Carbon Capture...

Search results are dependant on who is searching. But still:

When you use DuckDuckGo the first result is wikipedia.

When you use Google the first results are corporations.

When you use Bing the first result is a corporation, then Wikipedia.

Brave search gives an AI summary of carbon capture, an investment page, one of the corp pages, and then a breakdown on why 'carbon capture' is a misleading tactic.

Edit: All this to say, maybe stop using Google.

You forgot to mention the crypto spam on Brave lol
- You're confusing the browser and ths search engine, I think. I use various combinations of Firefox and Brave browsers with Qwant, Brave Search and Google Search on different machines and AFAIK, I've only seen the crypto stuff in the Brave browser when I initially installed it. Quickly went through settings to disable that stuff and never seen it since. Still the best Chromium browser, and good to have next to Firefox in case of compatibility issues. Privacyguides.org is clear about that.
  The search engine seems decent too, I haven't noticed a big difference between Brave Search and Qwant so far, they are both fine, and less heavily manipulated than Google
- FWIW, I disabled it in the configuration and I’ve never been bothered about it again.
Let me ask Jeeves
- I haven't seen this guy in a very long time.
My first results on google are all mostly from my country, so that seems to have a big impact on it too
In order: Wikipedia
Climate Change Authority Australia
Climate council Australia
Geoscience Australia
Center for Climate and Energy Solutions

It should be blatantly obvious just from basic thermodynamics that carbon capture cannot ever possibly be cheaper than not burning the fossil fuels in the first place.

Thermodynamics tells us it takes exactly as much to put the carbon back in as you got out of it by taking it out. So best case scenario we double the price of energy (which also means increasing the price of everything by a lot due to production costs increasing with higher energy costs) and capture as much carbon as we release.
However this is the real world and in the real world processes aren't 100% efficient. Even a hyper efficient combustion engine is only like 40% efficient in converting the stored energy into a usable form. Our carbon capture techniques suck hard at the moment, but say we improve the tech. That means in the real world we would need to increase energy costs by 4-6 times. Which probably means increasing the pricing of everything by a factor of 10.
That shows just how unsustainable our current consume heavy economy actually is. And that is assuming we have a way of capturing carbon out of the atmosphere in a way that's both efficient and long term. And do this in time before the processes we've set into motion spiral out of control.
And like you say, it puts into perspective how big of a win not releasing the carbon is.
- Thermodynamics tells us it takes exactly as much to put the carbon back in as you got out of it by taking it out.
  Thermo says it takes at least as much energy to put the carbon back in. If the process is done in a reversible way (reversible in the thermo sense), it would take exactly as much energy. And since real-world spontaneous processes are never reversible, it will always have energy lost.
  I know you said down below that energy is lost, but I'm just saying that from a physics POV, there is not a possible way that reactions can ever be done in a reversible way, so it's not like there's even a possible theoretical world where you could approach 100% efficiency.
  By definition, you will always pay the heat tax to the second law of thermodynamics.
- There's nothing thermodynamically wrong with burning methane, releasing the water, and putting the CO2 back underground. Sequestration does not require un-oxidizing the carbon.
  Though if we're going to bury harmful waste underground, nuclear power reduces the quantity of waste by a factor of a million.
- Caveat: it's been a few weeks since I read up on this so I'm fuzzy.
  It's also worth noting we will need carbon capture to actually keep catastrophic global warming from occurring. Even if we cut emissions to 0 by 2035 we're blowing past 1.5C and maybe even 2 as I recall.
  Doesn't mean that we can fix the climate with CC, but we can't fix it without.
- So best case scenario we double the price of energy (which also means increasing the price of everything by a lot
  This wouldn't be wrong, because historicaly the price for polluting the environment and cleaning up the mess afterwards has never been priced in.
No, definitely not cheaper. Also not a viable alternative to not burning.
That said, we're probably going to need it eventually to try to undo even a small amount of the damage we've done
- Problem is that it's not being used to undo the damage - it's being used to justify doing more.
  Solar - even with batteries is significantly cheaper under almost any circumstances... Location, scale, photovoltaics vs thermal - it only tends to affect how much cheaper. Wind is cheaper too, but less so on average.
  Funny how pulling power out of thin air is cheaper and better than digging it out of the ground, shipping it all over the place and burning it.
I do wonder if it could be beneficial for the case of excess solar/wind/etc production. Obviously, renewable infrastructure, storage capacity, and efficient transfer should be prioritized, but I can see there being a place for carbon capture, as long as it's not to the detriment of something better.
Edit: but i do totally agree with you that using fossil fuels to power carbon capture is completely idiotic and makes no sense

I think Carbon Capture is a legitimate and respectable area of research, but it's fuckall for any practical use today or tomorrow and it should never be treated as a replacement for emission goals or the maintenance of critical ecosystems.

Carbon capture, Carbon footprint, Carbon offsetting....

All things invented by oil and gas corporations to greenwash themselves in the public eye while they destroy the planet.

Good old offsetting.
Where it's OK to cheat on your wife, as long as you slip 5 quid to a guy in another country, and he'll tell you he's stayed celibate.
- That metaphor doesn't apply. CO2 in the atmosphere is fungible. Taking a gram out after putting a gram in works out to zero.
  Where it's a problem is that they aren't actually taking a gram out. Regulatory oversight is little to nothing. That has allowed companies to pay a token amount into offset programs and pretend the problem is solved. What they're paying is far too cheap to accomplish what they claim.
- Is there money in that? Because I could make some bank.
Burns, burns, burns, the lake fire...
...cuz the ring lit the lake and it was full of oil.
- Cuyahoga River – “at least 13 fires” …

If you Google anything the first results are sponsored links.

...and that should tell you all you need to know.

Just looking for ways they can charge us to clean up the mess they created.

Reclamation bonding has entered the chat

Geologist here. I work in Oil and Gas, but not for producers. Service side. We've helped with the geology of a handful of carbon capture injection wells this year. They get funded by the majors, but operated by someone else, and they drill them on site of a factory or plant that produces a lot of carbon. That way there is a local site to inject the carbon they capture as a by product od the industrial activity. Pretty cool stuff I'd you look past a quick internet search and make assumptions.

Out of curiosity, how long can we inject captured carbon underground for? Do we have a good estimation of the long-term ramifications?
- Long term ramifications.. If you store carbon for millions of years underground, eventually a future species will tap it as a fuel source.

Carbon Capture and Storage has proven highly effective at injecting taxpayer dollars straight into politicians’ pockets

That’s a half truth.
A lot of money was funneled directly into corporate profits and the pockets of carbon sequestration speculators.

I'm not sure that we should write it off completely...

There's a thing in Iceland that binds CO2 underground.

It's pretty cool: https://www.carbfix.com/

Here's the science behind it https://www.carbfix.com/scientific-papers

Hey, I think the tech has some promise, but my opinion is this: basing our goals and pledges to solve the climate crisis on technology that hasn't yet proven itself is putting the cart before the horse.
We need to set the objective to stop the increase of emissions, and then we can also try out sucking carbon emissions out as we do that to help accelerate our fix to the climate problem.
Whether the tech works or not, fossil fuel companies as I see it, are just using it as a delay tactic to the world reducing its dependence on their business: by making the central issue something that will help, but not ultimately solve the problem.
- Agree.
- The tech is in its kidsshoes, all this pushing for new technologies is almost like a hidden excuse for.continouing their fossil bullshit.
yeah, that's legit, not the coal power plant nonsense. at this point I'd consider carbfix et al. to be at the R&D stage.
- Why not both? Reduce on all fronts.

As much as I agree with the implication that O&G companies latch on to every potential carbon sink as a way to greenwash themselves, carbon capture does have merits.

However, the only ones who can currently utilize carbon capture on a significant scale are the ones who produce a lot of carbon to begin with. Technology will have to advance drastically for it to be a carbon sink effective enough to offset emission to the point where emission cuts can be scaled down.

Source: Last year I was involved in surveyon an area that was planned for huge-scale carbon storage after capture.

One industry that is really suited for CC is steel production. Making steel from iron is basically removing the carbon from the iron ore, and that has been done since the 1800s by introducing oxygen to the molten iron. This creates a pillar of carbon dioxide from a very localized point and should, if the technology existed and was used, be easy to capture. The Swedish steel manufacturer SSAB accounts for 11% of the national Swedish emissions, and 10% of Finland's. It's not negligible. And steel is used every day, everywhere, and for everything. Every other metal pales in comparison. It's a gigantic industry. And it's perfect for carbon capture.

it's much more nuanced than that though.

naunce? in this economy?

Hey, look at us, we are planting 2 bn trees that are ALL THE SAME.

None of the methods they present as solutions are even close to being viable. The ones that do look promising, however, are where they bind the CO2 to tailings.

Any capturing strategy is useless at scale. We need strategies to transform co2. Trees are more effective and scalable long term solutions than any carbon capture. And much cheaper
- The problem is stuff like concrete… the way to make new concrete emits a shitload of CO2, whether or not you use electricity or fossil fuels. So we either need to find an alternative to cement or we need to capture all that CO2.
- Cheaper and scalable, yes, but what I'm getting at is the monoculture approach that most proponents take.
  Also, it requires quite a bit of land mass to do, whereas with other options, you could potentially get similar benefits on smaller footprints.
  I don't know enough about C offset dynamics to speak intelligently, but these are some of the things we need to consider.

Okay? And how are we supposed to deal with the emissions currently in the atmosphere? Even if we abandon all technologies that generate greenhouse gases overnight, we still have shit in the atmosphere warming the planet.

The most compelling strategy I've heard is biochar. You immolate organic matter in a medium like nitrogen so you don't get carbon dioxide, and then you bury the char or use it as fertilizer. The char is relatively stable so shouldn't create much in the way of carbon dioxide once it's formed, and because you make it in an oxygen-less atmosphere you don't get more greenhouse gases from making it.

That's the thing though, fossil fuel companies aren't promoting it as harm reduction, they're promoting it as a solution to emissions so they can keep fucking the earth for profit.
There exists a natural carbon capture cycle that will take up a lot of the existing carbon in the atmosphere. If we reduce production, it will reduce the amount of carbon capture required.
Forests, algae... There is no need for carbon capture. It doesn't do anything on scale. There is need of transformation co2, which can be done by plants and algae
- Humans burnt 100’s of millions of years of plant growth within 100 years. There is no way we can significantly reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere with plants alone in a timeframe that is necessary for humanity to see a difference. There is just not enough land to plant that many trees and plants. We need all the solutions and that includes human tech.
- Think of biochar like humans helping plants keep the carbon out of the atmosphere. Plants are good at capturing carbon, but what happens when they die? Hell, what about all the leaves they shed? When something rots, it releases a mix of CO2 and methane (which decomposes into CO2). The idea of biochar is that it's a way of sequestering the carbon that plants captured. For an example, you make an algae pond, harvest the algae, dry it, char it, bury it. That's carbon that's not going back into the atmosphere anytime soon, whereas if it was left to rot, it'd eventually wind back up in the atmosphere. You're taking the carbon the plants captured, and processing it in a way that makes it easier to sequester.
Absolutely, I also think Biochar is very promising as one way to recapture atmospheric CO2 and to compensate further emissions.
While I understood the production process to be a little different, the benefits of Biochar can't be ignored.
low in energy consumption
low in recourse cost
very good scalable
no hidden science or process
the stored carbon can be used as a soil amendment
- The process may be a bit more complex than I understood, but my understanding is that the gist of it is to "burn" plant stuff in a way that doesn't create carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. One way of doing that is to use a chamber flooded with nitrogen or similar inert gas. No oxygen means carbon can't bind to two oxygen atoms to create carbon dioxide.
biochar is awesome
I don't understand. Biomass already isnt CO2. Why do we take an extra step?
- Because when biomass rots, it creates CO2. By charring it you're making the carbon more stable and less likely to become CO2 in the future. It also won't rot when charred.

Yup. And they've been working on it for 20 years, and have yet to illustrate any scale that would effect the problem.

Who here is googling with sponsored search results?

It's like running all their car engines in reverse. Push a shitload of electricity in, and recombine car exhaust into petrol. Then burn it all over again.

Except they will not pay for the electricity.

Tried it and it's true. Also tried on DDG and I got mostly actual information. Use DDG.

Not quite

If you google ...
Your investigation failed to comprehend the first 3 words.
- Just the third word actually. Sorry about that. How about now?
They said Google.
- Good thing I never Googled it

Carbon capture will only work if the capturing and storage of said carbon uses less energy than it took to release said carbon.

So far I have yet to see that.

It's not about the energy cost, it's about the financial cost. If the system incentivizes proper and effective use of carbon capture, then there'd be a difference. Carrot, stick, both, it'll be better than the half-assed token measures we have currently.

Rich companies have the best SEO?

Ever heard about trees Mr Techbro

They want someone else to do it (probably the taxpayer) and carbon capture means they think they don’t really have to change what they do.

I hate people using "google/googling", in this case it make sense since I believe Google engages in these practices more than any other search engine