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Comment by mmastrac | Hacker News Reader

We live in a time where it is far easier to invent wild new technology to extract and sequester CO₂ from the atmosphere than it is to convince industry and individual to reduce the amount of CO₂ they contribute, let alone convincing people that a problem actually exists.

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It is significantly easier to engineer a solution for a single, large (generally industrial) pollution source than a billion small pollution sources for both technical and political reasons.

So, for example, electric cars are incredibly useful even if they have the same carbon footprint as combustion cars simply because they move the pollution source to a single point (the power plant).

In addition, there is not a lot that an individual can do that will dramatically affect his carbon footprint. Neighborhoods don't magically become walkable or bikeable. Businesses don't magically implement work-from-home because a low-level employee wills it (see: Yahoo).

Most carbon reducing solutions require buy-in from a group of people, and that takes forever, if you can get them to agree at all.

"In addition, there is not a lot that an individual can do that will dramatically affect his carbon footprint. Neighborhoods don't magically become walkable or bikeable. Businesses don't magically implement work-from-home because a low-level employee wills it (see: Yahoo). "

I don't buy that, that attitude I largely why we're in this situation.

It's the individuals which make up the whole, if each individual did something, then the whole would be better off.

What do you mean you don't buy it? Parent post is saying that's what the problem is. You seem to agree that it's the cause of our problems, then saying "I don't buy that".

Not disagreeing on anything, just clarifying that the power plant may or may not produce carbon.

Invent, sure, but implement on a useful scale, not yet. Even sequestering CO2 right at the source has proved more expensive than anyone wants. Extracting it from the air is worse. Research needs to be funded all-out at this point, but leaving existing fossil fuels underground is going to be the cheaper option for some time.

I read once about a really fascinating way to transfer carbon back into the oceans by seeding it with iron, which promotes algae growth. Might transform some local ecosystems, but it gets the carbon out of the air at a shockingly cheap price. (iron and ships)

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

Well, at least IS an idea, yes, but its effects at middle and long term are still untested. Could release again the carbon to the air in the next summer. A 400 years old tree on the other side...

"really fascinating way to transfer carbon back into the oceans by seeding it with iron"

Thats a horrible idea. See ocean acidification on Wikipedia.

Ocean acidification happens when CO2 dissolves in the ocean. If that carbon is fixed first by algae then it won't cause acidification.

You seen the replacement rate of energy with solar panels in the last 2 years or so ? Granted, cost calculations for those were done when oil was $100, but they made sense at that point and solar has been lowering in cost by ~27% per year. In other words, despite oil dropping to 50, it's just going to continue. Even China is moving away from coal (thank God for that). Coal generates disproportionate amounts of CO2 so this helps even more than you'd guess from a simple linear estimation. Most oil usage is going to get replaced soon as well (people are talking about electrical engines for non-nuclear navy ships, container carriers, ...)

What we need to invent is cheap, dense, mobile batteries. No amount of blustering by Elon Musk can mask the fact that we can't store electrical power anywhere near as easily, lightly (meaning we need the ability to pack it up and move it around), and small. Yes you can fix it with $50k cars, but electrical cars could be $10k and even less if we assume magic perfect batteries. That'd be great and will get almost every gasoline car of the road.

Batteries are currently about 10% as dense either per liter or per kilogram. A bit of this can be made up because the infrasstructure to "burn" electricity is much simpler and therefore lighter than the infrastructure needed to burn gasoline. So let's say they're 20-25% as dense for locomotion purposes (this makes them not work for powering lights or factories or ... at night though). So we need batteries 4x smaller and lighter than current batteries. Assuming the current rate of improvement in batteries, that would require about 20-30 years (improvement per year is about 5%).

So that's just not good enough. Please invent something to fix it. If we can store energy efficiently, co2 release per year will stabilize probably on less than 10% of it's current value.

Or carbon neutral fuels. I've been a fan of engineering algae to make ethanol and similar from sun water and CO2 and though nothing's ready for primetime yet you never know.

> let alone convincing people that a problem actually exists.

I love this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPgZfhnCAdI

It's my favourite episode of the daily show.

Let's say it is easier (I can't comment on that), but instead of requiring industry to party for the waste they make, isn't it a huge subsidy to allow them to keep all their profits and make taxpayers pay for cleaning up their mess? That sounds like the wrong kind of incentive.

The oil industry already gets insane incentives at taxpayer cost. I don't feel like adding to them.

We all reap the benefits of cheap oil. We might not be individually responsible, but we all profit.

It comes down to building an economical product for the Industry to use over building new technology that is not limited by cost..

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