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Earth

Is Carbon Capture Here? (nytimes.com) 188

"Is carbon capture here?" asks a headline from the New York Times.

A Swiss company named Climeworks "is operating a device in Iceland that sucks CO2 from the air and shoots it into the ground, where it turns into rock." [Stephan] Hitz and his small team of technicians are running Orca, the world's biggest commercial direct air capture (DAC) device, which in September began pulling carbon dioxide out of the air at a site 20 miles from the capital, Reykjavik.

As the wind stirred up clouds of steam billowing from the nearby Hellisheidi geothermal power plant, a gentle hum came from Orca, which resembles four massive air-conditioners, each the size of one shipping container sitting on top of another. Each container holds 12 large round fans powered by renewable electricity from the geothermal plant, which suck air into steel catchment boxes where carbon dioxide or CO2, the main greenhouse gas behind global warming, chemically bonds with a sandlike filtering substance.

When heat is applied to that filtering substance it releases the CO2, which is then mixed with water by an Icelandic company called Carbfix to create a drinkable fizzy water. Several other firms are striving to pull carbon from the air in the United States and elsewhere, but only here in the volcanic plateaus of Iceland is the CO2 being turned into that sparkling cocktail and injected several hundred meters down into basalt bedrock.

Carbfix has discovered that its CO2 mix will chemically react with basalt and turn to rock in just two or three years instead of the centuries that the mineralization process was believed to take, so it takes the CO2 that Climeworks' DAC captures and pumps it into the ground through wells protected from the harsh environment by steel igloos that could easily serve as props in a space movie. It is a permanent solution, unlike the planting of forests which can release their carbon by rotting, being cut down or burning in a warming planet. Even the CO2 that other firms are planning to inject into empty oil and gas fields could eventually leak out, some experts fear, but once carbon turns to rock it is not going anywhere.

Orca is billed as the world's first commercial DAC unit because the 4,000 metric tons of CO2 it can extract each year have been paid for by 8,000 people who have subscribed online to remove some carbon, and by firms including Stripe, Swiss Re, Audi and Microsoft. The rock band Coldplay recently joined those companies in paying Climeworks for voluntary carbon credits to offset some of their own emissions.

The firm hopes to one day turn a profit by getting its costs below the selling price of those credits.

Current cost: about $600 to $800 per metric ton.
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Is Carbon Capture Here?

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  • by dada21 ( 163177 ) <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Sunday October 31, 2021 @08:59PM (#61945935) Homepage Journal

    so, no.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      however it won't stop cop26 recalcitrants from pretending to bluster their way out of emissions targets with the promise of gifting YOUR taxes to their pet projects.

      Hail Mary.

    • Last thing I heard, the law is not true, statistically, the answer is more yes than no. Probably depends a lot on your sample and the timeframe.
      • Last thing I heard, the law is not true, statistically, the answer is more yes than no.

        I don’t see how that could possibly be true. Places with nothing of value to say abuse the pattern to drum up clicks that will be answered with a “no”. Places with something of value to say avoid the pattern to begin with because they have no need for it: they can simply make an assertion. And as more people have come to associate the pattern with poor editing and trashy journalism, reputable publications that actually make a point of seeking out sourced answered have eschewed it more and

        • Statistics usually do not care about the reasoning behind it ;-)
          • Statistics usually do not care about the reasoning behind it ;-)

            Quite right! We should seek to understand them, rather than disregard them just because they don't make sense to us. That said, statistics that lack citation are subject to being questioned on the basis that they may have been misremembered, misunderstood, or otherwise misstated, and may well be disregarded entirely until/unless they can be backed up with data if they fly in the face of common sense or conventional wisdom.

    • It feels like there could be an extension to Betteridge’s Law along the lines of “...and the attached article is almost certainly not worth your time.”

    • Yep. Betteridge. I'll wager that the year of the Linux desktop will come before carbon capture & storage becomes a feasible, rational approach to combating climate change. 'Nuff said.
  • Emissions reduction/carbon capture is not going to solve global warming. Too little, too late, too expensive.

    Time to come up with Plan B.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

      > Time to come up with Plan B.

      Abort the population?

    • by rattaroaz ( 1491445 ) on Sunday October 31, 2021 @11:43PM (#61946167)
      Plan B is to reorganize society to prepare for up coming changes. Move farms to newer climates. Move populations to higher ground. Build new infrastructures for the changes in society. I think Plan B is impossible. Don't give up on Plan A.
      • The thing about that plan B is that it requires plan A to succeed anyway. The whole movement is so expensive that it basically can't be done. However, if you reduce CO2 output partially then it becomes possible but just hugely hugely expensive, much much more expensive than reducing carbon output. If you reduce that budget for movement by, say 10% and invest that money into reducing carbon output further then suddenly your CO2 output is much less and you have to move less and so on.

        So, the most absolutel

        • So Plan A on steroids.

          Anyone got a Plan C?

        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          The problem with plan A is that it requires doing things now to avoid consequences in the future. The problem with plan B is that it requires doing even more things now to avoid consequences in the future.

          So, plan C?

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Also there is Plan C: massive reduction in global population. That one _will_ happen, even if Plan A or Plan B is implemented fast and decisively. The only question is whether it will be done in a controlled fashion or by way of a series of truly impressive catastrophes.

        Given that the science on climate change was solid ca. 1985 and that not a lot has happened since then, my guess is neither Plan A nor Plan B will make it in time as the cretins that presume to "lead" the human race will keep dicking around

      • As OP I'll call this Plan C. I think it merits consideration and is better than Plan B.

        I'm still hoping for more plans, not just endless recycling variations of Plan A.

    • There are plans A-Z & then some. We need to find the best mix of plans & coordinate them according to local conditions. Every countries' & regions' mix of plans is going to be different according to climate (How hot &/or cold?), available sources of sustainable energy (How much sunlight &/or wind &/or hydro/tidal power &/or geothermal &/or other sources?), pre-existing infrastructure (urban planning models, architecture, transportation options, etc.), types of economies &
      • Every single thing you mention is an implementation of Plan A - reducing emissions. It is not going to reverse climate change.

        You are not even trying.

    • Emissions reduction/carbon capture is not going to solve global warming. Too little, too late, too expensive.

      Time to come up with Plan B.

      If this tech works and can be feasibly scaled then it solves both global warming and ocean acidification. In fact, if it takes less energy to recapture a ton of CO2 than you get from burning the equivalent amount of fossil fuels we don't actually need to switch away from fossil fuels (though air pollution is still a big factor, especially for vehicles).

      So realistically, something like this should probably be plan A. Of course, we don't really know if it will work or be scalable so we should continue with th

  • Cost is (Score:5, Informative)

    by presidenteloco ( 659168 ) on Sunday October 31, 2021 @09:07PM (#61945945)
    $ 2,160,000,000,000 ($2.16 trillion) per year, to neutralize current emissions.
    • by marcle ( 1575627 )

      That is, as soon as they build the millions of machines required.

      • And assuming said machines don't get clogged up with, say, volcanic dust.
        • Every machine that we use regularly has some issues with time, require maintenance, etc. Why should it be different here?
          The money your are spending on them is not wasted, it is literally necessary to save our own existence and style of life...

    • by quenda ( 644621 )

      $ 2,160,000,000,000 ($2.16 trillion) per year, to neutralize current emissions.

      Is that all?? We can do that. Sounds too cheap ... 50 billion tons/yr x $600 = $30 trillion. Nearly half of global GDP.
        Sadly your maths is off.

      Some costs will come down with scale, but is this based on incredibly cheap electricity in Iceland?
      And how much of this suitable basalt is accessible?

      • Re:Cost is (Score:5, Informative)

        by Truth_Quark ( 219407 ) on Sunday October 31, 2021 @09:55PM (#61946013) Journal
        Yep. Using global emissions from here [ourworldindata.org], and $600, I get 21.6 trillion US$, So it looks like quenda dropped a 0.

        Still at those levels you'd be getting the economies of scale so you could use the $100-$150. That's centred around 4.5 trillion. Or about 5.5% of GDP. Probably cheaper than adaptation (depending on how much you value the well-being of future generations), but a difficult sell as the cost of adaptation is mostly in developing countries who aren't going to be contributing much to the sequestration.

        Judging from the fact that people die of starvation, and the world produces enough food, I'm going to predict that humans don't have access to an approach that could make that happen.
      • Yeah, no worries. Of course, we have to build somewhere around 100,000,000 of these machines.

        And build enough power generation to keep 100,000,000 of them operating 24/7 in perpetuity.

        And we'll actually need more than 100,000,000 of them, since they'll be down for maintenance some of the time....

    • by v1 ( 525388 )

      The problem is that co2 is the low energy product of metabolism. Of course it's going to take energy to turn it into something else. There's no way around that, anyone that thinks there is has just found a different source of energy to use.

      I don't see why if we're going to be spending money, why not turn it into something useful? Like carbon and oxygen? We can use the carbon to build fuel, and release the oxygen into the atmosphere.

      It's a bit like cracking water to make hydrogen and oxygen. It takes an

      • There are plenty of efforts geared towards synthetic fuel production from atmospheric CO2. You could also use the product of CO2-capture (such as alkanes) for materials synthesis. Raw carbon capture just seems like a stupid idea overall.

        • There are plenty of efforts geared towards synthetic fuel production from atmospheric CO2. You could also use the product of CO2-capture (such as alkanes) for materials synthesis. Raw carbon capture just seems like a stupid idea overall.

          Well, apart from the obvious way to do it, which is to grow trees and then make buildings out of them [cnn.com]. I have serous doubts whether these carbon capture machines are close in terms of efficiency to trees.

          Carbon capture mostly seems to be interesting because you can use the CO2 to help extract more fossil fuels. It's likely a bad idea and it definitely shouldn't be a priority, except in the rare cases where a coal power station can't be phased out within the next two years where it should be obligatory but

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        There are lots of proposals, and some operating plants, to do just that. Jet fuel is the usual thing. I think that's probably how airplanes will be powered in the future.

        It would also be nice to take some of the carbon out of the atmosphere, rather than just cycling it around some more. Some of the jet fuel proposals suggest pumping excess back into the wells the original oil came out of.

    • Cost is irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday October 31, 2021 @10:07PM (#61946035)
      Even if we switched entirely to carbon-neutral energy sources immediately, that does nothing about all the excess CO2 already in the atmosphere. This is what renewables proponents don't seem to get when they claim research into sequestration is just a conspiracy to allow us to continue burning fossil fuels. Renewables can't solve global warming, all they can do is stop it from getting worse. They don't remove CO2 from the atmosphere; they simply don't add more CO2. So the best renewables can do for us is stop global warming from getting worse. They can't make it better.

      The excess CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere came from carbon which used to be sequestered underground in the form of coal, oil, and gas. But we burned it and released it into the atmosphere as CO2. Until it's sequestered again, we'll be stuck with the elevated atmospheric CO2 levels and the deleterious weather and temperature effects that causes. So until we're willing to pay the cost to sequester that excess CO2, we'll be stuck with the effects of global warming.

      Even after we switch entirely to carbon neutral energy sources, we're still going to have to pay that sequestration cost eventually. So the cost doesn't matter because we have to pay to return to the way things were before global warming. The longer we delay the development of sequestration technologies, the longer the payback will take and the more expensive it will be (due to us continuing to suffer the effects of global warming for longer).
      • Don't forget about the various natural carbon sinks [wikipedia.org]. CO2 is being absorbed by natural processes constantly, in particular by the oceans, and some fraction of this absorption is permanent (e.g. buried in the sea bed). We're overwhelming this process currently, but it's still ongoing.

        We may well need artificial sequestration to avoid the worst effects, if it's cheap enough it could save us significant climate costs, and at scale it could certainly shorten the effects of our emissions, but all the carbon we've

        • The so-called "carbon sinks" work... unfortunately, I'm not sure they work fast enough.
          Also, some of those "carbon sinks" have their own issues (like increased acidity in the oceans, at least for a while).

          There's also the danger of permafrost thawing, which could send a lot of methane into the atmosphere. The thawing risk (and the affected surfaces) increases with increased global temperature and the risk of wild temperature swings (which we've had aplenty during the last decade, and they seem to accelerate

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Sequestering from the atmosphere would help reduce excess CO2, but most of it is being done at CO2 emitters, i.e. fossil fuel burning power plants. It's a lot easier to capture CO2 at source than to recover it from the atmosphere.

        Renewables proponents understand this perfectly well. We also understand that just recovering some of the CO2 emitted when burned doesn't account for the rest of the lifecycle - those fuels had to be extracted.

        What we need to solve this is machines that can remove large quantities

      • Even if we switched entirely to carbon-neutral energy sources immediately, that does nothing about all the excess CO2 already in the atmosphere.

        Yes it would because of the carbon cycle [wikipedia.org]. Removal of a major source of CO2 emission could have quite a rapid effect on global CO2 levels given the amplitude of the annual oscillation in the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

        We are still going to need carbon capture to achieve zero emissions in the medium term because there are some things, like flying, that we still have do not have the technology to let us avoid using fossil fuels but that will change given enough time.

    • I think you may be off by a decimal place.

      I get a cost $22,800,000,000,000 (23 trillion) *per year* (not including the cost of building the plant) give 38 billion tons of carbon and $600 (the low end).

      Global GDP is about 87 trillion.

      However, building these plants was also going to cost about 950 trillion in the last article I read.

      • I think you may be off by a decimal place.

        I get a cost $22,800,000,000,000 (23 trillion) *per year* (not including the cost of building the plant) give 38 billion tons of carbon and $600 (the low end).

        Global GDP is about 87 trillion.

        However, building these plants was also going to cost about 950 trillion in the last article I read.

        And unless I'm off in my understandings, carbon credits would pay around 900B to 1.8T at current prices for that much carbon, assuming you could get that many credits.

    • So are you saying we can achieve half of what we need if one single country stupid war mongering? Well fuck the human race is dumb*.
      Note: Of course it's dumb, the fact we still rely on armies proves that we are collectively not an intelligent species.

    • Lets break it down (in ballpark numbers, close enough for a rule of three):
      - 2.5gWh per ton of CO2 (2gWh thermal, .5gWh electricity)
      - 25 tons of water per ton of CO2
      - Low price of $600, high of $1200. (Break even prices are assumed to be: $100-$150 )
      - building cost of $10m-$15m

      plans to capture 4000 tons/year
      Emissions are in the ballpark of 30 000 million metric tons. (3e10)
      (I'll be using TeraDollars, because billion/trillion gets confusing at 10^12)
      thats 7-8 million such plants. -> $80x10^12 -- 80 TeraD

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      That's pretty reasonable. It also sounds like a simple extrapolation of their fairly optimistic price estimates for a single plant, so it's probably not possible. There's only so much cheap and accessible carbonate, and even Iceland can run out of accessible geothermal power.

  • Maybe there's some kind of biological machine that sucks in carbon and spits out oxygen that grows well in high-carbon-dioxide environments.
    • They specifically mentioned trees in the article. Way better than nothing, but mineralizing carbon into rock is permanent, instead of trees that can die and rot/catch fire and release carbon back into the atmosphere.
      • Re:Trees? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by djinn6 ( 1868030 ) on Sunday October 31, 2021 @11:11PM (#61946133)

        You can burn the trees in a low-oxygen environment to create charcoal, which can then be buried. If left alone, in a million years it'll turn into coal. Though at that point you might as well just stop people from digging up coal in the first place and save all that effort.

        • Why bury it? Charcoal will be super valuable as a renewable chemical reduction agent in the smelting industry.

        • Trees are not the problem, their cycle is essentially closed. Burning trees to capture other carbon requires (a) energy input, and (b) replacement trees, which is also energy-intensive.

          So you need to get off the fossiles.in yhe first place. If you do that quickly, you can mostly stop there. If you don't, whatever else you do instead is not going to gelp.

      • It would be permanent. Restoring the vast swaths of the planet that have been ravaged by unsustainable farming & logging practices would permanently extract a sizable chunk of the CO2 we need to sequester to get back to pre-industrial levels. Those areas would stay green with the CO2 sequestered by their ecosystems for the foreseeable future. Also reducing or even stopping those unsustainable farming & logging practices would substantially reduce our exposure to novel pathogens like variants of ebol
    • Re:Trees? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Namarrgon ( 105036 ) on Monday November 01, 2021 @02:30AM (#61946343) Homepage

      The average tree will absorb around a tonne of CO2 over its life. We're emitting 35 billion tonnes of CO2 every single year. I'm sure you see the difficulty here.

      • The average tree will absorb around a tonne of CO2 over its life. We're emitting 35 billion tonnes of CO2 every single year. I'm sure you see the difficulty here.

        Not really, there are about 3 Trillion trees now. Adding a extra 35 Billion trees is only a 1% increase in the number of trees. Difficult, but if serious effort was put in to reafforest areas of desertification then it's quite likely it could be done in a way which worked well with the environment. Not doing it is a choice and a failure by humanity. Doing it partly would be a definite good start.

        • You think we can plant an extra 35 billion trees every year? In areas that they can actually grow (it's being tried [wikipedia.org] but is not so easy [nature.com] in the desert), and without displacing cropland needed for food. And that's not accounting for the trees that will die or burn prematurely, or for the decades needed to mature, or of course for all the carbon that's released again when they rot.

          Sure, any trees planted will help. Just not very much, compared to the scale of the problem. Far (far) easier to tackle the problem

          • You think we can plant an extra 35 billion trees every year

            We don't actually have to plant all of them. The great thing about trees is that, once there are a few in an area they will self-seed unless something stops them. More important is to provide protected areas where they can grow without e.g. being eaten by sheep. There were, apparently, originally about double the number of trees (6 Trillion or so) so the world has plenty more potential for trees.

            without displacing cropland needed for food.

            Efficient use of cropland and giving up large amounts is an absolutely crucial thing at this point. Things li

          • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
            Yes, you'd need a combination of fast-growth trees that live forever. That's a tough call. Or alternatively, use fast growth, zero net carbon transport and processing to turn it into biochar and sequester the rest, all without depleting soil of minerals. I love trees, but I don't think trees are the answer here.
            • You think too simplistically. When you restore a desertified area you lock in the CO2 permanently. Trees die but new ones take their place. Think of it in terms of whole, complex lush & rich ecosystems rather than individual trees. They become self-sustaining & reproducing in a relatively short space of time. No need for further input from humans. We just have to leave it alone. Additionally, the more greenery we have, the more stable our ecosystems & climate become.
      • If tree planting were the only solution on the table, I'd see your point. How about we look into more than one solution at a time? A tonne per tree sounds like a welcome addition to the mix to me, not to mention the idea of restoring a lot of desertified &/or degraded land to it's former lush greenery & all the good things that go with that, including increasing the amount of land available for food production.
  • by Canberra1 ( 3475749 ) on Sunday October 31, 2021 @09:22PM (#61945977)
    Clearly these shipping containers should go to where there are active fresh lava flows, to carbonate the basalt before it sets. CO2 is fungible, so credits should be too. Also countries that produce LPG. Did you know LPG out of the ground has to be purified, with 2-4% of the CO2 in it removed - usually just vented into the atmosphere (CO2 is clear/invisible). Makes sense to pump it back down.
  • "A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year."

    So, only $2,750 per year per vehicle! Plus, that is only the marginal cost and assumes the capture process is powered by 100% renewable energy!

    "We're going to need a bigger boat ..."

  • From today on NPR: "My daughter is distraught on how to save the climate from global warming. I told her you can't save the planet but you could join an organization focused on one thing."

    "We're composting."

    "Us, too!"

    Doing a great job breaking down waste into carbon dioxide to release into the atmosphere, due to left over innumeracy about running out of landfill space, from the 1970s.

    • Re:Yee haaaaa! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Monday November 01, 2021 @06:13AM (#61946571)

      From today on NPR: "My daughter is distraught on how to save the climate from global warming. I told her you can't save the planet but you could join an organization focused on one thing."

      "We're composting."

      "Us, too!"

      Doing a great job breaking down waste into carbon dioxide to release into the atmosphere, due to left over innumeracy about running out of landfill space, from the 1970s.

      What composting avoids is the methane that comes from rotting in landfills. Methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 so this is a major benefit. The compost is then a part of a proper CO2 cycle in that it helps plants grow which will then absorb more CO2 than the compost released (you mostly use small proportions of compost mixed with other soil) and so overall the whole thing will be CO2 negative.

      So the people on NPR were right, it turns out. Are you going to apologise for misunderstanding and thinking this was related to space in landfills?

    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      Getting to 'zero' carbon emissions is hyperbole (we have to breathe, after all), and composting I would think wouldn't go beyond the normal cycle (you are composting food scraps and paper products, all coming from things that are inherently growing).

      However, if you landfill that product depriving the decomp environment of adequate oxygen, then you don't get CO2, you get methane, which is far far worse than CO2.

      • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        The aim is net zero, not zero. Given respiration, that would need some capture, but human respiration is likely only a fraction of the total human CO2 and COe emissions.
        • by Junta ( 36770 )

          My point is that composting is, like respiration, releasing carbon from sources that historically are naturally captured as fast as we would release carbon, so long as they get to decompose in the open air instead of burying them only for them to release methane instead of CO2..

          The issue is not with composting things that grow as fast as we consume them, but with massive accumulation and continued release of carbon that had been sequestered as petroleum and such. So talking about non-fossil-fuel carbon is l

    • by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
      The point of composting is to avoid the creation of fertilisers that are very energy-intensive. Composting is not zero-CO2, but is a lot less CO2-intensive. Where soil conditioners are peat-based, it also avoids destroying bog habitats and releasing the CO2 sequestered in them. So composting is actually a good idea. If you buried stuff and didn't compost then to keep your garden growing you'd need other fertilisers. Or you could let your garden be a wasteland, I suppose. Your choice.
  • This is literally the plot for Japan is sinking. A "revolutionary carbon neutral" aka carbon capture initiative is used in Japan called "COMS".

    It liquifies carbon dioxide and injects it into the ground where they get the oil from allowing Japan to be carbon neutral.

    But it turns out to be BS because it increases the occurrence of "Slow slip" when two terrestrial plates come together, one drops beneath the other. The plot is that the increased ocean weight due to polar ice caps melting and more garbage in th

    • If all the ice we have on the planet will melt, the ocean will rise about 200 - 300 meters (make it yards - basically the same).

      Perhaps you want to look on a map how high Japan is ...

  • Doen't have to be either-or. This could be set up on the middle of the sahara desert and powered by solar during the day. Don't get many trees growing there. Though atm its a proof of concept and needs to be massively scaled up to be any use.

  • I can see big petroleum companies claiming "Carbon Capture" credits by pumping co2 below ground , and just running a pipe a few miles away where it comes right back up. I would not trust any third world country to even attempt that sophisticated a scheme either.

    Unfortunately avoidance or immediately solidifying and visible validation will be feasible.

  • It used to be called "plants".

    • It used to be called "plants".

      It did.
      But then we went and put out far more CO2 than the plants could absorb. And the CO2 levels skyrocketed...

      • Use more plants.

        Oh wait, we're chopping them down to make room for some industrial plants instead. Some of them will probably be doing some carbon capturing. A lot more expensive and way less efficient, of course, but hey, it's good for business.

  • Fewer duplicate posts might reduce CO2 production. But then you could probably reduce the number of cat videos on the internet by 90% and reduce CO2 production with no effect on human happiness.
  • by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Monday November 01, 2021 @09:30AM (#61947053) Homepage
    So I'm in Canada where the average emissions per household is 15.6 tons per year. Let's say I'm on the high side at 20 tons per year. At $800 per ton that's $16,000 per year, which is likely USD. Yes, that's a high price, but (a) the price is likely to come down and (b) our family could actually afford that. Actually, it would make more sense to replace our 15 year old forced air gas furnace with an air source heat pump, and that would likely cut our emissions enough to bring that $16,000 down significantly (have to look at how much fossil fuels are used for our electricity mix, which in Ontario is about 80% nuclear). At any rate, it actually seems like a family like mine who are some of the biggest emitters actually could take steps to not only go carbon neutral, but carbon negative to make up for some of the past emissions. This is the first time its seemed even possible to me. However, I get that we're in a... ahem... privileged position because our family spends far less than we make. But it's interesting.
  • The world currently emits about 38 billion tons of CO2 a year.

    So this would be $30,400 billion to get rid of one year's worth.

  • Stop destroying forests, grasslands

  • by eepok ( 545733 ) on Monday November 01, 2021 @12:24PM (#61947747) Homepage

    This isn't hard.

    1. Grow Trees. Trees clean the air while they're alive. They capture the carbon in their wood.
    2. Cut down the trees and bury them deep in caves. Coal mines would be perfect for many reasons.
    3. Left the dead trees alone.

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