Bill Gates-Backed Carbon Capture Plant Does The Work Of 40 Million Trees
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- Published on Jun 21, 2019
- In Squamish, British Columbia, there’s a company that wants to stop climate change by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
It’s called Carbon Engineering, and it uses a combination of giant fans and complex chemical processes to remove carbon dioxide from the air in a procedure known as Direct Air Capture.
Direct Air Capture isn’t new, but Carbon Engineering says its technology has advanced enough for it to finally make financial sense.
The company is backed by Bill Gates - but also by the oil giants Chevron, BHP, and Occidental. These partnerships will bring Carbon Engineering’s tech to market by using the captured carbon to make synthetic fuels and and help extract more oil from the ground.
Will Carbon Engineering’s technology decrease the amount of CO2 in the air, or is it going to prolong our dependence on fossil fuels?
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How Carbon Capture Can Affect Climate Change
Damn, even the tree's are losing their jobs to technology.
Let's see a carpenter frame a new building using one of these tree substitute machines!
The whole meaning of this things is to do what simply planting trees cant do
and we are losing moisture from our verylungs to give good ol' bill a buck
So far the best solution I’ve seen involves growing seaweed on the open ocean. The ocean is a vast unused source of solar energy. If captured through photosynthesis it can be the best most economical carbon sink. I think the problem with direct air capture is the extreme high cost when compared with other more natural types of carbon capture. To me this is an over engineered solution which is in fact not scalable to the size which is necessary to do serious carbon capture.
@Gloria The Animator there is no highest CO2 levels of the entire Earth's atmosphere right now there is only 0.04% carbon dioxide left in the entire Earth's atmosphere at this very moment and reports in the higher elevations of only 0.035%, that just happened last year between last year and this year so probably a year from now there won't be any carbon dioxide on the planet at all and that in the atmosphere so what that's going to do to all the wildlife is eliminate their only source of oxygen but as far as what it's going to do to humans no one has ever asked on the internet for the last health 3 4 5 years that's what the results are going to be so it's your guess as good as mine and I think when the plants die that they say is their only source of oxygen it's going to be chaos is it not boo talk about a party with a shooting solution like lock and load baby you may be in my parallax
@Gloria The Animator nature needs co2 to thrive. How is this helping nature?
@Luis Ostasuc Imagine being the Maintenance crew living jn the desert 🌵?
@Luis Ostasuc i think these should be build in areas where co2 is the highest and is hurting the wild life most
That way you would get most efficiency and also most benefit for wildlife
I found a fur tree sapling a few years ago . I wanted to grow my own Christmas tree . I planted it close to the edge of a creek . It ended up growing crooked so I left it where it was . It is now keeping the soil from eroding when it floods .🤗
crooked trees have alot of character! They can often right themselves over time while keeping a cute crook.
Trees are awesome....
Keep planting trees. Every tree helps.
Be sure to brush and comb your fur trees otherwise they'll mat especially after air drying after a bath.
Don't stop Josh!
Become a environmental conservationist and ecologist and travel around the world bro and save our planet!!!!
I believe in ya :^D Don't be like your peers, rise above them and be extraordinary!
Actually the “price per carbon” failed miserably... unscrupulous businesses started to make more carbon to capture to make millions off of the program while at the same time net increase to to output of carbon.
Thanks for always including both sides to each of your informative videos! I don't feel as though one side of the coin is shoved down my throat like many other media.
This should be used in conjunction with planting trees everywhere because we still need to promote habitats for a better eco structure.
No there’s still a solution, we could reduce overpopulation. We could impose restrictions on the number of children being born. Our population would decrease in a certain time. I know it’s harsh and unethical. But, it’s for survival.
@2freeIvX Sounds scientifically valid.🙄 Maybe you should take another look at how photosynthesis works.
Algae in the ocean is a big one that most people forget too
Pizz Time no we don’t have an overpopulation problem... just because some states are over populated it doesn’t mean the world has that people. That’s illogical. As the population increases we have world poverty decrease. They’re are millions of square miles that are unused. Cali is over populated in certain cities because of job opportunity iand beautiful weather. Left wing policies are driving approximately 1000 people out of Th e state a day. Mostly for Texas.
Well no ones advocating to stop planting trees lol Lumbar companies actually plant the most trees. Of course they do because they have the greatest incentive.
How much did this plant cost to build and run? How much energy does it use? How many trees could be planted with all of that money without using nearly as much energy? Asking for a friend...
@Supergamer Grill A tree sucks CO2 from the first day since otherwise it wouldn't be able to grow.
You are denying the science how dare you
Meanwhile in other parts of the world we have a car tire fires (where they store old tires) burning 24 hours a day for years and no one mentions it. Did you ever see a car tire burn? It looks like about the nastiest pollution in the world.
This needs WAY MORE attention. Why isn't that in my daily google news feed. Who cares which celebrities are getting married or having a baby. Tell us about the real stuff going on in the world that's quietly being swept under the rug....
Or in this case, burned Under the tire fires
As a sustainability architect the views of those against this technology are myopic. There must be a "transition" platform to migrate to fully renewable methods. It cannot happen overnight. If we simply adopt renewable technology 100% from today forward we are NOT addressing residual CO2 levels currently evident within the atmosphere. Action needs to be made at all levels, existing CO2 reduction, current CO2 minimisation and future CO2 elimination. Getting petrochemical companies involved is a no brainer in this "transition" phase. Plant trees, healthy soil, use of ocean vegetation (kelp forests), better farming practices, developing renewable systems, capture of CO2 from existing energy generation and removal of existing CO2 from our environment are ALL CRITICAL. Industry alone will NOT fund this technology given there is no financial benefit. All developed countries need to contribute funding to this as a MORAL imperative.
"Sustainability Architect" like "Climate Change 'Scientist'" ... a job that relies on there actually being a problem. No problem, no job.
Some solutions simply create more problems. Many over look the true problem in favour of something seen as an easier fix. Foe example, it is not plastic that is the problem, it is how we handle waste.
Some technological solutions are simply the wrong solution. Wind for example causes as many problems as it solves. SAI is a technology that would attempt to inject calcium carbonate into the atmosphere in order to reflect sunlight away. The proponents of CO2 based AGW seem to forget that CaCO3 breaks down to CO2.
CO2 is a gas as essential to life as oxygen yet you want to put it in the hands of others. It would be like giving the government control of the oxygen you breathe.
As a sustainability architect, how much CO2 do you think should be in the atmosphere. Are you qualified to do that job without knowing that even the C4 classification plants, that is those that have evolved to exist in the low CO2 world we live in and make up less than 20% of the worlds current plants, are only just in a sufficient CO2 environment ?The remaining 80% of C3 and below plants, evolved in atmospheres with much higher CO2 concentrations, and are still starved of it at the levels we currently enjoy.
In the mean time, how "sustainable" are electric cars which require lithium and cobalt extraction at un precedented levels. Or the Giga factories that require the same.
Solar ev that requires rare earth materials.
Wind farms that require huge amounts of copper that must be extracted from the ground. While at the same time inflicting environmental catastrophes.
Or the destruction of habitats in order to feed the myth of animal toxicity. Can you truly say anything about "Sustainability" if you believe and propagate the lies of the one sided narrative, without discussing and understanding the alternative views?
What are you going to do when we have to start expending energy heating chalk to put more CO2 into the air inorder to sustain our ecology destroyed as much by misinformed do-gooders as by thise who profit from it (or when Gates makes a bigger fortune by selling back CO2 to sustain nature)?
Open your eyes. Or more to the point open your mind.
Nobody is against technology. The asinine use of technology yes, technology no.
So let's build a big machine that removes an essential, life giving gas from the atmosphere. What can go wrong?
That's why it's so frustrating that a lot of activists are against NG. Not only is NG cleaner, but it's the *perfect* complement to renewable, since it can be quickly scaled up and down as demand and renewable output change. It's a great bridge to grid storage.
“Its just chemistry”
I was hoping for full explanation about how it works in detail, like which liquids etc. Ill put that on my list to do research when i have time
Wishful thinking by gates,maybe little mirrors up in the sky to reflect the sun,will come up will somthing soon,were all so clever -jeez-
It just Big oil BS spin.
@Gh0st You better proof what you've just said
@Gh0st based on what information? It seems pretty simple and non toxic to me.
@JC Gong Avoe LOL, people are litterly buying fresh air in bags to breathe.
They should reuse hydroelectric plants to power stations like these, while moving the grid towards Nuclear energy. Also, to those in the comments section berating carbon capture technology, I would point out that no amount of trees is going to capture all the carbon we burned from deposits in which it was stored safely for millennia. One plant over a short period of time won’t fix the problem, but it’s a start.
Good to have people researching this stuff but we have deforested such big areas around the world that we need to replant and recreate biodiversity for our environment to become more resilient to human impact. in other words the industrial removal of carbon is a one trick pony while a forest is a holistic approach.
I wonder how many years it takes to recapture the carbon caused by all the construction, the commuting of the contractors, the heavy equipment, the trucks to bring the materials, the carbon from the manufacturing of the materials, the carbon from the creation of the chemicals, the carbon of disposal of the chemicals, the carbon footprint of building the power plants to power this, the carbon from the employees driving there, the carbon footprint of the maintenance contractors, the carbon footprint of the maintenance of the roads into it, and the carbon capture lost by clearing vegetation to build this... 🧐
they placed this thing out in the middle of the woods instead of near an industrial area? geniuses...
@Anti-Them You didn't catch the part where they do it directly I'm guessing?
He does mention it doesn't matter where you place the factory. Our polluted air is everywhere.
@dont-want-no-wrench what is space then?
air is everywhere man
@Evenor the point of putting it near an industrial zone would be to pick up pollutants before they get too far. you must be a genius just like the guys that picked the location for this thing.
I love how CNBC tries to present both sides of the problem, not only just the benefits of the CE, but also pitfalls, and possible consequences.
12 minutes in and they still haven't mentioned that when this CO2 is underground, plants start dying above ground. Kind of an important detail.
If only they did the same when talking about Trump, instead of bashing him 24/7.
@Ameya S the oil and coal from underground was old biomass from eons past from trees primarily. We are taking that carbon and putting it in the atmosphere. That extra carbon from that system has now been added to the ecosystem, and we need to put it back
@Kevin Cheung Wut!!??....you are made of biomass...if you take biomass "out of equation" (!?), then the human body, plants and animals (nature itself) ceases to exist!
@Ramael Metatron The issue with trees is that it only stores carbon into biomass. Once the trees die, the carbon dioxide goes back into the atmosphere. the biomass itself needs to be taken out of the equation.
“After that, it’s just chemistry.” The scraping sound you hear is economics, scalability, waste management, and end products being swept under the rug.
This is no different than commercial fishing companies slapping "dolphin safe" stickers on tuna cans while continuing the exact same fishing practices.
@Ömer Lütfi Taygun You clearly did not read the other guy's comment cuz he was the one to bring up flaws of capitalism like I already stated on my previous response, so I mentioned communism. And I didnt even say that you defended communism, idk where you got that from. Also how could you even criticize my understanding of capitalism when I never even talk about my understanding of it?
@duckisgood 1-you didn't mention it. i made a sarcastic comment that criticizes your understanding of capitalism
2-I didn't defend communism. I criticized your mindset which you accuse people of being communists when they criticize the millionaires and corporations for manipulating and exploiting the common people.
3-I wouldn't respond to your comment if i haven't read the other guys comment
@Ömer Lütfi Taygun
1) Dude who I was talking with mentioned capitalism
2) Most communist countries doesnt even put the needs of people in front of profit
3) No government is based on profit
4) You definitely did not read the other guys comment didnt you
@M Geller Hes buying US land up as well. He is the largest farmland owner in the US now.
One thing you never hear about is perma frost, the Savannah style grass lands in the Arctic circle captures just as much if not more carbon than trees and traps it under ground with almost zero cost
@Colin Genge What Colin said.
Amazing they’ve made carbon dioxide a renewable source of energy
2 year old video and never heard of it. A month ago they released a new study showing how much more effed we are than we thought. Thanks for the "fix" Bill. Be sure to bring that money with you to the after life.
We need this technology AND planting more trees. Trees do so so much more than just sequester CO2 from the air.
We also need...more CO2...twice what we currently have. Trees need to eat too !
This recent study is relevant to this discussion in case anyone is interested: science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76
@-BR- N0xiety so need for population control
@-BR- N0xiety seaweed
Nature is never wrong, nature does it better.. always
"Your not stopping the fossil fuels industry, you are actually promoting it." This captures the hatred some have toward others. If this technology can dramatically reduce GHG emissions, maybe you can dramtically reduce your hatred? The solution requires more partners and less enemies.
I thought some coal power plants already tried this 10 years ago and it took 30% more coal to produce the energy to capture the Co2 which made the whole process not worth it.
One of the situations where I think this tech would make sense is after we get to a lower emission rate, we can use any excess powered by green energy to turn back the clock on how much carbon we already pumped out. Soooo... around 2040 or 2050?
Or in the mean time of trying to develop green energy storage, we use green energy to offset the emissions of Co2 coal plants by using the excess to power these direct carbon capture.
@Gregory Everson no such thing as green energy? Did you mean no such thing as green energy storage? Which also is not true since they pump water to hold excess energy already.
Lithium mining is not ideal but i think they found the good still outweighed the bad over the course of lithiums lifetime
Carbon capture continues to remain the technology of the future. We need to act as if it will never succeed and still hope it does.
I whole-heartedly agree with Kammen, et.al. However, I also believe we will need to taper off fossil fuels or face a significant social/financial collapse of some kind so they will be needed to stay active for decades, at least. I would also happily refuse funding from the perpetrators, (aka Big Oil), if it were replaced and enhanced from other sources. Until then, the researchers should take what they can get regardless of the donors' motives.
Let's build these machines AND plant trees.
Why is everyone so either or?
@Old man
You didn't watch the video with scientific impartiality.
@hg2 or perhaps I could interest you in some nutritional supplements...
@hg2 I have a unicorn for sale. I could make up some cool looking Graphics to prove its authentic! Isn't that good news?
because the more you invest in one option, the more you benefit from economy of scale, which helps you scale up faster and become more efficient. its the positive feedback loop of specializaion.
One advantage of planting trees large scale is it can actually significantly impact local climates. Look at the projects going on in Africa (great green wall) and China (40 Billion Tree project)
In these projects Desert is being reclaimed which not only positively impacts CO2 but also positively impacts radiative heating. CO2 is only a part of the problem and I've seen data that suggests it's not as large a portion of the problem as politicians are pushing.
Ethanol plants in the US are pursuing "Green Fuels". Carbon stored in biomass is captured during ethanol production and sequestered. the result is a fuel that emits less carbon when burned than is removed from the atmosphere. It's a step in the right direction where fuels are required.
I like an electric centric economy in the future with nuclear power. it is the cheapest most reliable and has the lowest negative environmental impact of any power source we have.
Germany and France are perfect case studies for what we should and shouldn't be doing.
France has primarily nuclear power and has some of the lowest carbon emission rates at reasonable prices.
Germany closed down nuclear power and invested billions in renewables and their carbon emissions and costs both went way up.
Renewables require building 3 x the capacity due to the inconsistent nature of the power and the addition of natural gas plants to stabilize output. It's just a terrible model.
I think it would be a huge technological advancement if humans could achieve the carbon cycle. Hydrocarbon fuels are a fantastic energy store, and if having more fuel in storage meant less CO2 in the atmosphere, I feel like that is a fantastic technology.
Maybe with fusion, one day energy could be so cheap and environmentally friendly that flying cars really would be the most efficient solution (time is money).
If there was a way to extract the CO2 from the atmosphere and use it for say, carbon fiber - I can only assume it would lower the cost even further and advance the use of them in all other industries... It cant be simply - extract and store underground ... it needs to have a manufacturing use to succeed.
never mentioning how much co2 they capture in metric tons is sketch as hell.
@Heloise O'Byrne i seriously do not understand what you are talking about. Whats your educational level?
@vladimir martinez haha but 2050 we'll be all dead
@Heloise O'Byrne exactly. Beside co2 essential for rain,plants etc. And if u research,u’ll find out that co2 level isn’t that high.
they claimed it was 1 megaton of carbon/year, 12:43. their sources seem sketchy for these numbers and they seem to want to offset ALL emissions leaving almost nothing for plant life.
Mr Beast: Plants a whole forest
Bill: *It’s big brain time*
@Tessa Lee ongoing radiation for 10 years from 3 melted down reactors into Pacific no media coverage ,large aquatic die of mammals starfish herring others no end in sight for this global catastrophe
@Daniel Stan What about the ocean? Can we not clean that up and let the ocean vegetation do its thing? Can we not stop trawling that rips out tonnes of ocean vegetation that usually cleans our air for us? Edit: That's right, there's no money and not much virtue signalling for cleaning something we should never have damaged in the first place. Obviously parents have done a poor job of making their kids accountable for their actions and responsible for cleaning up after themselves.
@s p they dont understand basic science, CNN has to tell them what science to believe
@Daniel Stan This will make pollution way worse. They had to have known that when they started this project... are they trying to destroy earth? Co2 is not putting holes in the ozone and its not a chemical thats foreign to our environment like aerosols. Co2 is natural and the more thats in the air the faster and larger plants will grow. Plants always produce more oxygen when you give them more co2. Heck pot farmers pump co2 into their greenhouses. Makes the fruit huge and they grow faster.
@Daniel Stan And the earth doesn't have so many landmass available for the number of trees needed to make carbon net zero emissions. Seriously, we reached that level.
Well, we need 2 or 3 plants like this in almost every major city in India
Gaurav Gupta yeah, same with seattle, los angeles, dallas, denver, new york, chicago, etc in the us. Having red and orange in the sky is usually not natural during the day
@ashy slashy take your conspiracy theory elsewhere..
P.Hd graduate people make these reports. They are the professional of the research. And government cannot hide it
@Gaurav Kumar Gupta IT IS NOT DUE TO GLOBAL WARMING ITS DUE TO THE SUNS 150,000 YEAR SUPER NOVA.ITS CORE IS CHANGING RELEASING TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF RADIATION AND ULTRA VIOLETTE LIGHT.HEATING EARTHS INNER CORE.ANTARCTICA IS 1 GIANT VOLCANO AND WILL BLOW.U NEED TO STOP THINKING GOVERNMENT IS HELPING YOU.TRUTH IS GOVERNMENT ONLY WANTS YOU DEAD.
@ashy slashy Do you know that recently the largest ever glacier broke off from Antarctica due to global warming.
Or India is suffering many cyclones just because of the 2°C increase in temperature of arabian sea?
YOU DO KNOW CO2 IS THE LOWEST NOW THEN IN EARTHS HISTORY EVER!
What needs to be done is to tally in a very unbiased way, every single expense imposed on the taxpayer due to the restorative efforts to remove pollution from the environment. The biggest culprits, including oil companies should be held responsible through Legislative action for every cent that it takes to address this issue. I find it despicable how they are still trying to worm their way into the clean up process and demanding concessions. They should be imprisoned, any person who aids and abets this is an enemy of the people. If they really want to help, they should be doing their best, so that we don't throw them into a volcano.
They just haven’t figured out a way to tax us for trees existing.
Wth is that supposed to mean? Why can't "they" just tax you already for that amount? If a government actually wants to its just gonna raise taxes, no need for finding obscure excuses to do so
Well, they say everybody has a tree somewhere out there with their name on it. Send us $100 today or we're gonna chop YOUR tree down. :)
Saying it "does the work of 40 million trees" is undermining the issue. We need both.
I used to plant trees for a living.
30 people can plant 3-4 million trees or more in about 3 months. (depending on the people)
@dave web Cover all roadways with, I should think, carbon-negative concrete with a structure... wow. Well, good to see you try some of that. Got some Möbius on hand to get revved up?
@Loon Atic instead of aqueducts reverse it and put mile long concrete coverings over highways , good for animals and pedestrians to move about and can be covered with trees
@-BR- N0xiety If the average carbon foot print of a person is 5 ton per year then we all need to pay $500-1000 each a year to remove the CO2 using the extraction method... quite pricey.
@Peter Hanneman Trees can then be cut down, used profitably, and new trees planted.
the problem is the amount of land to plant those
Oil companies have a huge initiative to reduce the cost of and build more effective methods of CCS (or direct air capture) because they want to keep doing what they are doing. And when the fossil fuel energy is on its last leg, they'll switch to synthetic fuel. This is why we have to let them be a part of this process -- because they aren't against the environment, but for themselves. We just can't be duped by them: we must first use the tech they create to store carbon until we reach a place where the atmosphere can handle the implementation of synthetic fuel.
Energy conservation?
How does this method compare to bamboo if you take the space for solar panels and "the chemistry" into account?
And how much water does it take to remove 1kg co2?
(water polluted with chemicals is probably worse than evaporation/usage by plants)
In Bill Gates book, he describes this as very capital intensive and should be a last minute resort
@Zuzana Stachova ths was my father's name...
@3nd4k51 of course not but you do thats why you have to hide your identity behind silly numbers/letters nick name
@Zuzana Stachova clearly you have no idea what you're talking about
it is the last minute.
Carbon capture should team up with Graphene battery companies.
Get Pure Carbon from the air and make them into batteries and other graphene products. (creating the graphene from the carbon.)
@Joe Anonimous might aswell put my fan outside with a blanket behind it, look i made a CO2 and a covid air scrubber, lol
@Nikolai Eriksson Kukkonen you know nothing about recycling, you cant recycle everything, smelting metals is very dirty
Yes, let's combine TWO useless dreams.
@Yeet_isgold Yeet_king Umm? You do realise you can recycle waste panels among other things very efficently, right?
graphene can only be constructed via what is basically 3d-printing, molecule by molecule, which means it is currently not scalable at all. The problem with graphene is not thatwe have no carbon, it's that we can only construct in atom by atom
The federal government could mandate planting snake plants or other oxygen producing plant in each household as part of existing building codes despite how silly and ridiculous it sounds.
The Government. Mandate. Boy, have you not been paying attention.
Please, this has the potential to be used as a crutch. We will rely too heavily on the technology. We still need to take responsibility of curbing our own overuse of the environment.
As said within the video itself, we no longer have the luxury to pick and choose the methods used to scale back climate change. We've gotta do as much as is available. Some tend to be more easily crowd-fundable, some do better commercially, some are backed by big benefactors. Whatever we can get is what we gotta do.
Well said sir.
It’s not a question of doing this or that, it’s doing it ALL.
Thank you Bill gates for backing carbon capture machines. However we need about 300 more according to Swiss scientists who invented the process, when carbon goes down then we can focus on electric cars, and switching to non fossil fuels
I love how this piece highlights all views and gets that the answer isn’t either/or; it’s ALL of it. If more journalism and politics reflected this way of thinking we would be alright. Thank you CNBC. Keep this type of work up
It's logical that we should be pursuing all possible remedies, but people are rightly concerned that a "little bit of this, little bit of that" approach will be far worse than just concentrating on the one or two most impactful solutions. For example, the oil companies love these carbon capture fans because they know that the more faith people have in carbon removal, the less pressure there will be to eliminate fossil fuels. So some of us are saying that carbon capture is a red herring, and we should focus on the 8,000-pound elephant in the room: humans need to entirely stop burning fossil fuels, now, and we have the technology to do it, and a very steep carbon tax (which simply puts a price on the cost of pollution) will provide the economic incentive to rapidly advance and deploy those technologies.
When they store enough CO2 they can send it to Mars :D. Elon Musk would love that!
Actually what they need to send to Mars is Hydrogen. Find out who Robert Zubrin is.
@ashy slashy WRONG. On May 9, 2013, CO2 levels in the air reached the level of 400 parts per million (ppm). This is the first time in human history that this milestone has been passed.
Carbon dioxide concentrations dropped from 4,000 parts per million during the Cambrian period about 500 million years ago to as low as 180 parts per million during the Quaternary glaciation. of the last two million years.
Keep in mind that humans break the balance between global generation and consumption of CO2 and this is a fact regardless if one believe in human caused climate change or not.
@ashy slashy No.
In Bezos escape pod!
Why doesn’t Elon just take from lake nyo’s an missile it to mars to terraform the frozen planet
NO!! This is amazing I love it. But please do not say that it "does the work of 40 million trees" we don't need to devalue plant life any further...
Why not use both
Those trees are so getting fired!
It does though, its common sense
Trees aren’t actually a good way to capture carbon in the air. They can only capture carbon til they die, then fungi release that carbon back into the atmosphere. Grasses capture way more carbon by putting it in the ground in soil.
i never knew that...
so a grassland is better than a forest for carbon control
I came up with the blueprint on how to fight climate change 2 decades ago. This was futile. Nobody listened. My blueprint involved reforestation of deserts using large pipelines of water from the ocean pumped through the desert. As the water passed through the pipes it would be heated from the desert sun and using solar power and the resulting water vapor would then be used as freshwater to create rainforests. Theoretically, you cold turn the Sahara desert to a massive Co2 sucking rainforest, the biggest Forrest on earth using this method. This method would also solve the rising sea water problems of the next 300 years. Micro climates would be created worldwide, which would, in turn, cool the lands and eventually cool the seas. There are zero known planets in the entire universe similar to earth, or even contain life. So why are we searching for another planet when we should be focusing on saving our own? Trust me, Mars is a shithole.
How would you process the remaining particulates left over from the evaporation process? Salt, sediment etc?
Because human does act intelligent but deep down they we are stupid.
You are forgetting to consider the Earth's albedo and the potential impact it would have on the overall climate.
I’d love to see a breakdown of the inputs to create, run and maintain this facility
Precisely. This is the scientific approach.
hard mcshaft
You’d have to include the degradation, upkeep and repair of the solar system over those 50 years. I have no clue what any of that would look like. It’d be cool to know
Its a good idea but the fact its powered by burning gas is abit stupid..... should have this sort of thing alongside solar farms. If the cost installation an maintaing them could be includded in the large exspence upfrontof the solar farm the overall costs could be reduced. If u looking 50 years into the future well it definetly feasible
Expensive af. Only in American do we cripple ourselves in the name of the environment when the rest of the world doesn't care. Do you think what we conserve in America will offset what China or India outputs in pollution every year? I know we have to conserve the environment but we don't need to cripple ourselves in the process. The government is in the process of shutting down coal power plants across the nation and we don't have the infrastructure available to do that. We'll have to rely mostly on natural gas powered combined cycle units, most of which can't run if the wind speed exceeds 60 mph
As long as Carbon is recycled in a closed loop and used to make other products that is good. SUSTAINABILITY!
@Fox exactly like tar sands and making ethanol
I think it takes a lot of energy to turn CO2 into another product. After all, burning releases energy and CO2, so the reversal must cost energy
As a car enthusiast I really hope this works well
@nick king i probably die in the war,
It will be interesting to see what impact on trees this will have.
I prefer trees millions times more. They are beautiful, they keep the moisture in the ground. They give a home and an environment for many other plants and for the animals and birds.
Also, if you want to have water plant trees. You plant life not just trees.
Mr beast: I'm gonna plant 20million trees!
Bill Gates: Hold my beer.
Actually it's more like "hold my wallet"
we should follow the most effecient ideia. The O2 capture technology is the best option, dont worry about money it is for your safety
I donated a tenner to Mr Beast tree fund thing, who else donated.
(next person) I donated a comment,
I watched an advert.
why u gotta throw my boi under the bus like that
This plant only takes small portions of land compared to 40 Million Trees. This is great as it can work alongside with trees all the while taking minimal space.
Of course everyone prefers trees but this isn't meant to replace them. All of your are sounding ignorant.
I remember when everyone started yelling about climate change and I just sat back and thought to myself "once it becomes a financial problem, business (not nature) will solve it." I'm not wrong
40 million trees are worth more that just air quality. Cheaper to plant trees than to build/maintain infrastructure. Even if trees take longbto grow, this is a longer term solution than this bandaid solution.
@Gh0st its spring here. Already planting new things this weekend. Need to find out how planting trees works in a city.
@Daxaaar The Bot I agree, now go plant some trees...
@Gh0st they should be renewed more
Trees are a renewable resource.
Question: What is the energy cost of removing 1 ton of CO2 this way? And what is the carbon footprint of this energy, so what is the carbon footprint of removing 1 ton of CO2 for 130$? It wasn't mensioned. For example if it takes 0,5 ton of CO2 emission to capture 1 ton it costs than actually twice the price per netto tons CO2 captured.
Both are needed.
The profs did offer their reasons, albeit, they might seem a little biased.
Their main point was that with lesser monetary investment in other technologies, the same results can be acheived.
However, I agree more with the view that we need both.
Carbon capturing that keeps fossil fuel industry carbon neutral, and does not further accelerate it.
Direct Carbon captuting is 100% needed for reversing Global warmimg. If, it can be used for manufactuting cleaner fuels, then, it will be great.
How much energy is required to do this? And does that actually represent a net decrease in impact crom burning fossil fuels????
The biggest active ones use geothermal energy.
@Chris Hayes100% don’t ask questions it’s anti science
@Phil Swaim Damn It I got bamboozled! No wait.. I was just a idiot
@Supergamer Grill cool. So youre saying we need to solve our energy productiom issue first. Thank you for agreeing
@Phil Swaim We already have a good renewable source. Nuclear energy
It produces little carbon For a huge swathe of Energy. If a nuclear power plant came to power then we could power Atleast 20 Carbon captures. Already paying for the nuclear energy and creating a net gain. Add to that we could also power homes and other needs with nuclear.
We have the tools but people don’t wanna use it
Every idea that helps reduce or eliminate completely Co2 emissions out of the atmosphere needed to be backed and encouraged. We need more of them...
@Juba Yuva I didn't say you're talking about them, i gave those as an example to make a point. Being skeptical is what makes humans survive for the last 3 million yrs. It's the human nature to get suspicious. "I'm only not suspicious that i AM suspicious." Rene Descartes
I only stop being suspicious when i see the results
@Ömer Lütfi Taygun I'm not talking about Bill Gates or Elan Musk or Putin or Fernandel...Let's stop being suspicious and negative about everything, but instead encourage any positive thinking no matter what it comes from.
the problem is, does it really? or is it just a marketing strategy? When Bill Gates or Elon Musk is involved in something i sense more profit than environmental concerns but that's just me!
These plants ain’t replacing the trees. Trees have so much more to offer, never mind the fresh oxygen we get from them. Trees n these plants can together n help the Humainty reduce the green house gases effect.
Trees and plants lower the temperature . Go into a forest on a hot day way cooler than an open field think about it
And you don't think this is what's causing problems?
@Stephen Eaton we have solar, Windmills and nuclear energy
People are so ignorant.
Where did all the carbon in fossil fuels come from?
What happens if the co2 in the atmosphere drops below 150ppm?
Why do 80% of the worlds plants, with a C3 classification need far more CO2 than we currently have in the atmosphere?
Why have even the crop yields of C4 classification plants only just started to level out?
Why didn't the world burn up before the start to the current Ice Age, when CO2 levels were five to ten times higher than they are currently?
Why do greenhouse growers pump CO2 in to their greenhouses up to levels of 2000 to 3000ppm (and they would do higher but it costs too much)?
What keeps the earth from freezing?
CO2 is part of the system that gives rise to all the various life on earth, humans have restored the balance and returned CO2 lost to nature back to the atmosphere.
At the lowest point in the previous glaciation, just the latest in the current 21 million year ice age, concentrations of CO2 came dangerously close to the extinction level, 150ppm, (they dropped to 180ppm).
Current levels are the minimum required to guarantee life on earth continues. Particularly after the next glaciation.
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben was super eye opening. Trees are very misunderstood 🌲
This technology should be implemented in paired with major city roads and industrial complex that emits the most CO2 to make it effective.
These Co2 plants don't need to be near every road to be effective just built in the lowest places as C02 is heavy and seeks the lowest place possible !
@Marzadky Agreed.. I guess sooner or later the technology would be possible to miniaturize the size to become part of cars exhaust.. We should collaborate on researching and patenting that technology and make tons of money.. 👍😁
I actually feel this should be miniaturized and put in cars and all carbon emitters rather than put up plants. This would be a more preventive measure coz the industrial size juts would take all the carbon in the air and on some level in nature, there should be existing carbon in the air.
Your smart
Hendro H agreed!!
We've been doing this for several generations now. Ever seen those big stacks off the highway with ladders and platforms? Those are cryogenic oxygen separator plants. They draw in the air and cool it until it liquifies, separating it into oxygen, argon, co2, nitrogen and so forth. Where do you think the carbonation in your drinks come from? The gases in our air are used in every aspect of our daily lives, not just to breathe.
I would like to know whether the carbon obtained by the process can be used to create synthetic graphite
or diamonds
there is a few important things left out tho ... the trees are used by thousands and thousands of animals (that we need too)
these carbon capture plants use allot of chemicals and energy, they make a byproduct (maybe a new problem?)
plants and trees actually take energy from a thing we can spare sunlight....
so maybe use them together? still not sold on this idea.. can we just replant places asap?
look at madagascar there are 0 trees left... we can easily save the world if we all like only planted maybe 10 trees or something and pickup some trash around us.
but we all sitting here looking at this stupid solutions..
but yeah i just got a bit anoyed by this stupid guy with his plastic helmet talking like they are above nature.. and we "slow tree huggers" are doing a job in vain...
sorry for the bad english.
Woah!! We have carbon capture machines! I never knew we already have these
They've been using them on submarines for almost a hundred years. Submariners exhale Co2. It has to be captured and scrubbed.
Capture CO2 with this crazy hack! (Trees hate this trick!)
No really, trees actually do hate it.
@Richard Paige III Ship it then, planeta bud. (but not product, bc. consumption is then toxic like burning bunker fuel.)
@GentlemanBystander Plant asphixia eh? Nope.
@Midnight Majorly get there faster, you sound like an agrestic docent so far.
They already have plenty of co2
I don't know why many professors are showing concerns about use cases of the technology by Petro Companies. We need to explore all the options parallelly- Tree plantation, increasing renewables capacities, and reducing the carbon from the atmosphere with the help of such technologies.
My vote is for Gates, remember that even rotting trees give off CO2
Yes but trees drop seeds that yields more trees that take their place.
It feels even weird to compare the capacity with trees. Plants are lifeforms which make ecosystems where other organisms can survive & thrive. We humans have come from the same & it is only now living in urban jungles that we only care about this one aspect of the nature because we can see it affecting us directly & not the completeness of life & the universe which recycles and balances everything.
Fixing nutrients in soil taken up by urea, now seeing its effect on the soil. Calling forests as wood, soil as dirt shows the exploitative nature & lack of perception towards other life of the people who use it!
According to the BBC, tree farms capture little CO2. Natural forests capture 40 times as much due to undergrowth, bacteria, fungi, etc. That fits what I saw hiking through a tree farm: no animals. A few birds and squirrels but there is no food for larger animals.
Mr.Beast will plant 20 million trees
Elon musk: donates 1 million
Bill gates:
Me: what a time to be alive.
guest guest what’s wrong with people knowing you donated? Also I asked for some proof, as in things to confirm your claim is right, please give me some proof.
@Hi There Obviously you do NOT understand science. I suggest you take some science courses in high school by understanding, NOT by straight memorization. If Mr. Bill Gates really cares about charity, he would have donated his wealth anonymously withOUT strings attached.
guest guest you claim things without sources, where is your proof?
guest guest you literally won’t shut up about high school science so i don’t think you need to be talking about memorization. and he’s very true that the work is like a greenhouse, that’s why carbon is one of the GREENHOUSE gases.
@Eycran In America connections and briberies go a long way.
You can also be helpful by keeping the lands as Ag productive lands instead of covering them with your concert juggles . A concert juggle can cover up the unproductive lands
2:25 I blanked out and was confused as heck when it said $94-232 was a deep decrease cause I heard and read it as $94,232
Holds the soil in place, shades the soil beneath, encourages rainfall, provides habitat for a whole ecosystem and runs totally on it's own energy, not relying on outside energy sources.
We need both and Turning CO2 into fuel!
There was recently a dry ice shortage for medical use in Europe. Also a potential market for captured CO2.
@Neil Carmichael Yes and no. It's certainly better than extracting more CO2 from the ground. It's just so little that it doesn't really make a difference.
I read that worldwide, the beverage industry has a demand for only 6 million tons per year.
The point of selling to soda companies is to make the carbon capture process cheaper by gaining the ability to sell a small portion of their "product". While that's important for the facility, it's ultimately not what we need them for.
Leonhard Bokowski you’re right. But we could use this carbon and somehow make steal or something to make space craft or something space related. Then it would be 100% out of earths atmosphere. And if something happens to the space object. It’ll just be in space lost for forever
@a5cent but it the case of acceptable uses of co2 such as fizzy drinks or dryice, isn't it better they use recycled co2?
@Will Everyday the fact that oil companies are investing in this is because they're looking for a closed loop cycle for the fuel. its a good way to convert solar and wind energy into a reliable energy source
Ehmmm... You realize that selling the CO2, and thereby having it released back into the atmosphere, just completely defeats the whole point?
The plant pulls out co2 from air to help control climate catastrophe timetable and will eventually be all electric. Technology is changing and eventually we could transport fuels from other planets and have a clean planet at same time.
40 million trees is what it would take to just barely offset about one day of carbon production in just the US, assuming the power plant does not produce any carbon emissions of its own and that the tech actually works as advertised. For it to actually work, you would need to build one of these plants every single day for the rest of human existence. This is at the very best is a negative-sum estimate, spending a ton of money and energy to have no appreciable difference.
The only solution is rethinking of our energy production and consumption. It's not a problem you can solve with technology, it's a problem that must be solved by giving up the idea of tremendous wealth as an ideal.
Here's an idea:
Giant Reflective Tarps, stretched across floating buoys, placed alongside existing sea ice, so the ice can grow. Then the tarps can be moved. Ice reflects sunlight, while water absorbs heat from sunlight.
If one little hole is formed in a sheet of sea ice, the water in that hole absorbs heat from the sun, and the hole grows exponentially, with melting occurring in a runaway manner. We need to commission teams to find these holes or cracks in the sea ice, and cover them up with light-reflecting material, like a shiny tarp.
We could, at the very least, drastically slow down the melting of the arctic sea ice, or; maybe we could halt it completely, or even reverse the melting and begin regrowing the sea ice.
Colder water dissolves more CO², and then the cold water sinks, taking the CO² with it. (This slightly increases the cooling effect, but only slightly, and secondarily.)
Carbon Capture is great, but we need to fight this war on multiple fronts. We _Need_ to actively regrow our arctic sea ice. It's the biggest button on Earth's thermostat. I don't care if we have to build giant versions of those machines they put in ponds to freeze them for ice skating. I don't care if we have to build a million snow machines, to cover all the remaining glaciers in fresh snow. We Must Build More Ice.
Our atmospheric content is like the insulation of a house. Our arctic sea ice is like the air-conditioning system on a house. We have to actively address both.
We also need to confront Methane. Methane is a Far More Powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. We need massive, expansive grasslands for that. Grasses absorb methane, while trees Do Not.
The Sahara would be an excellent location to build wild grasslands, but it's probably take a century to make any noticeable progress (though, that's not a reason to never begin). Maybe black, rich soil could be dredged up from riverbeds around the world, and shipped to the Sahara. Maybe desalination plants off the African coast could pump fresh water to the areas being de-desertified.
The problem with trying to turn the Sahara into green savanna is that the world is way too hot right now. When the planet was much cooler, as in 7,000 to 10,000 B.C.E., there was actually regular rainfall across the Sahara. With temperatures as hot as they are now, anything planted on there edges of the Sahara would require artificial irrigation, at least, until we further cool the planet through other projects.
So we need to start with creating expansive grasslands in Canada and Russia/ Siberia.
There's actually already a project underway, that's trying to artificially re-create the Mammoth/ Mastadon, because sub-arctic grasslands need a lot of stomping. The packed ground prevents tree growth, so that grasses can thrive, and drink up that methane.
*CO² Capture alone is a losing battle without addressing methane as well as sea ice production/ maintenance*
If we already have significant global warming positive loops in place, attempts to deal with it only by limiting carbon emissions is doomed.
“It’s difficult to finance these projects”
Bill gates: hold my beer
I'd rather hold his wallet
Bill should get help for his alcoholism.
@jon keating Don't say that, people will believe it!
🤣🤣🤣👍
Exine You know Bill Gates owns a patent for the zika virus, right? You understand the implications of this, right? (He funded research to create it, incase you couldn't put two and two together.) Oddly enough, the virus happened upon a large population. Almost as if the laboratory that held the virus, released it.
Well most of are right and have your views. What I think these plants can be set-up in cities which have high pollution and no space for trees. Let's say Delhi which can use this. This would at least reduce the health hazards they are suffering.
Can you imagine if we could pull co2 out of the air and then use it for energy! That would be awesome
The law of thermodynamics applies energy to produce will be greater than output . Noting beats photosynthesis + you get oxygen and cooling water retention in the soil less flooding and the use of native species of tree will greatly benefit wild life
we can grow corn and make energy from it, WOW
@jackdbur that's awesome. Maybe in the near future that would be a thing
Its called the Sabatier process !! SpaceX is setting one up at Starbase.
look into water powered cars... this is a waist of time.
Watched it twice over a year. This technology should be used. Governments should fund the project. Captured CO2 should not be used for any means, not even to make soda. Build the plants worldwide 100,000 of them. Governments should take on this project, not oil companies. Now!
There is no way in hell this would have worked if we started 50 years ago. Australia, California, Siberia, the Amazon, and much of indonesia lost massive swaths of forest in the past 2 years alone, trillions of trees, not only is that a loss in capacity, but their bodies were burned up into the atmosphere adding that much more carbon. People have very little concept of how much warming and extinction there will soon be, it cannot be fixed, but people will make lots of money making you think so.
Stop showing steam release as carbon dioxide emissions 🙄
@PapaWheelie No prob Bob...
@jeff shackleford - thanks, I just learned a new word today. Pedantic is definitely the most pedantic word I now know. And I thought this thread was totally useless.
@PapaWheelie On the off chance of being pedantic, nuclear uses fuel as well.
@Rob Calhoun Sorry I did not understand your sarcasm. Few of the people I work with use sarcasm, which makes me less aware that some people do.
Good news, the price per metric ton CO2 is now (3 June 2021) around 51 euro (= 62 dollars) in the EU, up from the 20 dollars the prof mentioned in the video. The incentives keep getting stronger, but we're not there yet. We need to price to go up, so that there are natural incentives for companies to become more sustainable.
When you remove CO2 from the air you're removing ONE Carbon atom and TWO Oxygen atoms. Ideally you want to remove ONLY the Carbon atom and release the Oxygen like plants.
"The process of photosynthesis is commonly written as: 6CO2 + 6H2O → C6H12O6 + 6O2.
This means that the reactants, six carbon dioxide molecules and six water molecules, are converted by light energy captured by chlorophyll
(implied by the arrow) into a sugar molecule and six oxygen molecules, the products."
The plant is taking in 18 Oxygen atoms and releasing the 12 Oxygen atoms it doesn't need.
Assuming a cost of $150 per ton of CO2 removed, and that 375 billion tons of CO2 has been released since the industrial revolution, it’d cost $56.25 trillion to remove all the CO2 with these plants.
Tree! Why is it so hard to ask these technologists to use the simplest possible solution? Geez!
Combustion process takes one O² and produce one CO².
Tree job is taking the CO², converts it into O² which we all can use. In the process, it also produces timber, food, protects the soil, and provide great habitat for wildlife.
But now you geniuses are capturing and locking CO² down. Eventually, trees cannot replace the O² lost in the atmosphere by photosynthesis anymore. Your success will become our demise...
Tree runs on free sunlight. Your machine runs on electricity. Guest what, most of the electricity production spews out CO² in the first place...
Think of something else, such as greenifying the desert and wastelands, genius!!!
These technology should be banned!!!
After calculating in all the fossil fuel and energy for producing the parts and machines, not to mention the energy and fuel costs of getting the resources to build those components as well as infrastructure and transport for all building companies involved in the project, I wonder how efficient that plant really is. What's wrong with planting more trees and greening the desert, like some people have been doing successfully?
part of the benefit is it can eventually replace fossil fuels. Making sure they don't get some stupid carbon credit would be important though.
I wander what the carbon footprint of creating and keeping this plant is?
Reversal of desertification is essential. Bare ground = hot planet.
The sad thing is much of this deforested land is permanently locked under concrete buildings and roads.
@captainlockes agree, that's true
@downbntout I meant reversing the melting of glaciers. The melting of glaciers means higher sea level and also exposing the dark earth which absorbs more sunlight causing more heat.
@captainlockes are you saying reversal of glaciers is essential?
And reversal of glaciers as well
WOW..!! So once implemented, remaining trees will not be able to produce oxygen without carbon dioxide and finally die?
We're really gonna take carbon out of the air just to put it in drinks so we can vent it back into the air? Damn.
it's a yes and no kinda thing, at the moment most of our co2 comes from capture at high carbon power plants at a cost of $69-$103 per ton which is already lower than the estimate here (although I'll wait for proof that they can do it at this price) the issue with capture for resale is that we've already got enough supply to meet demand, so we're back to square one where carbon capture has to be government funded or laws around carbon neutrality need to be introduced. I could see coke maybe introducing something like this at bottling plants if the costs end up being at the lower estimates, although their factories already use up so much water I wonder if there'd be enough left for carbon capture in the area
Planting trees is good idea to remove CO2 from the air. Not cutting them down en-mass in the Amasonas could be even better.
In order for trees to survive they need more than the current level of 475ppm of CO2. They do better when the CO2 level is at least twice that amount...that's when they become healthy enough to survive drought. There is a reason that greenhouse operators buy CO2 generators and subject their plants to 1200 - 1500 ppm of CO2, because that's when the plants are at their best.
Or cutting and planting, if it's twice the best.
Yes let’s get Bill Gates involved in planting trees,
@John Kubik Cool down for whom? All you quacks don't even know what CO2, Carbon, etc is for. Obviously its heat sources to decay & regenerate. The sun is morphogenetic as do all things that create a symbiosis. They are hiding a lot of truths by cooling the firmament. It's to allow folks who dont have carbon based elements in them to live long lives when in fact real nature would wipe out half the world like thanos did. A event like that would be catastrophic which is why they have systems designed to reverse everything
@John Kubik lets turn the whole planet into a desert then.
Imagine coming up with this plan after CUTTING DOWN TOO MANY TREES EVERY DAY!!! Sounds like desperation.