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Comment by brutusborn | Hacker News Reader

Carbon capture is being successfully used all around the world. It’s in its infancy, but so were solar panels decades ago, and we didn’t give up on them.

We don’t have enough data on geoengineering to judge yet, there is no real science to follow.

Also I don’t understand this attitude of rejecting potential solutions outright. Science doesn’t “prove” things, we can’t ‘follow’ it due to the problem of induction. So we should stay open minded and support all potential solutions, not just those we like best.

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The closest we have are emissions reductions on power generation and other highly polluting facilities. Carbon capture of CO2 from the atmosphere is not being used successfully, anywhere. There are plenty of feel good articles about trials and test sites and experimental facilities, none of which are within multiple orders of magnitude of being capable of scaled out to the amounts needed. They all require such vast amounts of electricity that it would be better using that electricity to not emit the carbon in the first place. There are no technologies on the horizon that could even put a dent in our current yearly emissions, let alone clean up past excess. Yet it is used time and time again to sell carbon neutral plans and policies to the public, which will never reach their targets.

Saying CCS isn’t currently successful is like saying utility grade solar wasn’t successful in the 70s. We’re on the start of an exponential curve and the tech will only get better.

I don’t understand why people think this is “used” to sell carbon neutral plans: why wouldn’t you count carbon sequestered using CCS? It’s no different to assuming batteries will get a lot cheaper: it’s not a certainty but it’s heading in the right direction.

Let’s put it this way: if we could use CCS to produce carbon neutral power from natural gas, would you reflexively oppose it? Or would you be thankful that we now have another carbon neutral power source?

I separate emissions reductions tech, such as fitted to power stations, from atmospheric carbon capture. Filtering emissions at source makes sense, and is nothing new. Lets do more of that and better, and I will have no problem with carbon neutral natural gas power if someone can get that to work. Trying to suck carbon out of the atmosphere though is a fools errand, and I do reflexively oppose that, because it has always been lies and propaganda. Large chunks of climate policy assume magic will happen, because technology will save us. But math and physics disagree.

What’s the maths and physics that make it impossible? I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’m interested in the limits.

I still think reflexively opposing a potential solution is stupid. Skepticism is healthy, automatic rejection is a waste. I wholeheartedly agree politicians spout a lot of nonsense, and that the solutions are closer than we think, we just need to get the bad policy out of the way.

> Carbon capture is being successfully used all around the world.

[Citation needed]

If I must spoon feed you… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_carbon_capture_and_s...

You must.

That list is a bunch of pilot projects and commitments AFAICT. One of the projects is burning methane from oil production to produce hydrogen to recapture carbon. That’s not really gonna save the world.

I couldn’t find much evidence in there that carbon capture is being done at scale or in a way that isn’t using energy in ways that it would be more efficient to just not do it, since it is pulling from a grid that is partially carbon powered.

So your criteria for success is to ‘save the world.’

How about we aim for ‘reduce emissions’ or ‘develop solutions’? Or even better ‘stop opposing people who are trying to help’?

All tech starts at small scales. Yours is an absurd rebuttal.

Ok, take out the save the world comment.

Can you point to a promising project from the link you posted? Like I said, it lists a lot of funding, but not a lot of actual carbon sequestration.

Your rebuttal doesn’t actually provide evidence that carbon sequestration is a technology that is on its way to working on the small scale. All of those projects are sequestering carbon by consuming massive amounts of energy from sources that are partially or completely carbon powered.

It’s early stage tech, they’re all promising in that _they are trying to develop tech to help_. How can I prove a developing tech will scale? How can you prove it won’t? It started at 0 and is now at millions of tonnes scale. If that isn’t good enough progress then I have nothing for you.

Imagine using the same logic in the 80s “solar panels produce hardly any power and use lots of fossil fuels for production, why are we wasting resources developing them?”

Or the internet in the 90s “it will have less impact than the fax machine.”

It’s just emotional nonsense. We should support the people working on solutions, not complain from the sidelines.

All I’m asking for is a specific project that looks promising instead of a Wikipedia page that is mostly a list of available funding.

What is currently the largest carbon dioxide sequestration operation in the world is pretty much a running joke, not the least for being some years past the initial starting date, accounting for a tiny tiny fraction of the CO2 emitted by the larger gas project, and essentially being little more than a distraction from ongoing CO2 from oil and gas operations as usual.

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

Chevron are not "trying to help", they're actively engaged in smoke and mirrors.

I hate Gorgon too, they tarnished the name of CCS for commercial gain. Their system is throttled for economic reasons though, not technological. Even worse: the government funded it!

If the Australian Government held their feet to the fire they would have sequestered the promised amount. However they didn’t, and Chevron has no incentive to fix it properly.

If you actually did the work, you would not have shared a list of prototypes, failed projects, and disappointments.

Do you want me to complain that I had to spoon-feed you that?

Without a massive amount of renewable energy we won’t be able use CCS at scale.

Why not? If we burn gas using CCS and develop a lot of nuclear, we wouldn’t even need renewable energy. I’m not saying it’s bad, just that it’s not essential (and may actually be a distraction in e.g. Germany where it has displaced nuclear development and resulted in coal plants being reopened).

I should have said "clean energy", you are obviously right about nuclear power.

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