundreds of unoccupied islands. All of theses are far, far more accessible and habitable that anything you'll find on Mars.

If you can't make your libertarian fantasy plan work out on an sub-antarctic island, then its certainly doomed to fail on Mars.

Re:You would think science could help

[HornWumpus]

Jesus tits, you're being even denser than usual.

Go back up the thread, find the first person talking about coal, it was you...

Cellulose was formed in recent growing periods. It's short cycle carbon. Perhaps I should type slower, so you get it.

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

I talked about coal, stupid threw in cellulose, which has nothing to do with coal. Again, fuck off troll.

Re:You would think science could help

[phorm]

it's not even a threat to human life on the planet, we are an adaptable species and global warming won't be enough to drive us to extinction

We're not quite as adaptable as you'd think. For one thing we depend on various other - less adaptable - life forms as a food supply. Second, there are plenty of other life forms - from jellyfish to bacteria - that would be very happy to have a nice hot planet that don't get along particular well with humans (and antibiotics are starting to become rather ineffective in many cases).

Re:You would think science could help

[phantomfive]

And nobody claims that global warming is a threat to life on Earth.

James Hansen does.

Nobody (who has an actual clue anyway) is worried about the end of the world here

James Hansen does, and he might be the world's most prestigious climate scientist.

Re:You would think science could help

[Coren22]

That comment was in response to your comment that cellulose to fuel wouldn't work. HornWumpus never actually said anything about coal, but about cellulose to fuel, which is an option to power cars, not coal power plants. If gasoline is replaced by biofuels, it removes a large source of Carbon going into the atmosphere.

This is the first comment in the string:

https://hardware.slashdot.org/...

Which says nothing about coal, but says that cellulose to fuel would allow useful work to be done with the extra plant matter that is now instead allowed to decompose.

Re:You would think science could help

[Coren22]

Which is exactly why cellulose is better than coal. You really should reread that, as it says nothing about coal, but about cellulose fuels.

If the Carbon was pulled out of the atmosphere less than a million years ago (as in the freaking plants grew, then we converted them to fuels), than it is Carbon neutral. This is a fact. You are the only one bringing up coal and the carbonaceous period, which is clearly outside of the less than a million years ago figure that HornWumpus is typing about.

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

So you admit that HornWumpus was off topic. Your point is?

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

You're missing the point that the only way to make ANYTHING that removes carbon out of the atmosphere long enough to make a dent is to actually physically remove the product from the environment by sequestering it. There are simply not enough mines to dump enough cellulose, same as with trees or any other carbon-bearing material. Part of the problem is density - oil and coal contain a lot more carbon that the same volume of trees. You can't just put either one into landfill either - it will generate methane gas as it rots. Same with silage. Plants and their byproducts are simply not a solution. Planting trees for carbon credits is one huge fraud, since forest fires just put that carbon right back into the air as CO2, same as anything else wood that burns. The Fort McMurray fire by itself contributed up to 10% of all Canada's greenhouse gas emissions this year. There are forest fires burning all over the world.

What next - suggest that we print up books like crazy and dump them into mine shafts to sequester the carbon in them? (there was a sci-fi short story about exactly that - with the idea being submitted to the government as a joke, and the government approving and funding it).

If we stop adding to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, natural processes will slowly remove it, but turning it into sediments that form limestone takes longer than our species will exist. The only viable solution is reducing the human population. Everything else is not a solution, but foolish attempts to avoid the reap problem. There are way too many of us. We need to lose 2/3 or more of the human race.

The US and Russia may actually achieve that in the next few years ... too bad we probably won't live through it.

Re:You would think science could help

[Coren22]

Um, using biofuels is entirely on topic when talking about Carbon capture, so I am not sure where you get that s/he was offtopic from. I would say that more you went entirely off topic by bringing something to the discussion that came from left field.

Re:You would think science could help

[BarbaraHudson]

Biofuels don't remove carbon. The fuel still needs to be burned to use it, so the carbon goes right back into the atmosphere.

Re:Fighting Climate Change

[0dugo0]

I'm sick of wankers looking for excuses to use the atmosphere as their private dumpster. Bye now.

Re:Fighting Climate Change

[PopeRatzo]

I am sick of stupid climate propaganda on my beloved ./

I officially quit this stupid site.

Good-bye.

Bye Felicia.

Manmade climate change is bullshit

[SensitiveMale]

Arctic ice was supposed to be completely gone by 2016 and there's more now that when that prediction was made.

Environmental doomsayers have been making these claims for decades. They have all been proven wrong.

Global temps haven't increased in sixteen plus years.

Manmade global warming is bullshit. At least they are getting smart enough to push the environmental disaster to 50 years away. There's less accountability that way.

Don't get me wrong. Reducing pollution is a good thing. But to constantly declare that it's the end of mankind unless we do something RIGHT NOW is exploitation.

Re:Manmade climate change is bullshit

[phantomfive]

When was that prediction made? Did they predict an entirely ice free arctic, or just one that is ice free in summer? Did they predict the entire arctic would be ice free, or just the central basin? (If they predicted the central basin would be ice free by 2016 then that was a good prediction; it's not that far wrong; give it a couple of years.)

It was widely reported in the news at the time, and you can still find some of them up. Here are some details.. Apparently that scientist was still making predictions this year. Note: other scientists disagreed with them.

Re:Manmade climate change is bullshit

[MrL0G1C]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"and there's more now that when that prediction was made." Very wrong

"Global temps haven't increased in sixteen plus years." WTF? Very wrong.

"Manmade global warming is bullshit." The science is very clear, again you are very wrong.

Personally I think the chances of mankind surviving a few hundred more years is less than 50/50, we've set the ball rolling to our own destruction and we'll be taking 95% of species with us. Mankind's biggest problem is over-population and unsustainable resource depletion.

Global warming deniers never can answer the following in any logical manner:
Is CO2 not a greenhouse gas? Is man not releasing very large amounts of CO2? What negates the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas?

Re:Manmade climate change is bullshit

[SensitiveMale]

Mankind's biggest problem is over-population and unsustainable resource depletion.

Bull. The planet is no where near over-population. Not even close. The only reason ANYONE starves on this earth is 100% political.

"Resource depletion" is bull also. How often have you heard "We're going to run out of oil" and other such poppycock.

Global warming deniers never can answer the following in any logical manner:
Is CO2 not a greenhouse gas? Is man not releasing very large amounts of CO2? What negates the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas?

Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. "Very large amounts" is relative. If I pour a quart of piss into your water cooler, that's a large amount. If I pour the same amount into a state reservoir, it's doesn't matter. We live in a closed system. The environment changes to deal with changes.

Re:Manmade climate change is bullshit

[drinkypoo]

Arctic ice was supposed to be completely gone by 2016

Who told you that?

and there's more now that when that prediction was made.

Who told you that?

Environmental doomsayers have been making these claims for decades.

And they were right. The only difference between the claims they've actually made and reality is that reality is much worse. The ice is actually melting much faster than projected.

Global temps haven't increased in sixteen plus years.

Who told you that?

Manmade global warming is bullshit.

Science says otherwise. Science made your whole lifestyle possible but you think it stops working when you don't like what it says.

Don't get me wrong.

Don't be wrong.

Reducing pollution is a good thing. But to constantly declare that it's the end of mankind unless we do something RIGHT NOW is exploitation.

It's necessary to keep pointing out that an emergency is occurring because some people apparently just want to watch the world burn.

Re:Manmade climate change is bullshit

[drinkypoo]

The planet is no where near over-population. Not even close. The only reason ANYONE starves on this earth is 100% political.

As we live today, the planet is over population. Until human nature changes such that we are no longer willing to place ourselves above everyone and everything else by living extractively, that will continue to be true.

"Resource depletion" is bull also. How often have you heard "We're going to run out of oil" and other such poppycock.

We will run out of oil eventually, if we can work out a way to keep burning it safely. Barring that, our civilization won't last long enough to accomplish that "goal".

We are also depleting our natural capital rapidly. But I bet you still think that we have more useful forests (in terms of carbon sinking) than we did five thousand years ago.

Re:Manmade climate change is bullshit

[NoOneInParticular]

Get on with the times and make your talking points current. Your facts are currently in 2014. This is the drill: temperature has gone up in 16 years, it has gone up in 17 years, it hasn't gone up in 18 years, it has gone up in 19 years, it has gone up in 20 years....

So please quote 18 years as your refutation for climate warming, dammit.

Wind and natural gas

[fermion]

Carbon capture was a technology that was useful in the US when it was thought coal would remain the primary fuel. Now that natural gas is dirt cheap, partially thanks to fracking, it is not so critical. Natural gas produces about half the CO2 per BTU as dirty coal. Switching from coal should reduce emissions at least 40%. In fact Texas can meet standards by shutting down a few very dirty plants and moving to natural gas.

But what is going to change everything is when the rest of the US follows Texas which now gets at least 10% of the power from renewables, mostly wind. This is where the climate change problem will begin to decline.

Which is not to say the carbon capture technology is dead. In other developing countries it may be useful,and the US could be the supplier for those systems.

Re:Wind and natural gas

[tsa]

40% is not zero by a very long shot. We should get rid of fossil fuels as soon as possible. Having said that, it pains me that my country (the Netherlands), which was the forerunner in nature-friendly technology in the 1990s is now way behind even the US in implementing the necessary steps to reduce CO2 emissions. We're gearing up to elections for a new parliament in March, but none of the parties that matter has even mentioned the environment in their party propaganda yet. We're a small country but one of the dirtiest in the whole of Europe thanks to the gouvernments we've had since the turn of the millennium.

Re: Wind and natural gas

[Rei]

Personally, I hate all of these "arguments through incredulity" that you encounter whenever it comes from energy, trying to argue that we can't expand fossil fuels fast enoigh, alternative fuels, solar power, wind power, nuclear power, you name it based on your ideology, fast enough to meet demand. It's always along the lines of "We'd have to build X units every Y days, and doesn't that numver sound impossibly large?"

Well, *everything* we do with energy is on unthinkably large scales. We spend a huge chunk of our entire planet's gdp, billions of man-years per year, on it. Arguments through incredulity gloss over this. When arguing against a given tech - as this article does with carbon capture - it's not enough to just act incredulous, you need to do a fibancial analysis (which on large scales is not trivial)

Also they do the "all or nothing" faælacy as well. It's perfectly acceptable ro pursue carbon capture at the same time as other technologies. More to the point, until one is sure that a particular solution is the be-all end-all in a particular field, it's only logical.

Re: Wind and natural gas

[phantomfive]

It's amazing what 6billion people can do if they work together (or even work vaguely towards similar desires).

Re: Wind and natural gas

[coldsalmon]

I'm sick of people citing in despair the overwhelming amount of work it would take to slow climate change. Yes, it will take a lot of wind turbines and carbon capture and solar cells. But we are really good at producing things - literally better than anyone can imagine. We make 165,000 new cars every single day. We need about 500,000 wind turbines to replace coal. If we made wind turbines at the same rate as cars, it would take us one week to get rid of coal.

Re:Wind and natural gas

[vandamme]

I was recently in the Netherlands, and it seems like there were more windmills than ever before. BIG ones, now.

Re:Wind and natural gas

[tsa]

True, but windmills are not very efficient and placing windmills is just about the only thing our government does for the environment. And besides placing windmills they recently increased the maximum speed on the motorways to 130 km/h, decided not to close some coal powered power plants, get more gas from elsewhere to prevent earthquakes in the province of Groningen instead of making an effort to insulate houses and make companies more energy efficient and they want to expand Schiphol. So every effort they put into green energy is more than compensated for. Oh and they also decided to increase tax on hybrids so the difference in tax you pay on diesels and more energy efficient cars has become smaller.

Mutually exclusive?

[Anonymous Coward]

. It's better to switch to a diet of energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables, rather than rely on this technology as a kind of emergency planetary liposuction.

Why is everything these days "This and only this is the right path" can we not do both? would that not be even better...

I think the science is in.

[hackus]

All the prevailing research shows that carbon taxes, not the carbon itself is the solution to Climate Change.

All Climate Change represents a serious threat to humans and we need to stop it, at any price.

Re: I think the science is in.

[Namarrgon]

That's the whole point. A competitive market will take care of the rest. And if there isn't a competitive market for some products yet, then the revenue from the carbon taxes can be used to help develop one, or offset some of the impact until there is.

That approach was proving quite effective in AU, until an incoming right-wing prime minister rolled it all back on behalf of his coal-magnate buddies.

Re: I think the science is in.

[ChunderDownunder]

We had a carbon tax once, here in Australia.

That was the very effective argument used to repeal it, citing electricity prices. Never mind that we once had state government owned and regulated power monopolies - by the people, for the people. Until fraudsters in conservative parties decided to sell everything off to their mates heading 'megacorporations', who can now charge whatever they like.

Leaks?

[whoever57]

How long before the CO2 captured by this generation plant and injected into oil wells leaks out again?

What was the point again?

Re:Leaks?

[HiThere]

That's not the only problem. We haven't yet experienced all the effects of the CO2 already emitted even if you don't include the knock-on effects like melting of permafrost causing emission of methane. So whatever we do, unless we actually decrease the atmospheric CO2 level, we're going to continue to get increased global warming, though some areas are predicted to experience the exact opposite. E.g. the gulf stream has been slowing, which may lead to Europe, especially Ireland and Britain, experiencing extremely cold winters (but probably hot summers). Also the temperature difference between the equator and the poles have caused the jet streams to weaken, which has already caused weather patterns to change more slowly, meaning longer heat, rain, and cold waves, etc.

That said, is we can just slow things up a bit it might help. But we aren't going to be able to hold things to a 2 degree rise.

Re:Leaks?

[Dr_Barnowl]

One of the major points is to make it look as if we're doing something to allow the fossil fuel companies to continue to rake in the cash.

Re:Leaks?

[david_thornley]

If we can keep some of it sequestered, that's at least a very slight help.

The real problem:

[Rick Schumann]

2nd- and 3rd-world countries say:

But we want to join the 1st-world countries on the world stage! LOL we'll do what we want, and we've got nice cheap coal to burn to slingshot us up with the Big Boys! Saving the planet can wait, LOL, it's not going to really be a problem for a few hundred years, why should we care? We're more interested in next week!

It's hard to get people to care about something that's even decades away when they're more concerned about next week.

Re:The real problem:

[BarbaraHudson]

What do you mean, next week? You missed Hurricane Matthew? The increase in severity of forest fires, droughts, etc? It's already here.

Re:The real problem:

[Rick Schumann]

Oh well that's terrible that that happened to those people, good thing that those things don't happen here.

And the further away it is, the less real it is to them, and the less they actually are emotionally impacted by it.

Re:The real problem:

[BarbaraHudson]

You're replying to the wrong person :-( You should have replied to the reply above mine.

Re:The real problem:

[david_thornley]

And it's mostly statistical in nature. We used to have droughts. If we have more now, we can't point at any individual drought and say "See? If it wasn't for CO2 emission we wouldn't have had that". People generally get more concerned about specific things that are happening, not an increase in frequency of bad things.

Re:The real problem:

[BarbaraHudson]

WTF do you think statistics are for? The frequency of forest fires has doubled. When your fire insurance doubles because of this, you're going to be concerned even if a forest fire didn't affect you directly.

Also, people ARE more concerned about things that happen more frequently. The frequency of terrorist attacks, the frequency with which Donald Trump shoots himself in the foot while shooting off his mouth, the frequency with which Clinton refuses to give direct answers, the frequency of bacterial outbreaks at Chipote, restaurants, the frequency of Samsung Note 7's bursting into flames ... people notice through repitition, same as how they learn most things.

Re:The real problem:

[david_thornley]

Statistics are for reasoned discussions. They don't have the same impact in casual conversation. Too many people are aware that figures don't lie, but liars figure.

Nobody (to a reasonable approximation) cares how many terrorist attacks there are; they're just scared of them. The frequency of bacterial outbreaks at X restaurant is not only trumpeted in the media, it's significant numbers of what should be a very rare event. Droughts weren't that rare, and that they are more common now isn't something that hits people like Samsung phones spontaneously combusting.

Re:Fighting Climate Change

[tsa]

Good riddance.

Re:Meanwhile

[Dr_Barnowl]

Natural gas... is a fossil fuel? It might be a little less... grubby.. than coal and oil, but it's still chock-full o' carbon.

Re:Meanwhile

[HiThere]

It's not pointless, but it's not reasonable allocation of effort, either.

P.S.: Natural gas is not Carbon neutral unless it's sources from bio-fermentation, and often not then. Solar, hydro, wind, and even nuclear are better choices if that's your goal. It's better than coal, but that's faint praise indeed.

Nuclear

[johannesg]

So what is it going to be: mess up the entire planet, or build the safest nuclear plants we can and perhaps mess up one tiny spot every few centuries? Keep burning coal in endless quantities, or choose a completely emission-free technology?

And no, pointing to decades old plants that were in at least one case made by people with zero safety standards does not count as evidence of danger. The true danger is destroying our world; we will certainly do better if we limit that danger to the best nucleair plants we can build.

Re:Nuclear

[KonoWatakushi]

Hear, hear. The people telling you that "It's better to switch to a diet of energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables" are completely out of touch with reality. While the first world is busy sprinkling their landscapes with renewables and prematurely shutting down nuclear plants, the global share of clean energy is actually declining, and the reason is quite simple: growth. Before advocating unrealistic solutions based on ideology, please educate yourself.

There are already billions doing without, burning dung and wood just to survive; telling them that they can't have a better life is insulting. The developing world will choose the most economical option, and today that is coal. They desperately need cheap, abundant, and reliable energy to build out infrastructure and industry. It is our job to push technology, as only a better option will dissuade them from realizing the mountain of coal plants currently on the drawing board. Once built, they will continue to burn coal for the next 40-60 years.

Molten salt reactors were proven 50 years ago, and can solve the problems facing conventional nuclear. The primary obstacles are political in nature, and while it will require courage, they can be overcome. There are dozens of companies trying to push nuclear forward, but they are mired in overzealous regulations and unfair policies distorting the market in favor of renewables only and not clean energy in general. In reality, these policies lock in fossil fuel backup, which will remain the bulk of generation. Only when reactors are rolling off of assembly lines, do we have any hope of truly closing the book on fossil fuels. Until then, it is foolish to leave any effective clean energy options off the table.

(Also note: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is an anti-nuclear organization; leading climate scientists, among others who genuinely care about the environment, do not exclude options based on the "green" ideology.)

Re:Nuclear

[NotInHere]

Nuclear has long been skewed positively to support weapon making with it. You may build a more or less safe nuclear plant in theory, but usually that's not happening for economic reasons. Also in the case of a major nuclear incident, the company running the reactors simply declares bankruptcy and lets the taxpayer pay for the damage. Look at Japan for how its done. That is yet another subvention of the technology.

Also, nuclear is not a clean energy. Its dirty like coal. The only difference is that coal makes lots of things a little dirty, and nuclear makes very few things really really dirty and that for a very long time.

While many countries in central europe may not have as much solar irradiance that they can ever go to 100% renewables that stand inside their borders, many countries of the development world have much stronger solar irradiance, and therefore renewables are far more viable for them.

Also, renewables are already now the more economic option, if you add in the externalities like climate change effects on the economy or health degradation. However, as they are not internalized, their prices may appear cheaper for you as customer.

Re:Nuclear

[johannesg]

It's not "dirty like coal". Coal gives you _guaranteed_ dirt, plus the additional _guarantee_ of killing the planet. Nuclear does neither. That means nuclear is by far the preferable option.

Re:Nuclear

[drinkypoo]

So what is it going to be: mess up the entire planet, or build the safest nuclear plants we can and perhaps mess up one tiny spot every few centuries? Keep burning coal in endless quantities, or choose a completely emission-free technology?

Your logical fallacy is: false dichotomy.

Do you want to try again, without logical fallacies? Or would you just like to retire in disgrace?

Re:Nuclear

[NotInHere]

When I said "nuclear makes very few things really really dirty and that for a very long time" I've meant the different kinds of radioactive waste that the operation of a nuclear plant creates.

Also, lots of chemical waste gets created too by the uranium mines.

And when I see how various countries treat the problem of nuclear waste I'm quite certain that I don't want it.

Re:Nuclear

[david_thornley]

It's going to be really hard to make most of our electricity, let alone powering our vehicles, with renewable energy, but it can play a very large role and cut down on CO2 emissions significantly. However, your dichotomy is that you seem to see no middle ground between nukes for everything and "burn, baby, burn" with the coal.

Carbon Tax

[P3r1$c0p3]

I find the deliberate altering of the atmosphere with aluminium and barium much more egregious than the normal output of carbon. http://www.geoengineeringwatch... The elites that want to set up the carbon exchanges will certainly exempt themselves from a carbon taxing scheme. It is an agenda to track all human behaviours by pricing all activities in carbon credits which will be tracked by some super-governmental agency that will not be affected by democratic edict. A taxing scheme that makes you pay an indulgence just for breathing to an entity that is immune from democratic input from your elected government is not something I can get behind. You are implicitly bad because you are a carbon based life form so pay them an indulgence and you will be forgiven. Sounds like they learned a thing or two from the holy roman empire. This site http://scienceandpublicpolicy.... discusses many of the other aspects of the AGW issue. Being conservative with energy consumption is a good practice. Using more than you need just because is not and should not be criminal. It is just common decency not to be wasteful.

Re:Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[bigfinger76]

'Radical'?

hyperbole

[phantomfive]

"We are betting our species' future on our ability to bury carbon."

Seriously? What do 97% of climate scientists agree on? I'll tell you, it's not that.

This kind of hyperbole is what turns people into climate change deniers. Very few scientists think AGW will cause the destruction of the human race.

Re:hyperbole

[ebvwfbw]

Aught to check out this site - http://realclimatescience.com/ . Real science stands on its own. Fake science threatens other people, changes historical data and such. Things this guy can show you, using news paper articles you can go to your library and look up for yourself. I did. Not one of his citations was bogus. NASA obviously has an activist over there changing data so every month is a new record. Ever notice that?

Bottom line, co2 isn't the cause, it's a symptom.

Check out the site. Facts, stubborn facts will set you free.

Re:hyperbole

[phantomfive]

How does he explain the melting polar ice cap?

Re:hyperbole

[ebvwfbw]

How does he explain the melting polar ice cap?

I could tell you. However I want you to look for yourself. Understand what is going on. The site is that well done. It's not bullshit, it's backed with facts. Might want to start here http://realclimatescience.com/...
You need to know what you're talking about. When you try to inform other people, they are often crazy. It's very comforting knowing you are right. Let them know. Knowledge is power. Maybe we can keep a bunch of scam artists from taking a whole bunch more money globally.

Re:hyperbole

[Layzej]

Pretty sure no one is going to follow you down the rabbit hole.

Carbon capture technology is not required

[prefec2]

First, we have to phase out CO2 by 2050 or 2040 (1.5 deg C). Second, we do not need fancy carbon capture tech. We can rely on plant growth and reforestation programs which actually work. We had a few of those. Also we have to help countries to protect their forests. Also helpful would be to reduce meat production.

Re:Carbon capture technology is not required

[Anonymous Coward]

Also helpful would be to reduce meat production.

Bullshit. Eating meat is carbon neutral. (Think about what we feed those animals. Hint: It's not oil.)

Oh, come on, I'm as skeptical as the next guy, but the animal feed for the creatures you're getting the meat from is grown with the use of fossil fuels and fertilized with chemical products created using petro- feedstocks. 1000 kilocalories of ground beef require the generation of a lot more CO2 than 1000 kilocalories of beans and rice.

Re:Carbon capture technology is not required

[vandamme]

guess what we feed tractors?

Oh no! Work.

[rasmusbr]

So we're talking about 250 new installations per year. I'm assuming that's for the whole industrial world. That's something like 2 new plants per year per industrialised country. That is not a lot if you compare it with what the industrial world built built back in the 1950's and 1960's after WW2. Sounds reasonable in terms of volume of work.

I mean it sounds reasonable when you first think about it. But I don't know...

I mean it would take work. It would take actual investment in actual projects, and actual political decisions about actual things. You know, those old-fashioned secondary sector of the economy things that we're not suppose to have to bother with in the modern world. We'd even have to hire actual workers to do actual work. Like, physically do work. Like, non-office work.

And you'd have to train people to do it too! I you think about it, you'd have to train unemployed people so that they could take these construction and planning jobs.

Seriously? There ought to be a way to solve global climate change in some reasonable way. Like by inventing a new financial scheme, or by making a new smartphone app. Or at least by having drones or self-driving cars do all the work. I'm sure someone will think of something.

Not a plant

[Namarrgon]

Try algae instead. There's far more ocean than land surface, and we're not using any of it.

There's still the problem of how to permanently fix the captured carbon though, ideally without turning it into more carbonic acid.

Get off your asses.

[WSOGMM]

It takes effort to limit your energy consumption. Especially when it comes to vehicles. Get off your asses and stand at a bus stop instead, bike to work, carpool if you have to.

Lead by example and lay down the groundwork for others to follow in your footsteps.

Fight to the bitter end with your dollar. Don't be complacent.

Seriously. The only reason this shit is perpetuating is because of the choices that you're making right now.

Re:Get off your asses.

[drinkypoo]

It takes effort to limit your energy consumption. Especially when it comes to vehicles. Get off your asses and stand at a bus stop instead, bike to work, carpool if you have to.

Oh, my sweet summer child. By spending more of your time and energy on transportation to show how hard you're sticking it to the man, you're just wasting time you could be using actually sticking it to the man. Meanwhile, if you use less energy, that just leaves more for war. If you don't burn up that fuel they'll put it into a bomber and use it to bomb some brown people.

Fight to the bitter end with your dollar. Don't be complacent.

If you mean we should be building fuel-air bombs, then there may be something to what you say. But it's bullshit to think that you can change the system by refusing to participate in it. You have to actually do something to it if you want to change it. What you're doing is just pretending that it's not happening.

Re:Get off your asses.

[WSOGMM]

What man? Which man? Whose the man?

When's a man a man? What makes a man a man?

Am I a man? Yes, technically I am

Prediction: Ice free Arctic by 2050

[Geoffrey.landis]

Maybe some scientist may have predicted ice free by 2016, but most predicted the date as much later.

"Many scientists have attempted to estimate when the Arctic will be "ice-free". They have noted that climate model predictions have tended to be overly conservative regarding sea ice decline.[2][13] A 2013 paper suggested that models commonly underestimate the solar radiation absorption characteristics of wildfire soot.[14] A 2006 paper predicted "near ice-free September conditions by 2040".[15] Overland & Wang (2009) predicted that there would be an ice-free Arctic in the summer by 2037.[16] The same year Boé et al. found that the Arctic will probably be ice-free in September before the end of the 21st century.[17] A follow-up study concluded with the possibility of major sea ice loss within a decade or two.[18] The IPCC AR5 (for at least one scenario) estimates an ice-free summer might occur around 2050.[3] The Third U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA), released May 6, 2014, reports that the Arctic Ocean is expected to be ice free in summer before mid-century. Models that best match historical trends project a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer by the 2030s.[19] However, these models do tend to underestimate the rate of sea ice loss since 2007. A 2010 study suggested that the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free sooner than global climate models predict. They chart the summer of 2016 as ice-free, but show a possible date range out to 2020.[20] This assessment was reported in the press as "US Navy predicts summer ice free Arctic by 2016" [21] In a study from 2016, the prediction uncertainty of an ice-free Arctic was quantified to be at around two decades, based on model simulations [22]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline

Re:Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[presidenteloco]

So let's get this straight:

Conserving living species biodiversity and habitat,
Preventing a wholesale shift of climate into a new regime 10 degrees F warmer
Slowing down the massive rates of fresh-water pollution and over-use
Preventing the oceans from acidifying due to warming and killing off all shellfish and many other ocean lifeforms

All of these things would be radical?

As opposed to continuing on our present accelerating course to a profoundly messed up life-support system on this planet and the attendant mass-scale misery and resource wars. Which would be, what, conservative?

Do you see quite how f**ked up your perspective is yet?

Re:Fighting Climate Change

[BradMajors]

The most popular topics on slashdot are about politics. If you don't like politics then slashdot is not for you. Try a technology forum instead.

Of course

[ChrisMaple]

Capturing carbon will protect us from anthropogenic climate change as well as garlic will protect us from vampires, and for the same reason.

Something not mentioned

[CanadianMacFan]

It was a poor article. Yes CCS can grab the Carbon coming out of the exhaust stacks but what is missed is the fact that the process requires a lot of energy. The article doesn't mention anything about it but other plants have systems that require 30% to 40% of the electricity generated by the plant. So the plant has to produce a lot more electricity just to get production back to what it was. And then there are the emissions and waste generated from the additional mining and transportation of the extra coal. Of course that isn't mentioned.

It's much better to put the money towards conservation and methods of electrical generation that doesn't create CO2.

Re:Something not mentioned

[drinkypoo]

It was a poor article. Yes CCS can grab the Carbon coming out of the exhaust stacks but what is missed is the fact that the process requires a lot of energy.

The best way is to use the CO2 to grow algae like we proved at Sandia NREL in the fucking 1980s. You can capture 80% of the output of a coal plant in this fashion. Of course, in order for this to work and not produce a bunch of radioactive wastewater you have to actually be using your scrubbers correctly, and we can find out-of-compliance smokestacks as fast as we can pay people to sample them.

Re:Something not mentioned

[CanadianMacFan]

The biggest part of energy use in CCS doesn't come from the sequestration but from the capture using the scrubbers. So it doesn't matter if they put the CO2 into an oil well or use it to feed algae the system is still going to use a lot more coal because it needs electricity for the scrubbers.

Re:Something not mentioned

[drinkypoo]

The biggest part of energy use in CCS doesn't come from the sequestration but from the capture using the scrubbers.

That's a nonsense way of looking at it. Capturing it is part of sequestering it. You can't do the latter without the former.

Re: Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet the Leo decaprios and al gore of the world are not living a conservative enviromentally friendly life style . They live in houses 10 times bigger than need , fly private jets when commercial flights are available etc . Technology will bring us to carbon negative in 30 years but rushing efforts and putting people into poverty while the liberal 1% goes on with their wasteful lifestyles . No way

Re: Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[presidenteloco]

How is your cherry-picked example of a few individuals' behavior in any way relevant to the essential problems at hand and substantial solutions needed?

To me how you responded sounds like an ad hominem attack with an agenda of stopping the changes needed. You must be out of valid logical arguments.

Re: Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[Anonymous Coward]

If we really want to stop warming we should invest in geoengineering our climate, and taking control of it. It could work, but people hate to admit it because they are afraid it might take away the need for their chosen totalitarian policies. Makes you wonder what the real motive is.

But more importantly, climate change is the wrong problem to worry about. We should be putting those resources into figuring out how to mitigate or limit the impact/force of the super volcano under Yellowstone, instead.

Ian Malcolm was right

[RogueWarrior65]

"The lack of humility before nature that's being displayed here, uh... staggers me."

Re:Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[Applehu Akbar]

Those people are automatically against any solution. They oppose even trying out solutions, out of fear that one will work. Search on 'Haida experiment' for an example.

Re: Maybe they should just look at corking

[riverat1]

Human emissions of CO2 ~ 35 billion tons per year.

Re:Maybe they should just look at corking

[WalksOnDirt]

Humans: 35,900 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2014 from fossil fuel burning.

No. You cannot "stop" climate change.

[Chas]

Because "climate change" is too broad and nebulous a term.
And the people looking for grant money LIKE it that way. You can basically wrangle ANY sort of phenomenon in Earth's atmosphere into some definition of "climate change". Basically there is no bottom to this well.

Also, climate change is a NATURAL process. Earth's climate has been changing since basically FOREVER.

Now, can we stop "man made climate change/global warming"?

Maybe. If we sequester enough carbon out of the atmosphere. It may make a difference.

Can we stop "man made climate change" PERIOD? No. Because anything we do is going to cause the climate to "change" in some way.

Re:Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[rally2xs]

Yes, radical. These guys want to harm the human race with extreme measures that still won't make a bit of difference, but they don't care, they have "the environment" to worship.

Re: Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[rally2xs]

The thing to stop is the diminishment of the prosperity we actually need to have in order to research the solutions to the problem. Research costs money, and if the country is pauperized by ill-conceieved and ineffective half-measures to attack the problem that don't actually have a hope of making a significant difference, the real solution will be delayed instead of hastened.

What we need first and foremost is a much improved battery. I call it the "magic battery" which needs to be cheap and small and cheap and rugged enough for automotive use and cheap and durable enough to not be wearing out and further increase cost and cheap and easily manufactured in quantity and cheap. Oh, and it has to be cheap so customers can buy a $12,000 electric car that will do everything that a $12,000 gasoline-powered car will do.

What we need is to be able to leave the oil and gas and coal in the ground, and we can't do that until we can make cars and planes and boats and ships and locomotives run on electricity. For that we need the magic battery. Otherwise, for solar and wind we need a world-wide power grid so that when the wind stops blowing at night, we can get our power from the Sahara or the Ukraine. A world-wide power grid and a magic battery will together solve the problem, but both will be expensive to make happen, and will be delayed by a strategy of "conservation" and maybe even "efficiency" if that is misapplied, such as vacuum cleaners that just make it take twice as long to do the carpets because they're underpowered.

Work the solution, but don't diminish us as a strategy.

Bury trees

[admiral snackbar]

I read an interesting article about the possibility of just burying trees in huge amounts to capture carbon. https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... Might that not be more easily scaleable than carbon capture systems near powerplants?

Re:Fighting Climate Change

[someone1234]

No more anonymous coward posts? Oh... you was the most prolific poster.

Why stop there

[Martin S.]

Why not genetically modify the plants to combine the C02 with some H20 and produce hydro-carbon fuel, why we are at it.

nike tn 2016 pas cher France

[chenfanjon]

LE SCAN SPORT - Lors de la douzième étape nike tn 2016 Montpellier-Mont Ventoux, Christopher Froome a continué la course à pieds après une chute, avant de récupérer un vélo à environ 1,5km de la ligne d'arrivée.Le Maillot jaune du Tour de France a chuté à 1.5 kilomètre de la fin de l'étape. Sa voiture de dépannage bloquée par la foule massive et compacte, le Britannique a jeté son vélo et a terminé la course à pied. A l'origine, une chute impliquant Richie Porte, Bauke Mollema, et le Britannique. L'Australien Porte, en tête du trio, a percuté la moto les précédant,qui avait dû s'arrêter brutalement à cause de spectateurs qui bloquaient le chemin.Et il faut reconnaître que, ces deux dernières années, la demoiselle s’est forgé une certaine culture de mode. Proche d’Olivier Rousteing, designer de Balmain, qui l’a carrément embauchée pour sa campagne printemps-été, Riri a écumé les derniers défilés parisiens. Entre buzz et rédemption, la rétrospective mode.

Re: Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[rally2xs]

The geoengineering that needs to be worked is one that extracts the CO2 from the air and turns it into carbon and oxygen. Make it something that runs on solar energy and generates electricity at the same time and it'll be a winner. The STEP process:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10...

would be something that would fix things forever, but apparently no one has actually gotten this thing to work. Somebody should. We could run it, have more and more pure carbon than you could get out of coal mines, and then recycle the carbon thru power plants to make even more electricity with _just_ CO2 as an emission, rather than CO2 plus SO2 plus mercury plus uranium plus radon plus a thousand other things not good for living things to contact.

Yes a plant

[drinkypoo]

Try algae instead. There's far more ocean than land surface, and we're not using any of it.

Algae is a small plant, it's not an animal or a vegetable or a mushroom.

Re:Yes a plant

[BoogieChile]

> Try algae instead. There's far more ocean than land surface...

Read the whole post, not just the first sentence. Unless you know a good way to get trees to grow in the ocean.

Environmentalists are control freaks

[John Jorsett]

Of course environmentalists hate carbon sequestration. They have an agenda that includes telling you how to live and carbon sequestration defeats it. If you can mitigate the damage, real or imagined, without resort to their remedies of deprivation, mandate, and punishment, you slip from their control, and they cannot abide that.

Re:Maybe they should just look at corking

[NoOneInParticular]

Great, so with the world pumping 35,000 Million tons of CO2 a year in the air, with the US taking about 14% of this, just the US excretes about 10x the amount of volcanos each year. California contains about 10% of the population of the population, but they are actually on a good road to minimize their footprint. So Texas it is. Let's nuke Texas instead of putting a cork in all volcanos. Easier and the world would be a much better place.

Fracking with the captured co2 not helpful

[dkegel]

Capturing the co2, then using it to extract more fossil fuel from underground, won't get us to a carbon-free economy.

Re: Fighting Climate Change

[gwjgwj]

Help fight continental drift!

Re: Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[Methadras]

No, what needs to happen is that 3rd world countries need to get off their asses and modernize. They are the primary source of CO2 emissions. Not efficient running countries like the US.

Re: Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[presidenteloco]

Per capita you're way wrong.

Country - - - - - - - CO2 Emission per capita (t) in 2014
United States - - 16.5
China - - - - - - - - 7.6
European Union 6.7
India - - - - - - - - - 1.8

Re: Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[beastofburdon]

We already have these amazing devices! We often refer to them as plants! They go by many different names, but the most iconic is called a tree!

Re: Straight From Greenpeace Agenda

[rally2xs]

Well, we already have the plants, and they are obviously not getting the job done. We likely don't have enough land that can grow them, and it might even be dangerous to create some kind of super-plant and stick it into the sea without knowing the environmental impact of doing so - what if it overmultiplies and not only clogs the seas to make shipping impossible, but sucks virtually all the CO2 out of the atmosphere and plunges the planet into an ice ball. I once read of an alien attack that was accomplished entirely by tricking our scientists into creating some single-cell critters that they carelessly allowed into the environment, they found their ways to the sea, and commence to sucking all the oxygen out of the atmosphere, suffocating all animal life on the planet. Forget how the planet was saved, but it was probably unworkable and the planet would actually have been destroyed.

Doing our geo-engineering without summoning the fire of using living things to do it might be a safer route. If we make a machine that is detrimental to our survival, we can turn it off. Living things in the biosphere are much harder to control.