this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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Wasn't carbon removal an unproven concept? I feel like I watched Climate Town discuss it in one episode, talking about it never actually hitting any meaningful % thresholds...
Just Google CO2 Removal Unproven and scroll past the fossil fuel sponsored articles on top to see multiple reputable sources treating it as basically a tech scam.
Of course it's a scam, we have millions of polluting sources a few CO2 removal sites could never counter act that. Sure it helps but it is a band aid on a gunshot wound.
I'm on my phone so it's tricky too properly cite these sources but some back of the napkin math:
Global annual CO2 production is about 37 billion metric tons. About 27% of that by weight is just carbon. That's like 10 billion metric tons in just the carbon part of what is being put into the atmosphere each year by people.
The global annual production of cement, one of the most used construction materials in human history, is estimated to be about 4 billion metric tons.
If you had a magic machine that could pull carbon out of the air, remove the oxygen from it, store it in a pure form, you would have to now find some place to store two and a half times the mass of all the cement the world produces each year.
That would be just a break even on carbon. The energy costs for any kind of real life machine or infrastructure to do that would necessarily be extraordinary.
If this device was powered by magically consuming thermal energy from the area around it, the heat demands would change the climate faster than the carbon being pulled out of the air.
My point is, we make just produce too much carbon. Way way way too much.