this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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New way to make cement may be key to large-scale carbon capture (cosmosmagazine.com)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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It is estimated that 4 billion tons of cement are manufactured each year. To speed up CO2 uptake, "instead of mixing calcium oxide with sand, they mixed calcium oxide with another mineral composed of magnesium and silicate ions. The heat catalysed an exchange of ions, forming magnesium oxide and calcium silicate: alkaline minerals that react quickly with acidic CO2 in the atmosphere." Far quicker than most concrete, anyway...

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The method essentially speeds up the natural process of silicate weathering. In this process, CO2 in the atmosphere dissolves in rainwater to form a weak acid. This reacts with common minerals in rocks called silicates, breaking them down into other compounds such as bicarbonate ions (HCO3–), which flow into the ocean and stably store carbon for thousands of years.

Although the carbonation process took weeks to months to occur, it was still thousands of times quicker than natural processes.

If I understand this correctly, it sounds like a terrible idea because this method speeds up a natural process and sees the ocean as a sort of a stable dumpster. If I got this wrong, please let me know.

Btw:

Guide to Investigating Fossil Fuels: Greenwashing | Global Investigative Journalism Network, Feb 2025

The fossil fuel industry promotes solutions such as carbon capture and storage, liquefied natural gas, hydrogen, and renewable natural gas, which critics argue are far more focused on preserving industry profits than significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The tactics they use include funding university research that skews public discourse and policymaking in the direction of their preferred solutions. They have hired management consultancies to conduct skewed analysis supporting those solutions and funded lobbyists, and advertising and public relations firms to promote them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Those bicarbonate ions are great for combating ocean acidification, they act as a pH buffer. Ocean acidification is rising due to increased atmospheric CO2 levels and that decrease in pH makes it harder for macro life forms to utilize carbonates to form shells and drives extinction. By increasing the concentration of bicarbonate, the carrying capacity of the ocean to absorb atmospheric CO2 without changing the pH is increased.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Those bicarbonate ions are great for combating ocean acidification

In this context tho, what you say reminds me of geoengineering and I consider it to be an extremely dangerous approach.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Not all geoengineering is the same. Beavers are geoengineers. We have already had a crazy huge impact on this planet, we should absolutely do something to mitigate these effects. A distributed (as opposed to all in one location) carbon cycle buffer is about the least harmful effect one can hope for and still have a positive impact.