• 2 Posts
  • 468 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • In your picture you are missing the part where CO2 is the fundamental compound to create life on earth, as it is the source of carbon to “create” all living beings, as well as fuel and oxygen source needed for many of them to live.

    Carbon capture is extremely expensive and inefficient, because it is thermodynamically disfavored. In the big picture ineffective, because we need to transform CO2, we don’t need to bury it. The solution is to reduce the amount of excess of CO2 released, and increase the processes that transform CO2


  • Sorry, but I don’t understand your point. You are made primarily of C, and you don’t emit C either, other than C that you get from food and you transform in CO2, luckily for you. Your C is safely stored in a variety of forms that do not contribute to greenhouse effect, until transformed by bacteria. C, fossil fuels and CO2 are very different things


  • We don’t need transformation of C, we need transformation of just CO2 in other C based compounds.

    The reason why capture doesn’t really work, is because you need to spend a lot of energy to break CO bonds. Therefore any solution is based on very weak chemical bonds. It means that CO2 desorbes over time, substituted by other gases. And adsorption needs to break an equilibrium, against “natural direction of processes”, i.e. requires energy.

    Unless we find an efficient version of artificial photosynthesis, everything else is a waste of resources



  • But it is not a solution. Carbon capture is the perfect thermodynamic example of sweeping the dirt under the rug. Best case scenario it would alleviate the problem now to make the problem worse in the mid term. Most realistic scenario it will do nothing at all.

    We currently do not have a human tech to support the process. The only thermodynamically meaningful process is transformation of CO2 in safe and useful organic compounds. But all our technology is too expansive, and requires a lot of energy, production of which is currently one of the main responsible for emission of CO2


  • I know enough of “C offset” to tell you that the problem is not C offset. You cannot and don’t want to “offset” carbon. Carbon is literally the most important element for nature. Carbon is not a problem at all. Excess of CO2 is the problem. By excess I mean all CO2 that the system “earth” cannot transform in biological compounds. Transformation is primary done by plants, algae and bacteria. Unless we find a ecological, economically viable way to perform artificial transformation, the only solution is to increase number of natural “transformers” and decrease excess of CO2. Any other solution is thermodynamically useless, i.e. marketing. Carbon offset as a concept is pure marketing


  • The problem is purely thermodynamic. Plants transform co2 in useful compounds that do not contribute to greenhouse effect.

    Any capture system is a temporary storage of co2 that has anyway to be transformed, because co2 is loosely trapped. Scientifically is literally sweeping dirt under the rug. There is no long term benefit (as at some point in the future you’ll have too transform more co2 than what in the atmosphere), it costs a lot, and gives a fake sense of “trying to solve the problem”, while it’s doing nothing