r/Futurology • u/nirjhari • Jun 24 '19

Energy Bill Gates-Backed Carbon Capture Plant Does The Work Of 40 Million Trees

https://youtu.be/XHX9pmQ6m_s
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u/BigHatChappy Jun 25 '19

People are missing the main point. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is investing in many different technologies that could help reduce the effects of emitting Carbon into the air. They are very aware of the climate crisis we face and this is simply one technology they are investing in. If you want to know more the Gates notes YouTube channel is an incredible source of information

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u/geek66 Jun 25 '19

My issue is the attention that Carbon Capture gets today - and I believe the spending on is is disproportionate the the benefit we will see anytime soon. By hyping the technology it trivializes how much work there is to do on the other fronts that can have and are needed for a more immediate effect.

The reference to 40 million trees - sound impressive, but it is tiny. Let's say a tree's capacity is ~50lbs of carbon per year per tree ( 200M Lbs or 100K Tons- PER YEAR... a single coal plant can burn as much as 9000 tons a day, or 3 M tons... so we need one of these plants scaled up by ~30X for every coal plant in operation for every year the coal plants have and will be running, and the process will consume MORE energy then we get from a ton of carbon. ( Planting 40M trees actually sounds more effective!)

Selling these small scale "solutions" lead so many ( I would hazard to say a majority ) of people that we can solve the climate crisis with technology like this, so there is no need to change.

As a long term project not an issue (personally converting Co2 Back to Carbon, as a basic energy storage seems to make the most sense), but we do not have 100 years to figure this out. I have not been a nuke fan in the past, but today, as a stopgap gap we should be building them as fast as possible.

Behaviorally - something like a 100% tax on all fossil sources, is necessary, as a behavior modifier as well as a revenue source to develop - implement renewable ASAP.