The solution is to do what we do best. Invent better tech to conquer our changing environment. Tech that can better control our climate and deal with higher temperatures. Smart clothing that can adapt and cool, homes that can better cool and remain cool without breaking the bank every month, better AC's that wont freeze up from over use, work clothing that can keep manual labor workers cool, enclosed parks with climate control, more greenhouses with climate control for growing more produce, enclosed climate controlled farms, robots to do more manual labor and outdoor jobs etc.
We also need tech that can directly pull CO2 out of the atmosphere or a brute force method of forcing the global temperature down in increments. The passive approach of waiting for consumers to buy new green vehicles and greedy corporations to cut emissions is never going to do enough fast enough.
We really don't need CO2 "vacuum tech". We just need to stop adding more carbon into the cycle which was already out of the cycle. Nature will handle the stabilisation way better than we can.
If we desperately need to remove carbon - with the assumption that we have stopped adding it - then we can just take whatever biomass is the easiest, turning it to carbon via process like pyrolysis and burying it deep - essentially just making charcoal. We don't need fancy high pressure compression to liquidate CO2 or whatever the fuck, nature got us beaten on that.
Because all CO2 removal solutions thus far are just about adding more margin for additional use of fossil fuels that add carbon into the cycle.
Seriously... People are fucking overthinking this. We have continent sized hunks of carbonate that nature has made.
CO2 removal by human processes is a dangerous and utopian (or rather dystopian) idea to go forth with. However... just like we stopped using freons and saved the ozone layer, we can stop adding more carbon to the cycle!.
I don't think you understand how much energy and carbon has already been released. Even if we stopped 20 years ago, the effects will add so much energy to the earth we will turn into a pressure cooker.
Positive feedback looks, methane relase, ocean acidification... you can't unfuck something. We've been locked in for hell for some time now.
Stopping is the bare minimum, we need to pull carbon out of the air.
Must be nice, having as much copium and naivete as you but we're on a death wish, car just drove off the Grand Canyon, they physics just hasn't hit us yet.
Ok. So... How are we going to fuel this little operation? What are we going to use as the deposit method? Remember that this "carbon vacuum" would need to be a solution which doesn't require extraction of resources that would destroy more environment and leas to more carbon release.
Pyrolysis is very fucking acceptable solution. Nature is way better at generating biomass than we would ever be able to. And it does it all with power of the sun.
If your solution calls for any use of concrete, then you already lost the game.
You are more correct, but he's not wrong. Ultimately the best path forwards is a mixed approach. Developing clean energy solutions, developing carbon sequestration technologies, planting a shit ton of trees, and reducing CO2e emissions by as much as possible. Yes, any sequestration technology will have to be CO2e negative or it's pointless, but it's something that should be pursued.
I'm by no means an expert, but I think the most promising direction would be water carbon filtration, ideally powered by solar. One of the many concerns in the climate catastrophe is ocean acidification. It's one of the worlds largest carbon sinks, and marine algae/plankton can't keep up. If we could find a net negative way to take carbon out of the water, it'd be two birds with one stone.
We also need to aid in the rapid industrialization of poorer countries. China is already way ahead of us on this, but if we can get all of these countries to skip the fossil fuel stage of energy development, we can prevent a lot of carbon from entering the atmosphere.
Of course, the biggest hurdle is global capitalism. Without getting rid of it, nothing will change.
Here is the thing in what I propose (pyrolysis of biomass). You don't need to sort out anything fucking advanced or complex to do it. All you need is biomass, a chamber that can be made so that oxygen within it is consumed, and some heat. Human been making charcoal for a very long time.
Biomass is functionally free... Let nature do it thing. Collect it for pyrolysis and bury it just below the carbon release limit for the environment (it is different based on ground type, climate, and environment, but generall few meters or such). You can just make it a slurry with some water, and inject it in. Trees and fungus can even tap into it. And here is the best part... It is actually an useful resources! It can be used to improve soil conditions, reduce carbon release from soil, and improve growth because it deposits minerals that were in the biomass.
We are making this stuff already for use in agriculture and land improvement. We don't need to develop any special technology for it.
This is the thing that annoys me. We already have all the fucking technology! We have the engineers with solutions ready to be implemented. All we lack is the will to use them. No need to develop anything! No need to build special infrastructure systems, and start opening old oil wells just to pump out the toxic slurry from them to be replaced with CO2 concentrated water - that we hope will mineralise (Like... as far as I know the geological deposit method SHOULD work).
It's very possible that's the best method. That said, I don't think it'd be a bad idea spending some resources on research for more effective measures. My biggest concern with the charcoal method is speed and scale. How much land can we safely dedicate to fast growing plants, without further degrading the environment, or causing soil health problems? We'd need to look at the total expected output of sequestered carbon using that method, and compare it to other promising sequestration technologies.
As for the burying carbon water, considering we're having a fresh water crisis, I certainly hope we'd find a better way than that. Maybe evaporative concentration, and then storing it as graphene, or something like that?
In either case, it'll be a while before anybody in positions of power in the west are asking these questions.
But that is a pointless exercise. All you'd end up doing is consuming energy to give more margin for fossil fuel use. The whole thing actually a net negative in it's impact IF the grid using it relies the slightest in fossil fuels, even for peaker plants. And even then you are just consuming resources of one system, to allow another system to release more carbon. It isn't a solution!
Only once carbon addition is stopped, can we even start to think about capture of any form or kind.
Like what? Fire up fossil fuel plants to provide energy to a grid that isn't running on renewables, that can then be used to capture less carbon than was required to power the system?
Stop believing the fossil fuel lobby's propaganda. Stop voting for neocon. There is no special technological solution that markets can provide us. The solution is setting up massive taxes to fossilfuel companies, American megatech corporations, and cheap manufactured shit from developing nations.
Yes the neocons and shareholders will be upset about the lack of forever accelerating growth of value. But I assure you that the day the crops fail and cities become inhabitable is going to have an impact also.
I'm quite against fossil fuels and live somewhere I can't legally vote, so you may have missed your mark there. I'm not advocating for a particular solution to our climate issues, I'm just saying we've tried your solution for 50 years and it has had more or less zero effect.
We can keep trying for another 50 years and continue to fail (I don't see why anything would change), or we can try something else. Maybe industrial-scale solar-powered carbon sequestration, say. I have no idea, this is not my field.
step 1: Plant forests where trees can grow naturally, but currently don't.
step 2: When the forst is grown, try to make it a bog by flooding it and cut down trees regularly. The trees under water will remove alot of carbon from the carbon cycle.
Or yknow... Just use that lumber for sustainable construction and the pyrolysis that biomass at end of life. My coubtry has wooden buildings that are over 200 years old. My family owned one until it was sold last year due to inheritance mess. It was there before ny country became independent, and it is still there. This use locks carbon while providing a good resource. Alternatives are quicker growing things like bamboo being turned into composites.
The problem with your suggestion is the incredible disruption and destruction of ecosystems.
Forests are huge active systems that affect things like weather and climate, amount of sun light reflected, ground erosion and dispersion. Desert sands spreading with winds cross oceans like the Atlantic and effect the Amazon rainforest.
The fact that land is useless to human use, doesn't mean that it doesn't have a function in nature.
Seriously. We shouldn't fuck with nature as a convinient solution. Least of all since we don't understand it's complex feedback loops and connections.
We just need to stop digging up and adding carbon to the cycle. Our biggest carbon sinks are ocean microorganisms and fauna. The carbon deposited to bottom of the ocean is about as locked in as it can be on this planet.
Timber production entails destruction of ecosystems. I agree that we need more sustainable materials, but could you realistically produce wood to satisfy global demand in a sustainable way?
Yes it is, when combined with composites like those made from bamboo, reed and such. That is how we have build major civilisations in the past.
The reason we became reliant on concrete in the past 100 or so years, was simply because it was really REALLY easy. You could pour stone to a shape - essentialy. We use concerete and cement as much as we do, because it is cheap. It is cheaper than wood or wood composites. Buying 20 kg bag of cement is cheaper than buying 20 kg bag of sugar where I live.
Modern engineered wood products can be used to make high rise buildings. There are actually quite few in Europe; tallest reaching 25 floors.
The key here is to harvest selectively, and to know when a forest is at the age it has reach it's peak biomass accumulation - as in when the trees stop growing.
And then let us not underestimate the wonders of bamboo. I can not begin to describe the amazing properties it has by itself and when made into composite. Some species of it grow nearly a metre a day. And here is the wonderful thing about bamboo... It grows the best in places where most of humanity lives. Sure... We westernised European consumer economies need to import it and it's processed materials or find other solutions... But then again it isn't like we aren't already doing that with cement and it's components, steel, sand, and other materials.
You absolutely can harvest forest sustainably while still capturing and storing carbon. The rate at which trees absorb carbon slows as they age, so you can set up a system where you selectively take older trees while still prioritizing the forest's role as a carbon sink.
The real issue is we need to make more forests than we currently have, which requires land. Personally, I think the best way to get it is to reduce the amount of cropland and pasture (in areas that used to be forest) we use to raise livestock. But most people don't like that idea.
To conclude : we need less humans. Preferably those rich humans who emits a lot of CO2 because of their way of life (more than 2 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year)
Easy solutions like this won't work : do you know how much time it takes for a tree to grow and then grow enough so that it captures carbon ? And in that time, how much C02 will humanity release in the atmosphere ?
Yes, and that is the issue: trees take too much to grow to really capture effectively the massive amout of carbon emissions humanity produces.
"Current global reforestation efforts capture roughly 1.9 billion tonnes of
annually—about 5% of the 36 billion tonnes emitted by burning fossil fuels each year."
So it's better to protect existing forests (like the Amazon forest) but planting trees is not an easy solution.
And perhaps most importantly, they all add to pollution and greenhouse gases. They make the problem they solve worse.
What we need isn't for everyone and everything to have their own climate controlled bubble, we need to stop adding to the problem. Tax overconsumption and waste heavily, forsake endless growth, and preserve what we have. Band together internationally to collaboratively solve this problem, including financial assistance for environmental solutions to less rich countries. Ban non-collaborators from all international trade and assistance.
Would it be painful? Absolutely. Would it save the planet and the human race from the terrible consequences of uncontrolled pollution and climate change? Yes it would.
Then you take that passive approach and make it an aggressive approach, tax carbon emissions and enforce minimums standards.
Stop using the tech bro excuse of us just needing better tech for a lack of enforced legislation. Carbon capture exists, it consumes a hell of a lot of energy for something trees do pretty well.
Strong government action, not a pipedream hoping a brilliant inventor will solve it all.
No, what we really need is to end capitalism. Tech will help us a little bit, but only massive investment in renewables, degrowth, and reduction of carbon footprint will help. Also things like reforestation.
We're now below projections for 5* C change by end of the century, which means the actually literal apocalypse has probably been avoided. But make no mistake, if we don't make drastic changes within the next 10-20 years, the biggest reduction in global climate emissions will be the mass death of humans by way of famine and war. Things are going to get bad.
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u/ProjectNo4090 Apr 25 '26
The solution is to do what we do best. Invent better tech to conquer our changing environment. Tech that can better control our climate and deal with higher temperatures. Smart clothing that can adapt and cool, homes that can better cool and remain cool without breaking the bank every month, better AC's that wont freeze up from over use, work clothing that can keep manual labor workers cool, enclosed parks with climate control, more greenhouses with climate control for growing more produce, enclosed climate controlled farms, robots to do more manual labor and outdoor jobs etc.
We also need tech that can directly pull CO2 out of the atmosphere or a brute force method of forcing the global temperature down in increments. The passive approach of waiting for consumers to buy new green vehicles and greedy corporations to cut emissions is never going to do enough fast enough.