# How Can We Address Climate Change Besides Limiting Emissions? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 20, 2022, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265 "2022-07-20T15:34:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2022, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/181 "2022-08-08T22:23:16Z")
I think “breakthrough” just refers to their method of measurement. The abstract has the same figure without the “breakthrough” language: > The coordination of polyamine and cyanuric acid modification endows MNNs with high adsorption capacity (1.82 millimoles per gram at 1 bar) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2022, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/182 "2022-08-08T22:28:53Z")
And what do you do with those chemicals once they’re saturated? Replace them with more of the chemicals, I assume. Where do these chemicals come from? Can you make more, without generating more carbon dioxide? This looks to me like the sort of “promising new technology” that fossil-fuel companies invest in so they can pretend they’re doing something, even though they know they’re completely useless. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2022, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/183 "2022-08-08T22:33:48Z")
I don’t like being pessimistic, but I have to agree with you. [We’re gonna need a bigger solution](https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/)… [![](https://u4d2z7k9.rocketcdn.me/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Co2-levels-800k.jpg) ](https://u4d2z7k9.rocketcdn.me/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Co2-levels-800k.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2022, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/184 "2022-08-08T22:39:31Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > This looks to me like the sort of “promising new technology” that fossil-fuel companies invest in so they can pretend they’re doing something The article actually has the funding information: > #### Funding Information > > [U.S. Department of Energy](http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000015): DE-AC02-76SF00515 > [U.S. Department of Energy](http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000015) > [Amherst College](http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100013070) > [Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center](http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100019861) I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this kind of research as such. But it definitely needs to be treated more critically. And the research team should be more careful about their claims of practicality. ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2022, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/185 "2022-08-08T22:59:13Z")
> [@Tfletch1](#): > > … Shouldn’t the breakthrough capacity be just the opposite … In the world of Catalysis/Adsorption/Absorption breakthrough refers to : Say you have a packed bed, like a cylinder with the pebbles of the stuff under consideration here ( think of it like a filter). The gas flows through this packed bed and the CO2 gets absorbed in the pebbles. So you keep flowing the CO2 loaded gas from one end and you get CO2 free gas on the other end. After some time, the bed will get “saturated” with CO2, and CO2 will start showing up in the exit gas. This is referred to as breakthrough. _Literally, CO2 is breaking through the material._ You have 1.8 mmol/g (1 mol of CO2 = 44g, so 1.8 milli mol of CO2, means about 0.08 grams of CO2 is adsorbed per gram of the material. Or 1 lb of the material will get rid of 0.08 lb (about 1.3 oz) of CO2. There are 100s of such materials claimed by many researchers every year, but there already are proven CO2 absorption/adsorption media available commercially with more than 50+ years of operating experience. Unless there is a super breakthrough, these materials are only academically interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/186 "2022-08-09T12:55:37Z")
> [@Tfletch1](#): > > This sounds pretty cool. > > [New Cheap Carbon Capture Tech Could Be Attached To Tailpipes | IFLScience](https://iflscience.com/new-cheap-carbon-capture-tech-could-be-attached-to-tailpipes-64776) Science journalism strikes again. The actual paper doesn’t say anything about vehicles because it’s designing an adsorbent for power plant flue gas. Not your fault. The dominant tech is an anime wash that is thermally regenerated. Ideally, one uses a material with both a low heat capacity and heat of adsorption. The new material in the paper has a lower heat of adsorption than some other recent materials. They don’t model full-scale operation so I couldn’t tell you how its efficiency compares to other options. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/187 "2022-08-09T13:02:24Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And what do you do with those chemicals once they’re saturated? Replace them with more of the chemicals, I assume. [No](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage). It works like a standard sorbent. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/188 "2022-08-09T13:10:15Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > The dominant tech is an anime wash that is thermally regenerated. Can someone explain what this means? ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/189 "2022-08-09T13:54:53Z")
Put an amine in water. Spray it through the power plant exhaust. The amine reacts with carbon dioxide. Pump the solution away. Heat it. Concentrated CO2 comes out. Reuse the solution. Then you have to do something with the CO2. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/190 "2022-08-09T14:03:23Z")
Thank you. The misspelling was blocking my Google searches. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/191 "2022-08-09T14:35:03Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > The dominant tech is an anime wash > [@Pleonast](#): > > Can someone explain what this means? I’m no expert, but it sounds like The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. > **[The Great Wave off Kanagawa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa)** > > The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Japanese: 神奈川沖浪裏, Hepburn: Kanagawa-oki Nami Ura, lit. 'Under the Wave off Kanagawa')\[a\] is a woodblock print by Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai, created in late 1831 during the Edo period of Japanese history. The print depicts three boats moving through a storm-tossed sea, with a large, cresting wave forming a spiral in the centre and Mount Fuji visible in the background. > The print is Hokusai's best-known work and the first in his series Thirty-six Views of Moun... I’m glad @Ruken returned to clarify that they meant amine, not anime. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/192 "2022-08-09T15:11:48Z")
😆 In that case the regeneration process involves tentacles. ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/193 "2022-08-09T16:06:07Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > It won’t make much difference in the southern US. A heat pump working as an air conditioner is just an air conditioner, and will be about as efficient as a dedicated air conditioning unit, and that’s the vast majority of what’s needed in the southern US. Agreed and this is very true. What does work for southern US is geo based heat pumps. The temperature a few feet underground is pretty cool in the southern us (much like the frost line in the Northern US). If instead of moving heat to the air (which is 100+ F in summer, the ac can move the heat a few feet in the ground which is like 70F, there is a big saving in power). Also, it should work for northern places in the winter too i.e. pipes buried a few feet in the ground (below the frost line) will reduce the power demand of a heat pump. There are many such designs, one simple one is to bury a lot of pipes in the ground. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/194 "2022-08-09T17:41:24Z")
The problem is - you capture all this CO2. If you’re really lucky, there’s a way to turn it into C (pure carbon). The obvious follow-up question is - now what? You can capture carbon as trees, and then for maybe 100 years they sit there sufficiently moist not to burn. You can create peat moss, if the climate is wet enough. But generally organic matter will either rot or burn, thus putting the problem on a future generation. There are suggestions it can be turned into solid CO2 and buried in the bottom of the ocean. (Can it? how stable is that?) Or pumped into the earth. Is there enough carrying capacity? We’ve pumped oil out of the ground on the order of millions of barrels a day, and coal just as badly - is there a place to put this back, even if there is a process to capture and transform it on such a scale? ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/195 "2022-08-09T17:49:42Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > 1. Grow biomass. > 2. Dump into oceanic rift. > > That’s skipping over the details, obviously. I think that’s the easiest way we can get something similar to the coal and oil generation of past eras. And the closest we can get to undoing what we’ve done. Maybe we can’t do it now, but it’s the only solution that will last in the long term. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/196 "2022-08-09T17:56:18Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > But generally organic matter will either rot or burn, thus putting the problem on a future generation. If you grow trees, you can use the wood to make charcoal by heating it without air: > **[Charcoal | Production methods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal#Production_methods)** > > Charcoal has been made by various methods. The traditional method in Britain used a clamp. This is essentially a pile of wooden logs (e.g. seasoned oak) leaning in a circle against a chimney. The chimney consists of 4 wooden stakes held up by some rope. The logs are completely covered with soil and straw allowing no air to enter. It must be lit by introducing some burning fuel into the chimney; the logs burn slowly and transform into charcoal over a period of 5 days. If the soil covering gets Mo... I expect charcoal is rather resistant to rot, but of course it’s rather combustible. Its low density means you couldn’t easily sink it in the ocean, so you’d need to bury it somewhere. The Hambach surface mine seems like a good candidate. > **[Hambach surface mine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_surface_mine)** > > The Tagebau Hambach is a large open-pit coal mine (German: Tagebau) in Niederzier and Elsdorf, North Rhine–Westphalia, Germany. It is operated by RWE and used for mining lignite. > The mine is on the site of the ancient Hambach Forest, which was purchased by RWE in 1978. The company then cut most of the forest down and cleared it to mine. Only 10% of the forest area remains. RWE planned to clear half of the remaining area between 2018 and 2020. This plan was met with massive protests in the autu... ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/197 "2022-08-09T18:05:41Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > Science journalism strikes again. The actual paper doesn’t say anything about vehicles because it’s designing an adsorbent for power plant flue gas. Not your fault. It’s not in the paper, but the journalist didn’t make it up. It quotes the lead author: > “In this study, we focused on cheaper material design for capture and storage and elucidating the interaction mechanism between CO2 and the material,” lead author Dr Haiyan Mao from UC Berkeley said in a [statement](https://news.berkeley.edu/2022/08/04/a-simple-cheap-material-for-carbon-capture-perhaps-from-tailpipes/). > > “This work creates a general industrialization method towards sustainable CO2 capture using porous networks. We hope we can design a future attachment for capturing car exhaust gas, or maybe an attachment to a building or even a coating on the surface of furniture.” I don’t 100% blame the author either, because it seems we’re in an environment where scientists have to come up with justifications for their work, no matter how dumb. Saying “we’re just in it for the science” doesn’t seem to play well with their funding sources. Anyway, CO2 exhaust capture is dumb either way. It’s not possible to invent a better form of sequestered carbon than coal. It’s almost pure carbon, in a very stable solid form, already buried deep underground. It’ll stay there with no effort for millions of years. It’s perfect! All we have to do is to not dig it up and burn it. And the second-best form of sequestered carbon is oil. (CO2 capture _might_ make sense for the carbon we’ve already burned, but we’ll see how that goes) ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/198 "2022-08-09T19:08:47Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > It’s not in the paper, but the journalist didn’t make it up. It quotes the lead author: It’s in the news release but the university PR department may very well have written it based on my experience. And even if the postdoc did say it, reporting on what some postdoc says\* instead of the actual science in the paper that other scientists at least nominally signed off on is why we get bad articles like this. \*Furniture coatings? I know one of the other authors on the paper and am going to give him crap about this. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/199 "2022-08-09T19:21:08Z")
Scene: a small, dingy university conference room University PR department: We have to make this look good. No one cares about anime. Lowly postdoc: Amines. PR: Whatever. Tell us what this is useful for or we cut your… funding. Postdoc: I don’t know! Um, power plants. Vehicle exhaust. PR: Not enough. Give us more. Postdoc: Uh… \ furniture… coatings. PR: Good enough. You may go… for now. ---
**Author:** ![am77494](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@am77494](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/am77494)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2022, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265/200 "2022-08-09T19:41:45Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > Or pumped into the earth. Is there enough carrying capacity? I’ll try the other questions later, but this one is a low hanging fruit 🙂 0.3714 million metric tons of CO2 are produced per million barrels of crude Oil ([https://climateaccountability.org/pdf/Sums/Oil%20Sums/Oil%20EmissionFactorCalc%206p.pdf](https://climateaccountability.org/pdf/Sums/Oil%20Sums/Oil%20EmissionFactorCalc%206p.pdf)) or, 0.4 (round numbers) metric tons of CO2 are produced per barrel of crude Oil Or 400 kg of CO2 are produced per barrel of crude oil. _CO2 is stored in earth between 2500 to 3000 psi where its density is almost the same as water (1000 kg /m3)_ So 0.4 m3 of space is needed in earth for storing the CO2 from 1 barrel of crude So about **2.5 barrels of space** is needed inside the earth to store the CO2 emissions from **1 barrel of crude.** Or put in another way, **2.5 years of Oil production" space"** is needed for storing a year’s worth of Oil based CO2 production. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-we-address-climate-change-besides-limiting-emissions/968265.md?page=11)