" 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). "
The video at the link, Bill Gates and Big Oil back this company that’s trying to solve climate change by sucking CO2 out of the air https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/carbon-engineering-co2-capture-backed-by-bill-gates-oil-companies.html using information from last year puts the cost at "$94-232 per ton of CO2." For what is worth, this is yet another alternative suggested by Gregory Benford: Put a Fresnel lens at the (Earth-Sun) Lagrangian point L1 to reduce the solar energy reaching the Earth by 0.5% to 1% with an estimated (more than a decade ago) cost of $10B. As a potential bonus, assuming that the positive feedback loop of CO2 and temperature which has been "confirmed" stands, more CO2 (in the atmosphere) -> higher (global) temperature -> more CO2 -> ... and presumably, lower temperature -> less CO2 -> lower temperature -> ... Interestingly, in his introduction to the mid-nineties FAR FUTURES anthology he wrote: "Current thinking holds that the big, long term problem we face is the loss of carbon dioxide from our air. This gas, the food of the plants, gets locked up in rocks. Photosynthetic organisms down at the very base of the food chain extract carbon from air, cutting the life change." On Fri, Jun 7, 2019 at 12:18 PM Ian Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
