• bacon_pdp@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Well the US military figured out you can extract carbon dioxide from the ocean easier than from the air and proved that a small reactor (nuclear on an air craft carrier) could in a day collect enough to counter the amount of fuel burned when in an active combat zone.

    Another alternative for carbon capture is conversion into blocks of carbon (sometimes called coal) and shoving them into holes in the ground (could be called a reverse coal mine)

    • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      I think you missed the part where extracting CO2 costs huge amounts of energy, and converting it back to oxygen to capture pure carbon costs the exact same amount of energy as you got when you burned it in the same place. Add losses due to heat etc, and basically if you want to dial back the clock for CO2 levels, and given that no other extra CO2 is being emitted anymore, you’d need to spend about twice the energy the world generated. Want to dial CO2 back how it was 10 years ago? That’ll cost you about twice amount of energy that the world has spent over the past ten years by burning fossil fuels.

      And that is on top of the normal world consumption of energy, and that is also assuming that all CO2 emissions have stopped. That is also ignoring energy costs for storing the carbon as well

      So yeah, good luck with that.

      • bacon_pdp@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Yeah, we are going to have to do that to unterraform our planet.

        Might as well harvest sunlight to do it.

      • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        It sounds good, and long-term it’s a nice tool to have, but it’s nowhere near fast or effective enough to counter even a fraction of actual emissions. This is a “we’re basically already at net zero and now we can start trying to recover” tool. Not a “Yay, we can keep burning!” tool.

    • Auli@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      I’m a little confused they are taking CO2 from the ocean? Why would they collect CO2 from the ocean to counter fuke burned?

      • bacon_pdp@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        If you are in a warzone and need to keep combat craft operational when access to fossil fuels from external sources is limited but you have a nuclear reactor at your disposal; you make jet fuel and remain operational.