Comment by WalterBright
1 day ago
> there's already some plants out there synthesising them directly from green sources
I didn't realize that a "green" carbon atom is different from a regular carbon atom. They both result in CO2 when burned.
1 day ago
> there's already some plants out there synthesising them directly from green sources
I didn't realize that a "green" carbon atom is different from a regular carbon atom. They both result in CO2 when burned.
> I didn't realize that a "green" carbon atom is different from a regular carbon atom.
Easy mistake to make, don't beat yourself up over it.
It's not the individual carbon atoms that carry the signature, it's the atoms in bulk that give the story ... eg: 6 x 10^23 carbon atoms
See: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7757245/
The problem isn't CO2 it's pulling carbon out of geological deposits. Thus the carbon atoms in synthetic fuel can be considered "green" provided an appropriate energy source was used.
I understand that, but it's a fallacious argument. It's still emitting the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.
You can also bury dead trees in a landfill.
You misunderstand the problem. The act of emitting CO2 into the atmosphere is not a problem.
Significantly increasing the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is the problem. This happens when geological sources are used.
Unfortunately, burying dead trees in a landfill doesn't solve the problem because they decompose to methane which escapes. But you're right that geological CO2 production could be balanced by geologic CO2 sequestration, done properly.
The point is that emitting CO2 into the atmosphere was never the problem. Adding geological carbon back into the carbon cycle is the root cause of the entire thing.
You can certainly bury dead trees. I'm not sure how deep you'd need to go to accomplish long term (ie geological timeframe) capture. I somehow doubt the economics work out since what is all the carbon capture research even about given that we could just be dumping bamboo chips into landfills?
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But if the CO2 recently came from the atmosphere it's still a net zero impact though.
Like, take 5 units of carbon out of the atmosphere to create the fuel. Burn it and release 5 units of carbon to the atmosphere. What's the net increase again? (-5) + 5 = ?
FWIW I'm not saying these processes actually achieve this in reality. Just pointing out that it could be carbon neutral in the end.
Its the time shift. Burning a plant releases CO2 and it is still considered to be carbon neutral.
Sorry, that's just verbal sleight of hand. There's no such thing as "green" CO2.
Yes there is. I used to fall for the same lie, but it's just not true. It's a question of system boundaries.
Green CO2 was recently (in geological terms) captured from the atmosphere into biomass, that's why its release is basically net zero.
Fossil CO2 hasn't been part of the atmosphere in eons (back in e.g. the Crustacean, the CO2 ratio was many times higher), so its release is additive.
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How do you justify exhaling then?
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Have you always had difficulty with abstraction?
And, the two major byproducts of burning hydrocarbons are water and carbon dioxide.
Literally essential plant nutrients, essential for life.
Tangentially related, the 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcanic eruption ejected so much water vapour in to the upper atmosphere, it was estimated to have ongoing climate forcing effects for up to 10 years.
Water vapour is a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
And we heard precisely nothing about that in the media other than some science specific sources at the time and nothing on an ongoing basis.
From Wikipedia:
The underwater explosion also sent 146 million tons of water from the South Pacific Ocean into the stratosphere. The amount of water vapor ejected was 10 percent of the stratosphere's typical stock. It was enough to temporarily warm the surface of Earth. It is estimated that an excess of water vapour should remain for 5–10 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Hunga_Tonga%E2%80%93Hunga...
Please, the media didn't report on this because natural disasters affecting the climate is not controllable by humans and thus doesn't warrant a global effort to address unless it's so large as to be species ending.
Global warming is not fake, there's tons and tons of evidence it is real and the weather is getting more and more extreme as humans continue to burn petrol.
Also some time after that other guy copied and pasted his canned Hunga remark into his big spreadsheet of climate denial comments the international community of climate scientists concluded that Hunga cooled the atmosphere, on balance.
"As a consequence of the negative TOA RF, the Hunga eruption is estimated to have decreased global surface air temperature by about 0.05 K during 2022-2023; due to larger interannual variability, this temperature change cannot be observed."
https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1049154/files/Hunga_APARC...
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Yes, and it doesn’t fit the narrative.
We should be moving towards being able to terraform Earth not because of anthropogenic climate forcing, but because one volcano or one space rock could render our atmosphere overnight rather uncomfortable.
You won’t find the Swedish Doom Goblin saying anything about that.
> burn petrol.
Well yeah, so making electricity unreliable and expensive, and the end-user’s problem (residential roof-top solar) is somehow supposed help?
Let’s ship all our raw minerals and move all our manufacturing overseas to counties that care less about environmental impacts and have dirtier electricity, then ship the final products back, all using the dirties bunker fuel there is.
How is that supposed to help?
I mean, I used to work for The Wilderness Society in South Australia, now I live in Tasmania and am a card carrying One Nation member.
Because I’m not a complete fucking idiot.
Wait till you learn about the nepotism going on with the proposed Bell Bay Windfarm and Cimitiere Plains Solar projects.
I’m all for sensible energy project development, but there’s only so much corruption I’m willing to sit back and watch.
With the amount of gas, coal, and uraniam Australia has, it should be a manufacturing powerhouse, and host a huge itinerant worker population with pathways to residency / citizenship, drawn from the handful of countries that built this country. And citizens could receive a monthly stipend as their share of the enormous wealth the country should be generating.
Japan resells our LNG at a profit. Our government is an embarrassment.
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