dpm59 t1_j9j65uj wrote on February 22, 2023 at 10:15 AM

Reply to comment by zosolm in MIT team makes a case for direct carbon capture from seawater, not air by MotorDrive

My comment about the lack of understanding of the carbon cycle refers more to the quantification of the natural sources of CO2 in the carbon cycle. The assumption is that before the Industrial age the cycle was in balance and man disrupted that. While this may indeed be true. ( but we have been warming since the last ice age) If the scientific community can not accurately quantify the natural release and absorption of CO2 it remains a hypothesis.

I have yet to find any accurate data on the natural sources with less than 5-10% accuracy. My personal opinion is that if more time was spent understanding the natural sources they also could be mitigated and possible more cost effectively.

Fundamentally I am against condemning man, which to be fair had made incredible progress lowering CO2 emissions on a productivity based over the past 100 years. Think about the progress moving from Wood to Coal to Oil to natural gas to nuclear, wind, solar, battery storage etc. Burning stuff enabled mankind, it is the differentiator between us and other living things. Without fire we wouldn’t excite today nor would any of our technology.

zosolm t1_j9jb4yu wrote on February 22, 2023 at 11:20 AM

Sure, I basically agree that condemning is pointless and am not interested in condemning anyone. That’s not what climate science is about. I guess that’s maybe more what happens in the political spheres? Idk

Just regarding the 5-10% accuracy thing (and without meaning to nitpick, just explaining what assumption I’m making from what you said); I guess you meant more than 5-10% accuracy because if you’re yet to find data with less than 5-10% accuracy that means you’ve only found data that’s more accurate than that.

If you’ve not found data that’s more accurate than 5-10% you might want to check again. The CO2 analyzer that was installed at Mauna Loa (an active volcano) uses a technique called Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy (CRDS). (Prior to this, an analyzer was used based on infrared absorption). CDRS I think is about 99% accurate and infrared absorption I am not too certain of but I’m sure it’s more than 5-10%.

They measure the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. It doesn’t really matter if it’s coming from humans or not (incidentally, some of it is, but that’s irrelevant). The point is that we know the effect of more CO2 in the system is that the planet warms, and having modelled that we understand that’s going to cause problems for us. There’s things we can do about it like carbon capture and switching from fossil fuels. Which is cool.