Don't Fall for Big Oil's Carbon Capture Deceptions
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
> Don’t be fooled. It’s mostly a distraction from what we really need to do right now: phase out fossil fuels and deploy more effective climate solutions.
This is a false dichotomy. I’m yet to find a person that claims these solutions will be enough. It’s just a piece of the puzzle.
> First, industrial carbon capture projects are far too small to matter. > Second, they are far too expensive, costing thousands of dollars for every ton of CO2 removed.
To anyone who treats these kinds of arguments seriously, I highly recommend reading „Why Internet win’t catch on” - a serious article from Newsweek from 1999 ( https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv... ).
We don’t know if CCS will scale, but we should keep exploring every avenue possible. Especially when we know that certain in certain fields (agriculture, air travel) it will be close to impossible to get to net zero without carbon capture.
Also, if we manage to get the costs of CCS down to €100-200 or so, we can switch from carbon taxation to just requiring companies to be carbon neutral, period. Right now we are in this limbo where we can’t tax carbon polluters as much as it takes to clean up (because the economy would collapse and the poorest people would suffer the most), and we end up charging arbitrary amounts that are not enough to clean up the mess, but we hope are enough to limit the co2 footprint.
Also, replying ad hominem to an article that is ad hominem as well - people who are against CCS are people who are degrowth and just want to get rid of technology altogether. The people that are privileged enough to be able to ignore all the good that technology has brought to developing nationa.
The bottom line is that every dollar wasted on these inferior technologies/strategies is one not spent on more promising avenues. It's a simple matter of opportunity cost, even beyond the (valid) distraction angle.
> This is a false dichotomy. I’m yet to find a person that claims these solutions will be enough. It’s just a piece of the puzzle.
1) That's not a dichotomy because it's an AND not an XOR. So it's not a false dichotomy.
2) "Deploy more effective climate solutions" seems awfully open-ended. How is that "a piece?" I would argue that the phrase means roughly "actually solve the problem(s)," which would also be a complete solution.
> Also, replying ad hominem to an article that is ad hominem as well - people who are against CCS are people who are degrowth and just want to get rid of technology altogether.
3) Making a claim about what people believe or how they act is not an ad hominem. An ad hominem attacks the person rather than the argument.
Best of luck to anyone cramming for a philosophy final next week!
I know people that believe this, but they aren't scientists. I know quite a few climate scientists and none believe eliminating fossil fuels is enough. I've also never met one that is actually against CCS either, just differing arguments about how resources should be spent which is far more nuanced. Discussion is more complicated around nuclear but maybe I shouldn't bring that up. Its complicated so lots of "experts" on both sides get a lot of information wrong and passionately argue points that are inaccurate. I think around any complex topic -- which absolutely includes climate -- we need to adapt better language and often should probably shut up and listen to the experts. Where experts are not the people you see on the news (a whole other problem I don't want to go into).
I get wanting to make things clearer by simplifying them but you can only simplify so much without losing necessary complexity. The problem as old as time is that lies are unbounded in simplicity while truth has a lower bound in complexity. If you're passionate, you gotta put in the time to gain that knowledge, not just the time to expend your passionate energy.
The problem is that fighting misinformation with misinformation (even unintentional) provides an easy tool for your adversaries to discredit you. You no longer can claim to be founded in the basis of science/logic/facts/whatever you want to call it. It just becomes trivial to discredit and you perpetuate the tribalism. Articles like this even increase tribalism as it splits supporters of decarbonization and even people who want to eliminate fossil fuels. Because now we have to have this discussion instead of the important ones about decarbonization.
Last year we put 36.8 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere, and this year we've put out even more. That's the main number we should be concerned with lowering. Why even think about baling out water when the leak keeps getting bigger and bigger? Plug the leak first!
And yes, in many places it is cheaper to just not emit, but in many other we may never get to that (heating in colder climates without nuclear, agriculture, air travel, to some extent cement industry)
The idea of continuing to burn carbon and then creating an entirely new industry to recapture that burned carbon on a massive scale is... kind of obviously something that only benefits the fossil fuel industry. And it doesn't even work, because most of our industrial activity still emits even more carbon. Emitting carbon in the process of capturing carbon is ridiculous; we need to fix the emissions problem first because doing anything else makes the problem worse.
Is that even true? I mean, if I make million dollars from whatever I'm doing that produces a ton of CO2 in the air and it costs 100,000 to sequester a ton of C02 then it's more efficient to put the CO2 in the air and then take it out right?
We won’t be able to conserve our way out of this crisis.
I think carbon capture is going to have to be part of the solution.
China’s use of fossils fuels increased in 2023.
The developing world want to live like the developed world and with democracy, it is untenable to stop them.
There is no way the developed world voters will give up their lifestyle. Look at the yellow vest protests in France. Even Germany increased use of coal to make up for shortfalls when they shuttered nuclear power plants.
Look at Joe Biden’s efforts to keep the price of gasoline low (opening up strategic reserves, trying to convince Saudi Arabia to increase oil production).
We need massive development of carbon free energy (wind, solar, nuclear, hydro electric), and we will need some type of carbon capture.
We have already emitted enough CO2 to cause catastrophe and we haven’t stopped. We need a way to capture that, even if we magically halted all CO2 emissions worldwide tomorrow.
Not sure what the point of this statement is besides xenophobia. China is the world's factory, where most US consumer goods are made. They at least are making huge strides in deployment of solar and wind, and they're not still debating whether climate change is "real".
"Oh no, it's not possible, think about how much it'll cost. It's just not efficient."
Let's be clear, it is true that CCS is not a viable solution today and that we should not rely on it saving our asses. I really haven't heard anyone that supports CCS argue that we can follow a business as usual model with emissions. I've heard oil propaganda that is very clearly oil propaganda but never an actual person, scientist, or really even the low bar that is youtube armchair experts (admittedly I'm in a bubble to filter out the worst).
The reason I dislike these articles is for 2 major reasons.
1) Our concern is climate and while a major driver is CO2 (as well as methane and other things which we often don't address) it is not the problem. If our net is 0 then this is equivalent to not emitting any[0]. The problem is the emissions in our atmosphere which is dependent upon our emissions but that's different then them being the same thing. The subtle distinction is extremely important.
2) Even if we phased out all fossil fuels and EVEN IF WE REACH NET 0[1], this does not solve the subsequent problem of removing the remaining excess carbon in the atmosphere. Net 0 is foolish, we need to be net negative. At net 0 the planet will still warm for some decades due to the lag in the heating effect. The world is already at 420 ppm atmospheric CO2, about 150% the levels of most of human history and 120% of what's considered a safe level. There is also a lot more carbon locked in our oceans and some will release as we draw it out of the atmosphere. There's carbon locked in icecaps and tundras that will release as warming continues or even saturates.
The fact of the matter is that we need to be net zero. They're right to point to reducing or eliminating fossil fuels to the extent possible. But this is extremely short sighted and it just creates an easy tool for the fossil fuel industry to weaponize against the green movements because if you fight dishonesty with dishonesty you don't get the benefit of context or nuance, you make it simple to discredit you. This phenomena is not unique to climate change and it is ridiculous that we continue to do this after decades of observing the results of these tactics.
We can't put all our eggs in one basket, hoping that we can solve all the remaining emission problems soon enough. Just like we can't rely on CCS to save us. (Right now CCS is terrible and who knows how long till it'll be sufficient, but that's not an argument against continuing research and development, especially since it's a small slice of the pie). It is the same argument and they are both valid. Additionally, we can't continue to jump from fire to fire, as climate change is a problem explicitly caused by short term thinking. We will still down the line have to remove the additional carbon that has accumulated and we should absolutely do this faster than what would happen via natural sources. CCS does include planting trees, but you also can't plant enough trees to offset a single year of US emissions, let alone the remaining 70%.
I'm sorry, but CCS has to be part of the solution. People using a solution to create false narratives is also bad, but that doesn't mean we need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We've seen the results of this with another energy technology where a certain country has far lower emissions than its neighbors and if that was popularized as it was initially we wouldn't have half the mess we have today. Stop repeating the same mistakes.
[0] if we make naive assumptions of homogeneity, but extend the net argument to heterogeneous emissions and we get back in line
[1] Which we currently don't know how to fully solve because electricity isn't the only source! We can make fantastic headway and should not let this fact deter us in the slightest but rather be cognizant that there are more sources of emissions and more than fossil fuels