Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
“Heirloom’s technology will later be deployed at a major hub in Louisiana the government expects will remove 1 million tons of CO2 a year by the end of the decade.” OK, great, but current CO2 emissions are 37.5 BILLION tons per YEAR. (I just googled that). I feel that if you’re going to throw out impressive-sounding figures like “one million tons”, you should also include that other figure, just for perspective.
You would need a *lot* of these sorts of plants (tens of thousands of them) to have an impact. Maybe that’s the plan, I don’t know. The article doesn’t tell us.
We already have carbon sucking technology.
It’s called trees. We just need to stop cutting them down, and then reforest areas that were logged. Forests are huge carbon sinks.
Are you willing to give up all wood products? Convince others to? Yes we should do re-forestation but “stop cutting down trees” isn’t very viable. People will switch from wood to plastic. Paper to plastic. We can cut down trees for lumber as long as an equal or greater number is replanted.
And if you had done some minimal research, you would know that these are _not_ enough by far. Seriously.
Wrong. Trees absorb CO2 and produces O2 during the day, but it absorbs O2 and produces CO2 at night, so they are about net neutral with their consumption/production. A much better alternative is in the oceans, via algae, which only consumes CO2, but not in enough quantity to be representative.
Now, I am curious with the process (or the way it was worded in this article). It says they heat Limestone, making it to release its captured CO2 and store it into tanks, then the leftover powder is left exposed to abs
The plant can absorb a maximum of 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, equal to the exhaust from about 200 cars.
The plant can absorb a maximum of 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, equal to the exhaust from about 200 cars.
The question is, would it have been cheaper to just ask 200 people if they’d swap their ICE car for a free EV, and then liquid glass the engines?
Yeah, I realize the increased load of 200 EVs added to the electrical grid would have a carbon footprint as well, but I’m sure some creative accounting can make that go away if it’s too much effort to deal with the problem at the source. Seems to be no worse than what they’re doing with this carbon capture facility.
Talk to Joe Manchin
Talk to Joe Manchin
But, isn’t he retiring?
… and the GOP who wouldn’t agree to maintain them.
… and the GOP who wouldn’t agree to maintain them.
We can’t be expected to subsidize everything forever. Perhaps there is an argument to maintain the EV subsidies longer to keep this “jump start” of the industry further but the industry must be expected to sink or swim on its own at some point. If not now then when? With a handful of EV makers in the market now it would seem that there’s some signs that it is self sustaining. On top of that is every major automaker producing successful (though some more successful than others) EV
We can’t be expected to subsidize everything forever.
We can’t be expected to subsidize everything forever.
We’re essentially doing exactly that with carbon credits, and it’s presently just benefiting businesses (such as the one in TFA) rather than average people. Wouldn’t it be better if say, Microsoft could instead dump money into a scheme that helps get ICE cars off the road and replaces them with EVs, and still receive their carbon credits?
I recall seeing claims that new EVs are second and third (sometimes fourth) vehicles and so is just paying people to buy what is a luxury.
I recall seeing claims that new EVs are second and third (sometimes fourth) vehicles and so is just paying people to buy what is a luxury.
That’s why I proposed a “cash for clunkers”-style arrangement, where you know you’re removing an ICE vehicle from the road. Yeah, it still does end up hurting the poor so
That’s why I proposed a “cash for clunkers”-style arrangement, where you know you’re removing an ICE vehicle from the road. Yeah, it still does end up hurting the poor somewhat because it reduces the availability of used vehicles, but even in the original C4C program the vehicles that qualified were such bad gas hogs that they’d be a burden to own just in fuel costs alone.
That’s why I proposed a “cash for clunkers”-style arrangement, where you know you’re removing an ICE vehicle from the road. Yeah, it still does end up hurting the poor somewhat because it reduces the availability of used vehicles, but even in the original C4C program the vehicles that qualified were such bad gas hogs that they’d be a burden to own just in fuel costs alone.
That’s a “broken windows fallacy”. I had a long explanation on why this is a bad idea but decided to delete it as it got long and winded to try to avoid what I expected as replies to defend “cash for clunkers”. In short it was a bad idea from the start, and long term did nothing to improve the average safety or fuel economy of vehicles on the road. This is backed up by a number of analyses of the program. I doubt you could produce any improvement on the idea because of how deep the flaws run in the conc
One of the larger flaws in the original C4C scheme was that as long as your trade-in met the qualifications, you could turn right around and buy another brand new gas guzzler. Limiting the scheme to only allowing the purchase of EVs absolutely would result in reduced carbon emissions.
Granted, yes, there are valid criticisms against the whole carbon credit scheme, but if you’re going to have one, it seems like a better use of it to let companies purchase credits that go towards eliminating carbon emissions
It’s not. It’s a green pork barrel project.
So what does green pork taste like?
I’m Muslim, so I dunno.
We already have cement plants around the world that separate 1.5 Billion tons of CO2 from cooking limestone to make lime from cement. Heirloom Carbon Technologies does essentially the same thing but “stores the CO2 in storage tanks” and promises to find a way to bury it underground sometime, somehow in the future. https://essd.copernicus.org/ar… [copernicus.org]
If Heirloom just worked with preexisting cement plants to capture the CO2 and reliably store it for thousands of years, they would not need to build their own li
I was wondering the same and TFA is unclear about this:
Finding enough clean power for the energy-intensive process could be a challenge. In California, Heirloom paid a local provider to add more renewable electricity to the grid. But experts say care is needed to ensure that direct air capture plants donâ(TM)t inadvertently cause emissions from the electricity sector to rise by diverting wind or solar power from elsewhere.
Finding enough clean power for the energy-intensive process could be a challenge. In California, Heirloom paid a local provider to add more renewable electricity to the grid. But experts say care is needed to ensure that direct air capture plants donâ(TM)t inadvertently cause emissions from the electricity sector to rise by diverting wind or solar power from elsewhere.
Notice the use of “clean power” which can only be to misguide: all sources of power result in greenhouse gas emissions. The net contribution of such a project to greenhouse gas emissions should be negative. I wonder why it is not quantified and advertised, but I do not wonder too hard: if the net was indeed negative, it would be foolish to not advertise it.
Notice the use of “clean power” which can only be to misguide: all sources of power result in greenhouse gas emissions.
Notice the use of “clean power” which can only be to misguide: all sources of power result in greenhouse gas emissions.
That’s true, all sources of energy will emit some amount of greenhouse gases but with many the amount is so close to zero that it is effectively zero. Humans cannot live without emitting some amount of CO2, just by breathing we emit CO2. What we can do is bring our CO2, and other greenhouse gas emissions, to a low enough level that it becomes what natural forces can cancel out on their own. The ecosystem in which we live is very large and built to come to an equilibrium all on its own, if it didn’t come
The company CarbonCure is making concrete that absorbs the CO2 during mixing.
The company CarbonCure is making concrete that absorbs the CO2 during mixing.
All concrete chemically bonds to CO2 from the air, there’s nothing special about their kind of concrete. They only force the CO2 into the blocks they produce than allow the blocks to pull CO2 from the air naturally. The net CO2 pulled from the air is identical to any other concrete block. Well, arguably the CarbonCure blocks are worse because they put so much energy into capturing the CO2 from the air.
We still have to make concrete… If we can use that to permanently sequester CO2, that’s a significant bonus.
We still have to make concrete… If we can use that to permanently sequester CO2, that’s a significant bonus.
The CO2 captured in the concrete is identical to the CO2 released in the production of the lime that was
What happened to planting trees or living in an ecological friendly way?
What happened to planting trees or living in an ecological friendly way?
What happened to planting trees or living in an ecological friendly way?
None of that allows for government funds to be laundered through private businesses into campaign donations so there’s no incentives to pass laws to subsidize it.
Bingo! You won the internet this week!
What happened to planting trees or living in an ecological friendly way?
None of that allows for government funds to be laundered through private businesses into campaign donations so there’s no incentives to pass laws to subsidize it.
What happened to planting trees or living in an ecological friendly way?
What happened to planting trees or living in an ecological friendly way?
None of that allows for government funds to be laundered through private businesses into campaign donations so there’s no incentives to pass laws to subsidize it.
Your mate can’t set up a business supplying trees? What kind of Crony Capitalist are you?
To be a commercial endeavor implies they are selling something at a profit. What is it that they sell? It looks like they sell carbon credits, but that’s an artificial market created by government mandate, not something people go looking for naturally like they look for food, shelter, and clothing. Well, they do claim to make CO2 for concrete which I guess is something…
The carbon dioxide still needs to be dealt with. In California, Heirloom works with CarbonCure, a company that mixes the gas into concrete, where it mineralizes and can no longer escape into the air.
The carbon dioxide still needs to be dealt with. In California, Heirloom works with CarbonCure, a company that mixes the gas into concrete, where it mineralizes and can no longer escape into the air.
The problem with this is that the concrete would suck the CO2 from the air naturally, the CO2 doesn’t have to be pumped into it to mineralize.
Concrete (or more specifically the cement or mortar that hold the aggregate in concrete together) is an artificially created sedimentary rock. We make it from mining naturally formed sedimentary rock. We mine limestone, “cook” it to release CO2 into the air and leave quicklime behind. This quicklime is mixed with water, sand, and other stuff to make cement, mortar, or concrete with the distinction being how much of each is mixed in and other factors. This artificial sediment slurry is poured into forms, or whatever, then allowed to set. This setting process isn’t drying out, though that happens too as part of the process that makes this a durable sedimentary rock. The part that makes this stuff truly durable is that as it is exposed to the air the lime slowly returns to becoming the limestone from which it came. They can forcefully inject CO2 into concrete to speed up the process of turning quicklime into limestone but this isn’t a net gain on drawing CO2 from the air, either way the CO2 that this artificial rock absorbs is the same as that released back when the original limestone was “cooked” down into quicklime. There will never be more CO2 out of the air with this process than was released in the process of mining the limestone for quicklime.
There are experiments with making cement/concrete/mortar that is a net carbon sink but it starts with the mining for material. Instead of using limestone for the quicklime they mine basalt, an igneous rock that contains natural lime, lime that has been buried deep enough that it hasn’t had enough exposure to air to turn to limestone yet. Basalt has a lot of sand in it already so much that it wears out mining equipment quickly and some of the sand would need to be removed to make a useful concrete, cement, or mortar.
This carbon removal system is not going to lower CO2 in the atmosphere, not if the CO2 they extract is being used for what is clearly “green washing” like rapid curing of concrete blocks. They point out several times in the fine article the need to use carbon neutral energy for the process so it is a true carbon sink, and I certainly agree on that point. If the politicians in California were truly interested in lowering their CO2 emissions then they’d be putting the money they collect from taxes into new nuclear power plants than fund this carbon credit scam. Unless I’m missing something very important in this process they are not taking any CO2 from the air in anything they do. Chances are they are only making the problem worse by consuming gobs of electricity to do what would happen naturally without their intervention. The electricity used in this carbon credit scam is electricity that could have been used for something that actually produced a product that could be sold at a profit rather than add to the government overhead of accounting for imaginary tons of CO2 removed from the air.
This would be laughable if it weren’t such a waste of valuable resources.
Given enough nuclear power, they might even be able to split the CO2 back into carbon and oxygen. Butit’s probably more efficient to farm large amounts of fast growing plants and use solar power to pyrolize the plant matter and bury the charcoal in old coal mines.
Given enough nuclear power, they might even be able to split the CO2 back into carbon and oxygen. Butit’s probably more efficient to farm large amounts of fast growing plants and use solar power to pyrolize the plant matter and bury the charcoal in old coal mines.
Given enough nuclear power, they might even be able to split the CO2 back into carbon and oxygen. Butit’s probably more efficient to farm large amounts of fast growing plants and use solar power to pyrolize the plant matter and bury the charcoal in old coal mines.
How would either of those processes be something that is a profitable business? Are there people that own mines willing to pay people to put charcoal into them?
What is a product that is at least close to net zero carbon, as close to zero as anything currently advertised as “zero carbon”, is using nuclear power to crack CO2 into carbon and oxygen then taking that carbon to make hydrocarbon fuels. There’s CO2 released from burning the hydrocarbon fuels but no more than was already taken out from the product
To be a commercial endeavor implies they are selling something at a profit. What is it that they sell? It looks like they sell carbon credits, but that’s an artificial market created by government mandate, not something people go looking for naturally like they look for food, shelter, and clothing.
That’s basically the definition of a government service – it solves the problems a market will not, but that citizens collectively do want solved. Protecting (or now, restoring) the environment is much like nati
That’s basically the definition of a government service – it solves the problems a market will not, but that citizens collectively do want solved. Protecting (or now, restoring) the environment is much like national defense – it provides value to everybody, so each individual is better off not paying for it and just letting everybody else pay. This is why taxes have to be mandatory.
That’s basically the definition of a government service – it solves the problems a market will not, but that citizens collectively do want solved. Protecting (or now, restoring) the environment is much like national defense – it provides value to everybody, so each individual is better off not paying for it and just letting everybody else pay. This is why taxes have to be mandatory.
If it is a private entity producing some service only because the government pays them to do it then is it “commercial”? This sounds to me like a government contractor. That’s like saying battle tanks are some commercial product when it is something that only the government can buy. Carbon credits are sold to private companies but it is the government that hands out the carbon credits to sell. So more like a private trash collector that is picking up trash, they charge private entities for this service
As for carbon credits, I wonder if they will ever really take off. They would be the best solution if the accounting was honest and if people would trust them, but there is a lot of mistrust about “greenwashing” or “indulgences.”
As such, I suspect at some point the primary producers of hydrocarbons will simply be required to sequester an equal or greater amount of CO2 than they are extracting. This re
They’re using Microsoft LeakProof(tm) Technology built on Windows11, Carbon Edition.
America’s First Investor Scam Money-Sucking Facility Opens in California.
You’re welcome.
This reminds me of these “composting machines” like the Pela that are trying to enter the market. It’s a 1200W heater/grinder which processes your food scraps while heating them to remove the water, and produces a crumbly brown material that is almost but not quite completely unlike dirt. It reduces bulk going into your garbage, which is a problem nobody really needed to solve, and I actually suspect the resulting dessicated and sterilized vegetable mulch is actually much harder to compost than the food scr
Recently, I saw a variant on this idea where you then packed it up, and someone trucked it back to the farm, were it was put back in the ground! Someone seems to be unfamiliar with the laws of thermodynamics. But imagine how well it will signal your great virtue!
Cold sea water holds 26x the CO2 that the atmosphere does.
Cold sea water holds 26x the CO2 that the atmosphere does.
I’m not sure that makes sense without more context. Is that 26x more CO2 by mass? By volume? Per unit of energy required for extraction?
I can see that there’s value in this because the US Navy is using CO2 extracted from seawater in their experiments to produce jet fuel at sea on nuclear powered vessels. They proved it works in a lab, they just need to prove it works on a ship that is rolling and bobbing on the waves. They believe they can get costs to where it is competitive with what it costs them to
Realistically, that should factor into the “tons of CO2” removed calculations. If it removes 1,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per day, but its power draw from the grid results in 500 additional tons of CO2 being released power plants, then the “true” amount of CO2 being sequestered is half what they’re claiming. And this isn’t even getting into if the power draw induces *more* in grid emissions than it actually captures from the air, at which point this thing is less climate change revolution and more
There may be more comments in this discussion. Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead.
iOS Beta Adds ‘Spatial Video’ Recording. Blogger Calls Them ‘Astonishing’, ‘Breathtaking’, ‘Compelling’
Is Capitalism Dead? Yanis Varoufakis Argues Capitalists are Now Vassals to ‘Techno-Feudalists’
If you can’t get your work done in the first 24 hours, work nights.
