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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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That's a false dichotomy in a lot of the comments here
We do both
Carbon capture isn't so we can continue to use fossil fuels. It's because once we get to 0 emissions we still need to draw down the carbon in the atmosphere
An ounce of prevention is almost always worth a pound of cure but we're still going to want that cure because every extra tenth of a degree we can bring the Earth back to normal is going to be worth it
Nah, we don't do both. Carbon capture projects are bullshit for the most part, see https://time.com/6264772/study-most-carbon-credits-are-bogus/ for example. Some are actually generating more carbon, not less overall. Instead, companies have been using this as a way to "buy" their target metrics, except they are buying offsets that don't really exist. And they use this to market their products as green/net zero products, which incentivizes even more consumption.
So overall this whole thing is most likely a net negative, as in we would be better without them. And honestly is not surprising at all, technology is not magic. It's just people want perfect solutions so we don't have to do anything and the problem goes away, so they keep falling for this bullshit. Case in point, your comment lol.
Oh, and I thought they made carbon capture viable (assuming clean energy). Meh
But that is literally how it is used in the official plans and projections by governments and the UN. They nearly all plan with an increase of fossil fuel use and later (unrealistic) draw-down to reach "net zero" by the 2050ties or so.
'Carbon capture' technology is stupid. Planting trees and not cutting down any more, that is the way to go. They capture carbon, lots of it. That 'technology' has worked for millions of years.
Yes that is a great solution if we had infinite space and time also if we weren't concerned about the natural world and were happy to destroy all the biodiversity and unique biomes by converting into forests. Oh and if it would actually work of course, but that doesn't matter in feelgood fantasy world.
I love trees, I've volunteered planting trees and donates to woodlands and all sorts of things but they are not going to save us from the mess we're in. They're also not as simple as they should be, management is crucial as there's a surprising amount of things that can go wrong on a large scale which would totally fuck the environment - especially with foodweb issues and soil chemistry.
Nice strawman, is it biodegradable?
It's not a straw man, the guy knows what he's talking about. Destroying biodiversity is a major problem with a lot of tree farms and tree planting programs. Tree planting doesn't HAVE to do that but that kind of management is hard to do, like the guy said
Tear down oversized parking lots and ten lane highways, failed "development" projects, hotel deserts and all of those other cemented spaces that are just dead and useless. Just let nature take it back.
It's easy to be glib but the actual reality is far more complex than you want it to be, here's a good simple video talking about the difference between good tree planting projects and bad ones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9k-22Lv9bU - Simon Clark, when tree planting hurts the climate
He doesn't go into the bad very deeply but they're are plenty of other resources if you're interested. The tree planting projects he does talk about are great and beneficial to the climate but their benefits are so much more than the small help they give the environment - is great treed are being planted when done in the right place but they won't save us alone and it's difficult to do
The education aspect is vital, one tool that's got a lot of promise is the node and branch analysis that plantCV does, there are projects working on using that to look at a tree and model it from images to highlight which limbs to cut and where for effective copicing, as well as other plant health info like tracking diseases or pests and providing good eco solutions. If a charity could give access to such a tool to subsistence farmers in their native languages (via an LLM like metas open-source models) that would be far more effective than their current efforts protecting training video onto the side of a building.
One of the best eco solutions though is not longstanding forests it's actually maintained cycles of smaller fast growing plants like willow, hemp, or even biowaste from crops or things like sidewalk grasses from.managed spaces. They collect the biomass using a non destructive cropping method then dry it in a thermal solar collector before burning it, the heat drives a turbine to generate electricity and the smoke goes upto the chimney where a portion of that electricity is used to create an electric charge over a membrain which collects over 90% of the carbon - this is then converted into echems (electronically derived chemicals, lubricants, fuels, or building materials.) These are used then at end of life we chuck them in a hole, ideally a used coal mine so that carbon goes back where it came from.
It's not a choice between eco utopia and tech hell, take a bio recycling center as an example, currently they're incredibly limited with people having to manually remove contaminants which means loads gets missed and we actually end up adding plastic and chemicals to farm fields, the process is slow and results in low quality 'soil improver' which is why to stop total soil death we'd either need to starve as our arable land lays fallow or cover it in chemical fertilizer (which would could make at the carbon capture plant btw rather than the current ugly supply chain) a better option is automation and ai enabled permaculture integrated into human living spaces, cities teaming with life and covered in plants all being maintained by automated tools with their biowaste taken (via underground cargo networks if we're blessed) to have the carbon extracted and useful things made with it.
All of this is possible with the science we know, solutions are still being engineered but if we put nasa levels of effort into it then we could have the start of things in place within five years (the education tools, facility automation, ground broken for at-scale biocarbon extraction plants, and home garden automtion)
Trees are our friends but tech is not our enemy