this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
92 points (100.0% liked)

chapotraphouse

13 readers
1 users here now

Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.

No anti-natilasm posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer

Vaush posts go in the_dunk_tank

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

archive.today • U.S. to Fund a $1.2 Billion Effort to Vacuum Greenhouse Gases From the Sky - The New York Times

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.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago

Don't forget the shareholders too.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

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:

  • current experimental CO2 capture uses quaternary ammonia, which smells like rotting fish and will prevent DAC systems from being installed in population centers (or at least near rich people)
  • the proposed site for this is in Wyoming, where all of those industrial emissions definitely come from
[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 years ago (1 children)

a guillotine would be a lot cheaper

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (7 children)

You say that, but when the federal government does an execution it ends up costing something like $2M.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The US has 612 billionaires so those prices work out to about the same.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago

Most bourgeoisie do the same crimes, legal fees don't need to be duplicated much

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

And it probably wouldn't even work in the rain

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Which is why the people should do it 😌

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

All the prison contractors need to get their slice of the blood pie before anything can move forward

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 years ago

The vacuumes will be fueled by fossil fuels lol

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago

That means they’ll stop polluting so it can work right? anakin-padme-2

anakin-padme-3

That means they’ll stop polluting so it can work, right? anakin-padme-4

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Law of thermodynamics? Never heard of it, sounds like leftist propaganda to me

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

"The degrowth left is unable to imagine a radical alternative because of their capitalist realism" Spider-Jerusalem

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Americans criticizing China for producing the world’s products and ignoring their efforts to transition to clean energy, meanwhile the US funds tunnels for cars and drop giant ice cubes into the oceans to cool it off

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Builds all of their factories there, then gets those goods shipped back to them, THEN have the nerve to blame pollution on China.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Have they seen how big the sky is??

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago

Maybe that's why the right wants to oppress women, so they stop holding up so damn much of it

[–] Fiivemacs 18 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm sure it's a secret plot to just build megamaid

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

OK make it 12 billion

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago

Or you can use that money for reforestation and windmills

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago

And since we don't have that technology... thinkin-lenin

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago

I love running the air conditioner and the heater at the same time too

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

to-the-moonInvest in sky vacuums

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think on the Internet we call that “mask off”. Notice that they use the term “fossil fuels” instead of “carbon fuels”. They have no vision of participating in an energy revolution that replaces fossil fuels. I could swear there was a trans flag guillotine emoji.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

Less fucking cars would cut down emissions so much more, but car treats go vroom vroom. grillman

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

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

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

We need....MegaMaid

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

The richest percentile of western society is, on average, really fucking stupid but is shielded from consequences for its stupidity.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

All we need to fix global warming is to simply build a space elevator. Should be easy, right?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

chronic pool pissers to fund $1.2 billion effort to vacuum piss from the pool

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (6 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (6 children)

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.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

All sorts of silly Rube Goldberg tier bullshit can be attempted, anything and everything but reducing consumption. wojak-nooo stonks-down

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Well, i was gonna say it sounded better than blocking out the sun with micro-particles.

load more comments
view more: next ›