I’m very glad to see the New York Times Magazine feature on carbontech. I desperately needed an infusion of hope. When it’s 115 degrees fahrenheit in Portland, Oregon, it’s hard to see how there’s any future for humanity. It’s been a long time since I thought run-away global warming could be stopped, and it’s happening now rather than in the indeterminate future.
The all-time record high for British Columbia is 112 F (44 C), recorded on July 16 and 17, 1941, in Lytton and Lillooet, while the record for all of Canada is 113 F (45 C), set on July 5, 1937, in Midale and Yellowgrass, Saskatchewan.
AccuWeather meteorologists predict Kamloops, British Columbia, to reach 112 F (44 C) on Monday and 115 F (46 C) on Tuesday, which would set a new all-time record high for the country.
This kind of weather is an aberration today, but it’s a sign of things to come. To avoid this future we need to stop putting any carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The goal, which seems completely unrealistic, is to accomplish this by 2050. But it looks like carbontech could be an important part of the solution.
The idea is to use carbon dioxide in everyday materials, like concrete, carpeting, and tires where it will essentially be captured. This can make some of the most carbon-intensive manufacturing processes carbon neutral or even carbon negative. This, in turn, will create a market for carbon dioxide as a raw material, so rather than drilling for fossil fuels and moving them around in pipelines, investment will go to gathering CO2 and piping it around to where it’s needed. This will also make it easier to bury CO2 where it won’t contribute to global warming.
By itself, carbontech won’t put much if a dent in emissions, but if it can help create a new infrastructure for carbon capture and distribution, it might accelerate how quickly we can transfer away from fossil fuels.
We’re past the point where we need to use science to make our arguments on climate change. When Republicans in Washington state have constituents dropping dead by the thousands because that’s what happens when it’s 125 degrees and no one has any air-conditioning, they’ll either stop reciting ExxonMobil talking points or they’ll be voted out office.
The problem is that it’s probably too late.
But human’s can be very intelligent and innovative–some of them anyway–and carbontech is a good example of this. Maybe we can wriggle out of this mess after all.
For some years now Kevin Drum has been pushing massive R & D funding as the most politically practical method for dealing with climate change. Basically, pay as many smart people as possible to do as much clever research and innovation as possible to 1) make alternatives to fossil fuel cheaper and easier to use, and 2) create, as you describe, markets for capturing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and putting them to alternative uses.
As we’ve seen with the $5 trillion-with-a-T in pandemic relief funding, (almost) everyone likes free money and cheaper stuff.
Going to try posting this again… This is something I wrote a couple of months ago during a discussion about climate change with my colleagues.
It seems like we’ve been talking around this problem for a long time. James Burke did a fantastic special about this back in 1989 called After the Warming (part1, part2) and in some ways Connections is also about this if you think about some of its conclusions (Ep 10 Yesterday, Tomorrow and You). The pandemic seems to have exposed some serious fractures in our ability to act collectively (though maybe they’ve never been that good to begin with) but also showed that our rapid pace of technological change may be sitting on solutions that haven’t been able to gain traction because free markets aren’t magic. I guess I still have some faith that we’ll be able to weather global climate change through technological innovation but I also feel like my choice of career hasn’t necessarily been driving towards that goal. The obvious long term solution is some kind of hand waving about:
Food is a challenging one. I like food, and a wide variety of it. And I’m not a vegetarian. So my impacts here are probably larger than they should be. I’m hopeful that things like warehouse vegetable growing (Plenty) or lab grown meat will turn food production into a subset of the energy problem in the long run, but in the short run I’m honestly not sure. Our mechanized petroleum fueled farm productivity has been great in allowing a smaller percentage of the world to be involved in food production (and to some degree this is the basis of modern society… see Connections Ep 1 The Trigger Effect). But that approach is just really hard on the planet in terms of water usage and things of that nature. Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to turn essentially a place with a desert climate (CA central valley) into one of the major agricultural producers of the world? So there are all these challenges of available arable land, water availability (especially in the face of climate change induced droughts), distribution costs (fuel, time (leading to compromises on the type/quality of foods), and economic impact because running a large mechanized farm is expensive and thus hard do get into and if you aren’t producing things that way at scale you need to sell into a more niche market which the vast majority of the world can’t afford.
Food quickly gets you tied into global economic equity questions which is a whole other problem for which we don’t have good solutions. But I’m definitely a fan of better targeted (handing $$$ directly to people instead of terrible governments and maybe without the intermediaries of cows or laptops) foreign aid than whatever we have been doing which doesn’t seem to be improving the situation.
It’s been a really long time since I read it so might be misremembering things but Fritjof Capra’s The Turning Point, talks about how the reductionist paradigm of problem solving isn’t doing a good job solving our problems anymore and we need to switch to a more holistic/system theory approach to solving problems. Unfortunately I think we’re still stuck in advanced capitalism for the moment:
– Haruki Murakami Dance, Dance, Dance
The next 40+ years are already baked into the cake in my opiniohn. Right now are the results of the CO2 we dumped into the air from the 1940s to the 1980s. It takes a while for the climate to really get turnt up, but it’s going to increase exponentially from what we’re witnessing now, simply because CO2 output for the last 40 years has been exponential. Take a look at a graph on CO2 output from 1980 to 2020. Yikes.
I’m sure we’ll survive as a species, there’ll just be a whole lot less of us, supply and demand on arable land and water being what they are.
Of course, volcano eruptions or massive carbon capture or climate engineering could be used to counteract the CO2, and the natural methane release that is a byproduct of increasing temperatures, but, and it’s a big but, it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have it’s own problems associated with it. Just injecting shit into the sky to reflect light might have an impact on all sorts of things, like plants, plankton, etc, that might double the shittiness of the situation.
This is The Great Filter for humanity. Whether we’re going to get through it or get filtered by it probably determines the future of the species.
Now, all of that doom-n-gloom said, imagine what happens if Republicans really riggajig everything, take back the Federal Government, and don’t let go for another 20 years. Hilariously tragic results I can’t wait to live or not live through, all because they’re upset about being called bigots and hate liberals for calling them out on it. They’re perfectly fine with the rich getting to survive, as long as they can hold onto the ankles of all the god damn libruuls as they drown in a boiling sea.
Remember, folks. The Second Amendment isn’t just a right, it’s a responsibility.
Ima gonna get my AR 15 so I can shoot back — at the bad guys.
Get some practice first… so you don’t shoot yourself! 🙂
It’s never too late for the planet, the planet will be fine and recover. Whether we do is a good question though. I mostly remain optimistic. I really don’t see much climate denialism anymore as people have sort of given that up.
That NYT article is lengthy but it lays it out well. I was surprised to learn about the carbon capture and reuse that is on going even now. It does seem that we should move quickly to transition our autos to electric. The temperatures in the NW and Canada are unheard of. People out there have never really used or had air conditioners but that is changing now with the higher temps. I suppose Trump and co figures it was Obama caused it all or maybe the illegal immigrants. One of them I’m sure. Freaking freaks.
The hope I have stems from the fact that once people get engaged, we’re really good at doing the impossible. WWII is a great example. What’s frightening is the technology to fix this does not exist so there’s no way to predict how long it would take to develop and implement it. But we have vast resources and are an innovative species. Too innovative for our own good most of the time, but every now and again it becomes an important quality.
I’m not an odds maker, so I’ll just say I think it’s greater than 50-50 that things get really bad before there’s any improvement. But if there’s a chance we turn this around before our coastal cities are flooder and we suffer mass migrations, technologial innovation will be a big part of the solution. That being said, the problem is enormous. As large as the atmosphere itself. There will be no easy solutions.
It feels like things have already gotten really bad:
So far we haven’t had major food system failure…