Draft script:
From Bill comes this email message, along with a link: “Good news Guy! We can all breathe easy, or perhaps more likely by this time next year the world will finally focus in sobering terror at the reality of irreversible climate collapse exploding all around them.” The article at the link is titled, “First carbon capture plant opens in the US to help avoid climate catastrophe.” Here’s the lede: “The first ever commercial-scale carbon capture facility has begun operations in the US, marking a significant milestone towards meeting cleaner climate targets .” From the article comes this line: “San Francisco-based startup Heirloom Carbon Technologies opened the carbon removal plant in Tracy, California, on Thursday, claiming it will be able to capture 1,000 metric tons per year of CO2.”
That seems great. After all, we have collectively put enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to threaten the continued existence of our species, along with all life on Earth. Let’s take a close look at the ability to “capture 1,000 metric tons per year of CO2.”
According to a report from the International Energy Agency published in March 2023, “Global energy-related CO2 emissions grew by 0.9% or 321 Mt in 2022, reaching a new high of over 36.8 Gt.” Gt stands for gigaton, which is 1 billion metric tons.
In other words, the ability to capture from the atmosphere 1,000 metric tons per year of carbon dioxide sounds great, but it’s actually meaningless. After all, 1,000 metric tons per year represents less than 0.00003% of our collective emissions each year. In other words, we need to capture more than 36,800,000 times as much carbon dioxide as can be captured with this new facility in California. That’s merely to break even each year, of course. What we really need to do is reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not simply take out as much as we are putting in. In other words, this bit of, “good news” represents a minor dent in an enormous.
My response to Bill pointed out a couple of facts and ended with, “as much as I’d like to believe otherwise, disaster awaits.”
If you’re thinking of sending me an email message, please proceed carefully. If you check the numbers against the reality of abrupt, irreversible climate change underlying the ongoing Mass Extinction Event, you’ll save me the trouble of checking the numbers for you. On the other hand, you’ll give me the basis of another video feature another Bill. In an ideal world, this will lead to an educational outcome for some people.
The prefix "giga-" means billion, not million, that's "mega-"
As I have previously pointed out, the IPCC have factored Carbon Capture and Storage, at scale, into their Representative Concentration Pathways, even though that technology doesn't exist. The key words are "At Scale".
The IPCC gambled the entire ecosystem on fantasy technology, with the delusion that someone would overcome the dilemma sometime in the future. Classic capitalist speculation, mostly with taxpayers' funds.
Despite what this latest boondoggle might try to imply, and the need to ignore the laws of thermodynamics, this technology is still in the development stage and no engineer I know of believes it will be scalable, in time to make a significant contribution. It's the Helium and Fission nonsense regurgitated.
Have a look at the embedded photo of the enormity of the plant and think about all the mining (calcium oxide powder will need to be mined somewhere, plus all the steel and concrete for construction) and transport required to manufacture, design, assemble and more importantly, how much energy is required to operate the plant. We are conveniently never given that figure because it would give the game away.
What this plant represents to me is a successful pitch for development finance from governments desperate to maintain "Business as usual". The objective is never the preservation of the ecosystem, it's the continuation of BAU.
Someone creates a shiny Power Point presentation that looks wonderful, if you avoid the detail, and some government official, looking for a directorship when he (it's always a 'he') leaves government, approves the venture capital and boom we're underway. Boondoggle underway, directorship locked in.
All these scams are built around the vain attempt to make the unsustainable sustainable!
When aliens arrive on our baron rock, sometime in the future, and see all these monuments of futility and they will ask "What were they thinking"? the answer is clear, "More, More, More."
That reminds me of a quote Guy taught me years ago from John Kenneth Galbraith "People of privilege will risk their complete destruction rather that relinquish any material portion of that privilege".
I've added this link to my blog post titled "Survivable IPCC projections based on science fiction."
https://kevinhester.live/2017/05/18/survivable-ipcc-projections-based-on-science-fiction/