EDIT : Also this initiative seems to be very research-focused, rather than be just about using already known methods?
"Does Stripe Climate offer traditional carbon offsets? No. Traditional carbon offsets, while often inexpensive, are unlikely to scale to the size of the climate problem. Instead, we’ve chosen to focus on permanent carbon removal technologies."
Planting trees and renewable energy are some activities that carbon offsets fund.
If we're going to flatten the peaks of power availability with anything, it should probably be novel energy storage techniques so that the carbon that is output is not wasted, so the energy is actually used eventually for something productive.
We already have a carbon removal system that is viciously efficient and solar powered: it's called a plant.
1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/08/spreadin...
> A simple chemical model estimated the rate of weathering for the crushed rock based on the local soil conditions. They also calculated energy requirements based on distance from likely rock sources, as well as accounting for the energy mix available to run everything. (The more fossil fuel burned to carry out the work, the less CO2 removed from the atmosphere in the final accounting.)
If it was true that any carbon capture method that uses energy will emit more carbon that it captures, then the researchers wouldn't have bothered doing the research. Yet they have, and do. Carbon capture is a very good avenue of research for mitigating climate change in the near term as we transition to new power sources.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/spreading-rock-dust-...
The only way this works is if it's using excess energy that wasn't produced by processes that emit carbon to start with. Run it on nuclear, solar, etc. and it can work. However, the grid is still awash with coal power! There's no way any machine is going to capture more carbon per KW consumed energy than the coal to produce that many KW emitted to start with.
So, does it makes sense to deploy this in areas with a ton of green energy available on the grid? Maybe... but those areas have lower PPM carbon in the air, so it's not the right place to run the machine anyway.
Perhaps instead of all this wasted effort and engineering time, we could just replace the damned coal plants and stop emitting carbon itself.
Not really, coal is quickly vanishing from the US electricity sector due to cheap natural gas and renewables. I see no reason that trend won't continue. Source: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
> So, does it makes sense to deploy this in areas with a ton of green energy available on the grid? Maybe... but those areas have lower PPM carbon in the air, so it's not the right place to run the machine anyway.
Global carbon dioxide concentrations are not evenly distributed, but the distribution has much more to do with climate patterns than where the emissions happened. The atmosphere is fairly well-mixed. Across the whole globe, concentrations are significantly higher than pre-industrial levels. Source: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/82142/global-patter...
> Perhaps instead of all this wasted effort and engineering time, we could just replace the damned coal plants and stop emitting carbon itself.
Once the world reaches net-zero emissions, we can't celebrate and say we've stopped the problem. We just stopped it from getting worse. Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for centuries, if we want to return the climate to pre-industrial, massive negative emissions will eventually be necessary. Engineering work on negative emissions will not be wasted unless we give up on that goal completly.
Yes, plants remove carbon from the air. But plants die, and rot, and some amount of that carbon (all, at the limit) ends up right back in the atmosphere.
I happen to think that planting poplar, making it into charcoal on an industrial scale, and using the biochar as a soil amendment to mitigate topsoil depletion, is severely underutilized as a carbon capture strategy. We should be doing enormous amounts of this, instead of... basically none.
But it isn't "just plant trees". There's more to the job than that. But nothing which requires technology which was unknown to the Romans.
Do you believe a religious metaphor to be useful for understanding climate change?
Do you believe adding CO2 molecules to the air to be intrinsically sinful with the result that no amount of subsequent removal of CO2 can wash away the sin?
The problem isn't on the buyer side. It's that the seller is inherently going to break his promises and defraud you for a penny.
But my main point is that global warming is eminently amenable to technical solutions similar to how for example putting humans on the moon was eminently amenable. Not all societal concerns are so amenable, but for those that are, it seems to me very suboptimal to resort to analogies with religious concepts in public discussions of the concern.
My first comment has a score of -4 now by the way.
Also, I would have hoped that we could have managed to solve the pollution issue in a rational way, but hope is getting thin. And religion comes with the power of strong taboos that might succeed where we previously failed. Or maybe what is blocking us is how progress has been given the status of a new religion, and while we can appreciate where it got us, we also have to consider whether the costs aren't going to outweigh the benefits in the future...