I sit in a hot office and think about this. I am not sure where to ask. I am genuinely curious. I have seen a breakdown of building solar panels to power the earth 2x over in order to recapture carbon equal to the rate it is being produced, but then areas of the earth that were reflective are now absorbtive of heat…

  • @[email protected]
    20•1 year ago

    From another thread on the subject -

    Literally all ideas about carbon capture are quickly revealed to be cynical greenwashing if you think about one simple thing: how much CO2 do we need to store to offset global emissions?

    The answer is that we need to store almost 40B tonnes of CO2, or around 10B tonnes of C if we break that down, every year. That’s something on the order of 1500 great pyramids of Giza (which weighs 6M tonnes) worth of carbon every year.

    Basically, whatever method you dream up of, it’s gonna need to account for this

    • @[email protected]
      14•1 year ago

      To be fair, carbon capture does not have to entirely offset all of global emissions to be useful, it only does if you’re trying to use it as a single solution to climate change by itself. But if you were using it to augment a reduction in emissions you’d need less of it, or if you do eventually reach net zero global emissions someday, but want to slowly reduce carbon already there to bring the world back to the temperatures that used to exist, you could do so more slowly as a long term project.

    • @[email protected]OP
      4•1 year ago

      I agree that the quantity is mind bogglingly big, but I think that good brainstorming starts by not shooting early ideas down, but after all the ideas are out, evaluation can begin.

      Here is some general optimism jn the face of “greenwashing”. I think that human knowledge is fractal, and if any human stares at a single part, they can zoom in enough to see the gaps in knowledge. And those gaps in knowledge are “low hanging fruit” for whatever profession or passion project you are in.