Meet the new carbon-fiber-based economy?
August 26, 2015 5:02 PM   Subscribe

Scientist develops technique for sucking carbon out of the air, making stuff out of it. Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: A new electrochemical process pulls carbon from the air, and creates carbon nanofibers and oxygen.
posted by 40 Watt (89 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
So it's a tree?
posted by w0mbat at 5:07 PM on August 26, 2015 [83 favorites]


Oh my god, we might not all die. If this is in any way real and can be scaled up quickly enough, it might help prevent the climate change from being apocalyptic (rather, than merely catastrophic). Someone please give them all the fucking money.
posted by Caduceus at 5:10 PM on August 26, 2015 [10 favorites]


They calculate that given an area less than 10 percent of the size of the Sahara Desert, the method could remove enough carbon dioxide to make global atmospheric levels return to preindustrial levels within 10 years, even if we keep emitting the greenhouse gas at a high rate during that period.

Of course this would require a huge increase in demand for carbon nanofibers.
I would buy those carbon offsets.
posted by books for weapons at 5:12 PM on August 26, 2015 [13 favorites]


I like this like a drowning man likes a floatie, but I'm not nearly scientifically literate enough to understand if what they're throwing us here is inflated at all. I honestly wish there was a Youtube channel or something devoted to reviewing claims like this the way video games or films or whatsit are reviewed. I'd Patreon the hell out of that.
posted by AdamCSnider at 5:15 PM on August 26, 2015 [8 favorites]


Look, I hate to be Debbie Downer here but if it sounds to good to be true...*

*I really, really, want it to be true.
posted by djeo at 5:15 PM on August 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


They calculate that given an area less than 10 percent of the size of the Sahara Desert, the method could remove enough carbon dioxide to make global atmospheric levels return to preindustrial levels within 10 years

Great! Surely it couldn't take long or cost much to build enough of this to cover all of Texas!
posted by aubilenon at 5:17 PM on August 26, 2015 [19 favorites]


It's probably true but requires a ton of energy to make it happen. So unless someone is going to build a big nuclear plant, it's probably a net-increase-in-CO2 process.
posted by GuyZero at 5:18 PM on August 26, 2015 [13 favorites]


The real question is, of course, does the generation of the electricity needed for this process release as much, if not more, CO2 into the atmosphere? Of course, if this were in the Sahara Desert, I'd assume solar power, but if we tried doing this somewhere else, we'd just be burning coal to power this.

On preview, GuyZero beat me to it.
posted by Hamusutaa at 5:19 PM on August 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


Yeah covering an area the size of Europe with this thing, that itself uses a ton of energy, is not gonna solve the world's climate problem. It's bad science PR/reporting to suggest otherwise. Otherwise, an interesting technology I guess.
posted by iotic at 5:21 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


In a recent demonstration, his group used a unique concentrated solar power system, which makes use of infrared sunlight as well as visible light to generate the large amount of heat needed to run the desired reaction.

It sounds to me like this is a solar generator that interacts specifically with the growth system, which would make it more efficient for this process than regular solar generation.

Yes, we're probably not going to build that much, but large scale carbon fiber factories could still make a significant impact on the global CO2 accumulation. I don't know if you've noticed, but we need all the help we can get.
posted by Caduceus at 5:23 PM on August 26, 2015 [14 favorites]


I could see this being useful if you were producing huge amounts of raw material, being able to suck carbon out of the air might actually save a lot of trouble of refining and shipping raw chemical feedstocks. I wonder though if this process requires pure CO2. I also wonder if this process will create local zones of low-carbon, high oxygen air where plants won't grow and everything keeps bursting into flames for no reason.
posted by rustcrumb at 5:25 PM on August 26, 2015 [14 favorites]


and if we did use nuclear for this we'd be pumping a fucktonne of water vapour into the air, so even moar greenhouse effect, chomsky?
posted by scruss at 5:25 PM on August 26, 2015


Of course this would require a huge increase in demand for carbon nanofibers.

Space Elevator!

Win-win, baby. Then we start mining asteroids and building solar power satellites to beam down lots of energy to the Sahara to keep it going.
posted by George_Spiggott at 5:28 PM on August 26, 2015 [23 favorites]


local zones of low-carbon, high oxygen air where plants won't grow and everything keeps bursting into flames for no reason.

Tourist attraction!
posted by Wolfdog at 5:31 PM on August 26, 2015 [7 favorites]


Caduceus pulled the quote that I think is what makes this exciting, a concentrated solar power system is basically a bunch of mirrors that track the sun and concentrate light on a small area to produce high temperatures. The motors needed to move the mirrors are typically small and simple, and can in fact happily run off solar power themselves. If there aren't large energy inputs besides what they can get from using a CSP then... well... this is really exciting.
posted by books for weapons at 5:34 PM on August 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


You can make jokes and snark all you want, or you can make gifts directly to the GWU chemistry department where this research is being done. The researcher's website is linked in the article.

Seriously, we need all the help we can get.
posted by Caduceus at 5:36 PM on August 26, 2015 [19 favorites]


I hadn't thought about it before since they're currently such a small sliver of the waste stream, but what's the endgame for old carbon fiber building materials? Do they start to degrade and release CO2 back into the air after a hundred years? Can they be reprocessed into new carbon fiber?
posted by contraption at 5:44 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


The BMW i3 is carbon fiber, the wings on the new 777-X will be carbon fiber, there is a market out CF. Ironically, cars and airplanes that use CF instead of steel/aluminum will emit less carbon from combustion due to lighter weight, which means that there will be less carbon for this device to suck out of the atmosphere.
posted by SirOmega at 5:45 PM on August 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


You know what else we could do with a small proportion of the Sahara desert? Well, we could supply all the world's energy consumption via solar panels with less than 20% of the Sahara, but we don't do that, because it is too expensive (relative to cheap coal). I'd imagine this sort of process would much, much more expensive.

We as a society have this weird thing where we look at installing a whole lot of solar panels and wind turbines to replace coal and we think that would be too expensive, can't be done, let's just do a bit of that and otherwise keep on burning coal. Then someone talks about something very early stage and experimental and everyone seems to think that it sounds like a great solution. Let's use the technology we have!

This does sound pretty cool though.
posted by ssg at 5:47 PM on August 26, 2015 [6 favorites]


Well, we could supply all the world's energy consumption via solar panels with less than 20% of the Sahara, but we don't do that, because it is too expensive (relative to cheap coal).

Well, there's also the small matter of getting that energy to where it needs to be once it is collected. Transmission loss makes such a project totally infeasible.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 5:50 PM on August 26, 2015 [6 favorites]


Carbon nanofiber demand skyrockets. Massive withdrawal of CO2 from atmosphere triggers ice age. :(
posted by sexyrobot at 5:58 PM on August 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


So can a college level Chemistry student download the 2009 paper by the researcher and start their own carbon fiber start-up in their parent's garage? Is molten lithium carbonate hard to acquire? I like the potential poetic symmetry of how a substance used to treat bi-polar disorders in individuals may also prove to sublimate and solve our global consumerism/climate concern bi-polarity.
posted by astrobiophysican at 6:06 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


Massive withdrawal of CO2 from atmosphere triggers ice age.

And starves all of the flora at the same time!

Cue a dozen muscle cars doing donuts in a Walmart parking lot while every is screaming "SAVE THE TREES!"
posted by CynicalKnight at 6:13 PM on August 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Aren't carbon nanofibers highly carcinogenic? Or is that just smaller molecules like bucky balls? It sounds like their plan is to use solar power the heat the lithium compounds used in the process. I wonder how much that would cost to set up? They have some cool mirror farms for power generation in Spain. And, they have heard that much of the Sahara is politically unstable (or covered with dunes). This sounds really pie in the sky at this point.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:19 PM on August 26, 2015


Is there anywhere an analysis of:

- the resources needed to manufacture the mirrors, motors, etc. needed;
- the effect of the heat output;
- the costs/politics/resources/environmental impacts of getting enough lithium;
- whether this offsets the benefits gained?
posted by amtho at 6:21 PM on August 26, 2015 [7 favorites]


This could be our WWII. If this will actually reasonably work, I think people will be willing to sacrifice to make it happen.
posted by amtho at 6:22 PM on August 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


The thing is, if we're not doing the other stuff we could be doing today and aren't, what reason is there to believe we're going to do this either? Between bioplastics from bacteria and oil from algae, we should be getting at least some of our hydrocarbons from the atmosphere already, not drilling and refining and burning to put them into the atmosphere. What in hell is the matter with us?
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:22 PM on August 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


What in hell is the matter with us?

Capitalism?
posted by davros42 at 6:30 PM on August 26, 2015 [26 favorites]


And hell, if oil algae and bioplastics sounds too much like a science project, let's talk hemp. (Pause here for your interlocutor to sneer something about you reading too much High Times and make the joint-smoking gesture.) Hemp is just crazy productive, producing biomass, fibers, oil and feedstock, and you can improve exhausted and/or eroding land with it in the process.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:31 PM on August 26, 2015 [6 favorites]


Well, there's also the small matter of getting that energy to where it needs to be once it is collected. Transmission loss makes such a project totally infeasible.

Well, of course. Neither the subject of the FPP, nor covering 20% of the Sahara with solar panels, is remotely feasible. Both are total pie in the sky - that's the point that I'm making.

However, retiring coal fired power plants and replacing them with solar and wind is pretty feasible and we already have the technology.
posted by ssg at 6:34 PM on August 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Energy-wise, as long as you're using something carbon-neutral, so wind, solar, wood, natural gas, hamsters on treadmills, you'd get a net reduction of atmospheric carbon. Of course, whether we have the carbon-neutral energy capacity to power a process like this at scale is another question.

If hypothetically you did have a large scale fiber plant running, could you implement a kind of carbon tax by requiring carbon producers to fund, say, burying excess carbon back in the ground?

Also, if this system can only remove CO2, we'd still need to find a way to deal with carbon monoxide and methane in the atmosphere. Preindustrial CO2 levels would be amazing, but if melting arctic ice ends up releasing ancient methane deposits into the air, we might not be out of the woods quite yet.
posted by GameDesignerBen at 6:48 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


People make comments about feasibility as if the only way to approach it is with a single, mass-sacrifice all out war-economy effort in which we see no benefits until everything is done.

But that's pretty much not how we as a civilization have done anything ever -- except maybe beat the Axis powers -- and it's not how anyone would suggest doing this. You accomplish big things as a series of small things, each of which pay for themselves, hopefully with handsome dividend on top of it to keep the investors going. Capitalism isn't the enemy here; oligarchy and incumbency are. To say nothing of failures of imagination.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:53 PM on August 26, 2015 [12 favorites]


Carbon nanofiber demand skyrockets. Massive withdrawal of CO2 from atmosphere triggers ice age. :(

At which point we dig up and burn all the tar sands to reverse the process.

Drill baby drill!
posted by bracems at 6:58 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


That process described in the article really does not sound like the kind of thing that can be scaled up to making hundreds of tons of product constantly. Hell, at that point, the planetary abundance of lithium might be a problem.
posted by Mitrovarr at 7:04 PM on August 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


Great! Surely it couldn't take long or cost much to build enough of this to cover all of Texas!

I nominate we use Texas, all of it, to test.
posted by DigDoug at 7:30 PM on August 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


People will burn these things for fuel, and set us right back to the beginning.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 7:30 PM on August 26, 2015


Forget Earth, how soon could we use this to terraform Venus?
posted by chimpsonfilm at 7:35 PM on August 26, 2015


We can use the nanofibers to build a space elevator in case the original plan doesn't work out.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:36 PM on August 26, 2015


I just want to use this opportunity to say: CARBON NANOFIBER BIKES FOR EVERYONE!
posted by aniola at 8:00 PM on August 26, 2015 [8 favorites]


Fusion + Carbon Capture + Pressure = diamond poop.

Welcome to the Diamond Age.
posted by Static Vagabond at 8:05 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


If the documentaries I've seen coming out of LA are in any way true, the fact that there's no vast conspiracy to destroy this tech and murder the scientists behind it means that it's no big deal.


As far as I can tell it has no applications for energy generation, so unlike wind/solar even at total pie-in-the-sky levels it wouldn't cause the fossil fuels industry to lose market share. Thus, they can live.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:14 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wolfdog: " local zones of low-carbon, high oxygen air where plants won't grow and everything keeps bursting into flames for no reason.

Tourist attraction
"

Specifically, Exodus-themed Biblical theme park.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 8:15 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is basically unburning the fossil fuels we've been burning.

So by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it'll take more energy to unburn than we got from burning it in the first place - a lot more energy, considering that the theoretical maximum efficiency of an internal combustion engine is less than 50%.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 8:16 PM on August 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


I also wonder if this process will create local zones of low-carbon, high oxygen air where plants won't grow and everything keeps bursting into flames for no reason.

I don't know if this is obvious, but the air will still be ~80% nitrogen.

Energy-wise, as long as you're using something carbon-neutral, so wind, solar, wood, natural gas, hamsters on treadmills, you'd get a net reduction of atmospheric carbon. Of course, whether we have the carbon-neutral energy capacity to power a process like this at scale is another question.

Plus it would give us something to do while we're waiting for the future to happen. (I'm all for massive solar and nuclear plants in the Sahara, or anywhere else away from population centres and oceans.)
posted by sneebler at 8:23 PM on August 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


George_Spiggott: The thing is, if we're not doing the other stuff we could be doing today and aren't, what reason is there to believe we're going to do this either?

It seems to me that the main difference is that a fiber plant of this sort is something that a sufficiently motivated billionaire could conceivably do on their own initiative without a lot of politics. I mean, building a solar power plant is all very well, but it doesn't actually reduce atmospheric carbon if the coal plant next door is still operating at full capacity. Solar is only a win if it replaces fossil fuels, and that means fighting the owners of existing power plants. Whereas this kind of carbon sequestration scheme doesn't require anyone else to change what they're doing -- heck, Big Oil would probably thank you for doing it precisely because it lessens the need for them to change.
posted by baf at 8:23 PM on August 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


as I understand it, enough energy to heat lithium carbonate (1,333°F melting point h/t google), enough energy to supply as voltage to regulate thread generation (no info there, but I'd guess on the low side).

People are pointing put that the "20% of Sahara/10 years" thing is not realistic, but it's an interesting data point. (703000 square miles h/t wolframalpha - I feel like looking things up today)

heck, Big Oil would probably thank you for doing it precisely because it lessens the need for them to change.
posted by baf


If I was opening a coal-plant today I might consider this as an on-site sequestration/revenue stream? I am not opening a new coal-plant today, btw
posted by Golem XIV at 8:34 PM on August 26, 2015


lupus_yonderboy: This is basically unburning the fossil fuels we've been burning.

Well, sort of. You're burning hydrocarbons, but only unburning the carbon part. How much of a difference this makes, I have no idea.
posted by baf at 8:39 PM on August 26, 2015


The process requires molten lithium carbonate, with another compound, lithium oxide, dissolved in it. The lithium oxide combines with carbon dioxide in the air, forming more lithium carbonate. When voltage is applied across two electrodes immersed in the molten carbonate, the resulting reaction produces oxygen, carbon—which deposits on one of the electrodes—and lithium oxide, which can be used to capture more carbon dioxide and start the process again.

Wow, chemistry FTW. This almost sounds so simple that I wonder why it's just now being discovered. (I'm probably completely misunderstanding how hard or easy it actually is.)
posted by salvia at 8:48 PM on August 26, 2015


Afghanistan has the lithium. So is this the contorted sell for.the post election war resumption? But really it is a diamond mine?
posted by Oyéah at 8:53 PM on August 26, 2015


Wow, chemistry FTW. This almost sounds so simple that I wonder why it's just now being discovered. (I'm probably completely misunderstanding how hard or easy it actually is.)
posted by salvia

From looking at the paper the why-not-sooner of it may have been more a matter of how to dope the batch and stepping up low voltage through the electrodes
posted by Golem XIV at 8:58 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


Finally I can stop caring about the planet!
posted by blue_beetle at 9:25 PM on August 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but the Technology Review article notwithstanding, this is research about a new manufacturing method for carbon nanotubes, not about solving climate change. It's cool research and the process may contribute to reducing carbon emissions from fossil fuels via carbon capture and sequestration, but the idea that this process is going to scrub atmospheric CO2 back to pre-industrial levels is pie-in-the-sky dreaming.

In the original paper (which is available open-access, no paywall), the term "climate change" appears exactly twice: once in the abstract and once in the introduction. (The authors also included it as a keyphrase despite barely mentioning it.) The term "carbon capture" (another keyphrase) appears only once in passing. I'm sure the scientists who did this work are genuinely excited at the idea that their materials science research will contribute to solving the greatest problem currently facing humanity, but they're obviously not climate researchers and haven't really studied the scale of the problem.

The MIT Technology Review article's discussion of the researchers "[calculating] that given an area less than 10 percent of the size of the Sahara Desert, the method could remove enough carbon dioxide to make global atmospheric levels return to preindustrial levels within 10 years" smacks to me of some scientist over-enthusiastically telling a journalist about the back-of-the-envelope calculation she did. Okay, fine, but I can do back-of-the-envelope calculations too. The total amount of carbon unburied and returned to the carbon cycle by human industrial activity since 1750 is about 2000 gigatons. The net amount of carbon fixed by all plants in Earth's biosphere is about 60 gigatons per year. So if humanity stopped digging up fossil fuels tomorrow, and instead we took all plants and buried them deep in the Earth every year (somehow without depleting the next year's plant population), it would take us 33 years to rebury all of the carbon we've unburied since 1750. In order to accept the 10 years figure, we have to believe that it's plausible that a human industrial process would fix carbon at a rate over three times more efficient than the entire Earth's biosphere. I can only assume the researchers got their 10 years in 10% of the Sahara figure by the researchers is assuming perfect energy efficiency in their solar capture. But if we could get that, everyone would switch to solar power immediately and CO2 emissions would be a non-issue.

(Incidentally, I was curious just how much material we're talking about. The density of carbon nanofibers varies depending on their exact structure, but I found several values ranging around 1.3-1.5 gm/cm^3, meaning that at the end of the researchers' hypothetical ten years, we'd have a mass of carbon nanofibers filling about 1500 cubic kilometers, which Wolfram Alpha helpfully informs me is about one eighth the volume of Lake Superior. Since some commenters here are calling for a space elevator, if we used it all to build one extending up to 40,000 km, we'd have enough to build one about 100 meters wide [neglecting density changes due to pressure]. So that's pretty cool.)

There isn't going to be a magic bullet to solve climate change. It took hundreds of millions of years to fix and bury the carbon in Earth's fossil fuel reserves, and we've pulled much of it back into the carbon cycle in only about two hundred years. CO2 is a low-energy state for carbon; any process to rapidly get it back into a solid form and out of the carbon cycle is going to take a lot of energy and resources. Practically, solving climate change requires political and social changes, not just new technology.
posted by biogeo at 10:10 PM on August 26, 2015 [23 favorites]


AdamCSnider: I honestly wish there was a Youtube channel or something devoted to reviewing claims like this the way video games or films or whatsit are reviewed. I'd Patreon the hell out of that.

Then you might like Rebecca Watson's YouTube channel.
posted by biogeo at 10:17 PM on August 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Something that has always occurred to me when scientists proclaim we should cover the Sahara with x energy system or scientific project, is that such an undertaking would not come without consequence. The Sahara being rocky/sandy wasteland does not preclude its impact on various climates and ecosystems surrounding it. If you covered 10% of it with factories to create this carbon material, what would happen to the regional weather dynamics in the absence of that heat radiating from the rocks and sand? Perhaps wind patterns would be altered, or what little local wildlife that exists would be pushed to extinction.

There is no truly sterile, unconnected environment on earth, and there are no economic actions sans unintended effects.
posted by constantinescharity at 10:18 PM on August 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


Reminds me of the process for making fertilizer from atmospheric nitrogen, the Birkeland-Eyde process. It was invented by Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland and pioneered by industrialist Sam Eyde in the early 1900s, using the power from the world's then-largest hydro power plant.

The area's industrial heritage just made the UNESCO world heritage list.

Maybe I'll make an FPP about this, as it's an interesting story.
posted by Harald74 at 11:39 PM on August 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


So it's a tree?

Sort of, except it consumes more energy instead of producing and storing it, doesn't hold soil together, and is almost certainly unsustainable, among other things. It's the bad, hyperbolic science reporting kind of tree.
posted by Bangaioh at 12:54 AM on August 27, 2015 [5 favorites]


We all know the truth is that we'll just go on fiddling while Rome burns. Intelligent species, my ass.
posted by JaredSeth at 3:48 AM on August 27, 2015


For all of you people who want to read a proper comment, read biogeo's.


I want people to read this again whenever a small scale proof of concept comes from a university lab or a small startup or even a govt.


There isn't going to be a magic bullet to solve climate change. It took hundreds of millions of years to fix and bury the carbon in Earth's fossil fuel reserves, and we've pulled much of it back into the carbon cycle in only about two hundred years. CO2 is a low-energy state for carbon; any process to rapidly get it back into a solid form and out of the carbon cycle is going to take a lot of energy and resources. Practically, solving climate change requires political and social changes, not just new technology.

posted by lalochezia at 4:04 AM on August 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


That little thrill of hope that people are feeling? That's what makes political and social changes possible. At all. The defeated feeling under which most of us have been laboring makes change really hard. The technology, even if it's not perfect or easy, is what can lead to the other changes.

It's not like the World Wide Web was all that conceptually revolutionary, either. It is what it is because so many people got excited about it.
posted by amtho at 5:25 AM on August 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


Of course this would require a huge increase in demand for carbon nanofibers.

Carbon fiber bicycles for everyone, and I mean everyone!!!
posted by JoeXIII007 at 6:43 AM on August 27, 2015


There is no problem putting carbon nanotubes to work. Lots of applications, many of which we have never even thought of.

But this is a win only if the process is carbon negative, which is going to be hard, given the amount of energy required.

In production, this is going to be tied to nuclear reactors.
posted by clvrmnky at 7:02 AM on August 27, 2015


The level of snark-over-imagination here is astounding.

Nothing about this discovery precludes any other climate change initiatives. Nothing about the energy input requires use of carbon positive energy sources. The paper clearly states that it is viable using solar power and was designed so. Nothing about this discovery requires some mythical factory the size of the Sahara, it would be perfectly viable to deploy this as a global swarm and enjoy regional production of an incredibly versatile material. It looks like the lithium used in the processed is reclaimed, but to what efficiency is not revealed.

The next person that snarks about trees should look up how long they take to grow.

I for one, will be sending these researchers both my money and my resume.
posted by butterstick at 7:16 AM on August 27, 2015 [10 favorites]


Sort of, except it consumes more energy instead of producing and storing it

Trees also require huge amounts of energy to sequester carbon.
posted by clawsoon at 7:22 AM on August 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Obviously, you need to power the process with solar to have a net decrease in atmospheric carbon. That's stated in the article.

It's very cool, but trees/plants really do similar things, and more (construction materials, fibers, food, habitat, soil creation/preservation...). It's not at all snarky to say so. It's just the truth.

As to trees taking a long time to grow... OK, so how about hemp/bamboo? It really depends on the plant.
posted by mondo dentro at 7:36 AM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


To be clear: it's not either/or. This process is no replacement for wide-spread reforestation. But it's not contradictory to it, either. Let's do both!
posted by mondo dentro at 7:38 AM on August 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I also wonder if this process will create local zones of low-carbon, high oxygen air where plants won't grow and everything keeps bursting into flames for no reason.

People already buy pressurized oxygen in tanks. So, in an industrialized application of this, they'd figure out how to capture the O2 and sell it the same way manufactures save other waste materials and sell them. That at least solves the high oxygen problem. I'd imagine that there is sufficient movement from the wind to keep low CO2 from being an issue.

The thing is, this isn't really technology for sequestering carbon. This is a new way to produce carbon nano-fibers. The benefits here are that it's cheaper, easier, and better than current methods. The fact that it can be used to sequester atmospheric CO2 is just a side benefit. The people who buy the technology won't care about that.

If we made a wind turbine that produced more electricity, cheaper, and more reliably than a coal fired plant, power companies would be all over it. Especially if they were so much better that it made financial sense to replace the coal plants. Like, if it were less expensive to build wind turbines than to run a coal plant for a few years, they'd all be falling over themselves to switch to wind power.

That is basically what this is for carbon fiber production. The real danger is that someone will come along with an even cheaper and easier method to produce carbon fiber where the externalities are all negative and worse than what they're doing right now.
posted by VTX at 8:08 AM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


But the problem isn't capitalism. Indeed, if we were true capitalists and correctly priced externalities from carbon, we'd be a long way towards solving this.
posted by persona au gratin at 8:14 AM on August 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


True capitalism doesn't correctly price externalities. It doesn't give two shits about externalities. That's kind of a defining characteristic.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:22 AM on August 27, 2015 [6 favorites]


That ain't true. If we have a proper market system all externalities are priced. By definition.
posted by persona au gratin at 8:35 AM on August 27, 2015


So: here is a non-market-based solution to climate change: The government prevents you from emitting more than x amount of carbon. Maybe it puts you in jail if you do.

Here is a market-based solution: we figure out the true cost of emitting x amount of carbon, and impose a tax so that those who emit it pay the true cost.

Right now, no one pays the true cost of carbon emissions.
posted by persona au gratin at 8:40 AM on August 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


butterstick: The next person that snarks about trees should look up how long they take to grow.

It's not snark. The physics and energetics of this manufacturing process versus carbon fixation by trees are similar, and both processes produce an industrially useful composite material. But one of them already exists and is perfectly compatible with natural ecosystems (i.e., forests), while the other is just spin some scientists put on their materials engineering research to attract attention, and would require displacing or destroying natural ecosystems (the desert is a complex, fragile ecosystem and covering 10% of the Sahara with human activity would be disastrous for it).

More back-of-the-envelope calculations. The total amount of timber harvested annually in the United States was about 15,500 million cubic feet in 2002 (pp 14-15 from source). The density of wood is around 630 kg/m^3 according to Wolfram Alpha. About 50% of the dry mass of wood is carbon, and the moisture content of wood is about 10% (once dried for usage). All this means that the total amount of carbon represented by the American timber industry, which is now operated in a generally sustainable fashion, is around 0.13 gigatons per year. So if we took all of the timber produced in the United States every year and instead of using it, dropped it into a giant hole in the ground and buried it (or used it and then buried it when we were done with it and before it could decompose), it would take a bit over 15,000 years to rebury all of the carbon we've unburied since 1750. But my last back-of-the-envelope calculation used global data, so for a better comparison we could look at global timber production (which isn't necessarily as sustainable with current practices), which was about 1800 million m^3/year (pg 101) in 2005. This gives a value of about 0.5 gigatons per year, for a reburial time of 4000 years.

To emphasize, my scenario imagines leveraging the total production of the entire world's timber industry, and still can't get anywhere near what the researchers are suggesting. Is their technology more efficient at fixing carbon than trees? Sure, probably. But we're still talking about something that would be an absolutely massive operation, and have tremendous unintended consequences. Carbon capture technologies are great and absolutely have a role in reducing carbon outputs from point-source emitters like power plants, but they are not going to solve climate change. Yes, we absolutely should invest in technologies like this because of their potential to make carbon capture for power plants economical, and we absolutely should invest in renewable energy sources and in fusion power. But if you are feeling excited and motivated to give money to the cause of addressing climate change, please consider donating it to researchers, activists, and politicians who are actually working on the problem.
posted by biogeo at 8:54 AM on August 27, 2015 [6 favorites]


persona au gratin: Here is a market-based solution: we figure out the true cost of emitting x amount of carbon, and impose a tax so that those who emit it pay the true cost.

Right now, no one pays the true cost of carbon emissions.


But how do you identify the true cost to impose the tax? "Cost" is inherently subjective. Markets work by aggregating the subjective preferences of large numbers of people to arrive at a "true cost." Taxes require some bureaucratic system (n.b., not intended to be pejorative) to decide a cost. How do we arrive at that cost? What's the cost of the extinction of a species no one knew existed? And how do you prevent the taxing bureaucracy from becoming subject to regulatory capture?

I'm actually completely in favor of carbon taxes and other systems to try to internalize the costs of carbon emissions (though I think focusing on carbon unburial, i.e., extracting fossil fuels, is a better idea than focusing on emissions; the real problem isn't putting carbon into the atmosphere, it's putting it back into the carbon cycle). But I don't think these are really "market-based"; market incentives still exist for polluters to try to bend, break, or change the rules that are imposed on them.
posted by biogeo at 9:06 AM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm reminded of this talk: Why we should be building out of wood instead of concrete.

Producing concrete is very carbon-intensive. China used more cement in the last 3 years than the US did in the entire 20th century. Clearly not all concrete uses have a biomass alternative, but you can choose to build things in other ways. I was encouraged the other day when I passed a building site that used a steel skeleton style of structure, but in place of steel girders it used glued laminated timber.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:09 AM on August 27, 2015 [4 favorites]


> I would buy those carbon offsets.

I'd be happy to sell them to you! Our website is still ramping up, but I'll send you my Paypal info right away. Take a look at some of our previous successes (in terms of offsets sold, at least).
posted by Sunburnt at 9:22 AM on August 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


True capitalism doesn't correctly price externalities. It doesn't give two shits about externalities. That's kind of a defining characteristic.

True but a defining feature of capitalism is ZERO regulation by the state. We all know that that's untenable so how about we just all agree to use "capitalism" as short-hand for "American style regulated capitalism" since that is the definition that's useful to the discussion?

More to persona au gratin's point. Correctly pricing and charging as a tax externalities (tax credits for positive ones I suppose) would be a great way to use capitalism to solve TONS of problems. Figuring out the value of a social cost like that is hard (What's the value of the survival of the species?) but even getting people to think in terms of tax=payment for costs that your activities place on society and much of the spending of those funds is to counteract those burdens would be a HUGE step forward. You'll end up with a system that looks kind of like property taxes where "experts" assign values and rates are assigned, etc. It would be an imperfect system and we'd probably end up under-valuing the cost of most negative externalities but it would still be FAR better than what we do now.
posted by VTX at 9:42 AM on August 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


The US already has a calculated value for the social cost of CO2 emissions, but I very much doubt it'll get used for anything more impactful than cost-benefit analyses.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:01 AM on August 27, 2015


Zero regulation by the state isn't an inherent feature of capitalism. I suppose that's one sense of the term. But Sweden is very capitalist. There are tons of privately owned businesses. And they are regulated. Compare this to the USSR, or even China, where the government owns many businesses.
posted by persona au gratin at 10:10 AM on August 27, 2015


People make comments about feasibility as if the only way to approach it is with a single, mass-sacrifice all out war-economy effort in which we see no benefits until everything is done.
Right, one thing will not replace coal and petroleum, but several things that reduce demand and several more that replace the supply will.
posted by soelo at 10:15 AM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Apologies if my tone seemed strident. I didn't intend that.
posted by persona au gratin at 10:17 AM on August 27, 2015


I think calculations about the social cost of carbon are kind of silly. We have a pretty good idea what kind of emissions reductions we need to achieve, we have pretty good ideas about the marginal cost of alternatives versus current practices, so we need to price carbon to make alternatives cheaper until emissions are reduced to the necessary level. That's going to be a moving target and will need adjustment as we go (balanced with the need for stability and predictability in carbon price level increases over time), but it isn't rocket science.

I understand the desire to calculate a social cost of carbon, but it seems to me like an area where the assumptions that go into the calculation are so difficult to pin down and the calculation itself is so dependant on one's assumptions that you can pretty much make some sort of reasonable technical argument that lets you end up with any results you like. Even very slight changes in the discount rate make enormous differences!

If we make social and environmental values subservient to economics, we'll screw ourselves in the long term. The physical world is not an externality to the economic system! The economic system is inside the physical world and if we don't play by the rules of the physical world in our economic system, we're screwed. So, we need to set physical goals for emissions reductions and then use economic tools to achieve them. Setting economic goals for the physical world makes no sense at all.
posted by ssg at 10:45 AM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Oh brother. The only true capitalism there is is the one eating the planet.

An economic system based on markets but without externalities is intriguing, but it can't be called "capitalism" without at least some sort of modifier ("zero externalities capitalism" or whatever).
posted by mondo dentro at 10:59 AM on August 27, 2015


There's also the problem that carbon nanotubes maybe be kinda like asbestos.
posted by clawsoon at 11:13 AM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


I understand the desire to calculate a social cost of carbon, but it seems to me like an area where the assumptions that go into the calculation are so difficult to pin down and the calculation itself is so dependant on one's assumptions that you can pretty much make some sort of reasonable technical argument that lets you end up with any results you like. Even very slight changes in the discount rate make enormous differences!

The idea behind pricing the social costs is that you can then charge it as a tax and, if you've picked the right numbers, those social costs make alternatives with few social costs less expensive. The idea is that coal is only cheaper because you don't have to pay for the social costs. If you had to pay for the social costs of coal and those costs are reasonably accurate (or at least lead to the desired outcome) it's going to make more business sense to tear it down and replace it with solar.

But, instead of stopping at just carbon, applying your same logic to every externality that makes sense instead of just carbon. We both want the same outcome (it make more business sense to build green) but I want use the same scheme for more than just carbon and just power plants.
posted by VTX at 11:46 AM on August 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


A good libertarian will argue that trying to price external costs and tax them will only lead to more opportunities for rent-seeking, since you've involved the coercive hand of the government.
posted by clawsoon at 11:56 AM on August 27, 2015


So we build big carbon-fiber stalks with diamond-domed habitats on top of them. Get some air cars and jumped-up Roombas in that mess and boom, we're the fuckin' Jetsons.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:42 PM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Unless that libertarian has a better alternative other than, "do nothing and hope" I'll be okay dismissing that criticism.
posted by VTX at 2:29 PM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


But, instead of stopping at just carbon, applying your same logic to every externality that makes sense instead of just carbon. We both want the same outcome (it make more business sense to build green) but I want use the same scheme for more than just carbon and just power plants.

Oh, I'm in favour of taxing and or regulating all kinds of negative activities. I just don't think the hand-wavy social cost calculations are a good idea.

Here's an example:

The US EPA says the social cost of carbon in 2015 is between $12-$117 per tonne, depending on your discount rate. Let's say we pick one of their two middle options (3% or 2.5%) resulting in a social cost of $40 or $62 per tonne. Unfortunately, that level of tax may shift consumption a little bit, but it won't get anywhere near the reductions needed. In my jurisdiction (British Columbia) our carbon tax is $30/tonne and it is pretty difficult to see a real effect. Maybe a few percent reduction, depending on how you squint at the numbers and how generous you want to be. We don't need a few percent reduction, we need an order of magnitude reduction. What's the level of carbon tax that will cause significant reductions? Probably a lot higher than $40-$62 a tonne. Probably a lot higher than $112. We need to be able to set a tax rate that achieves what we need, not really on whatever social cost we calculate (also, we need to make big investments in low-carbon buildings, transport, food, etc. - a tax alone won't work).

On the other end of the scale, if we suppose that we don't do anything about carbon emissions and we keep burning our massive deposits of coal, we'll probably eventually manage to create an environment so hostile that humans go extinct. It won't happen soon, but we can likely lock in enough warming if we don't do anything in the long term. So what's the social cost of extinction? Infinite? I guess the real cost of carbon emissions is infinite then, no matter what your discount rate is. But instead we pretend that we can calculate some number that makes sense. We can't.
posted by ssg at 2:55 PM on August 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is basically unburning the fossil fuels we've been burning.

Unburning could be a valuable technology for combating climate change. Currently we have much lower-hanging fruit like simply swapping out coal generation for wind generation, but in a hypothetical future where much more of the low-hanging fruit is picked, clean grid stability could be increased and managed by diverting unwanted capacity into unburning, allowing aircraft to continue using kerosene and similar applications where there are poor alternatives to using carbon.
posted by anonymisc at 2:58 PM on August 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


George_Spiggott: "Producing concrete is very carbon-intensive."

This was my immediate thought. If they truly could scale up production to controlled shapes maybe you could use the output as a replacement for things like cinder blocks or paving stones
posted by Mitheral at 7:02 PM on August 27, 2015


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