Not quite
They said Google.
Good thing I never Googled it
If you google …
Your investigation failed to comprehend the first 3 words.
Just the third word actually. Sorry about that. How about now?
Do you have an adblocker?
Of course, who the hell browser the web without one?
That’s why the ads didn’t show up then.
Yes that’s why I use an adblocker. Otherwise every search will just turn up some sponsored stuff relevant to the search. See:
Did you somehow forget what the purpose of your research was?
Read the post again.
14th word actually — sponsored
When I search, I don’t see sponsored results at all though
That’s not a default Google screen. You’re missing the point if you’re showing screenshots that have been adulterated by third party tools that scrub parts of the page.
OP: “Google is paid by nefarious corporations to appear at the top of their results to change the social narrative.”
You: “wrong! It doesn’t happen on a completely different site, or if I use third-party tools to remove the links in question!”
Well, no doy.
Google is paid by corporations to sell you stuff based on your search. That’s the whole point of keyword based sponsoring. You can be searching for dildos, solar panels or marriage counseling and you’ll get sponsored links. It doesn’t say anything about the actual thing other than that someone is trying to profit off it. Dildos aren’t scam because someone is trying to sell me one when I search for them.
OP: “Google is paid by nefarious corporations to appear at the top of their results to change the social narrative.”
OP told me I’d get sponsored results as the top of the google search. I didn’t. Because I’m not some weirdo who chooses not to use an adblock, that’s a caveat OP left out.
If you want to see sponsored results, be my guest, but don’t assume everyone is like that.
You’re trying really hard to miss the point. I hope it makes you feel proud, or happy, or good in some way, dude, because it doesn’t really contribute to the conversation. You’re just derailing and making it about you. Yay, you.
Great argument.
What are you talking about? The point was that fossil fuel companies are promoting carbon capture. Not that google without adblock is going to show you sponsored content. Everyone knows that.
The point was that fossil fuel companies are promoting carbon capture.
Shell is one of the sponsored results for me for solar power. A Finnish gas giant was one of the results for recycling. Same for biodegradable products. For wind and hydro, the result was two large coal energy producers.
Does that tell “everything you need to know” about those or is it just a case of companies angling to make money out of something?
It’s like running all their car engines in reverse. Push a shitload of electricity in, and recombine car exhaust into petrol. Then burn it all over again.
Except they will not pay for the electricity.
Okay? And how are we supposed to deal with the emissions currently in the atmosphere? Even if we abandon all technologies that generate greenhouse gases overnight, we still have shit in the atmosphere warming the planet.
The most compelling strategy I’ve heard is biochar. You immolate organic matter in a medium like nitrogen so you don’t get carbon dioxide, and then you bury the char or use it as fertilizer. The char is relatively stable so shouldn’t create much in the way of carbon dioxide once it’s formed, and because you make it in an oxygen-less atmosphere you don’t get more greenhouse gases from making it.
Absolutely, I also think Biochar is very promising as one way to recapture atmospheric CO2 and to compensate further emissions.
While I understood the production process to be a little different, the benefits of Biochar can’t be ignored.
- low in energy consumption
- low in recourse cost
- very good scalable
- no hidden science or process
- the stored carbon can be used as a soil amendment
The process may be a bit more complex than I understood, but my understanding is that the gist of it is to “burn” plant stuff in a way that doesn’t create carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. One way of doing that is to use a chamber flooded with nitrogen or similar inert gas. No oxygen means carbon can’t bind to two oxygen atoms to create carbon dioxide.
I’m confused, how can you ‘burn’ anything without oxygen? Burn literally means to oxidize
That’s why it’s in quotes. You’re subjecting it to high heat, which would normally cause it to burn, but because there’s no oxygen it chars instead.
Forests, algae… There is no need for carbon capture. It doesn’t do anything on scale. There is need of transformation co2, which can be done by plants and algae
Think of biochar like humans helping plants keep the carbon out of the atmosphere. Plants are good at capturing carbon, but what happens when they die? Hell, what about all the leaves they shed? When something rots, it releases a mix of CO2 and methane (which decomposes into CO2). The idea of biochar is that it’s a way of sequestering the carbon that plants captured. For an example, you make an algae pond, harvest the algae, dry it, char it, bury it. That’s carbon that’s not going back into the atmosphere anytime soon, whereas if it was left to rot, it’d eventually wind back up in the atmosphere. You’re taking the carbon the plants captured, and processing it in a way that makes it easier to sequester.
The problem is purely thermodynamic. Plants transform co2 in useful compounds that do not contribute to greenhouse effect.
Any capture system is a temporary storage of co2 that has anyway to be transformed, because co2 is loosely trapped. Scientifically is literally sweeping dirt under the rug. There is no long term benefit (as at some point in the future you’ll have too transform more co2 than what in the atmosphere), it costs a lot, and gives a fake sense of “trying to solve the problem”, while it’s doing nothing
Humans burnt 100’s of millions of years of plant growth within 100 years. There is no way we can significantly reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere with plants alone in a timeframe that is necessary for humanity to see a difference. There is just not enough land to plant that many trees and plants. We need all the solutions and that includes human tech.
But it is not a solution. Carbon capture is the perfect thermodynamic example of sweeping the dirt under the rug. Best case scenario it would alleviate the problem now to make the problem worse in the mid term. Most realistic scenario it will do nothing at all.
We currently do not have a human tech to support the process. The only thermodynamically meaningful process is transformation of CO2 in safe and useful organic compounds. But all our technology is too expansive, and requires a lot of energy, production of which is currently one of the main responsible for emission of CO2
There exists a natural carbon capture cycle that will take up a lot of the existing carbon in the atmosphere. If we reduce production, it will reduce the amount of carbon capture required.
I don’t understand. Biomass already isnt CO2. Why do we take an extra step?
Because when biomass rots, it creates CO2. By charring it you’re making the carbon more stable and less likely to become CO2 in the future. It also won’t rot when charred.
So how do we produce biomass? Plant more trees? Which we already do. Then in how many year we cut it down and biochar it instead of using it reporposing it for something else? I’m kind of failing to see the benefit. Just seems like an alternative that isn’t really any better than some of the other good alternatives.
Make algae ponds, harvest the algae, dry it, char it, bury it. Algae sucks up carbon dioxide like crazy, the downside being that it releases the carbon when it starts to rot. By charring and burying it, you’re helping to make sure that carbon doesn’t re-enter the atmosphere.
Ah. I didn’t think of algae. Might be a good reason to harvest all the algae blooms from the fertilizer run off.
Peat, too! It’s one of the best carbon sinks we currently have.
biochar is awesome
That’s the thing though, fossil fuel companies aren’t promoting it as harm reduction, they’re promoting it as a solution to emissions so they can keep fucking the earth for profit.
This binary thinking from activists really annoys me.
Binary thinking everywhere all the time. People love polarizing ideas. Makes things easy. Harder to think holistically.
How is that binary?
You seriously need to ask? You do not want to actually understand how it may work, how much it may cost, how realistic it is? And instead you would use “energy companies = bad” and if they also want to participate in carbon capture, then it is ALL you need to know and reject the idea simply based on this. You do not see this as binary??
Companies = bad
Or a bit more nuanced: Under a capitalist system, the first order of business is to make money. That does not have to be bad a priori, but with the given scenario of carbon capture, the meme points out the fact, that it is mostly greenwashing. Does that mean carbon capture is bad? No. Is it the best way to tackle climate change? Absolutely not. Does it make them money and delay actual action to combat the climate crisis? Yes.
But that wouldn’t be a meme, would it?
Making a meme does not mean that you have to do it as a one-bit stupidity. That’s not a valid excuse.
There is no single technology that will tackle climate change, it will/does require combined approach and carbon capture quite possible have a role there to play too. And as for companies making money, they do make monies on solar, wind, electrical cars, and they will make money on carbon capture, hopefully. If there is no money to be made, then it would be a very good indication that the idea is dead on arrival.
System change, not climate change
yeah, no one’s getting distracted
As much as I agree with the implication that O&G companies latch on to every potential carbon sink as a way to greenwash themselves, carbon capture does have merits.
However, the only ones who can currently utilize carbon capture on a significant scale are the ones who produce a lot of carbon to begin with. Technology will have to advance drastically for it to be a carbon sink effective enough to offset emission to the point where emission cuts can be scaled down.
Source: Last year I was involved in surveyon an area that was planned for huge-scale carbon storage after capture.
One industry that is really suited for CC is steel production. Making steel from iron is basically removing the carbon from the iron ore, and that has been done since the 1800s by introducing oxygen to the molten iron. This creates a pillar of carbon dioxide from a very localized point and should, if the technology existed and was used, be easy to capture. The Swedish steel manufacturer SSAB accounts for 11% of the national Swedish emissions, and 10% of Finland’s. It’s not negligible. And steel is used every day, everywhere, and for everything. Every other metal pales in comparison. It’s a gigantic industry. And it’s perfect for carbon capture.
Search results are dependant on who is searching. But still:
When you use DuckDuckGo the first result is wikipedia.
When you use Google the first results are corporations.
When you use Bing the first result is a corporation, then Wikipedia.
Brave search gives an AI summary of carbon capture, an investment page, one of the corp pages, and then a breakdown on why ‘carbon capture’ is a misleading tactic.
Edit: All this to say, maybe stop using Google.
Let me ask Jeeves
I haven’t seen this guy in a very long time.
deleted by creator
My first results on google are all mostly from my country, so that seems to have a big impact on it too
In order: Wikipedia
Climate Change Authority Australia
Climate council Australia
Geoscience Australia
Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
You forgot to mention the crypto spam on Brave lol
You’re confusing the browser and ths search engine, I think. I use various combinations of Firefox and Brave browsers with Qwant, Brave Search and Google Search on different machines and AFAIK, I’ve only seen the crypto stuff in the Brave browser when I initially installed it. Quickly went through settings to disable that stuff and never seen it since. Still the best Chromium browser, and good to have next to Firefox in case of compatibility issues. Privacyguides.org is clear about that.
The search engine seems decent too, I haven’t noticed a big difference between Brave Search and Qwant so far, they are both fine, and less heavily manipulated than Google
Edit: I’m an idiot I thought this was a different discussion
Anyway to your point: yeah I am talking about the browser. I’m now realizing that that was not what they originally meant. My bad!
FWIW, I disabled it in the configuration and I’ve never been bothered about it again.
Did you mean Regulatory Capture?
I think Carbon Capture is a legitimate and respectable area of research, but it’s fuckall for any practical use today or tomorrow and it should never be treated as a replacement for emission goals or the maintenance of critical ecosystems.
Carbon capture is 100% useless until the day that we completely stop using carbon energy sources.
Even if you use solar panels, that energy would better be used directly.
But that isn’t how technology works. We’ll need carbon capture to be at a point where we can actively remove carbon from the atmosphere at a higher rate than it enters the atmosphere as we ween off carbon fuels if we ever want to survive climate change long term.
We will almost certainly need to remove carbon already in the atmosphere. Yes, we can wish getting serious about climate change one or two decades ago would have made that unnecessary, but we’re stuck with this choice now. Short of replacing every single carbon producing device tomorrow, that’s where we’re at.
Yes we are and because of those choices back then, we are fucked. The next generations will be fucked worse with each generation. It will take centuries to clean this shit up if we actively work on it and spend over 50% of our energy budget on cleaning. If we do nothing it might never recover and be the end of us…
It’s not useless. Carbon capture will have to become mandatory at industries that will still require fossile fuels for a little longer after electrifying everything. Think cement and steel production. This is called on-site carbon capture and prevents releasing more carbon to the atmosphere. This is already happening.
Now that stupid thing that sucks C02 gas out of the air, yes, it’s total bollocka and will never ever work efficiently. Maybe if we eventually develop cheap fusion power.
There is a lot of things wrong with your statement but first and foremost is that Carbon Neutral is no longer a solution for our problems. Without a way to alleviate and regulate emissions already in the atmosphere the Human Race is still on a death march if it stopped producing today, much moreso 30 years from today. In addition to that, the sale of power to consumers can just increase consumption, and the infrastructure to move power and store power where it is needed is not necessarily there so for example Iceland’s Geothermal powered Carbfix may not be efficient on paper compared to magically selling the power off to a far off place: it is still an optimal nearly lossless solution given their circumstances.
No, my statement is perfect correct.
Starting carbon capture while there is still fossil fuel power generation is stupid at best. If you do it for research, sure, go nuts. Anything beyond is just making shit worse.
If you have the energy and no where to get it to, that might be the one exception, perhaps but that’s it.
If you do carbon capture with energy from CO2 power then you’re literally making it worse trying to make it better. If you use non CO2 power you’re still doing it wrong because of losses, that power would be better used to avoid others using CO2, you’d be more energy efficient that way.
My point is that there are multiple companies currently doing carbon capture and its just stupid, its another one of those “look at me being smart! Pay me money!” schemes that want government money that would be better spent on replacing CO2 power sources instead.
The “one exception” just described the vast majority of the operations. There is no using the power to avoid using CO2 because that’s not how the power market works at all. If prices go down, consumption goes up. If you think some Carbon Capture facilities are a net zero effect aside from collecting data then that’s fine, if you think they’re a dumb thing to be spending resources on then that is fine, but you’re absolutely not correct to say it’s more efficient to put all that energy into a giant capitalist grid.
I’m not saying that at all, I’m saying that it’s literally throwing a bucket of water on the floor and then mopping it up. Better not throw the bucket on the floor to begin with
Okay well the reality is people have been throwing water on the floor for 20 years and you don’t want us to clean it up.
No.
People have been throwing water on the floor for 200 years now, since the start of the industrial revolution, and right now a huge hose is connected to an enormous water tap and that hose dumps all the water straight on the floor.
You want to take a mop on that, I say that the mop is make ng it worse, because I need you to help me get rid of that hose.
Once the hose is gone, please by all means, mop away, we will need it, I fully agree. But while that hose is dumping water, I need you ) that is, the entire world) to first focus on stopping the water flow.
Edit: and just so you understand the severity of the situation: even if we spend 5-70% of the worlds energy budget on mopping 24/7, we’ll likely be mopping for the next CENTURIES to get rid of all the extra CO2 we dumped for the past 200 years.
I’m not sure that we should write it off completely…
There’s a thing in Iceland that binds CO2 underground.
It’s pretty cool: https://www.carbfix.com/
Here’s the science behind it https://www.carbfix.com/scientific-papers
Hey, I think the tech has some promise, but my opinion is this: basing our goals and pledges to solve the climate crisis on technology that hasn’t yet proven itself is putting the cart before the horse.
We need to set the objective to stop the increase of emissions, and then we can also try out sucking carbon emissions out as we do that to help accelerate our fix to the climate problem.
Whether the tech works or not, fossil fuel companies as I see it, are just using it as a delay tactic to the world reducing its dependence on their business: by making the central issue something that will help, but not ultimately solve the problem.
Agree.
The tech is in its kidsshoes, all this pushing for new technologies is almost like a hidden excuse for.continouing their fossil bullshit.
yeah, that’s legit, not the coal power plant nonsense. at this point I’d consider carbfix et al. to be at the R&D stage.
It would be better if they put that money into renewable energy.
Why not both? Reduce on all fronts.
Because carbon capture will never reduce carbon as much as competing with non-renewable energy companies
It seems we don’t have matching initial assumptions, I apologize I should have been clearer.
When I think carbon capture I mean reducing the amount of currently existing CO2 in the atmosphere, not offloading new CO2 that is being generated.
This means then that at the same time we could produce less CO2 trough renewable energy sources.
But using renewable energy will reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere more than carbon capture, just not directly.
Tried it and it’s true. Also tried on DDG and I got mostly actual information. Use DDG.
it’s much more nuanced than that though.
naunce? in this economy?
Carbon capture, Carbon footprint, Carbon offsetting…
All things invented by oil and gas corporations to greenwash themselves in the public eye while they destroy the planet.
Burns, burns, burns, the lake fire…
…cuz the ring lit the lake and it was full of oil.
Cuyahoga River – “at least 13 fires” …
Good old offsetting.
Where it’s OK to cheat on your wife, as long as you slip 5 quid to a guy in another country, and he’ll tell you he’s stayed celibate.
That metaphor doesn’t apply. CO2 in the atmosphere is fungible. Taking a gram out after putting a gram in works out to zero.
Where it’s a problem is that they aren’t actually taking a gram out. Regulatory oversight is little to nothing. That has allowed companies to pay a token amount into offset programs and pretend the problem is solved. What they’re paying is far too cheap to accomplish what they claim.
Is there money in that? Because I could make some bank.
Carbon capture will only work if the capturing and storage of said carbon uses less energy than it took to release said carbon.
So far I have yet to see that.
It’s not about the energy cost, it’s about the financial cost. If the system incentivizes proper and effective use of carbon capture, then there’d be a difference. Carrot, stick, both, it’ll be better than the half-assed token measures we have currently.
If you Google anything the first results are sponsored links.
…and that should tell you all you need to know.
Ever heard about trees Mr Techbro
