CadeJohnson

I think mineralization is simply a broader category and enhanced weathering approaches are using the crushed rock directly. There are also mineralization methods that are based on electrochemical techniques using seawater as the mineral source, and sometimes using crushed rock for the mineral source (but not directly as the CO2 adsorbent).

I made an electric biochar reactor to test the idea of capturing the syngas! What a magnificent smoke factory! https://www.openairforum.org/t/experiment-4-electric-fired-biochar-reactor-d/838/1 -- I did collect a bit of pyrolysis oil but my primitive gas collection system was no match for the smoke particles and the garage will probably never be the same. They say pyrolysis oil production is favored by "fast" pyrolysis and at first I did not know what that meant - 30 minutes seemed relatively fast to me. But it turns out that fast means several SECONDS. To do that you need biomass cut into small pieces and heated very quickly. A way to do that is with molten salt but for some reason, my wife has forbidden this class of experiments in our garage for now . . .

This is a nice informative video. I wish the creator would tell us his qualifications - though at the end he does refer to a source for his ideas - Living Web Farm (which I have not checked out).

He states several times in the video that crushing biochar is detrimental, and maybe he is right. But the high porosity of biochar is a microscopic feature which may or may not be affected by breaking up the char. In the related material, activated carbon, particle size is chosen on the basis of optimizing flow of air or water through the media, not because it has any effect on the capacity of the carbon to adsorb. So put a pin in that point - it may be inaccurate. Big pieces may take longer to adsorb AND release nutrients. The interior of big pieces may not be accessible to plants or fungi (though in the fullness of time the carbon pieces will break smaller and smaller).

Biochar is becoming one of the most common and discussed ways of CDR - it is so accessible to the average person in many variants. I suspect that in the long run, the means of making char will become much more sophisticated and the gas produced by pyrolysis will become a valued product itself - not something that we'd want to burn. But that is for another decade or two . . .

This is incorrect. The energy released by burning hydrocarbons is not the same as the energy required to convert carbon dioxide into biomass. The difference is that biomass has lower energy density than hydrocarbons.

The rate at which we burned fuel and the rate at which we undo the damage are not linked. We can remove carbon dioxide either faster or slower as we collectively choose.

From what I am reading, the agencies we might imagine as having a role in direct research have been almost completely stripped of that capability over the last few decades by relentless budget cutting. So the entire focus of CDR development nowadays seems to be two forks: policy initiatives to create market incentives for CDR activities, and grant programs to fund basic research by large and small organizations (with the basic capability to pursue grants). For sure some of that is being siphoned into oil companies.

I have made small quantities of biochar experimentally, and I am considering making a 55-gallon drum sized burner (TLUD-style). I bought this place in 2021 and I have been using every scrap of biomass for composting so far - the soil here was very poor. Of course the biochar would help the soil too, but it won't support earthworms - I needed to kick start the soil organisms first. But all my neighbors mow every week and generate lots of grass clippings and little else. It will be hard to make that into biochar I think - green and dense - but I will eventually try. For now I have at least convinced several to quit bagging the cut grass and putting it in trash pickup.

That video presents a really great overview. I agree that we are really behind the eight-ball; if we can't figure out how to do some serious CDR AND kill off big oil, we are not going to leave much of a legacy on this planet. But we can keep some of our modern happy lifestyles maybe if we can learn quickly enough how to convert biomass to chemical feedstock instead of using petroleum - and if we can get far smarter about transportation. Still, all in all, I am sad to leave this world in such a grim situation - doing what I can in my later years to help set it right.

There is about 1000 gigatonnes of excess carbon dioxide in the Earth systems from the burning of fossil fuels. It is already THERE, and will not naturally return to the lithosphere in less than thousands of years. So that is a really terrible deal for sure. Of course we should not keep adding to the problem - we must get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. But there are likely to be some hard-to-eliminate uses and there is already this giant legacy of CO2 we have to deal with. I don't think we have any actual choice to not do carbon dioxide removal - not and retain an appreciable percentage of the world's biodiversity.

Governments are starting to spend on CDR development, but it is not enough - considering the scale of the problem. There are also a variety of ways that governments are promoting CDR through tax means - creating a market for low-carbon concrete or giving tax breaks for low-carbon activities. I received a nice tax discount when I installed my own solar panels. I am in a CDR volunteer collective called OpenAir (openaircollective.cc) where we are trying to promote CDR in many directions.

I did not install a grid tie connection at my house - the connection is one-way and I seldom use any grid power at all. But it is nice to know there is a back-up. I would have been willing to cross-connect and share power, but there were barriers: high connection cost and very low payback. Here in Puerto Rico, there is an activist group promoting micro-grids at neighborhood-scale or city-scale to make the system more resilient - but I do not think their efforts are catching on with the entrenched interests at the power authority, unfortunately.

The existing fossil fuel subsidies would go a long way to developing the CDR technologies we need. The money is there, but it is going the wrong place.

Declining birth rate is not a problem that requires fixing, it is a mercifully wise collective decision by intelligent creatures who've become educated and aware enough of their place in the biosphere to recognize the destructive effects of their own overpopulation. The idea that declining birth rate is decidedly NOT economic - lower birth rate does not arise among the poor and uneducated in the world.

There is no problem in today's world that would be mitigated by increasing birth rate. I live in a region where there is a burgeoning elderly population and sometimes people say - we need more young people in this economy! But that does not mean that having more babies here is any help: by the time they are adults, the wave of excess elderly people will be gone. Economic crises are far more immediate than generational solutions - if a region lacks workers, economic forces are more effective to relocate workers than biologically growing new ones. Of course, governments often fail to anticipate needs and adjust migration policies in a timely way, or housing policies, or other such issues that create barriers contrary to the economic forces.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxG5KAao5rJY3vvwbVUSv4g - The "This Is CDR" series is particularly good. OpenAir Collective is all-volunteer and focused on carbon dioxide removal (which is secondary to eliminating fossil fuel use, but it is something I can actually work on and make progress). In the long run, CDR is no less vital than decarbonizing.

These are some good points. The more traditional engineering disciplines have a depth of methods and practices that developed over time, and software engineering is - what? only maybe 50 years old or so? I have not worked with software engineers, but with all other sorts, so I know if there is engineering going on in software development there will be certain methods in place: preliminary designs that senior teams evaluate and compare, interdisciplinary review so the features of design that "work" for one objective also do not detract from others, and quality control - nobody works alone - every calculation and every sentence and every communication is documented, reviewed by someone else, and recorded permanently.

I can imagine that some software engineering efforts must bring some of these tools to bear, sometimes - but the refrain in software development has long been "we don't have time or funds to do it that way - things are moving too fast, or it is too competitive." Which maybe all that is true, and maybe it can all be fun and games since nobody can get hurt. So if game developers want to call themselves engineers regardless of whether they follow, or even know about standards of their industry (let alone any others'), no harm, no foul, right?

An old friend of mine wrote the autopilot software for commercial passenger jets - though he retired about 25 years ago. He was undoubtedly engaged in a project that nowadays would be dubbed software engineering. The aerospace company included him in the team with a whole slew of different engineers of all sorts and they did all the sort of engineerish things. But I don't have the impression that much software goes through that kind of scrutiny - even software that demonstrably deeply affects lives and society. In a way this is like criticizing the engineering of an AR-15; what were the engineers thinking to develop something that would kill people?! But it seems like with software, the development has effects that are a complete shock even to the developers: facebook algorithms weren't devised to promote teen suicide, it was just an unforeseen side effect for a while.

I think it is time for software engineering to be taken seriously. And there is professional licensing. The problem is that corporations are dubbing their staff as software engineers a lot of times, when there is no licensed engineer in the building and there are no engineering systems in place. It is fine for me to say that I engineered the rickety shelves in my garage, because I'm an engineer and therefore it must be so, but that is some sensationally bad logic. They could collapse at any moment - I'm a chemical engineer.