In todays more Positive Climate News: A Company Opens World's Largest Vacuum to Suck Carbon From Atmosphere. It has is now operational.

thanosotitan · May 13, 2024

https://futurism.com/the-byte/worlds-largest-suck-carbon-atmosphere

A new carbon capture facility that claims to be the biggest of its kind in the world began quite literally sucking the carbon from the atmosphere this week.

The plant, called "Mammoth" by Swiss company Climeworks, kicked off operations in Iceland on Wednesday, CNN reports, grabbing the available carbon from the air and injecting it deep below the surface to lock it up permanently.

Best of all, the operation is entirely powered by the island nation's geothermal energy, allowing it to put a dent in the abundance of carbon dioxide polluting our planet's atmosphere without adding to the problem.

Giant fans at Climeworks' Mammoth plant suck in the surrounding air, scrubbing it of carbon and pumping it deep into the ground where it turns into stone.

As its name suggests, the plant is absolutely enormous: ten times bigger than its three-year-old predecessor called Orca.

At full capacity, the company claims the facility can suck 36,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere annually, the equivalent of taking 7,800 combustion-engine cars off the road per year.

One of the concerns that we have is that folks are going to try and use this as an offset for continued fossil fuel production," nonprofit Carbon180 executive director Erin Burns told Axios last year, "when largely the role of carbon removal is to address legacy emissions."

"And we are seeing oil companies talk about this being a way to offset continued oil production," she added. "That's concerning."

I was wondering if someone was going to do something like this to help combat climate change. honestly if we are going to be able to erraform other planets, why not turn that tech inwards and do it with the one we already have.

tapedeck · May 13, 2024

GTAce · May 13, 2024

This is not positive, it's corporate greenwashing.

AzorAhai · May 13, 2024

Best sucker ever

BorkBork · May 13, 2024

Not even a blip at full capacity.

Darkstar0155 · May 13, 2024

Equivalent of 7800 cars a year...

This is like using a cup to try to save the titanic from sinking.

This kind of tech will be needed though and have to start somewhere

Sabretooth · May 13, 2024

Panchaea

Panchaea is a vast installation constructed within the arctic ocean. It is a geo-engineering project located in the arctic with the goal of curbing global warming. Panchaea is a location featured in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Designed and funded by the eccentric billionaire and inventor of...

deusex.fandom.com

acheron_xl · May 13, 2024

Cool.

Only need maybe a couple million of them. Should be easy!

Hollywood Duo · May 13, 2024

Darkstar0155 said:
Equivalent of 7800 cars a year...

This is like using a cup to try to save the titanic from sinking.

This kind of tech will be needed though and have to start somewhere

Yeah its a start, need a lot more in combination with reducing emissions across the board

Protagonist · May 13, 2024

"At full capacity, the company claims the facility can suck 36,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere annually, the equivalent of taking 7,800 combustion-engine cars off the road per year."

Amazing.

On a positive note: hope the technology keeps improving.

perfectchaos007 · May 13, 2024

7800 cars worth of pollution is a drop in an Olympic size swimming pool but Gotta start somewhere I guess.

PatAndTheCat · May 13, 2024

GTAce said:
This is not positive, it's corporate greenwashing.

What? Of course this is a positive development. A person would be foolish to think it is not.

Galkinator · May 13, 2024

Sounds cool, but in reality we need to multiply said "vacuum" by millions to actually have any sort of positive impact.
Unless that can somehow be profitable I don't have any hope it's ever going to be widespread :/

LordFlash · May 13, 2024

At full capacity, the company claims the facility can suck 36,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere annually, the equivalent of taking 7,800 combustion-engine cars off the road per year.

Just as a reference point (THIS IS JUST INDIA) -

As per industry estimates, about 4.1 million passenger vehicles were sold in the local market in the last calendar year, an increase of around 8.2% compared with sales of 3.79 million units in 2022.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.co...ofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

This is just utterly worthless corporate PR. Complete fantasy to think it will have any sort of impact.

Ouroboros · May 13, 2024

Nephtes · May 13, 2024

At least it's powered by geothermal energy. Can you imagine the headlines if this was part of the normal power grid or worse… powered by coal or something?

Absolutely begs the question: let's PRETEND the tech gets better and this COULD make a dent, how many places in the world have geothermal energy to tap into to build one of these? Because again, otherwise, you're needing to power it with "dirty" energy. In which case, what's the point?

ngower · May 13, 2024

We can put these outside our domed cities in the wastelands that all the poors live in when the climate apocalye comes.

Vincent Alexander · May 13, 2024

Never mind. This thread is bananas. Just editing and moving on. Jesus jiminy....

skeptem · May 13, 2024

While this is good, it also feels like companies will use this to greenwash and offset a fraction of their emissions instead of reducing them. So mixed bag? But also, we need all the help we can get!

BakedTanooki · May 13, 2024

If it doesn't fight against capitalism, it's not good news to me.

Edit:

Climeworks’ “Mammoth” vacuum cleaner is not a solution to the climate crisis - OceanCare

Direct air capture is an expensive, insufficient, and an environmentally incompatible technofix that distracts essential resources to phase out fossil fuels.

www.oceancare.org

Fallout-NL · May 13, 2024

PatAndTheCat said:
What? Of course this is a positive development. A person would be foolish to think it is not.

Like pissing on a raging out of control forest fire from a helicopter that is powered by e-fuels. It'll make you feel good, but not much else.

thanosotitan · May 13, 2024

LordFlash said:
Just as a reference point (THIS IS JUST INDIA) -

https://economictimes.indiatimes.co...ofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

This is just utterly worthless corporate PR. Complete fantasy to think it will have any sort of impact.

While that may be true, I think its at least a good start. Couple this with reducing emissions and other technologies like cloud seeding and reflector roofs and every small step can add up before we hit the 2.5c milestone and be on our way to becoming Venus 2.

PatAndTheCat · May 13, 2024

Fallout-NL said:
Like pissing on a raging out of control forest fire from a helicopter that is powered by e-fuels. It'll make you feel good, but not much else.

It's a start? What happens when the tech scales and becomes more efficient. God forbid people try. We will solve climate change and this is how we start

PatAndTheCat · May 13, 2024

BakedTanooki said:
If it doesn't fight against capitalism, it's not good news to me.

Edit:

Climeworks’ “Mammoth” vacuum cleaner is not a solution to the climate crisis - OceanCare

Direct air capture is an expensive, insufficient, and an environmentally incompatible technofix that distracts essential resources to phase out fossil fuels.

www.oceancare.org

Capitalism helped drive climate change. Capitalism will also drive solving climate change.

BakedTanooki · May 13, 2024

PatAndTheCat said:
Capitalism helped drive climate change. Capitalism will also drive solving climate change.

No. I thought like that maybe 10 years ago, when I was much more naive.

HStallion · May 13, 2024

PatAndTheCat said:
Capitalism helped drive climate change. Capitalism will also drive solving climate change.

This is not at all the reassuring point you want it to be.

Tathanen · May 13, 2024

There's a multiplying factor where these systems become increasingly effective as the rest of society lowers their emissions. Obv in isolation this is a drop in the bucket, but as we continue to shrink the bucket in other ways those drops become proportionately larger. Might as well start drippin. As long as no one is under the illusion that these solve the problem on their own.

LordFlash · May 13, 2024

PatAndTheCat said:
Capitalism helped drive climate change. Capitalism will also drive solving climate change.

I cant even be mad anymore when people say stuff like that lol.

Palas · May 13, 2024

PatAndTheCat said:
It's a start? What happens when the tech scales and becomes more efficient. God forbid people try. We will solve climate change and this is how we start

Yeah what if everyone pisses on the forest!

Palas · May 13, 2024

I just had the worst glimpe of the worst future in which some billionaire shithead says something like "oh what if we can turn this captured carbon back into crude oil... to generate jobs!" and it ens up happening

Netherscourge · May 13, 2024

What happens with the carbon they capture? Where does it go?

medinaria · May 13, 2024

there are two things that are true:

there's no feasible path towards net-zero that relies solely on direct air capture. relative to like "build more solar" and "switch to zero-emission cement" etc, it's way too expensive and the technology isn't there yet. the fossil fuel companies know this, and support it right now basically as a smokescreen so they can claim they care without having to actually care. (this is similar to why they used to support carbon taxes in the US, because they knew carbon taxes would never pass in the US.)
if you want to stop thinking about today's level of warming as "locked in" and unlock the capacity to reverse the harms that are being done on a like less-than-century-long timescale, direct air capture is basically the only game in town. it's an immensely important technology to improve on and will be pivotal later this century. this plant is very important in that regard, because we need to keep iterating on efficiency/scale/etc.

so it's definitely a positive piece of news, but only if taken in the proper context

behOemoth · May 13, 2024

PatAndTheCat said:
What? Of course this is a positive development. A person would be foolish to think it is not.

It isn't at all. the only one good positive is that it could provide carbon for follow up products like synthfuels instead of relying on fossils and worse plants. however, these plants still try to deal storing carbon just in general. the tech to use it as a resource is still an academic research topic.

StuKen · May 13, 2024

The energy required for carbon capture is between 5-10 times more than the useable energy harvested during the processes that released it in the first place. You could swap over the entire fixed energy production capacity of the entire world overnight to fusion and double it and still it wouldn't provide the required output to capture existing emmisions to keep it within the 2.5c ceiling while keeping the lights on.

This is nasty greenwashing to push the narrative that we can keep the on going as we have been since the industrial revolution with no consequences.

jitteryzeitgeist · May 13, 2024

Global climate change and carbon emissions aren't a single-solution problem, so even if these plants don't make much of a dent what we need them to be is a part of a global, wide-spread, multifaceted solution.

Maybe it ends up being nothing (the most likely scenario), maybe we get 10,000 of these out in the world and its scooping millions of tons of carbon out of the atmosphere annually.

Relying on a single solution and letting perfect be the enemy of good isn't going to get us anywhere.

LinkStrikesBack · May 13, 2024

GTAce said:
This is not positive, it's corporate greenwashing.

That the technology is at the point of existing absolutely is a positive. One of the biggest problems facing this specific carbon capture device would seem to be, we can't scale it up with the power supply method being geothermal, and we'd have to somehow massively scale up energy production in non-carbon generating ways (practically, meaning as much of both Green and Nuclear power as possible) that we're 100% unprepared to do.

Grue · May 13, 2024

The way the article keeps referring to a Mammoth plant, I want to take it seriously but all that's going through my head is:

To be fair I assume Audrey II did its fair share of carbon capture.

Dimensional Fortress · May 13, 2024

PatAndTheCat said:
It's a start? What happens when the tech scales and becomes more efficient. God forbid people try. We will solve climate change and this is how we start

I think all it takes is one billionaire to see the big picture and even if it's just for their own lineage's self-preservation. They decide to co own or buy out the tech, charge less than competitors and go big in production of these.

Hopefully a good billionaire and not an evil one that can decide to completely shut off a country or continent's carbon sucker network when they have a hissy fit.

JSRF · May 13, 2024

medinaria said:
there are two things that are true:

there's no feasible path towards net-zero that relies solely on direct air capture. relative to like "build more solar" and "switch to zero-emission cement" etc, it's way too expensive and the technology isn't there yet. the fossil fuel companies know this, and support it right now basically as a smokescreen so they can claim they care without having to actually care. (this is similar to why they used to support carbon taxes in the US, because they knew carbon taxes would never pass in the US.)

if you want to stop thinking about today's level of warming as "locked in" and unlock the capacity to reverse the harms that are being done on a like less-than-century-long timescale, direct air capture is basically the only game in town. it's an immensely important technology to improve on and will be pivotal later this century. this plant is very important in that regard, because we need to keep iterating on efficiency/scale/etc.

so it's definitely a positive piece of news, but only if taken in the proper context

Great post

Palas · May 13, 2024

StuKen said:
The energy required for carbon capture is between 5-10 times more than the useable energy harvested during the processes that released it in the first place. You could swap over the entire fixed energy production capacity of the entire world overnight to fusion and double it and still it wouldn't provide the required output to capture existing emmisions to keep it within the 2.5c ceiling while keeping the lights on.

This is nasty greenwashing to push the narrative that we can keep the on going as we have been since the industrial revolution with no consequences.

It's this really. The problem is, and always was, a question of how to boil water. Not what to do with the smoke. Cool, this technology exists -- but it needs scaling so massive not only in its own technology but also in the technology needed to power it (which is what matters) -- that it's not "letting perfect be the enemy of the good". It isn't good to begin with.

StuKen · May 13, 2024

jitteryzeitgeist said:
Global climate change and carbon emissions aren't a single-solution problem, so even if these plants don't make much of a dent what we need them to be is a part of a global, wide-spread, multifaceted solution.

Maybe it ends up being nothing (the most likely scenario), maybe we get 10,000 of these out in the world and its scooping millions of tons of carbon out of the atmosphere annually.

Relying on a single solution and letting perfect be the enemy of good isn't going to get us anywhere.

I would argue they are actively harmful due to the energy requirements being so high as to reduce the feasability of solutions that dont require pie in the sky tech advances and can deliver results with a fraction of input energy requirements. Focus the energy these solutions would waste on expanding urban municipal heating and cooling systems, electrified mass transit and decarbonsing agricultural processes.

Mistouze · May 13, 2024

Dimensional Fortress said:
I think all it takes is one billionaire to see the big picture and even if it's just for their own lineage's self-preservation. They decide to co own or buy out the tech, charge less than competitors and go big in production of these.

Hopefully a good billionaire and not an evil one that can decide to completely shut off a country or continent's carbon sucker network when they have a hissy fit.

"All it takes is one vegan tiger"

Fallout-NL · May 13, 2024

PatAndTheCat said:
Capitalism helped drive climate change. Capitalism will also drive solving climate change.

lol

GameAddict411 · May 13, 2024

GTAce said:
This is not positive, it's corporate greenwashing.

This^ These will not even make a small dent into the issue. But the corporations will start buying this shit to offset their pollution and advertise they are carbon neutral.

Zael Stormborn · May 13, 2024

Sabretooth said:
Panchaea

Panchaea is a vast installation constructed within the arctic ocean. It is a geo-engineering project located in the arctic with the goal of curbing global warming. Panchaea is a location featured in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Designed and funded by the eccentric billionaire and inventor of...

deusex.fandom.com

"It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from here."

GameAddict411 · May 13, 2024

jitteryzeitgeist said:
Global climate change and carbon emissions aren't a single-solution problem, so even if these plants don't make much of a dent what we need them to be is a part of a global, wide-spread, multifaceted solution.

Maybe it ends up being nothing (the most likely scenario), maybe we get 10,000 of these out in the world and its scooping millions of tons of carbon out of the atmosphere annually.

Relying on a single solution and letting perfect be the enemy of good isn't going to get us anywhere.

I agree that multiple solutions will be needed for climate change, but not on this particular issue. These carbon capture facilities consume insane amount of power. Power that could be used to offset fossil fuels.

Palas · May 13, 2024

jitteryzeitgeist said:
Global climate change and carbon emissions aren't a single-solution problem, so even if these plants don't make much of a dent what we need them to be is a part of a global, wide-spread, multifaceted solution.

Maybe it ends up being nothing (the most likely scenario), maybe we get 10,000 of these out in the world and its scooping millions of tons of carbon out of the atmosphere annually.

Relying on a single solution and letting perfect be the enemy of good isn't going to get us anywhere.

Oh it's always the global, widespread and multifaceted solution and never addressing the system that, by design, hates global, widespread and multifaceted solutions and favors "scalable", "profitable" and "good but not perfect" band-aids for the exsanguinated.

GTAce · May 13, 2024

PatAndTheCat said:
What? Of course this is a positive development. A person would be foolish to think it is not.

Foolish is the person who still believes a for-profit organization would do anything worthwhile.

PatAndTheCat said:
It's a start? What happens when the tech scales and becomes more efficient. God forbid people try. We will solve climate change and this is how we start

No, banking on this bullshit will prolong the process of finding, or rather implementing, better solutions.

PatAndTheCat said:
Capitalism helped drive climate change. Capitalism will also drive solving climate change.

Capitalism will kill all of us.

StuKen said:
The energy required for carbon capture is between 5-10 times more than the useable energy harvested during the processes that released it in the first place. You could swap over the entire fixed energy production capacity of the entire world overnight to fusion and double it and still it wouldn't provide the required output to capture existing emmisions to keep it within the 2.5c ceiling while keeping the lights on.

This is nasty greenwashing to push the narrative that we can keep the on going as we have been since the industrial revolution with no consequences.

This.

Dimensional Fortress said:
Hopefully a good billionaire...

There's no such thing.

RPGam3r · May 13, 2024

Fallout-NL said:
Like pissing on a raging out of control forest fire from a helicopter that is powered by e-fuels. It'll make you feel good, but not much else.

People often don't move mountains by actually moving a mountain, but instead by moving portions of it at a time and learning from that process how to get better at it.

GTAce · May 13, 2024

RPGam3r said:
People often don't move mountains by actually moving a mountain, but instead by moving portions of it at a time and learning from that process how to get better at it.

Experts and scientists already know how to move the mountain, but it's less profitable for the upper 10% than moving portions back and forth. This here actually adds piles on top of it.

In todays more Positive Climate News: A Company Opens World's Largest Vacuum to Suck Carbon From Atmosphere. It has is now operational.

It's Happening

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