One slight mistake, in the sentence I quote the word “from”(misspelled form) should read to. Mineral weathering is not around $200 but around $20, and is probably the most cost-effective CDR, Olaf schuiling
…money to go forward with mineral weathering seems to me a diversion of money form the most cost effective approaches). From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike MacCracken Sent: dinsdag 27 januari 2015 17:42 To: [email protected]; Geoengineering Cc: Andrew Lockley; Bill Stahl Subject: Re: [geo] Re: Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective Hi Greg—The flaw in both of our arguments seems to be our assumption that the world is rational. Right now there are tremendous opportunities for cost-effective (i.e., few-year payback) efficiency steps and yet, as noted in a CEO survey in the news yesterday, despite the clear risk and the opportunities to do something about it, the surveyed CEOs don’t seem to think this is a significant issue. There are also tremendous opportunities to slow the warming by cutting short-lived species—all quite straightforward and with many co-benefits to health, air quality, biomass preservation and more—maybe the world is moving slowly to eventually do that. Fortunately, the cost of renewables/alternative energy sources is coming down so that change is starting, but lots more could be done that is cost effective (witness solar panels on my roof giving me a 9+% guaranteed after tax return on investment) and there is just not a real sense of urgency even though the Social Cost of Carbon studies (not just the new one in Nature) show an external cost of order $200/ton of CO2. Where is rationality in all of this? In a rational world, lots would be going on in mitigation and then there would still be value in pulling CO2 lower, and augmented weatherization would be then a really key step (certainly worth researching, but given all the cost effective opportunities right now not being taken advantage of, diverting money to go forward with mineral weathering seems to me a diversion of money form the most cost effective approaches). So, my problem is not with air CO2 management in concept, just that it would be so much more cost effective not to put the CO2 into the air in the first place. Mike On 1/26/15, 11:27 PM, "Greg Rau" <[email protected]> wrote: Mike et al., I don't think anyone is asking mineral weathering to singlehandedly solve the problem, though the fact that it can and will naturally solve the problem given enough time means it does have the proven capacity to do so, unlike any other CDR scheme I am aware of. How much accelerated weathering we do does largely come down to extraction, processing, and movement of mineral mass. Yes, Gt's of CO2 mitigation does require Gt's of mineral, but why is this necessarily a showstopper if we fail to stabilize CO2 by other means? We currently extract about 2.5 Gt of minerals/yr. Is it unthinkable that we wouldn't/couldn't double or triple this in the interest of helping to stabilize air CO2, climate and ocean acidity? Or would you prefer to impact vastly larger land areas and potentially disrupt food and fiber production by employing IPCC-endorsed BECCS or afforestation? All methods of air CO2 management have benefits, costs, impacts, and tradeoffs. Let's hope that we invest in the research to well understand these for all of the CO2 management options available, and that we then make rational decisions on their deployment (in time) based on this info. Given the decisions and endorsements made so far, I'm not holding my breath. Hence, looking forward to that private resilience session in Paris. Greg ________________________________ From: Mike MacCracken <[email protected]> To: Geoengineering <[email protected]> Cc: Andrew Lockley <[email protected]>; Bill Stahl <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, January 26, 2015 5:09 PM Subject: Re: [geo] Re: Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective Re: [geo] Re: Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective Here is another way to think of the amount of mass being talked about. The global average per capita use of carbon today is of order 9. GtC/yr/7B people, so about 1.3 ton per person of carbon. Multiply by 3.67 to get to CO2, and it is about 5 t CO2 per person. Would olivine be an equal mass (or a bit more to match mole to mole)? That is a lot of olivine—and for every person on Earth to deal with present emissions—even if this is off by a factor of a few!!! Every person on Earth—not just everyone on coastlines in NJ or the US or the world. This is why we have to get global emissions down down, down and then also be doing something like this. Mike On 1/26/15, 5:36 PM, "Andrew Lockley" <[email protected]> wrote: Yes, placing olivine accurately is almost the exact equivalent of vacuum dredging, but in reverse. You could dump it with a huge Panamax class vessel, but it you'd end up with the drop too far from the shore, and probably too bunched up, too. With a smaller ship, like a dredger, you'd get the distribution you need. Added to which, the materials handling costs are going to be almost exactly right, because with dredging you're pulling material out of the sea in an arbitrary but nearshore location, and moving it to the nearest port with a rail head where you can get rid of it. It's olivine backwards. A On 26 Jan 2015 22:24, "Bill Stahl" <[email protected]> wrote: I hesitate to add to what is already a leviathan of a thread... but here goes. Assuming a carbon price were in effect, could coastal governments and landowners offset the cost of beach enhancement & sand replacement with CO2-sequestering sand? It would not have to optimally efficient to be substantial. On the face of it, getting permitted to use olivine on beaches seems a huge hurdle, but there is a already a tremendous amount of stirring-up of shallow coastal waters, budgeted and permitted. Transportation has already been arranged. Based on my familiarity of the Jersey Shore, coastal towns throw enough money at replacing sand that will quickly erode away, so why not put it to some long-term use? (Perhaps Atlantic City's unemployed croupiers can be sent out stirring the beaches). I have no idea how to calculate the potential scale, but perhaps this has already been done. Convince homeowners' associations to link CDR to property values and you've harnessed an unstoppable force... And is dredging relevant here? Talk about mass-handling. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
