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Global warming is solved, Carbon Scrubbers are here.


Where is all the energy coming from?

You seem to be assuming a perpetual motion engine somewhere.

On this rare occasion we are in agreement. To produce 1 gallon of gasoline from CO2, you need to input the energy content of 1 gallon of gasoline plus conversion losses. This energy has to come from somewhere.
 
Well, at $250 a ton, our annual emissions will cost in excess $2.5 trillion annually.

They claim to be able to scale it up and reduce costs to $100/ton, so assuming your number is correct (I didn't check it), that's $1T annually. And I'm not sure if you're including all carbon emissions or just the amount we'd need to scrub, because obviously the planet takes care of a lot, too. But, if in the end we decide this is too much, we don't necessarily have to reduce emissions by cutting net emissions down to 0. We could cut carbon emissions some and work on reducing the cost of the scrubbing even further. There are many ways to tackle a problem. I think we should continue to try to cut carbon emissions, and I think that will happen naturally, but I don't think we need a goal of 0 net emissions. I also think that the cuts in carbon emissions should come economically, so that means developing the renewables to a point where they are around what other forms of energy are at from a cost standpoint.
 

Where is all the energy coming from?

You seem to be assuming a perpetual motion engine somewhere.

I'm not entirely sure what their fuel source is. Nuclear? Electric? Natural gas? Not entirely sure. You'd have to ask the scientists what they are currently using for their prototype.
 
On this rare occasion we are in agreement. To produce 1 gallon of gasoline from CO2, you need to input the energy content of 1 gallon of gasoline plus conversion losses. This energy has to come from somewhere.

I can only quote from the article as I don't have any further information. So here is what it says:

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.

"research" is a link that sends you here: https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30225-3
 
I'm not entirely sure what their fuel source is. Nuclear? Electric? Natural gas? Not entirely sure. You'd have to ask the scientists what they are currently using for their prototype.

They will be using electric power porduced from the usual range of power stations. And lots of it.
 
They will be using electric power porduced from the usual range of power stations. And lots of it.

Can you just stop pretending to have information you don't have access to? How much is "lots of it"?
 
Can you just stop pretending to have information you don't have access to? How much is "lots of it"?

As has been explain in this thread by Surface detail, the energy required to make CO2 into petrol is in theory the same as the energy you get out of iit as you burn it.

But the efficency of the process of making electrical power out of heat means that you will get an optimistic 25% of the chemical energy out of petrol into useful energy of whatever form, such as electricity.

The reveres process is likely to be much worse.

So 25% x 25% is 6.25%. Optimistically.

This information is availible to anybody who has done physics. And, I expect, chemistry although I don't know as I have not done that.
 
Trees won’t but we can.


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To create 1 gallon of gasoline from CO2, you need to input the energy content of 1 gallon of gasoline and then some. While there will certainly be some niche applications for synthetic fuels, and they can act as a store of energy, they do not replace the need for a massive expansion in renewable energy generation.
 
As has been explain in this thread by Surface detail, the energy required to make CO2 into petrol is in theory the same as the energy you get out of iit as you burn it.

But the efficency of the process of making electrical power out of heat means that you will get an optimistic 25% of the chemical energy out of petrol into useful energy of whatever form, such as electricity.

The reveres process is likely to be much worse.

So 25% x 25% is 6.25%. Optimistically.

This information is availible to anybody who has done physics. And, I expect, chemistry although I don't know as I have not done that.

When we drill for oil, do we spend as much energy drilling for the oil as we get energy out of the oil we collect? For a nuclear power plant, do we spend as much energy running the nuclear power plant as we get out of the nuclear power plant? For solar energy, do we spend as much energy creating and running solar panels as what we collect from them in solar energy? On windmills, do we spend as much energy creating and running windmills as we collect from them in wind energy? On tidal energy collectors, do we spend as much energy creating and running them as we collect from them? Should I go on?
 
Not paranoia when there's a history of such.

Yes, but Pearl Harbor happened decades ago, and the Berlin Wall came down in the last century as well.
 
When we drill for oil, do we spend as much energy drilling for the oil as we get energy out of the oil we collect?

No. The energy we get out of th oil is vastly more than the energy required to drill down.

That is why oil is so profitable. It has the best returns on energy in to energy out.


For a nuclear power plant, do we spend as much energy running the nuclear power plant as we get out of the nuclear power plant?

No. Otherwise there would be no point in having them at all.

For solar energy, do we spend as much energy creating and running solar panels as what we collect from them in solar energy?

More or less, yes. Something close although the cost of the pannels is dropping. They well may be very effective soon.

On windmills, do we spend as much energy creating and running windmills as we collect from them in wind energy?

No but the power comes in fits and starts when the wind blows just right. So in terms of useful energy it's close. But they do get some profit out of them but not anywhere near fossil fuels.

On tidal energy collectors, do we spend as much energy creating and running them as we collect from them? Should I go on?

I don't see many such systems so I presume they can't be that good.
 
Global warming is solved, Carbon Scrubbers are here. Previously, the prediction was that scrubbing emissions from the atmosphere would cost $600/ton, but those predictions by climate change scientists were exaggerated once again. The fact is that we can currently scrub emissions for $250/ton, and by 2021, the cost will be around $100/ton. THERE IS ALREADY A WORKING PROTOTYPE AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS.

According to this article, the global GDP is between $75T and $110T. At $100/ton, apparently the cost would be between 3% and 5% of the global GDP to completely eliminate the problem of carbon emissions. So if we say 4% of a $100T global economy, the total cost is around $4T. $4T is a lot of money, but given the problem, it's very doable, and offsetting that cost are the investment opportunities. Carbon scrubbers can actually turn the carbon into fuel, so not only can this help produce profits, we can lower the cost of fuel as well.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science...imate-change-suggests-major-new-study/562289/

No no no that just cant be, the geniuses have been telling us for years that the only choice is a combination of using only green energy and humans going on an energy diet.
 
No no no that just cant be, the geniuses have been telling us for years that the only choice is a combination of using only green energy and humans going on an energy diet.

Yup. There is no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to energy. Listen to the geniuses, not the salesmen and charlatans.
 

No. The energy we get out of th oil is vastly more than the energy required to drill down.

That is why oil is so profitable. It has the best returns on energy in to energy out.




No. Otherwise there would be no point in having them at all.



More or less, yes. Something close although the cost of the pannels is dropping. They well may be very effective soon.



No but the power comes in fits and starts when the wind blows just right. So in terms of useful energy it's close. But they do get some profit out of them but not anywhere near fossil fuels.



I don't see many such systems so I presume they can't be that good.

Actually tidal collectors are insanely good, they just very limited in potential usage because they can only be put where there are good tides for it. So the point here is that you can get a net positive out of producing energy. In this system, they infuse hydrogen, which is energy, but that doesn't take a ton of energy to infuse.
 
Not to wander too far off your thread, but I've always wondered why they don't pull CO2 from the air to carbonate soft drinks. :<]

Because removing a trace gas out of the atmosphere is, and quite likely will remain, extremely costly to do and very energy intensive.
 
Money spent? Do you not see the incredible investment opportunity here to make money? These scrubbers can collect the CO2 out of the atmosphere and turn that CO2 into gasoline and jet fuel. The companies running these scrubbers can then sell that gasoline and jet fuel. This can longer the costs of fuel for people as well as well as improving national security through energy independence. We're literally talking about possibly being able to prevent wars here if we can produce enough fuel for the military that we no longer have to depend as heavily on protecting oil reserves. This is big stuff, so I'm surprised you are blinded to the great opportunities in front of us.

I wouldn’t get too excited. This reads like a press release for someone’s company.

You also won’t get a net output of energy- it will take much more energy to extract the CO2 than you’ll get out of the process. This isn’t speculative...it’s basic thermodynamics.
 
I wouldn’t get too excited. This reads like a press release for someone’s company.

You also won’t get a net output of energy- it will take much more energy to extract the CO2 than you’ll get out of the process. This isn’t speculative...it’s basic thermodynamics.

Your comment reads like someone who is more interested in keeping the fearmongering rolling to scare people into being environmentally friendly than actually commenting based on facts. Carbon scrubbers are a revolutionary game changer that solve global warming.
 
Your comment reads like someone who is more interested in keeping the fearmongering rolling to scare people into being environmentally friendly than actually commenting based on facts. Carbon scrubbers are a revolutionary game changer that solve global warming.

No, they really aren't. Carbon scrubbers require an input of energy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere; they are not a source of energy. They cannot violate the law of energy conservation. While they may indeed be useful for producing synthetic fuel from CO2 for use in e.g. aircraft and as an energy store, they are not, in themselves, a solution for global warming.
 
Your comment reads like someone who is more interested in keeping the fearmongering rolling to scare people into being environmentally friendly than actually commenting based on facts. Carbon scrubbers are a revolutionary game changer that solve global warming.

Theoretically.

Actually... not really even theoretically, unless you have a different definition of ‘game changer’ than everyone else.
 
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