The addons math/tabula and its parent addons math/cal and math/uu have been
largely rewritten and are now far stabler than they were.
The main way to get to grips with TABULA is via studying the built-in
t-tables ("TABULA-tables") SAMPLE0--SAMPLE9…
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/TABULA/samples
The last one, SAMPLE9, is particularly noteworthy. See this page for
details…
https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/TABULA/samples/cost_to_capture_atmospheric_CO2
Atmospheric CO2 concentration has been rising steadily since 1960, when it
first began to be measured regularly at Mauna Loa, HI. At that time it
stood at <320 ppm (parts-per-million). Now it stands at >400 ppm, an
increase of over 80 ppm.
This observed level of atmospheric carbon is gaining wider acceptance as
having a damaging effect on the world's climate. Whether it does or not, a
British Columbia-based firm called Carbon Engineering has built a plant to
capture CO2 from the atmosphere, at a cost of <$100 per metric ton (100
USD/t). They have attracted $68 million investments from Chevron,
Occidental and coal giant BHP.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47638586
I don't want to take sides over this. Nor to invite the taking of sides in
this thread. Rather it's my aim to develop tools to help the rest of us
explore the figures for ourselves, whatever side we're on. Relying on
specialists to do the calculations is simply to promote a new world
religion, with applied mathematicians as its priesthood.
So I thought I'd take Carbon Engineering's current price and use TABULA to
calculate what it would cost to restore atmospheric concentration to 1960
levels.
The cost comes out rather high: around 57 times the projected USA budget
deficit for FY2020, would you believe?
This raises vital questions for me:
++ are the input figures reliable? I used Google to track them down, but
have I copied them over correctly?
++ is TABULA doing it right? I'm terrified of orders-of-magnitude errors,
which can so easily arise with a misplaced prefix 'k' (kilo-) or 'G'
(giga-).
Would anyone fancy checking my calculations?
Ian Clark
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