I didn't read the article but I did scan it and I saw this...
Oil and gas companies lobbied for the direct air capture money to be included in the law, arguing that the world could continue to burn fossil fuels if it had a way to clean up their planet-warming pollution.
I would like 1.2 billion dollars to investigate the effect of slaughtering exxon executives on the emission of greenhouse gasses. Our thesis is that if we kill enough exxon executives the rate of greenhouse gas emission will slow.
Don't forget the shareholders too.
That’s only helpful after you stop burning fossil fuels, you absolute dipshits. It’s hardly a thing that exists at all, but even if we did manage to invent it it would take more energy to take a ton of carbon out of the air than is produced by burning fossil fuels that produce that ton of carbon. If you’re still using fossil fuels for energy, direct capture just makes things worse
By some of the experimental prototypes, it’s something like 2/3 of the CO2 absorption is just the power to run it and the remaining third is removing extant CO2. People here are overly skeptical about the capabilities as a reaction to liberal media’s over enthusiasm, which prevents finding the real dunks:
a guillotine would be a lot cheaper
You say that, but when the federal government does an execution it ends up costing something like $2M.
The US has 612 billionaires so those prices work out to about the same.
Most bourgeoisie do the same crimes, legal fees don't need to be duplicated much
And it probably wouldn't even work in the rain
IIRC a lot of that is the cost of the legal system and because they insist on using absolutely barbarous and ineffective methods. The guillotine is as fool-proof as it gets, and there will be no lengthy trials for billionaires.
All the prison contractors need to get their slice of the blood pie before anything can move forward
Which is why the people should do it 😌
The vacuumes will be fueled by fossil fuels lol
externalization of abstract/hidden costs is a major problem with the liberal logic of private property. the value contained within a unit of oil isn't just the labor power used to extract/refine it, but also the labor power necessary to deal with the consequences of its use. the consequences are experienced on a social level but ownership and profit on a personal/corporate level.
That means they’ll stop polluting so it can work right?
That means they’ll stop polluting so it can work, right? 
Law of thermodynamics? Never heard of it, sounds like leftist propaganda to me
"The degrowth left is unable to imagine a radical alternative because of their capitalist realism" 
The laws of thermodynamics would only be an issue if we were trying to convert CO2 back into oxygen and carbon. Even if you were using fossil fuel power, there's no (thermodynamics issue) with the idea that it would take less energy to capture CO2 and store it somewhere than the CO2 released in that energy's production.
there's no (thermodynamics issue) with the idea that it would take less energy to capture CO2 and store it somewhere than the CO2 released in that energy's production.
That's the issue, we don't have the technology to do that at scale, the law of thermodynamics looks far away at a micro level, but at the macro it teleports behind you and sucker punches you
It's all about scalability and its relationship to the law
Have they seen how big the sky is??
Maybe that's why the right wants to oppress women, so they stop holding up so damn much of it
I love running the air conditioner and the heater at the same time too
I'm sure it's a secret plot to just build megamaid
OK make it 12 billion
Or you can use that money for reforestation and windmills
And since we don't have that technology... 
Invest in sky vacuums
The Energy Department projects that together the two plants will create 4,800 jobs and remove more than two million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking half a million gasoline-powered cars off the road.
Are gasoline powered commuter vehicles really at the center of the climate problem? I was under the impression that most emissions came from the commercial and military sectors.
Hot take: Scrubbing carbon out of the air is good, and we should absolutely be learning how to practically deploy that technology. It may not pan out, but we’d be fools not to pursue it. You can do lots with carbon dioxide if you have enough clean energy, including synthesize non-fossil carbon fuels. When draft animals and water mills powered the most advanced human industries, the technological implications of fossil fuel combustion were unthinkably distant. It is not impossible that we stand in a similar position in relation to the implications of fusion power. Techno-optimism can be used as a conservative political force, but the optimism itself is not always unwarranted. If people are able to develop useful and helpful technologies under capitalism within the imperial core, the technologies themselves can be useful despite the social relations driving their development.
The Energy Department projects that together the two plants will create 4,800 jobs and remove more than two million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking half a million gasoline-powered cars off the road.
I looked it up and about 50 billion tons of CO~2~ are released each year. They're patting themselves on their backs for their plan to reduce CO~2~ emissions by a whole 0.04%. Climate change has been solved, everyone!
Ha that’s actually a lot higher than I’d have guessed. The Times’s centering of personal vehicles in their explanation both exaggerates the direct impact of this project, and perpetuates the narrative of climate change being a crisis of people’s personal habits.
And they're 100% going to use this as an excuse to not scale back the burning of fossil fuels in the slightest. Because they'll try literally anything else before going after capital.
Edit: wait nvm, they already directly said that lmao
Oil and gas companies lobbied for the direct air capture money to be included in the law, arguing that the world could continue to burn fossil fuels if it had a way to clean up their planet-warming pollution.
dammit where's our guillotine emojis when you need them
Less fucking cars would cut down emissions so much more, but car treats go vroom vroom. 
Are gasoline powered commuter vehicles really at the center of the climate problem? I was under the impression that most emissions came from the commercial and military sectors.
The thing is there isn’t really any “center” of the climate problem. It’s a billion different things. Just about every part of the global economy is at least a little bit underwritten by fossil fuels.
Yeah the commercial and military sectors contribute a lot, but not overwhelmingly so, and also “commercial” isn’t even that useful of a category since it groups a lot of different things together (it could mean production of anything from medical equipment to children’s toys).
This has a good chart showing how diffuse it all is: https://www.vox.com/2014/10/22/18093114/where-do-greenhouse-gas-emissions-come-from
yeah carbon capture is good as long its not literally powered by fossils, the real challenge is fighting for it to be sequestered, not 'neutrally' re-released, or to drive/excuse further expansion of fossil industries
but this initiative probably will be firmly on the side of doing those bad things, and probably hooked to a coal plant for maximum irony
Spaceballs (1987)
We need....MegaMaid
The richest percentile of western society is, on average, really fucking stupid but is shielded from consequences for its stupidity.
All we need to fix global warming is to simply build a space elevator. Should be easy, right?
chronic pool pissers to fund $1.2 billion effort to vacuum piss from the pool
We're going to need technologies like this, but these technologies can't be used as an excuse to keep polluting.
Better than this idea though seems radiant sky cooling.
I don't think technologies are going to get us out of this mess, except where they transition us off of fossil fuels. literally all of these proposals either a) be net positive on carbon emissions - cf carbon capture or b) would have drastic consequences for life on earth - cf the proposal to spray matter into the atmosphere to dim the incoming sunlight. these proposals are psychotic in the face of what we actually need - to immediately cease usage of fossil fuels.
All sorts of silly Rube Goldberg tier bullshit can be attempted, anything and everything but reducing consumption. 
Well, i was gonna say it sounded better than blocking out the sun with micro-particles.
This reminds me of the ngo industrial complex arguing that the only way to alleviate malnutrition is to genetically engineer rice to have more vitamins. Not the easier, giving people more money or redistributing land.
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Vaush posts go in the_dunk_tank
Dunk posts in general go in the_dunk_tank, not here
Don't post low-hanging fruit here after it gets removed from the_dunk_tank