Between April 2021 and October 2024, British physicist Michael de Podesta paid £40 per month to carbon capture company Climeworks. In return, the company promised to remove 50 kilograms of carbon dioxide each month. But in September 2024, de Podesta wrote that “when I checked the other day they had removed precisely no CO₂ from the atmosphere”.
The following day, de Podesta wrote, “I conclude that I am indeed a gullible idiot.”
Climateworks’ business model involves selling carbon credits for CO₂ that it hopes to capture in the future
Good scam if you can convince people…so have they convinced anyone
Microsoft, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Shopify, British Airways, Lego, Swiss Air, PwC, and TikTok.
Oh /s
I guess “in the future” is a promise you can always give, like “free beeer tomorrow”
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Seconded. Plant life has spent hundreds of millions of years perfecting carbon capture. We’re so cocky as a species, thinking we can speed-run terraform tech and that might somehow allow us to continue our culture of constant growth without consequence.
Relying on carbon capture to fix climate change is like calling in a construction company to rebuild your house while it’s still actively on fire.
Probably worth trying though?
We can concentrate energy way better than plants can, so the possibility is there. The problem is that as Climateworks is a private company, they are not releasing the data that might help others.
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This comforts me so much, as I hate the human species so fiercely! The Aliens movie scene where they have to make sure it doesn’t get off the planet is haunting now for me. We must, at all costs, make sure humans never get off this planet. We are a destructive force, a cancer.
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But cars are certainly on the path. Along with many facets of our modern comfortable lives.
Even the most ambitious climate agreements are mere consolation prizes. The only way to reverse course is global eco-fascism, for the sole reason that you cannot entice enough people to sacrifice for the public good to matter, you have to force them at the end of a gun.
Desuburbanization - forcing people out of their 4000sqft SFHs and into 700sqft urban apartment units like a bizarro Pol Pot. Seizing personal vehicles and letting them rot on the side of the road or in the desert. And yes, using military force to seize cruise liners and sink them to the bottom, and more broadly to shut down harmful industry.
None of that will ever happen though, because in our society violence serves capitalism, it will never seek to destroy it. So you are correct, everyone here should be on the Collapse communities rather then here.
“We told you so” (sponsored by 2nd law of thermodynamics)
I like those green algae bubblers set up on the exhausts of thermal powerplants, though, those are fun and work (partially), unlike this carbon capture fairytale bullshit.
It’s also kind of obvious by accounting for concentrations why this kind of carbon capture is a fairytale, isn’t it. Trying to capture from a carbon source like an exhaust, you’ll see a gas that’s easily 80% CO₂, compared to the meager 0,04% (400ppm) concentration in regular air. My guesstimate is that you’ll easily produce more CO₂ than you’re able to capture just trying to move enough CO₂ molecules through the capture device, even if you’re 100% efficient in capture.
Also a sidenote: I think carbon capture at the source has its use in combatting climate change, but we must not forget reduce > reuse > recycle. Carbon capture is very much recycling, so we should be careful to only do it for situations where it’s very hard to decarbonize.
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isn’t there already carbon capture with biochar?
https://ecologi.com/impact-shop/support-biochar-carbon-removal-projects
