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Comment by snowwindwaves | Hacker News Reader

I am surprised all of the comments so far are so negative. They can take carbon out of the air and make jet fuel with it. We still need jet fuel. It makes flying carbon neutral.

The CEO argues that even if all carbon emissions stopped today we would still need to remove some of the carbon we've already emitted.

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> I am surprised all of the comments so far are so negative. They can take carbon out of the air and make jet fuel with it. We still need jet fuel. It makes flying carbon neutral.

This is either an oversimplification or the technology is not useful, since a naïve method of doing this means that you will have to put in the energy we got from burning the fuel to convert the carbon dioxide.

Gather $renewable energy for $x time (x > 8 hours), convert to high-energy-density fuel required for flight and burn for 8 hours to cross $continent... Seems useful to me!

It would need to be 100% efficient over the whole cycle to make flying carbon neutral.

the process uses energy to create the fuel out of carbon in the atmosphere. the process does not release any carbon. the plane burns the fuel, releasing the same amount of carbon in the fuel back in to the atmosphere.

What part needs to be 100% efficient to make flying carbon neutral?

Further shows that many environmentalists care more about controlling the economy than helping the environment. Being able to utilize fossil fuels without the carbon issues should be great news, but instead people are worried that it won't kill off our means of producing power fast enough.

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