The Climate Un-changing Machine

[Perd Hapley]

A team of scientists from Harvard University and the company Carbon Engineering announced on Thursday that they have found a method to cheaply and directly pull carbon-dioxide pollution out of the atmosphere.

If their technique is successfully implemented at scale, it could transform how humanity thinks about the problem of climate change. It could give people a decisive new tool in the race against a warming planet, but could also unsettle the issue’s delicate politics, making it all the harder for society to adapt.

Their research seems almost to smuggle technologies out of the realm of science fiction and into the real. It suggests that people will soon be able to produce gasoline and jet fuel from little more than limestone, hydrogen, and air. It hints at the eventual construction of a vast, industrial-scale network of carbon scrubbers, capable of removing greenhouse gases directly from the atmosphere.

Above all, the new technique is noteworthy because it promises to remove carbon dioxide cheaply.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/its-possible-to-reverse-climate-change-suggests-major-new-study/562289/

It takes the Warming out of the air, and turns into back into evil fossil fuels. They've had a facility doing this in British Columbia for a few years, now.

I like how the Atlantic worries about the precious tree-huggers having to adapt to the world not ending.  

[Hawkmoon]

Cool! Take out carbon dioxide (so trees can't breathe) and mix it with oxygen (so people can't breathe), and use it to make stuff that uses more oxygen to create carbon dioxide when we burn it.

Brilliant.

If we really want to control carbon dioxide, we should plant more trees.

[Nick1911]

And, of course, energy input.  Until that energy input isn't coming from burning things, the net equation isn't any better.

More nuclear, please.

[230RN]

Cool! Take out carbon dioxide (so trees can't breathe) and mix it with oxygen (so people can't breathe), and use it to make stuff that uses more oxygen to create carbon dioxide when we burn it.

Brilliant.

If we really want to control carbon dioxide, we should plant more trees.

Yep.  So much of this conservation stuff is like a kid's party balloon.  You push in here, and it comes out there.  The volume doesn't really change all that much.

[230RN]

Double post, dang it.

Mods delete when you can, thanks.

[Triphammer]

This is brilliant! A machine that absolutely nothing w/ regards to climate change but is claims to stop global warmer. Run it a few years then claim it 100% effective when there isn't any warming or maybe some evident cooling. Request billions in Fed money to go large scale, go bankrupt & PRESTO!- SOLANDRA!!

[griz]

From the article:

“If these costs are real, it is an important result,” said Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “This opens up the possibility that we could stabilize the climate for affordable amounts of money without changing the entire energy system or changing everyone’s behavior.”

Good intentions aside, I maintain that we (even a national "we" instead of an international one) not only couldn't agree on what the correct global temperature should be, we can't agree on what the overall temperature is right now.

[brimic]

I should market my own Climate Unchanging Machine (TM).
It won't do anything except make a quiet humming noise, but it will give its owners a very warm feeling of doing something important.
$30/ea could for the base model.
$100/ea for the 'Max Virtue Signal' model with an LED light to show everyone that you care.

[Ben]

Were this technology ever to go online on a planetary scale, enviros 100 years from the point the switch was flipped would be yelling about anthropogenic climate manipulation causing a global ice age.

[Pb]

And, of course, energy input.  Until that energy input isn't coming from burning things, the net equation isn't any better.

More nuclear, please.

This.

[Scout26]

Don't we already do something similiar to make ammonia ??

And if we pumped all the CO2 into the atmosphere, sucking it out and turning it back into hydrocarbons to "re-burn" would give us almost unlimited power.  Of course the energy needed to this can only come from one source...Nuclear.

[brimic]

This technology might work if only CO2 was predictive indicator of warming, instead of the lagging indicator (by something in the order of 500 years)...

It’s like preventing frostbite by amputating toes and fingers.

[MechAg94]

Don't we already do something similiar to make ammonia ??

And if we pumped all the CO2 into the atmosphere, sucking it out and turning it back into hydrocarbons to "re-burn" would give us almost unlimited power.  Of course the energy needed to this can only come from one source...Nuclear.

I would bet the overall energy efficiency of this is so bad that even nuclear wouldn't make it come out ahead.  As said above, this is the sort of feel good money pit the global warmers would spend that new energy tax on and make themselves and their buddies obscenely wealthy.