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A comment on Billionaires who made their fortunes by trying to stop climate change. Parent comment

Re:Billionaires who made their fortunes by trying to stop cl... by dragonwriter on Thursday January 23, 2020 @12:18PM (#22129435)
> It is literally impossible for ICE vehicles to be carbon neutral.

No, it's not. ICE doesn't care if the fuel is manufactured from fossil sources (which isn't carbon neutral) or from biomass by thermal depolymerization or other means, which can be carbon neutral.

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Re:Billionaires who made their fortunes by trying to stop cl... by AstralStorm on Thursday January 23, 2020 @12:37PM (#22129660)
Growing biomass is carbon neutral, burning fuel derived from it never is.

Thus even bioethanol is not carbon neutral unless used in chemistry where it's not burnt.

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Re:Billionaires who made their fortunes by trying to stop cl... by dragonwriter on Thursday January 23, 2020 @01:15PM (#22130055)
> Growing biomass is carbon neutral,

No, growing biomass sequesters carbon.

> burning fuel derived from it never is.

Burning fuel derived from biomass releases the carbon sequestered in growing it. So, the whole process is carbon neutral.

(Yes, that means fossil fuels are carbon neutral viewed over the entire time window from when the biomass from which they were derived was grown. They aren't carbon neutral over the timescales we care about, but anything derived from recent and sustainable biomass production is.)

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Re:Billionaires who made their fortunes by trying to stop cl... by DuskStar on Thursday January 23, 2020 @01:07PM (#22129993)
Growing biomass is carbon negative, burning biomass is carbon positive. If you combine the two, and your biomass production process doesn't itself require carbon releases (fertilizer, diesel for farm equipment, etc) then the entire process can be carbon neutral.
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