Technology

59593 readers

6512 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

272

The US just invested more than $1 billion into carbon removal / The move represents a big step in the effort to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere—and slow down climate change. (archive.ph)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s to c/technology

75 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The US just invested more than $1 billion into carbon removal / The move represents a big step in the effort to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere—and slow down climate change.::undefined

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] AFaithfulNihilist 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] BackupRainDancer 0 points 1 year ago

Well put! Reduce reduce reduce and detangle the energy supply chain from carbon intensive fuels then roll it to all carbon emitting fuels.