Re:Don't give up on having kids because of climate change
by Yvain on Monday October 11, 2021 @11:57AM
(#28829758)
I'm the author. Guilty as charged of not being an engineer. But did you see the paper I cited for this, https://sci-hub.st/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art... ? I also think the fact that the price has come down by several times already and is still nowhere near an economy of scale suggests it can do so more in the future. I didn't mean Moore's Law as a literal "it will always go down by exactly the same amount every year"
Re:Don't give up on having kids because of climate change
by orwin on Monday October 11, 2021 @01:49PM
(#28830938)
I didn't want to accuse you of something like "not being an engineer" (which is perfectly fin as long as you're not working in digital marketing :) ), i'm sorry, it was poorly worded.
I've read the paper, it is very interesting, it does not talk about machine pumping carbon out of the atmosphere however (the figure appeared low, now i know why). But yeah, DAC might be a solution. I'll rather take the IEA rapport on this [0].
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere and removing carbon is not the same thing. You then need to either seal the CO2, or transform it ( in a power-to-gas station? ). Also their base case of 15% capex/year can go outside see if i'm there.
Carbon removal is allegedly 1000$/Tons and prototype work for 500$/tons (i did not check this, i'll trust him). And then he add "There seems to be a Moore’s Law for this kind of thing, and when people calculate it out it looks like it’s going to get cheaper pretty quickly". Yeah, no, sorry, this is a weird take. It's like saying we have Moore's law for Carnot machines when our 10% efficient motor went to 20% efficiency and then 40%. Yes, looked like moore's law. But we do have physic constraints, and i think our best gas plant have a theorical efficiency of 55 to 60% max, and ICE motors are still around 30%, even for the best cars. When it's only size constraints, we can make Moore's law last for a while, but energetic and chemical constraints, you can have one or two breakthrough - and we had that historically- but you can't plot those breakthrough on a notebook chart.
Agree with some of his other points, also i guess the main reason not to have kids is economical.
But please, don't talk about climate drift solutions if you don't have studied the question. Physic is hard. I should know i failed and had to settle as a software engineer :)