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silence7@slrpnk.net

Can We Engineer Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis? (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 8 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net

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[–] SinAdjetivos@beehaw.org 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The numbers presented are funny.

Global carbon dioxide emissions hit an all-time high of 36 billion metric tons last year.

Discussing Occidental's plants:

Powered by solar energy, and have the potential to capture and sequester 500,000 metric tons (0.0000005 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide per year.

Which then they say they plan on building more of said plants:

Occidental said it planned to build 100 facilities, each capable of capturing 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year

The annual amount captured magically doubles bringing it up to 0.000001 billion metric tons per plant and 0.0001 billion metric tons total annually.

It really seems like we should listen to the Vicki Hollub, Occidental’s chief executive, when they state the real purpose of direct air capture which could:

“preserve our industry. This gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think it’s going to be very much needed.”

This is ignoring their main usage of that 0.0001 billion metric tons is for oil extraction thus increasing the 36 billion metric tons.

In other words shame on the NYT for burying the lead and being deceptive with their numbers.

(@facedeer, I'd be curious to get your take on this article)

[–] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 4 points 7 months ago

It's NYT so they'd be using the American billion. So 1 billion = 1000 million.

So 100 plants * 1 million would be 0.1 billion metric tons. Still far short of the 36 billion metric tons per year.

This is ignoring their main usage of that 0.0001 billion metric tons is for oil extraction thus increasing the 36 billion metric tons.

I think it's best to think of oil like the illegal drug industry. Better to focus on reducing demand, and the supply will drop. Electric cars, better transit, replacing power plants will reduce the amount of oil being burned, and if you do that the oil industry can't sell something no one is buying.

But all that being said I'm mostly in agreement with you. This technology alone isn't going to solve global warming. We have to stop using fossil fuels and do it fast.

But some things aren't very simple. The airline industry puts about a billion tons of carbon into the air, and while there are ways they improve efficiency, it's hard to beat kerosene for energy per kilo. Hydrogen is an option eventually, but it's going to be quite awhile for that to happen.

At any rate, there is the problem of the carbon that's already in the atmosphere from a century of fossil fuel use. It's not really going anywhere until we suck it out. So this kind of tech will be needed to fix that at the very least.