Comment by IshKebab
2 months ago
> most of us don't control any CO₂ production we can turn off.
Uhm what? Driving? Flying? Heating?
> Sure, it seems very unfeasible with current technology, but that is bound to improve as you work on it.
Improve, yes. Break the laws of thermodynamics? No.
You can improve a perpetual motion machine but it's never going to be useful.
Should every car owner personally optimize the CO₂ emissions of their car?
I have definitely not argued against the laws of thermodynamics.
I'm sorry, I don't even know what you're arguing for.
>With good capture tech, you can keep keep doing some important CO₂ producing activities.
We're not asking people to stop breathing while there's no good DAC on the horizon, but I wonder what were the other important CO₂ producing activities you intend to do less of.
The following isn't breaking the law of thermodynamics; just wilfully ignoring it..
Gemini: >To offset a single typical gasoline car's emissions (around 4.6 metric tons CO2/year), you'd need a substantial fraction of a large DAC plant, as current large plants aim for 1 million tons/year, meaning many tiny DACs or a small portion of one large one; as of late 2025, the largest operating DAC (Mammoth) captures 36k tons, requiring about 80 such facilities to match one average ICE car's annual output, highlighting the massive scale-up needed, with projects like Texas's Stratos targeting 500k tons/year (equivalent to ~108 cars).
There are 3 or 4 laws of thermodynamics, and I can't figure out which one you might possibly be referring to.
I agree that current carbon capture tech is very inadequate, because very little effort has been put into it. How many orders of magnitude better it can get, we don't know until we try, but I don't see any fundamental reason it can't get good enough.
Once you have a solar powered capture machine park pumping CO₂ underground, it can keep working indefinitely at little cost.
> I wonder what were the other important CO₂ producing activities you intend to do less of.
All of them. This is well under way. I don't know how many decades it will take. But that's a separate problem.
The crucial thing to understand is that even if/when all CO₂ production has ended, the produced CO₂ won't disappear by itself for thousands of years!!
So you really need to actively remove it to get back to natural levels. Which is why I think carbon capture tech must be developed.
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> Should every car owner personally optimize the CO₂ emissions of their car?
Yes!! Obviously! Buy an electric/hybrid car or at least one with good fuel efficiency. Drive it in an efficient style. Try to avoid unnecessary journeys.
> Should every car owner personally optimize the CO₂ emissions of their car?
They can if they want to, maybe by buying a car with lower/zero emissions at the point of use?