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.
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.
What's the difference between fossil fuels and "non-fossil carbon fuels"? Is there some other way to get energy out of carbon than combustion? Also how does carbon factor into fusion tech, when IIRC fusion uses hydrogen as fuel (technically deuterium and tritium)?
We can store energy as fuel by using catalysts to make methanol from CO2 and hydrogen. The methanol burns fine, but it can be further catalyzed into gasoline. Right now most free hydrogen is made by burning natural gas, and a lot of CO2 is generated by burning fossil fuels. But it’s possible to obtain hydrogen though water electrolysis, and CO2 from the atmosphere. These processes of non-fossil carbon fuel synthesis take lots and lots of energy.
Looking at the lithium battery phenomenon from mine to landfill, it doesn’t seem to me that it’s a very good idea to use that technology for vehicles. Lead acid batteries are great for fork trucks, where the extra weight is a feature rather than a drawback. Grid electric is just better than everything else if you’re in the grid. For things like tractors, rural service vehicles, logging equipment, etc., The superior energy density of carbon fuel just makes it really practical. Also internal combustion engines are made of easily recyclable metals, and our infrastructure for recycling those metals is already in place.
I work in food processing, not in the energy sector. I’m not a futurist hype guy or a chemical engineer. But I find this stuff really really interesting, and it’s my admittedly inexpert opinion that non-fossil carbon fuel combustion has a place in a future where earth’s climate is managed socially.
Btw we already have a massive amount of internal combustion vehicles laying around, but the capitalist auto industry would much rather sell you an entire new vehicle than convert an old one to use another fuel/energy source.