I can't wait until they makes these no cost, low-maintenance, and self-replacing. Oh man, just think of how easy it would be to fix our climate issues!
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2025
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Direct air capture is a scam. It requires energy that comes from somewhere else. Capturing CO2 requires energy, it’s basic physics/chemistry.
Nothing about it makes sense excpet as an expensive boondoggle and a distraction for correcting the root causes of climate change.
MIT tech review article
This will only ever make sense when we have carbon neutral energy that is “too cheap to meter.” So, like, nuclear fusion, or solar panels become cheaper than tar roofs. In other words, these systems will make sense after climate change is solved. lol.
Exactly.
That energy can come from somewhere that doesn't produce more carbon than these kinds of machine sequester. Solar, wind, nuclear. Obviously we need to stop burning fossil fuels, but also we need to turn the carbon we've already produced back into a form that won't find its way back into the air.
It can, but it isn’t and it won’t. DAC is a scam and a distraction until fossil fuels are out of the equation. It is a false hope, a glamour, to keep us from addressing the root causes.
Once fossil fuels are out of the equation, we will still need to sequester carbon. And at point, it will actually be powered by renewables.
When fossil fuels are out of the equation, civilization will have to learn to live on a roughly 3 to 1 EROEI as opposed to the 100:1 of the prewar period and the roughly 20:1 today.
Your surplus energy decides your civilizational metabolic rate and is a key pillar of what is possible. Are we building shit like this at 3:1? What are we giving up for it?
https://www.collapse2050.com/eroei-civilizations-decline/
No, and we never will if the technology doesn't improve. The carbon has to go, there's no two ways about it
The carbon, or us has to go. If we couldn't afford to not emit it in the first place during the years of plenty, there is zero chance of getting rid of it in the lean years.
Any carbon emitted is carbon we will have to try and live with.
Cmon bro
They’re building nuclear plants for AI, you think they’re gonna build what, wind farms to run a DAC plant? They just basically made it unaffordable to put solar on your own home, do you think they won’t be like “lol build a natural gas power plant to run it”
Nothing gets done if the Saudis don’t win.
Kind of stupid to say its all about the Saudis when the US produces more oil and gas products than most every other country. In fact, Saudi Arabia produces literally half as much oil as we do here
None of this addresses the comment I left. I never said the saudis are gonna be the pioneers of renewable powered DAC lmfao
Saudis are a stand-in for “big oil” as a whole. In other words, the oil barons of the world aren’t going to let renewables power anything; DAC will be fossil fuels; “clean” coal/nautural gas and they will release more CO2 than they can capture of course because that’s just thermodynamics.
That article's only real point is that we shouldn't pin our hopes entirely on sequestration. Nothing about it being invalid or "a scam."
Basically summed up in these two paragraphs:
Carbon sequestration is likely to play a part in becoming carbon negative, and deserves to be explored.
Until fossil fuels are not a part of the energy equation, DAC is a band-aid where a tourniquet is required. Sure do research, but DAC will never work while we are burning fossil fuels for energy. It doesn’t even make economic sense.
We need a study to determine how much energy is released from burning billionaires. That's the only way these things might be carbon-neutral!
Finally, someone who gets it!
So what if it required 1 watt?
You have to do actual math to determine if it’s worth it, not just write it off because it requires energy.
The more you spend, the more you save!
The math has been done to death. CO2 capture requires energy input and doesn’t yield any. This is basic stuff.
Yes, but just because you are spending energy doesn’t mean you are emitting a lot of carbon. Especially if your power comes from nuclear.