Cool

Planting them has a labor and material cost and they won't start making headway on real carbon deficits for many years.

Meanwhile this technology continues to be experimented with and improved upon. It's only going to get easier and cheaper as we work on it harder and harder. Combine it with reducing our carbon emissions and we'll make some good headway on not burning the world to a fucking crisp.

I'm no economist, but I don't think you can use that inflation percentage in the same context as the gdp growth percentage, these numbers represent two wildly different things. To see the correct percentage, you will have to get the inflation number as it relates to gdp.

My grandpa is 99 and he lives in a remote village with population of 3. He "socializes" with them rarely. So, don't worry reddit, the last part is not necessary.

Thanks! :)

yeah, sorry, was on my phone and having trouble with the link... have since gotten it open. Thanks. :)

The youngest age one of my parents died at was 82, the oldest 96. My father is 78 and has no issues with blood pressure, or sugar, and is great health, apart from needing a hip replacement. This is despite a life of drinking and eating like a Viking, which he stopped as soon as he retired from being a builder. I've got about 18 aunts and uncles from both sides of the family, and only three have died at a relatively early age.

The 3% growth is already inflation-adjusted.

lol there you go believing everything you read. Think real hard about the people you know or meet over 50 and then delete the comment.

Black Alert

Alright, I came in pretty hot there and it's fair to call me on it. This is a topic that really irritates me, and I admit I was not the most polite I've ever been. Let me explain why:

Firstly, you're absolutely right that rare earth mining and the production of things like steel or plastics will nearly always create pollution (unless we find some exotic sci-fi process that eliminates pollutants, but I can't see the future). This is the best use of hydrocarbons, and something worth conserving them for since they're a fundamentally limited resource at this point in time. Not to mention plastics and steel are absolutely necessary to produce.

Secondly, Debbie Downer over here has a deep-seated, primal hatred toward grifters who prey on good intentions. Carbon capture is a genuinely useful technology worth developing, but the conversation around it (so far as I've heard, at least) is largely based around "Hey, the environment isn't screwed after all--we've got carbon capture now!" which is dishonest. What carbon capture is capable of right now is not nearly enough.

This generation of carbon capture technology can't live up to the hype of shiftless Greenwashing marketeers. I think it's a shame to see how positive the response is to news about developments in this sphere, 'cause the people who actually care about what they're reading are going to set themselves up for decades of disappointment. Again, I'm not trying to tear down carbon capture tech here, I just want the conversation to be grounded in reality, even if it isn't as uplifting per se.

Carbon Offsets/Carbon Credits are generally pure-and-simple scams where you pay money for someone to say "Okay, you're good. You may clear your environmental conscience" in the style of medieval Catholic Church indulgences or today's Elon-Muskian vaporware. Ask any Australian how their carbon offset programs have gone for more info.

And as myself and other commenters have mentioned, carbon capture and carbon offsets divert attention from solving the actual root of the problem, which is unsustainable use of a limited resource when better alternatives are available. Passive CO2 control through plants isn't just possible, it's something the earth has been doing for literally 10,000 times longer than anything remotely human has existed. There are literal mountains of evidence to that effect.

We can power reasonably sized consumer cars with electricity now. Yes, those are nasty to produce with the heavy metals and carbon required, but ultimately they're much, much better, and the tech will only continue to improve. If that car is powered by hydroelectric/solar/tidal power plants rather than coal plants, all the better.

Yes, this is all much easier said than done, but that doesn't make me incorrect. It's going to be a painful process with a learning curve, but the world changes faster than anyone expects. A couple decades ago, my house had one land-line phone; at this very moment, I'm using a more modern phone to (apparently) write an essay on why I hate "Green Grifters" for the eyes of one well-intentioned stranger. Technology moves in unpredictable ways, but regardless of how efficient carbon capture ultimately becomes, it will always make more macroeconomic sense to deal with power pollution by creating less pollution in the first place.

A wise man once said "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now." I truly hope the carbon capture tech we have now is a big, healthy tree in 20 years. Right now, I'm still betting on plants.

My dad died at 69, and my mom died at 56. I'm too busy at work to go outside and I don't like most people. I'm starting to realize that life is not only unfair, it's totally arbitrary and random.

There's a browser extension called Bypass Paywalls Clean. Just sayin'

The article has a numbers problem. It's "$39" to capture a ton of CO2 in the solvent but they don't explain how they extract it. They describe converting it to methanol, but if you're creating an equivalent ton of methanol then that's worth about $7,500 given that 2 lbs (1 gallon) of methanol costs about $15. They also need to get a bunch of hydrogen atoms from somewhere for that conversion (CH3OH) which is not explained.

So we gotta ignore the methanol thing and assume they're just extracting pure CO2 from the solvent. But how? If they're pulling it out as a gas then they'd be better off just using a vacuum to suck on the power plant's exhaust. And if the CO2 is somehow being extracted as a liquid then that's an incredibly exothermic reaction and the article is really burying the lede. Either way, all we have left is a bunch of CO2 with no explanation as to what we're supposed to do with it.

I’m a 46 year old married father of two in the UK. My maternal grandmother is still very much alive and is 100 in a few weeks. She called me on my mobile a few days ago to say thank you for the Christmas present we sent to her. All of my other grandparents died 90+, I maintain good (if dynamic) friendships and love being outside so it’s looking like I’ll live a long time… but… but… I’m now realising I’m no longer an old young person, but an young old person and the aches and pains are starting. Hope the long life - if I get it - doesn’t involve too many more aches and pains.

[removed]

Ah, well I'm screwed.

You'd have to be careful though, as cutting it and shipping it to the mines, placing it, etc would have pretty high emissions potentially.

Welp, guess I’m dying at 30.

The question is would you even want to

Fuck. I'm dead.

I can imagine that the interior of such a building will not have "mush-room" for activities.

Let the Spice flow!

I used to have a resident in a nursing home I worked in that was 103. Local paper came and did a story about her birthday, asked the usual "What's your secret to long life? She said a gin and tonic before bed and stay out of other peoples buisness. When they left she told me she wanted to say "Stay away from dicks and you'll have no drama!" . Also said it was miserable living long enough to see your friends and most of your family die.

In other news, water is wet 😂