John Tierney: Carbon Capture Could Be A Cheaper, Neglected Solution To CO2 Levels?

nytimes.com:

Governments are doing practically nothing to study the removal of carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere, but this technology could be a much cheaper form of climate protection than photovoltaic cells and other approaches getting lavish support, according to an article published today in Science.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[RomeoMD25]

They’re right about one thing. There is no debate or doubt about Global Warming. It’s a farce. It’s non-sense.

[RTIII]

Many posters here confuse sequestration with creating various fuels or capturing power; these are separate but sometimes related issues.

The article is about capturing carbon and getting it _out_ of the short-term carbon cycle and returning it to the long-term cycle from whence it came (from so-called fossil fuels).

Other ideas have to do with capturing carbon to incorporate into current-use fuels and thereby making what are in effect carbon-neutral fuels. Such fuels are short-cycle fuels. The short cycle is: Atmosphere --> capture process --> fuel -> combustion --> atmosphere. The long cycle is where the carbon is captured from the atmosphere and stored, say, as coal, or petroleum , natural gas, etc. All of these long-cycle media represent carbon captured some time ago from the short cycle and then stored. Man has disrupted this material and has re-introduced it to the short-cycle in massive quantities, which is why we are in trouble over CO2 now.

If you research a guy named Bates, he created an automobile adaptation wherein you generate methane from chicken manure and hay and burn it in your car and have more power with cleaner combustion than gasoline - we should mandate all our poultry "farms" generate methane and provide it to us as fuel... 100% capture is vital, though...
.

[alvdh1]

An alternative would be to make short cycle fuels into long cycle carbon capture. The only way that I know of to accomplish this is to burn waste organic matter and convert it to biochar. We are awash in animal waste that could easily be converted to biochar and produce electricity in the process. Organic garbage, tree trimmings and agriculture plant waste can also be converted to biochar. The biochar carbon cycle exceeds a 1,000 years. In addition, it is a soil enhancement that activates soil micro-organisms and in increases soils ability to retain water.

[research]

Yes! BioCHar looks like the best BioFuel system for most waste. See my profile for links.

[SonofLiberty1]

THE APOLLO SPACECRAFT ALL HAD CARBON DIOXIDE "SCRUBBERS"
DURING THE FLIGHT OF APOLLO 13, AFTER THE SERVICE MODULE BLEW UP AND ALL THREE CREWMAN HAD TO LIVE IN THE LUNAR MODULE THAT WAS ONLY MEANT FOR TWO NOT THREE MEN, NASA TECHS HAD TO DEVISE PROCEDURES TO BUILD A DEVICE THAT WOULD HOOK THE COMMAND MODULE SCRUBBERS UP TO THE LUNAR MODULE CARBON DIOXIDE SCRUBBERS BECAUSE ONE WAS SQUARE AND THE OTHER ROUND.

THEY DID JUST THAT AND SAVED THE CREW

[Ventoi]

Excellent...excellent...

then throw the mercury conglommers in the ocean...

and next step will be capturing and reusing uranium...

I WILL get my flying car in my lifetime!

Yay!

[fightorleave2]

I read what JacoboMorales read -- i.e. that carbon recapture is a joke.

[jacobomorales]

Carbon capture is just more of the same republican/industry double speak, smoke screen. It is not a solution, just more smoke to hide the facts.

[BlackbirdHighway]

Most reasonable independent studies put the cost of carbon capture at about 10 times the cost of carbon emission reductions.

It's a whole lost easier to lock the barn door before the horse gets out than the find the horse and get it put back in the barn afterwards.

[lightningbolt]

Planting massive amounts of trees might help.

[lightningbolt]

The problem with fossil fuels is not just CO2. There are many other toxic substances that are emitted from burning fossil fuels. These fuels are also limited in supply. The main advantages of solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, etc. are their cleanliness and their nearly unlimited supply of energy. In the long run, they cost less because we don't have to keep building new coal mines or oil rigs when the supply runs out, and we don't have to get entangled in foreign wars or bad deals anymore.

[SonofLiberty1]

Yeah right but..

We can't just stop but we do need something to replace it.

[lilpeg]

Grow some algae with all that CO2. Then use it for feed, or even just mulch and fertilizer....

[jsarets]

Closed-cycle cyanobacterial photobioreactors are probably the best means of carbon capture and sequestration from large stationary combustion plants.

But open pond algaculture has fairly serious problems, especially freshwater consumption and contaminated runoff. America has huge expanses of ideal grassland that could produce nearly as much biomass without being somehow flooded with freshwater at enormous expense and damage.

[YankinCanada]

was that a yes?

[jsarets]

The most economical solution to atmospheric carbon capture and sequestration is the cultivation of fast-growing oil seed grasses.

I'm quite confident that there won't be any man-made devices in the next few decades that can fixate as much atmospheric carbon as natural grasses given the same allocation of land and capital.

The best part is that come harvest time, the plants can just be chopped, mulched, and dropped in one operation to fortify the soil for the next growing season. The captured carbon returns to the earth.

By rotating these carbon capture crops with our staple food crops, we could reduce or eliminate petrochemical fertilizers. The mulched carbon capture crops fertilize next season's cereal grains.

We could encourage farmers to rotate their fields or even specialize in capture crops by letting them sell carbon permits on the cap-and-trade market according to their biomass yield.

I wholeheartedly support rooftop solar to the extent that it's affordable. But I don't think we can build sustainably unless we grow sustainably. Agriculture is the linchpin of sustainable development.

Drill, baby, drill must give way to grow, baby, grow.

[RTIII]

Your system is good but not what we're talking about here. We need systems like what you propose for creating "carbon neutral fuels" - they keep the carbon on a short cycle. But this will do nothing to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere as discussed in the article. We need to _remove_ and _keep_ _out_ the carbon, not merely reintroduce it back into the short-cycle! So you could grow it and store it, but growing it and then using it in any way just puts it right back in the cycle.
.

[RomeoMD25]

This is why everything about environmentalism is a scam. Can you think of a single good reason to spend $126 billion for the right
to emit carbon dioxide when 97% of it comes from nature?
The Earth emits CO2 all the time in the form of volcanic activity, the action of the oceans, storing and releasing it.
When you exhale six pounds of it every day?

wake up sheep
Exxon Mobil funding all this scam

[research]

I agree ACES is a bankster trading scam, but to conclude environmentalism is a scam, is going too far. Even if you skip CO2, the other environmental damage of coal include mercury, uranium, and mountain top destruction, leading to water table destruction.

rooftop solar is the cheapest electricity you can buy, 2$ per peak watt, 3 cents per KWH see my profile for links and proof. BioFuels from Waste solves our waste problems and can generate all the fuels we need.

[YankinCanada]

and yet no one is listening...why is that?

[Thermodynamics]

When I was very young I worked with a cashier who lost $10 most days. You can't stay in biz long like that.

There are lots of ways to capture CO2. The problem is that they use up more energy than we gained by burning the fuel that produced the CO2. There is no free lunch. Otherwise I would just invent a car that burned gas and then put the exhaust back together to be burned again.

This is similar to the problem with the ethanol subsidy program and the "clean coal" campaign. If there is enough money flowing around in subsidies it is possible for us chimpanzees to ignore the actual numbers.

The natural ways of capturing CO2 are economically feasible because they use free solar energy. Photosynthesis uses sunlight to capture CO2. The oceans also capture CO2 (ultimately relying on sunlight to fuel plankton growth, etc.) but the consequences there might not be so benign, as too much capture can make the oceans more acidic.

[YankinCanada]

was there an answer there or are you just talking?

[research]

I suppose if you were stupid you could pay 20$ per peak watt for solar leading to:

"carbon-intensive electricity production with roof-mounted solar photovoltaic panels can easily exceed $500 per ton of CO2. "

but if you get solar for the current best rate of 2$ per peak watt, it costs just 50$ per ton of co2 removes, far better than the proposed 100$ per ton co2 removed. see my profile for proof and links.

[spikeykitten]

Invention idea:

A device that attaches to the front and rear ends of all animals including people that captures the expelled CO2 and methane gas.

The CO2 could then be sold to and used by all of the soda makers.
The methane could be used to heat homes.

To pay for it all we could tax beans and broccoli.

[research]

Already been done:
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=211282&in_page_id=2