this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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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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Africa’s first carbon-removal plant stokes questions about responsible climate solutions (www.nbcnews.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don’t think that’s true, can you back up your claim?

It's survived till today as a conservative talking point. How solar can't pay off its own manufacturing costs, etc etc. None of it's true, but that's where it started.

I support research and development of the technology, because it’s something which could be useful in the future. But this article is about building carbon capture facilities today, which is a big waste of money.

R&D does not happen solely in the lab. At some point, you need concrete, full scale examples to work with on ironing out the kinks and figuring out where theory doesn't apply in reality.

We're not building a thousand of these plants. This is the early PoC example that we need to progress the technology.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sure, I’m happy to support building large scale experimental establishments to test the theories, but that’s not what this is at all. This is a commercial installation in Africa, of all places. Why would the European research teams build a research facility so far away? That doesn’t make sense.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What's the difference between a large scale experimental establishment, and a first of its kind commercial experimental establishment?

As for location, presumably cheap land, power, lack of NIMBYs. Maybe tax incentives.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It’s not the first of its kind though. It’s just the first in Africa. There are already a bunch of these in Europe and America.

If the researchers are in Europe then it doesn’t work for the plant to be in Africa. I don’t know why you’re arguing such an obviously wrong position lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Yeah scratch the first of its kind, wasn't thinking when I wrote that. Nevertheless, my point stands. For the technology to grow and develop we need PoCs to be constructed. Valuable data can be obtained from operating the PoCs that we wouldn't otherwise get.

If the researchers are in Europe then it doesn’t work for the plant to be in Africa.

In this age where everything is networked and teams can be distributed worldwide, what in the world does it matter if the plant is in Africa? If anything, it would be encouraging knowledge transfer and dissemination.

I don’t know why you’re arguing such an obviously wrong position lol

In most online discussions, that's exactly how the other person feels about you. We generally keep it civil by not saying it out loud, though.