Worlds largest vacuum to suck carbon out of the sky (and money out of wallets)

https://climeworks.com/news/climeworks-mammoth-construction-update-dec22

In a world of turmoil, trust the Sydney Morning Herald to ask the key question of the day:

Should Australia house a giant vacuum cleaner to suck carbon from the sky?

In May this year, on the flat plains of an Icelandic geothermal reserve, a gigantic vacuum cleaner designed to suck planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the sky was switched on.

The machine, called Mammoth, would not be entirely out of place on a Mad Max set….

The big machine in Iceland and will soon start pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere each year and turning it into calcium carbonate rock underground.

In a world where humans make 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually the project will be able to remove 36,000 tons of CO2 each year, which is approximately one millionth of human annual emissions.

Cost estimates are said to be “closer to $1,000 a ton” to remove the CO2. Effectively, we’re spending 36 million dollars US to convert one millionth of human annual emissions of a fertilizing gas into limestone rock we don’t need.

Flagrant Big Government wastage doesn’t get much more pointless than this.

File this away for the history books of the future like the quest for perpetual motion machines.

 

Carbon Capture

https://climeworks.com/news/climeworks-mammoth-construction-update-dec22

The process is called Direct Air Capture (DAC) and supposedly the Mammoth plant achieves something equivalent to taking “8,000 cars off the road” each year, as if that was a useful thing.

The problem for the Swiss Company (Climaworks) is that the most efficient machines for capturing carbon are plants, and they’re cheap and out of patent.

Climeworks built this project in Iceland, of course, so they can use “clean” geothermal energy. But that raises the question of how much electricity it takes to turn CO2 into limestone. If we ran it off coal fired power would it ever be carbon neutral?

The Chemical Engineer explains the process

“It’s essentially a SodaStream on steroids,” says Douglas Chan, COO of Climeworks. Absorption water is injected at the top of the tower and trickles down through packing that fills the column. The water dissolves the CO2 coming up through the bottom of the tower producing a pressurised mix that is ready for injection underground through two onsite wells operated by project partner Carbfix. Deep under the earth it reacts with the rock, becoming mineralised, locking up the emissions for long-term storage.

Jan Wurzbacher, Climeworks CEO, said: “Within two years, the CO2 has become solid carbonate rock, 800m underground where it will stay for the next couple of millions of years for sure.”

As for the cost of capturing the carbon, Wurzbacher says: “Today we are closer to the US$1,000 per tonne mark than we are to the US$100 per tonne mark.”

If we pretend the costs will fall like they did with slave-made solar panels subsidized by the Chinese Communist Party this process will become wildly cheap I promise:

“If we apply learning rates, which are known from other industries such as solar PV and the wind industry, and if we compare them to our predicted technological learning, we’ll end up at a cost level at the order of US$100 per tonne, going towards 2050.”

Even if this fantasy comes true, it’s still $100 a ton we don’t have to spend.

It’s a cult.

10 out of 10 based on 110 ratings

154 comments to Worlds largest vacuum to suck carbon out of the sky (and money out of wallets)

  • #
    David Maddison

    Even if atmospheric CO2 was a problem, which the Socialist Morning Herald calls “carbon” (sic) to cater to its ignorant readership, as Jo says, aren’t the most efficient carbon dioxide removal machines plants?

    Wouldn’t it be easier and actually useful to irrigate Australia’s central deserts and grow timber or crops to house and feed the world? This should have been done at least a century ago.

    Northern rivers that waste there water discharging into the ocean could be diverted for the purpose. This would be a far cheaper project, and actually useful, rather than “a giant vacuum cleaner” (sic).

    And don’t you love it how these bizarre and outrageously expensive Leftist mega-engineering projects have such simplistic names like “giant vacuum cleaner” to remove bad “carbon” (sic). That tells you all you need to know about the target audience for this nonsense.

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    • #
      Leo G

      Climeworks Mammoth plant is powered by geothermal energy so I expect that some time before decommissioning it will make the transition to net carbon sink.

      Of course there is the opportunity cost of using the geothermal source for carbon sequestration instead of, say, electric power generation.

      The other half-million or so “Mammoth” plants necessary to attain Net Zero would need a different power source. Windfarms perhaps.

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    • #
      Ozwitch

      I’m thankful these things are so ineffective. We need more CO2 not less.

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    • #

      Yes, the Bradfield scheme sometimes get referred to as if it was some sort of crackpot idea.

      It is pity that some version of it has not been carried out.

      Dr John Bradfield graduated from Sydney University with the University Gold Medal after completing a Bachelor of Engineering in 1889 and later a Master of Engineering in 1896.

      In 1912 he was appointed Chief Engineer for Sydney’s railways and in 1915 submitted his vision for the electrification of suburban railways, an underground railway link that would go on to become City Circle and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
      He oversaw both the design and construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
      He was responsible for the Cataract Dam (completed 1907), the Burrinjuck Dam (completed 1928), and Brisbane’s Story Bridge (completed 1940).

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    • #
      Jon Rattin

      Giant vacuum cleaner is a bit plain. I would have opted for a more punchy name like “The Decarbotron”, that’d really get the Lefties excited

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      • #
        Graham Richards

        Please stop the nonsense ideas.

        You might just convince the Albo / Bowen coalition to do something even more dumb & ridiculous which the tax payer ends up paying for.

        They currently have enough dumb & ridiculous plans of their own!!

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        • #
          jelly34

          Talk about”Dumb and Ridiculous”Speaking of electricity,I just had an epiphany.All those people driving around in”Electric Cars”patting themselves on the back for being such good citizens siting on a VERY large battery waiting for it to self combust and hoping that they can get out of said car in time.
          I bet that they are NOT told about THAT little gem.

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    • #
      Philip

      When I was a kid, I remember driving with my parents through the irrigation lands I had never seen before. And I’d imagine Australia in the future, with images of what I saw before me, spread everywhere, on a massive scale – probably powered by something like nuclear power stations pumping water into the dry inland. Really “futuristic”.

      But nothing happened.

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    • #
      Gatone Rewine

      Indeed, many countries have embarked on the afforestation programs some decades ago. Most notably, China. Some information on their program:
      https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/how-is-china-turning-deserts-into-arable-lands/
      https://time.com/4851013/china-greening-kubuqi-desert-land-restoration/
      https://english.www.gov.cn/news/202306/08/content_WS6481164cc6d0868f4e8dcb15.html

      Most impressive and admirable. India is doing the same. And our own Geoff Lawton conducted a very fruitful “Greening the desert” experiment in Jordan ( inspiring many around the world to try their hand in a drylands gardening in their own backyards in the process). I remember we had “Ribbons of green” program (not sure if it was Western Australia only) to fight salinity, I have no idea why it was abandoned. I also remember how some Shires in WA used to supply free trees to local residents who wanted to plant them. Where did it all go? Recently, City of Swan planted trees on the verges, people started complaining that now they have nowhere to park their cars. By now, lots of the trees are damaged or gone.

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    • #
      jelly34

      There’s one born every minute.Lol.

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  • #
    MM from Canada

    And what happens if the CO2 escapes? How many people will be killed?

    “­Lake Nyos had long been quiet before it happened. Farmers and migratory herders in the West African country of Cameroon knew the lake as large, still and blue.

    But on the evening of Aug. 21, 1986, farmers living near the lake heard rumbling. At the same time, a frothy spray shot hundreds of feet out of the lake, and a white cloud collected over the water. From the gro­und, the cloud grew to 328 feet (100 meters) tall and flowed across the land. When farmers near the lake left their houses to investigate the noise, they lost consciousness.

    The heavy cloud sunk into a valley, which channeled it into settlements. People in the affected areas collapsed in their tracks — at home, on roads or in the field — losing consciousness or dying in a few breaths. In Nyos an­d Kam, the first villages hit by the cloud, everyone but four inhabitants on high ground died.”

    https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/lake-nyos.htm

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Back in the day, they used to teach the carbon cycle in schools, which today have been transformed into indoctrination centres. Kids understood the importance and natural function of carbon dioxide, vital for plant growth, and plants for animal food, etc..

    Only in recent decades has carbon dioxide “carbon” (sic) been considered a universally bad thing by the masses, present company excepted.

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    • #
      Ronin

      They could achieve better results by persuading all the climate botherers to not exhale for an hour a day.

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      • #
        DOC

        Ronin. Very effective way to win the argument! No alternate opinions left to back the opinion science.

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      • #
        oeman50

        Given the costs, couldn’t they just buy 8,000 IC cars and take them off the road? It would be less expensive!

        20

    • #
      Ronin

      David, would you know how industrial CO2 is produced, years ago I toured the BOC facility in Rocklea in Brisbane, the process for liquid oxygen and nitrogen was done by compression, expansion and then distillation of the liquid air in a copper distillation column, I don’t remember any mention of CO2.

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      • #
        David Maddison

        Hi Ronin, I think there are several methods such as a by-product of extraction of oil and gas deposits, steam reforming of methane for high purity CO2, a by-product of fermentation and some other methods.

        Fractional distillation of air as used to produce liquid nitrogen or oxygen is not usually done because CO2 is a trace gas, there’s hardly any there.

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        • #
          Ronin

          Thanks David.

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        • #
          oeman50

          Hi David. Here in the U.S., the methods you cite are used but supplemented with natural underground CO2 pockets. Wells are drilled and the CO2 is fed into pipelines.

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        • #
          MikeH

          Air Separation Units work as you say, by cryogenic distillation.
          Interestingly they have pre-treatment systems to remove water vapour, CO2 and trace hydrocarbons which would freeze and block the distillation system. That pre-treatment typical employs a couple of large vessels containing molecular sieve material. They work on a duty/regen cycle with regen accomplished by heating.

          ASUs are rated by their oxygen capacity: 5000 tons per day is about the biggest.
          That would process about 25,000 tons of air per day => 25 million kg per day.
          Taking CO2 as 400 ppm, that’s 10,000 kg per day……
          Call it 3600 tons per year: 10% of this mahoosive facility.

          Why don’t they just take the regen stream from ASUs as a CO2-rich source?

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      • #
        Kalm Keith

        When I was a kid there were ice blocks of solid co2 used to keep ice cream frozen in insulated carry packs.

        Obviously it wasn’t expensive and must have been made at the local ice factory. This is in the period when refrigerators ran on kerosene or regular ice delivered to the home by the iceman.

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        • #
          Ronin

          KK, I can remember that, it was in big green canvas cylinder shaped bag it kept our ice creams cold, must have been for end of year breakup or fetes .
          Was the Co2 in pellets or blocks , it was in Brisbane back around 59-60.

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          • #
            Kalm Keith

            Was in blocks , but as you say end of fifties, start of sixties and memory could be unreliable, though not as bad as O’Biden.

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            • #
              melbourne+resident

              You could still get blocks of frozen CO2 in Queensland in the 1990s as we used to get a block to put into our Eskys when going camping on Fraser Island to keep our meat preserved.

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        • #
          StephenP

          ICI ammonia plants produced CO2 as a by-product. Sold as both liquid and blocks.
          It’s main uses were for producing fizzy drinks, cooling nuclear plants (IIRC Anglesey) and a very minor use for freeze branding cattle (subsequently replaced by liquid nitrogen).

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      • #
        Ross

        Whatever the process, recently the cost of CO2 has skyrocketed! I use the Medical grade CO2 bottles from BOC for one of my work practices. 2 years ago a replacement bottle ( D size) was about $30. Now, nearly $80. Explain that to me, because the BOC person couldn’t.

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        • #
          Ross

          C size, not D.

          40

        • #
          David Maddison

          The price of everything has skyrocketed.

          The Government is lying when they say the inflation rate is 3.6%.

          No one I know who actually visits a supermarket thinks it’s less than 25% to 30% or more.

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        • #
          James Murphy

          Food grade CO2 for Australian use was extracted from a well “Caroline” in South Australia. It was taken offline in 2017 as it ran out after about 50 years of production. It has been plugged and abandoned and decommissioned. The next CO2 reservoir (nangwarry) isn’t online yet, as far as I know.

          Not sure how or if this would affect pricing but I think the lack of this high grade CO2 doesn’t exactly help matters.

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      • #
        Cementafriend

        A major source of CO2 is beer making. CO2 is also produced in making wine. The bubbles in champagne are CO2. One can capture CO2 in making lime (CaO) from limestone but it is uneconomical compared to the supply from large breweries.

        30

    • #
      Grant Boydell

      I wonder if any of the kids realise their own bodies are ~18% comprised of Carbon?

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  • #
    David M. Albert

    Lots of moving parts and high pressure=high maintenance costs.

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    • #

      But … someone else is paying.
      And it’s saving the world.
      Think of the kids ….
      Do not worship false idols.

      It IS a cult, isn’t it.

      Auto

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  • #
    Anton

    Meanwhile 77 whales wash up on a beach in Orkney in the largest mass stranding for decades. Orkney is a centre for offshore windfarms. I’d like to see a map…

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  • #
    Bruce

    Pumping high-pressure CO2 underground, into deep rock formations of relatively unknown nature. When the CO2 contacts ANY ground / artesian water at high pressure it will become “Carbonic acid”, which is the thing that did all the fancy work in limestone caves at a slow pace, under “natural” pressure.

    What could possibly go wrong?

    How is this functionally any different from “fracking”?

    How might this affect the existing CO2 MINING operations in the US and Australia? These wells being the planets current primary source of “food-grade” CO2.

    When will the eco-nazis turn their satanic gaze on the people making bread, beer and champagne? They are already warming up the campaign against broad-acre grain crops, as a wary to “right-size” the global population.

    Combine that little caper with the coordinated assault on grazing and fishing and it gets clearer.

    As they say in the classix:

    “Something wicked, this way comes”.

    As always in these mega-projects intended to “save” us,(well, some of them, not us):

    FOLLOW THE SPILLAGE!!

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    • #
      David Maddison

      “Something wicked, this way comes”.

      In Macbeth, the witches, from where the phrase “something wicked, this way comes” are representatives of evil and are devoted to destroying humanity. Lord Macbeth is politicslly ambitious and is their current target and they enjoy watching his decline as he has to murder more people to cover up his previous murder.

      According to Wikipedia:

      The Three Witches represent evil, darkness, chaos, and conflict, while their role is as agents and witnesses. They appear to have a warped sense of morality, deeming seemingly terrible acts to be moral, kind or right, such as helping one another to ruin the journey of a sailor. Their presence communicates treason and impending doom.

      Lord Macbeth might be considered reoresentative of weak-willed and ignorant politicians and ill-informed voters while the three witches might be considered representatives of the modern Left/Elites who control the politicians.

      One difference is that Macbeth was overcome by guilt and paranoia, a stage no politician has yet got to but I am looking forward to.

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      • #
        Leo G

        Lord Macbeth is politically ambitious …

        Shakespeare’s Macbeth is self-absorbed and intensely evil. He contrasts the different natures of Macbeth and Banquo using the three witches to tempt each with a prophesy of greatness. The temptation blinds Macbeth to the truth, while Banquo understands the risk.

        “But ‘tis strange,
        And oftentimes to win us to our harm
        The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
        Win us with honest trifles to betray ‘s
        In deepest consequence.” – Banquo Act 1 Scene 3

        20

    • #
      Maptram

      “When will the eco-nazis turn their satanic gaze on the people making bread, beer and champagne?”

      I presume by champagne you mean sparkling wine.

      But what about all the non sparkling wines. I believe that CO2 is produced as part of the process to convert sugar to alcohol.

      Unless of course wine is excluded because it is the preferred beverage of the elite.

      30

    • #
      KP

      “How might this affect the existing CO2 MINING operations in the US and Australia? These wells being the planets current primary source of “food-grade” CO2.”

      Oh no!! We’re digging up the CO2 the last world-wide civilisation buried to save the planets, just before their demise…

      30

  • #

    36,000 tonnes a year.
    China produces 44,000,000 tonnes a day, just by burning coal – so the annual sequestration of this machine is equivalent to China’s output in about 70 seconds

    Redefines ‘worthwhile’, perhaps?

    Auto

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    • #
      David Maddison

      Thanks for that calculation.

      Like ALL “green” projects the numbers do NOT add up.

      But follow the money trail.

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      • #
        John in NZ

        Something else that doesn’t add up. I think the following is quite interesting.

        In the first IPCC assessment report(FAR) in 1991, total annual emissions, natural plus anthropogenic(N+A), were 197 gigatonnes of carbon per year.(GtC/yr). (FAR page 8)

        In the sixth assessment report(AR6) in 2021, total annual emissions were 224.4 GtC/yr. (AR6 Chapter 5 p.700 )

        So total annual emissions (N+A) have increased by 28.4 GtC/yr. Included in this increase is an increase in anthropogenic emissions of about 5 GtC/yr.

        This means that between the FAR and the AR6, natural annual emissions have increased by 23.4 GtC/yr.

        40

        • #

          John in NZ – thanks!
          Looks like the IPCC’s estimate [it does NOT actually measure the CO2] has increased by some 10% – or an error bracket of about twice the amount it is estimated [again] that humans emit.

          They compare two large numbers, neither of which is accurately known, then want to close down civilisation.

          Not very precise ‘science’ …

          Auto

          40

          • #
            John in NZ

            Hi Auto.
            They compare two large numbers, neither of which is accurately known, then want to close down civilisation.

            Not very precise ‘science’ …

            Indeed.

            The question we always should ask is ” How did they work out that number?”

            I am off to bed now so I can’t rave on, but once you understand how they “estimate” emissions, you won’t believe anything they ever say, ever again.

            20

  • #
    MrGrimNasty

    Various sources seem to concur what the article doesn’t say.

    The theoretical minimum specific energy demand for DAC is 150 kWh/Tonne of CO2, but all real-world process operate at a multiple of several times this value, 350-450kWh/T.

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  • #
    another ian

    “This would do Sir Les Paterson proud.”

    “The Albanese Labor Government will invest more than $300,000 to study Indigenous environmental knowledge about the connections between land, sea and sky, with a particular focus on whales.”

    More at

    https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2024/07/this-would-do-sir-les-paterson-proud.html

    But will it point a bone at offshore wind farms?

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    • #
      David Maddison

      My only question is: Into whose pockets do our hard-earned taxpayer dollars flow?

      It sounds to me like a typical “consultant” fee on a Government virtue signaling project for one person for about three months.

      Let’s see, 3 months, 35 hours per week, 420 hours.

      $300,000 / 420hrs = $714 per hour.

      Now, that won’t be far off.

      I know for a fact that 20 years ago, Australian Federal Government consultants from the “big three,” accounting and management consultancy firms were getting $400 per hour.

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    • #
      KP

      “The research project is partly funded by the Australian Government ”

      No, I’ll bet the taxpayer is paying for ALL of it, just through different sets of parasites on the public tit.

      50

  • #
    Sean

    You know corals in the oceans do this for free.

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  • #
    david

    Sum it up in one word. Madness.

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  • #
    Neville

    Amazing that Labor, the Greens and Teals are happy to destroy thousands of klms of our trees and environments for zero change to the weather or climate and yet we’re supposed to be happy?
    Yet we know that trees are very important and precious for parts of our Aussie landscape and toxic W & S are a real disaster for our wild areas, including the land and the sea.
    This so called co2 sucker is just another lefty vandal’s wet dream to add to their BS and fraud.

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  • #

    The problem with this ‘need’ to invent a machine to’suck carbon out of the atmosphere’ is that we already have one. And one that uses a natural and organic processes as well. It’s called agriculture and runs on solar energy and photosynthesis.

    Well managed, it can result in massive carbon sequestration in the soil profile and this, in turn, improves the moisture holding ability of the soil. This, in turn, inreases the amount of plant growth which increases the degree of photosynthesis which increase the level of carbon drawdown and sequestration.
    What’s not to like about the natural option?

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    • #
      Boambee John

      Whats not to like about the natural option? Simple, no opportunities for grift and graft.

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  • #
    TdeF

    Cost estimates are said to be “closer to $1,000 a ton” to remove the CO2.

    That’s a smallish tree

    The world has grown about 21% more trees since 1988 according to NASA. (actually 14% between 1988 and 2014) and so sequestered trillions of tons.

    But CO2 has not deviated from its low straight upward trajectory, oblivious to ALL human activity.

    So CO2 goes up and Trees numbers go up in exact proportion. More CO2 means more trees, more crops, more life on earth. The Greens hate that. They are busy chopping down state forests to erect windmills.

    Sequestering CO2 is obviously useless. CO2 is in rapid equilibrium with the 98% of CO2 in the vast oceans.

    This is physical chemistry at work. As by far the most soluble gas, CO2 is in rapid exchange. And at least 36 papers quote residence times for ALL CO2 in the air as about 10 years. So all ’emissions’ vanish quickly.

    In fact so quickly that with C14 derived levels of 3% of atmospheric CO2, low level human CO2 vanishes within 6 months.

    We saw this with the 2019 bushfires on the East coast of Australia.

    https://www.space.com/australian-wildfires-carbon-release-triggers-algal-bloom

    All this is so obvious. NASA says the world is greening. Our own law says that growing trees reduces CO2. And CO2 is constant within 1% year to year, season to season, pole to pole.

    Human emissions are completely irrelevant. Especially China’s coal. And everyone knows that.

    But still the $1,800,000,000,000 goes into pockets around the world every year. Enough over the last 20 years to build and have operations thousands of nuclear reactors. Why bother? There is no demonstrated problem.

    It going to be freezing again next week in Melbourne. Record cold again. Where’s my Global Warming? Haven’t I paid enough?

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    • #
      David Maddison

      It going to be freezing again next week in Melbourne. Record cold again. 

      And unbelievably, many people in Victoria will be cold and miserable because in one of the most energy-rich countries on the planet, a major coal, gas and uranium exporter, energy for non-Elites has become unaffordable.

      Something has gone seriously wrong, or from the point of view of the Left/Elites, this is exactly what they planned.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Nothing has gone seriously wrong, this is exactly what they planned.

        The crippling of Victoria is well underway.

        This by a segment of society which lives off the hard work of others. Those who need power and can barely afford it are being frozen. The deplorables. As in the US. People who cannot afford rocketing food and petrol and rents and house prices. The ones are the top of the tree are oblivious, especially the Teals and Greens who are saving the planet. And the most travelled, richest, priveleged, cosseted and self indulged people in society. These are people who can afford a Tesla to not go to work. Or travel regularly overseas to Europe, not even a villa in Bali.

        And all enabled by both politicians and Labor leaders who live at a level far above the workers. It was fascinating to see Setka and friends locked up in the Union building and turning the fire hoses on thousands of their own members. If there is a revolution coming, it is the workers against the elites.

        The problem is that in the UK and Australia, the alleged conservatives are worse than the antisemitic radical left Labor types.

        The ONLY leading figure who calls Climate Change a Chinese/UN hoax is Donald Trump. No Australian or UK politician does, with the exception of Nigel Farage who has come out strongly against “Migration, voter fraud and climate change”. And fact checked by their BBC.

        Western politicians are universally in favour of mass migration and climate change and the idea that women do not exist. I am very surprised if a single scientist agrees with CO2 driven man made warming. But it’s a living. The Climate Council leaders charge $1200 for a private lecture on why you are on the highway to Climate Hell. I have given the real information for free. And they refuse to debate. Typical.

        And the government bureaucrats as in the MET/WMO/BOM are happy to make up the data.

        The recent claim by the MET that May was the warmest recorded in the history of Britain was shameful. They later had to admit this was caused by unusually warm (3.5C) nights in the rugged Scottish highlands which lifted the average. And May was cold in the terms most people would expect, maximum daily temperature. It shows what a deceitful organization can do with data to deceive.

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        • #
          TdeF

          It is laughable the scientists who debunk man made CO2 driven global warming are alleged to be shills/in the pocket of the the fossil fuel vendors. I read it all the time about the amazing scientists and engineers in the CO2 coalition led by Prof William Happer.

          Why would any fossil fuel promoter pay to debunk Climate Change? Sales have never been as good! Worldwide. Not enough coal, oil, gas! Cannot ship it fast enough! And minerals like copper, iron, lithium. Bonanzas. In the US people are stealing hundreds of fire hydrants, traffic lights for the copper wiring, stripping electric rails for the copper. South Africa is being dismantled. And iron manhole covers in Russia.

          No, Global Warming is a multi trillion dollar festival of money. And the fossil fuel suppliers and miners would not pay even a dollar to stop it.

          In fact they are more than happy to help. As we saw with 130,000 businessmen flying into the most unsustainable city on the planet, DUBAI for a week. Often in private jets. Everyone who was anyone. And sponsored by Arab oil barons. As is COP29, in Qatar. The protesters cannot afford such luxury. I remember them freezing at night in Glasgow and Copenhagen. No longer. COP will be held in luxury resort cities in boiling hot places made possibly only by vast riches from fossil fuel.

          Perhaps some fossil fuel or iron baron could slip Jo a cool few million to keep up the good work. Except that does not even begin to make sense for them.

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          • #
            TdeF

            I didn’t mean to discourage anyone from donating a million to Jo for her excellent work. But that the fossil fuel vendors have no need to give anyone money to debunk the myth of man made CO2 driven global warming.

            The Climate business has never been better for fossil fuel buyers and sellers. Especially for China. Australian coal we aren’t allowed use to warm ourselves while we buy Chinese windmills instead of using reliable zero cost domestic coal. What idiots! It shows democracy in its worst light. It is no better than our democratically elected politicians who have a real problem telling a man from a woman.

            The whole mess reflects the fact that today’s politicians are some of the laziest people in our society. Completely unprincipled, they agree with everybody and especially the latest fashions from the loudest people, no matter how fringe. To such people the idea of Queers for Palestine makes sense.

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        • #
          OldOzzie

          TdeF,

          re The deplorables. As in the US. People who cannot afford rocketing food and petrol and rents and house prices – And all enabled by both politicians and Labor leaders who live at a level far above the workers. It was fascinating to see Setka and friends locked up in the Union building and turning the fire hoses on thousands of their own members.

          As David said – And unbelievably, many people in Victoria will be cold and miserable because in one of the most energy-rich countries on the planet, a major coal, gas and uranium exporter, energy for non-Elites has become unaffordable.

          Something has gone seriously wrong, or from the point of view of the Left/Elites, this is exactly what they planned.

          State/Federal Labor Governements/Greens/TEALS have no idea how their outlandish expenditure & expansion of Public Servants, who WFH and drain Australian Taxpayers, creates Debt that they then Tax the Proudctive Australia out of existence

          “What’s another $275 Million to Zelensky” – just money down the drain!

          As I said on today’s Friday Thread –

          Australia is Screwed – How Not to do Business in Australia

          According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the latest inflation figure for Australia is 4% for the month of May 2024. This is the highest level in 2024

          Looking at changing Gas & Electricty Suppliers, as Red Energy Increase 1 July 2024 well over 40% on current plan

          and after going through https://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au/ site and getting comparisons based on Gas Bills last year

          A Different Red Energy Plan came out with lowest Gas Plan, out of the 3 lowest.

          When compared to high winter Gas Bill last year. the increase was only 35% (Hey a saving over 40%), House Insurance only 29.1% Increase this year vs 34.8% last year (beggars can’t be choosy) – Land Tax this year down to 13.4% Increase but only increased Tenants rent 6.4%.

          What the Idiot State Labor Governments don’t realise is their horrendous Land Tax Increases are totally the responsibilty of Commercial Enterprises under a Commericial Lease, so coupled with Gas Increase of 35+% & with a Momentum Electricity Energy Increase in the Off Peak Rate of 50%, no wonder Australian Businesses & Manufacturing are going broke!

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            TdeF

            And that’s without a 35% CO2 tax on all the ‘250 biggest polluters’! As if we, the public, won’t wear that. No carbon taxes?

            Already the biggest plastics company in Australia has run away. And it was Chinese owned. 18 sites and 800 jobs gone. And the ability to recycle plastics. All off to China.

            What I want to know is how is the MMBW going to pay 35% on sewage? Will we all have to eat less?

            Plus every manufacturing, trucking, flying, shipping, agricultural, chemical, steel, lead, glass company in the country. That is every business in the country which is not a small business or the public service will pay 35% carbon dioxide tax. The first 5% is already due.

            Do the politicians think anyone will stay in Australia? Of course not.

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            • #
              Gazzaton

              TdeF, and now over 3000 jobs to go in the nickel mining sector from BHP closing down operations due to being unable to compete with cheap product coming from Asia. 3000 Jobs in high paying mining sector! These are people paying 60 thousand plus a year in taxes to the state Gov coffers.

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              • #
                TdeF

                Not workers. Families. No income. It is a tragedy.

                But the biggest problem every Australian employer has are the rapacious and insane Australian governments at every level.

                There is no shortage of taxation, no shortage of gifts overseas and holidays for politicians. People who have never had a job are intent on shutting down Australian manufacturing, farming and cheap energy. And fully supported by the Humphrey Applebees of Canberra who just keep paying themselves more and more. This is the stuff which drove the French revolution. The upper classes are the bureaucrats. The first estate, the clergy are the religious. And the second estate, the nobles are now the droves of public servants who pay themselves more and more. The public service is exploding, like Argentina.

                What do you expect when one ministry is Climate. Does anyone really believe a government can control the climate? It’s beyond parody.

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        • #
          Gazzaton

          A number of Australian politicians call out the Climate crisis hoax, Pauline Hansen, Malcolm Roberts, Ralph Babet, Gerard Rennick, Alex Antic, Bernie Finn, there are more but these are the most vocal.

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          • #

            Also Mr. Farage in the UK.
            Only 5 seats in last week’s election – but something like 4 million votes.
            Not everyone’s cup of tea – but dead right about the climate religion.

            Auto

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    • #
      Robert Swan

      Cost estimates are said to be “closer to $1,000 a ton” [than the hoped for $100 per ton]

      Why did they word it this way? Any price > $450 is closer to $1000 than $100.

      Could it be that they’re still well over $1000 per ton?

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        Robert Swan

        Dawned on me this morning (at dawn) that $550 is the threshold, not $450.

        Doesn’t change the point. I can honestly say that I’m closer to 30 than 20, just like most JoNovians. It’s the sort of weasel-wording used to hide the truth.

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      Angus Black

      Interestingly, $1000 is roughly what it costs to have tree surgeon safely drop a decent tree in Southern Tasmania. I just had one threatening the house taken down (it’s now firewood 🙂)

      Not important or relevant, but the symmetry is pleasing.

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      • #
        Ronin

        You would have got a fair bit of that $1000 back in free heating for the home, I imagine.

        I remember back in the 80’s in Tassie , either the Hydro or local councils lopping trees and cutting the wood up and leaving it by the roadside and families making a day out of it cutting up and taking home next years firewood supply, now it’s verboten.

        10

    • #
      el+gordo

      ‘So CO2 goes up and trees go up in exact proportion.’

      True, now all we have to do is prove 90% of the CO2 is natural. Game, set and match.

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      • #

        Well, 95.6% to be precise:

        Natural sources emit approximately 750 billion tons of CO2 annually.
        Human activities emit approximately 35 billion tons of CO2 annually.
        Therefore, human-caused CO2 emissions represent about 4.4% (35 billion tons / 785 billion tons * 100) of the total annual CO2 emissions.

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        • #
          TdeF

          By direct measurement 97.0% to be even more precise.

          It’s all that remains of a large volume of fossil fuel CO2 over time.

          The invention of the ‘surface ocean’ in the Bern model was to try to restrict the cumulative volume so that extra CO2 remained trapped and shared between the proposed surface ocean and the atmosphere.

          In this way the proportions worked out.

          Too bad the accidental atom bomb C14 experiment world wide proved absolutely that this was not true. It was like a radioactive tracer in modern medicine except the half life was long, 5740 years. And it is all gone in just 60 years. Which means it is diluted to nothing in the vast oceans, 1/50th the number of C14O2 as in the air as 98% of all CO2 is in the oceans.

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          • #
            TdeF

            Writing this raised a point I had missed.

            When I first looked at the C14 graph, it only went to about 2010. My rough fit in Excel showed the 200% of C14 should decrease to 97% of historic level with a half life of 7 years. All quite simple standard stuff. And I have been quoting that 3% ever since.

            However it’s not quite true. An increase of C14 levels from 100% historic to 200%, a doubling does not vanish entirely. Yes it is diluted by the 50:1 ratio of CO2 from ocean to air. And G.J.Fergusson’s 1958 measurement of C14 dilution 2.03%+/-0.15% plus 100%/50 or 2% should become 0.0%.

            C14 cannot vanish. It has a half life of 5740 years

            So guess what thevery latest measurements are showing?

            C14 levels are 0% different from historic values over tens of thousands of years.

            And by sheer coincidence from the size of the injection by atom bombs, back to the historic level for tens of millenia before the industrial revolution.

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            • #
              TdeF

              And interestingly the caption on the graph is wrong.

              “in 2021, the atmospheric C-14 concentration undercut preatomic levels for the first time since the bomb pulse”.

              No they didn’t. The 1950s had a level of -2.03%. You can see it in the graph. By my calculations that dip, the ‘Suess’ effect has been precisely and permanently wiped out by the atom bomb. The new level is the old historic level precisely. Which is great for simplicity in radio carbon dating.

              And for the period say 1850-2021 you just use the dilution from the graph. C14 has been moving so fast that forensic scientists can accurately date bodies from their teeth. To the year of birth. And there is scope for a piece of software to incorporate the modern C14 graph! Prior to 1800 it was a constant in air, sea, plants.

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        TdeF

        It was proven absolutely in 1958. Fossil fuel lacks C14 used for radio carbon dating, so modern dates are very wrong. The correction then was a dilution by fossil fuels of 2.03%+/-0.15%. This was the Suess effect named after one of the three founders of the University of San Diego. It was exciting to put to bed the question of whether fossil fuel CO2 hung around.

        G. J. Fergusson

        In the Royal Society.

        Then in 1965 the number of C14 molecules was doubled from one in a trillion to two in a trillion by atom bomb blasts. Now a mere 61 years later the CO2 dilution is nearly back to a horizontal asymptote of 3.0% dilution. Hardly more than in 1958.

        So the Bern model is busted too. Like the Hot Spot and all the silly theories created to back up an proposition which is known to be wrong, that (fossil fuel) CO2 builds up in the air as if it was some sort of special CO2. Fossil fuel CO2 and non fossil fuel CO2 are absolutely identical! Once you admit there is rapid exchange it is game over, so they invented a small ‘surface ocean’ in the Bern model. Busted.

        However CO2 ’emissions’ have rocketed especially with China so now the C14 free CO2 is exchanged with the ocean in about six months, as it is released close to sea level and close to water and heavier than air.

        And I thought too it was QED. But all this has been buried. Even the Royal Society pretends this extraordinary discovery did not exist. There is virtually no fossil fuel CO2 in the air. BY DIRECT MEASUREMENT not hypothesis or inference or correlation or coincidence. Absolute proof.

        The only argument against this is the implication from ancient metamorphic ice cores which have a time resolution of a few thousands years. I call these graphs the ‘ice hockey stick’, similar to Michael Mann’s ridiculous tree rings bolted onto theremometers.

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      TdeF

      And legally we Australians are punishing all ‘major polluters’ by the 2023 Safeguard Mechanism Act, 35% on CO2. Which money is used to buy trees under the “2011 Carbon Farming credits” Act.

      So why have a giant carbon sucker? Or are we the suckers?

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      • #
        TdeF

        If we are already paying for millions of trees, why pay again for suckers? Or does no one really care about science? Is it all just the cash for nothing?

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        • #
          Boambee John

          It seems that we are both paying for millions of trees at the same time as we are paying billions of dollars to replace millions of trees with solar and wind generators.

          Is this some kind of insane perpetual motion machine, that moves money perpetually between different groups of grifters?

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      • #
        Ronin

        We must be paying for millions of trees to replace the millions of trees bulldozed to establish industrial windmill ranches.

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  • #
    Tonyb

    To scale up those machines in order to suck a meaningful amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere would surely entail more minerals and rare earths than can ever be mined and where would the space be found to store the vast amount of CO2 during the two year cycle to turn it sold?

    The energy needed for all this process must surely be far more than can ever be justified without even going into the huge costs involved?

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      David Maddison

      The concept reminds of science fiction. In Aliens they have Atmosphere Processing Plants. Huge size and huge energy requirements.

      One reason the Left destroyed science and science education is so people can’t tell the difference between science fiction and science fact.

      https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Atmosphere_Processing_Plant#google_vignette

      The Atmosphere Processing Plant[1] (APP),[2] also known as the Atmosphere Processor (AP),[3] Atmospheric Processor or Atmos, is a large automated reactor capable of “converting” an unbreathable, toxic or otherwise inhospitable atmosphere into one suitable for human habitation. Atmosphere Processors are a key component of extrasolar colonization efforts. The technology was pioneered by Weyland Corp in the first half of the 21st century[4] and was later developed and refined by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.

      The first planet to develop a breathable atmosphere through the use of such a device (then known as the Weyland Atmospheric Processor) was GJ-667Cc in 2039.[4] APPs are cone-shaped towers some 1,500 meters high and are powered by a 1.0 terawatt fusion reactor.[5] The conversion process they carry out starts when native atmosphere is drawn in through a series of louvers in the base and sides of the structure. This gas is then drawn up through a battery of turbines, which compress and accelerate the atmosphere, into a series of hot mass processors arranged in a ring around the central fusion core.

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        TdeF

        It’s political science fiction. No actual scientists were involved in the creation of these laws. Only politicians who have never had a real job anywhere. And now they define science. L Ron Hubbard claimed to be a nuclear physics PhD when he switched from science fiction to creating his own religion. If only he dreamed of Climate Scientology. It took another fraud to invent that fantasy, Al Gore.

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    Ronin

    “Where’s my Global Warming? Haven’t I paid enough?”

    It’s packed its bags and gone to the Middle East, India, the Greek Islands and Death Valley.

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    AlanG

    I am no expert on CO2 by any means, but I do have a question – if it was true (however implausible) that CO2 causes climate change in terms of a warming effect, do ”climate scientists” have any logical or valid explanation as to how/why CO2 has not stopped some countries from having their coldest winters? Or at least an explanation as to how additional CO2 can cause colder temperatures?

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    • #
      AlanG

      btw, my question was not intended as a flippant comment.
      I truly am asking questions.
      And I wonder if anyone has asked this question to politicians?

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      • #

        AlanG, they have many explanations, all of them guesses. CO2 is changing the jet streams, and heat melts ice, which dilutes ocean currents, and changes their speed, and heat also shifts cloud cover, and heat is melting ice, causing crustal plates to shift, leading to earthquakes and volcanoes. I mean each climate scientist can pair some variable in the last 40 years to some change in something and call it an “association” or a “suggestive link”. They can run it through 3,000 monte-carlo style model simulations and declare it could be the cause of cooling in Argentina, or the northern Gulf stream, or the winter frost near Mildura.

        It’s all tea-leaf-level science and there are 50 variables in 10,000 gridded regions to play with. They could probably get ChatGTP to play with variables and write their papers. Plenty of permutations and combinations to generate grants for the next century, but not one model can predict the future until after it happens.

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      Robert Swan

      AlanG,

      why CO2 has not stopped some countries from having their coldest winters?

      I have heard a similar question asked about new low temperature records being set. The response is along the lines that this is not unexpected (due to statistics and all), but that there is a greater bulk of new *high* temperature records. I would guess their response on seasons would be similar: coldest winters are balanced (as convenient) by mildest winters and/or hottest summers.

      I question the meaning of “coldest winter”. The summer at the start of this year was declared Australia’s third hottest on record through creative arithmetic with mins and maxes and averaging all the way from Tassie to Darwin.

      That aside, the thrust of more warm records than cold records is a reasonable argument which can establish that there is a warming trend. It goes nowhere to saying it’s because we drive/fly/enjoy ourselves too much or has anything whatsoever to do with CO2.

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      • #

        The 1930’s record high temperatures were partly nullified by the many really cold times they had. It was a very extreme time.

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        • #
          Gary S

          When it comes to averages, don’t forget that the ‘average’ human has one testicle and one (functioning) breast.
          And the average ‘climate scientist’ is a liar.

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      • #
        DOC

        ‘Coldest days’ on record. What about the historical record of Ice Ages? Surely would have been at least mildly colder then, one would think. Must have been almost no CO2 in those times, and no respiring life if CO2 is the thermostat of the planet.

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    • #
      TdeF

      It’s a great question because while increased CO2 reflection on the hottest days may increase temperatures, it would be most noticeable on the coldest clear nights, say in the desert. There should be a much more dramatic reduction of cold nights. And this would add to the average temperature without necessarily increasing day time temperatures at all!

      This was true in the recent ridiculous MET statement in Britain that they had the hottest May in history, when in fact it was the nights in the Scottish highlands which were warmer and moved the average. In fact this is what you would expect. Not hotter at all. In fact May in the UK was cool but the average was a record.

      The entire point of Climate porn is to push hell fire. Warmer nights in the Highlands of Scotland would not threaten life on earth.

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      • #
        Gary S

        I spent most of May on the North Sea coast of northern England, and can confirm the lack of Summer.

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  • #
    Old Goat

    This boondoggle is paid for by carbon credits which are being pushed by the usual suspects . Putting this in Iceland is absolutely nuts as its a volcanic region and heating up calcium carbonate will release the carbon as CO2 . WOFTAM.

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    • #
      Geoff

      Volcanoes are one of the world’s biggest sources of atmospheric CO2. Trying to sequester CO2 in a volcanic region is insane.

      This is just more guv@work. I am awaiting an indigenous name for this process.

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        Robert Swan

        The whole thing is daft, but if you want to capture CO2, doing it from more concentrated sources is the right approach.

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        Ronin

        “This is just more guv@work. I am awaiting an indigenous name for this process.”

        Just wait, we will soon find out they were sequestering CO2 45,000 years ago as part of the science of ‘dreamtime’, just like their astronomers, map whisperers, fishtrap engineers, bushfire ‘combustion engineers’.

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    Maptram

    Perhaps there is another solution.

    On 21 April 2021, NASA announced that NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover has extracted the first oxygen from the Red Planet, so the technology to do so exists.

    https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-perseverance-mars-rover-extracts-first-oxygen-from-red-planet

    From each molecule of CO2, the process extracts one oxygen molecule and leaves behind one carbon monoxide molecule. Perhaps the technology can be tweaked to double the production of oxygen and leave behind carbon (real carbon) molecules.

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  • #
    Kalm Keith

    One of the most efficient reductions in production of human origin CO2 is staring us in the face: simply Stop Breathing.

    It’s a well known fact that most of us breathe.
    We inhale wonderful air containing 400 ppm of CO2 and exhale the body’s waste products shortly thereafter. That exhaled air has approximately 40,000 parts per million of CO2 when at rest and much more when we get active. The inhalation delivers oxygen to the bloodsteam and the exhalation removes the co2 waste with an exchange rate of 100 to 1.

    The solution to high atmospheric cow levels is obvious but even the UNIPCCC and WEF can’t bring themselves to tell us to Stop Breathing you peasants.

    Maybe that’ll be next years programme.

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  • #
    Kalm Keith

    I apologize.

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    Ross

    Couple of years ago there was a similar “ soda stream on steroids “ built by one of the American universities. The CSIRO thought it was a great idea and in fact posted on Twitter/ X about it. Right after they had just tweeted about Pride Month or Aboriginal science or similar. So, expect that once great organisation to possibly be seeking funds for another white elephant project.

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    Ronin

    “Should Australia house a giant vacuum cleaner to suck carbon from the sky?”

    Definitely not, idiots.

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    Angus Black

    And to add to ther insanity, they’ve picked just about the most geologically active place on land to run this machine…tho only (I think) place on earth where a mid ocean continent growing trench crosses dry land.

    Anything they inject is likely to stay down for half an hour at best.

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    • #
      KP

      “Anything they inject is likely to stay down for half an hour at best.”

      Ah, but when it comes back up it is ‘natural’ CO2, which is fine. Anything so long as its not man-made CO2!

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  • #
    STJOHNOFGRAFTON

    Cost estimates are said to be “closer to $1,000 a ton” to remove the CO2.

    That project is for suckers. Trees remove CO₂ for free via the miracle of photosynthesis. The intricate and wondrous structure of any leaf makes this man-made CO₂ removal contraption look primitive.

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    David Maddison

    Do you remember the bizarro project to inject CO2 into the Great Artesian Basin?

    Similar madness.

    It seems the more ridiculous a “green” project is, the more attractive it is for True Believers.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2023-11-23/great-artesian-basin-carbon-capture-project-opposition/103080402

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  • #
    Paul Siebert

    ___The calendar is stuck at
    April 1st.

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      Annie

      Just seen your comment Paul, after making mine @ 21.1.1.
      Too many 1sts of April these days, pretty well continuous supply of them.

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  • #
    CO2 Lover

    Why waste good CO2? Here is a better idea.

    The first commercial synthetic gas plant opened in 1984 and is the Great Plains Synfuels plant in Beulah, North Dakota. As of 2016, it is still operational and produces 1500 MW worth of SNG using coal as the carbon source. In the years since its opening, other commercial facilities have been opened using other carbon sources such as wood chips.

    Carbon Dioxide can also be used as a carbon source.

    The Sabatier reaction has been used in renewable-energy-dominated energy systems to use the excess electricity generated by wind, solar photovoltaic, hydro, marine current, etc. to make methane from hydrogen from water electrolysis plus CO2 In contrast to a direct usage of hydrogen for transport or energy storage applications, the methane can be injected into the existing gas network.

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    Dave in the States

    The whole co2/using fossil fuels are bad thing is so illogical and unscientific that it must be a religion.

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    • #
      SimonB

      Of course it is a cult. Otherwise they’d be touting that their efforts so far have created this lull in ‘extreme heat’, but we must push harder!
      Any recognition on their part of the current facts adversely affects their propaganda and could get useful idiots thinking for themselves!
      Like all cults; keep them at heel and stay the course, keep the koolaid coming and we’ll keep the subsidies flowing.

      00

  • #
    RoHa

    I’m sure nothing can go wrong with this.

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  • #
    Tel

    Australia could beat this with artificial reefs, which build Calcium Carbonate and need no electricity at all.

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    • #
      Sean

      Great idea, Australia’s locations is well suited to take advantage of this and it might not be very expensive to do. Unfortunately, compensation for such effort often reflect the costs to implement it rather than efficiency in sequestration.

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  • #
    Jon Rattin

    Just a thought, could insects be sucked up by this vacuum and encased in Calcium Carbonate? As insects from millions of years ago were trapped in amber, could this machine similarly provide fossilised relics to future generations?

    30

  • #
    SimonB

    Cults AND snake oil grifters. What a time to be alive!

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    • #
      TdeF

      One day someone will look at the list of attendees at COP28 in Dubai. All 130,000 of them. And ask why they went? And why oil sheiks are hosting Climate Change events in the scorching desert at immense cost in an event which must have cost a collective $billion or two. What was the point again?

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      • #
        TdeF

        It makes more sense than Glasgow or Copenhagen, where the protesters were out in the dark and freezing night chanting about global warming. There are no protesters in Dubai. Too expensive. And it would not be tolerated in Arab countries. A group of Queers for Palestine would last long either.

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        • #
          SimonB

          They were a perfect example of arrogance and hubris when you go unchallenged. As was the organization of 28 in Dubai.
          All before the independent media crashed the party and started waking conservative governments up to the fact that the critical thinkers were voting for them in the belief that they understood that vote was for conservative core values, not the ratification that you can join the screaming activists and Marxist grifters, like Morrison and a succession of Tory PM’s did.
          Critical thinkers saw – right from the start – the snow of Davos, the flooded streets of Glasgow, the Neon lit Oil signage denoting overwatered desert golf courses and 7 star fossil fuel powered playgrounds for renewables investors as the hypocrisy from grifters of taxpayer subsidies being manipulated by hardcore Marxists Soros & Schwab.
          The tipping point being, as always, the implosion of Marxist ideology under the weight of the greed at the top of the pyramid!
          The frustration though for conservatives, is the Uniparty (swamp) where too many weak politicians on the right worldwide were afraid of the character assassination and disinformation of the propagandist in trashmedia, instead of doing exactly what Jo does: research, facts, annotate, links to real science.
          The Marxists were given a massive headstart, external demands for facts are now causing the implosion of useful idiots scrambling for personal survival as always happens in Marxist regimes.
          Conservatives can’t afford to fall for the trap of matching that arrogance and hubris, as there’s a whole generation to reeducate with facts to deprogram them from Schwab, Soros and their puppets Gore and Seotoro!

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        David Maddison

        I would like to know how many tax dollars were spent sending the Australian contingent to COP28 and if commercial flights were used, what class of travel, and also if chartered or government executive jets were used.

        Recall that $40,000 of taxpayer money was spent sending our e Safety Kommissar to the WEF so she could advocate censoring …Aussie taxpayers…

        https://x.com/MRobertsQLD/status/1781178048173285708

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      • #
        David Maddison

        (The first time I posted this, it mysteriously disappeared.)

        I would like to know how many tax dollars were spent sending the Australian contingent to COP28 and if commercial flights were used, what class of travel, and also if chartered or government executive jets were used.

        Recall that $40,000 of taxpayer money was spent sending our e Safety Kommissar to the WEF so she could advocate censoring …Aussie taxpayers…

        https://x.com/MRobertsQLD/status/1781178048173285708

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      • #
        David Maddison

        (The first time I posted this it mysteriously disappeared.)

        I would like to know how many tax dollars were spent sending the Australian contingent to COP28 and if commercial flights were used, what class of travel, and also if chartered or government executive jets were used.

        Recall that $40,000 of taxpayer money was spent sending our e Safety Kommissar to the WEF so she could advocate censoring …Aussie taxpayers…

        https://x.com/MRobertsQLD/status/1781178048173285708

        10

  • #
    Dennis

    What would we call a room full of leftists with a CO2 vacuum extractor?

    Deceased.

    30

  • #
    Kim

    A far better solution would be to green the deserts. Terraforming the landscape positively.

    20

    • #
      TdeF

      According to NASA, satellites show the deserts are greening very rapidly with increased CO2. 14% more tree cover between 1988 and 2014! And the CO2 increase was 14%. It has been most noticeable in desert fringes where it was previously assumed the problem was water, not CO2.

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      SimonB

      It has been amusing watching the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia in January 2023, 2024 and the bleating about the performance of the ‘green technology’ hybrid, hydrogen and electric vehicles of the future.
      Then the fact they had to reorganise some legs due to torrential rain in the desert washing out ‘dry river’ crossings making it impossible to cross, but also inaccessible for the fossil fuel tow trucks to access!
      All with snow caps on low level rises in the background.

      10

  • #
    Will

    You have to applaud these woketards as when it comes to collecting money for their lunatic schemes to “save the planet” as no one can match them. I wonder who is the Icelandic Tim Flannery responsible for this financial black hole?

    Iceland seems to be almost totally Leftist from my infrequent interactions with them, so it comes as no surprise as all of these Scandinavians seem hell bent of removing their own gene lines from the planetary pool via mass “immigration”. I wonder when humans with white skin, blue eyes and blonde hair will become officially “endangered” as a sub species. More likely that there will be cheering when the “Aryans” become extinct.

    20

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    Rokdoktor

    Even though this CO2 extractor will make no discernable difference to atmospheric CO2 levels it is a stark illustration of the huge disconnect between the thinking behind such schemes and reality.

    Atmospheric CO2 levels have been declining at least since the early Palaeozoic, from several thousand ppm to only a few hundred ppm currently. A minor part of that decline has gone into coal and oil/gas deposits, but the vast majority has been sunk into carbonates by the steady production and accumulation of trillions of tonnes of marine limestones via invertebrate shell growth. I say “sunk”for a reason – for most of these carbonate deposits it’s a one-way trip – the CO2 will not be released back to the atmosphere in a meaningful time-frame (maybe in a billion years when the sun enters its red giant phase). The result of this is that the atmospheric CO2 concentration has declined to a dangerously low level. At the peak of the last ice-age, it is thought that CO2 declined to ~200ppm or less. This is not far from the point (~150ppm) where plants start to die. If they die – we die.

    It is therefore fortunate that this interglacial period we are living in, the Holocene, has seen the rise of industrial civilisation, with the extraction and burning of coal/petroleum with the release of that small fraction of sequestered ancient CO2. Maybe if we release enough we will get through the next ice-age when it comes, without extinction of plant-life. Maybe. Engineering projects to pull CO2 out of the air and store it underground makes me think of the cartoon character that is sawing through the tree-branch that he is sitting on. This is how the world ends, not with a bang and not with a whimper but with a prat-fall.

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    • #
      Kalm Keith

      Thanks: well put.

      It’s important to start with the big picture.

      The human central nervous system is responsive to CO2 levels in the bloodstream and one suprising feature is that if CO2 in the blood gets too low we can die.

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      • #
        Kalm Keith

        Kalm Keith

        May 6, 2022 at 1:03 pm

        CO2 in the human body is a balance between production via normal activity and removal of excess from bloodstream.

        Where CO2 builds up in the bloodstream it must be removed via the wonderful lungs we have.

        Bloodstream CO2 levels are monitored by the CNS which presumably signals the lungs to either work harder or slow down.

        Interestingly the CNS can not receive info when CO2 levels drop below a certain level and at this point it stops telling the lungs what to do: they cease activity. Death results.

        Too much oxygen can reduce CO2 below the critical point and life stops; many people are aware of this and at the end of life can peacefully move on with an altered breathing pattern which I’ve described previously.

        In that sense the gas known as Oxygen can be seen as the most dangerous gas on Earth.

        The term Cheyne-Stokes breathing is mentioned in this regard but it doesn’t seem to be the same process I’ve seen and understand.

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    Honk R Smith

    Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong.
    Like historically.
    Maybe these machines can become distant future secret engines of some sort like the Pyramids of Giza.

    Giant Carbon Suckers could be built in strategic locations.
    The ultimate capstones on the great Climate Change Road to Hell.

    Unintentionally collapsing civilization.
    Thousands of years in the future, conspiracy theorists can say …
    “what are these things?”
    “How did they build them?”
    “They make no sense as funerary tombs”.
    “It must have been a great technological society that built them, where did they go?”.

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      TdeF

      If all the coal, gas and petrol and diesel and oil and trees in the world cannot change CO2, what hope do giant suckers have? It’s often overlooked but if you plot CO2, the straight line trajectory has not changed in fifty years. About 0.5% a year. Near constant. If only inflation would be as low as that! What’s the problem again? We cannot change CO2. No one can. China is trying and failing.

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        Honk R Smith

        What can the giant suckers do?
        Suck the history of progress and the ability for rational decision making out of an entire culture.

        Wait … once the society conceives of and starts building the suckers in question, the afore mentioned sucking has already occurred.

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    Here is a link to the latest publication by the highly accredited hydrologist Professor Emeritus Demetris Koutsoyiannis
    at the Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, School of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Zographou, Greece.
    Stochastic assessment of temperature-CO₂ causal relationship in climate from the Phanerozoic through modern times
    July 2024 Mathematical Biosciences & Engineering 21(7):6560-6602
    DOI: 10.3934/mbe.2024287

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      TdeF

      So you warm water with 98% of the world’s CO2 and the amount in the atmosphere increases. For some reason people think that is surprising. It’s self evident in the graph of CO2 with annual peaks in May and troughs in the fall. And this is confirmed by stochastic analysis. Good. Hardly necessary though, except for people who want very complex explanations for the simplest things. I call it the flat beer effect.

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    Gerry, England

    They should have switched it on in April – how about 1st of the month.

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    Stephen

    The DAC idea has been around a while. Of course, their CSIRO has been fiddling with it for some time. The whole notion of it just sucks.

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    Ian Bryce

    I visited this plant recently in Iceland, and they do rave on how about how great it is environmentally. I said to one of the staff that they were putting an enormous amount of moisture in the air, which is a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. It took a while before the penny dropped, and then he said the main reason was to scrub out hydrogen sulphide, because people don’t like the smell of it in the atmosphere.

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      TdeF

      Ridiculous. Hydrogen Sulphide is a straight poison. Dissolved in water in your lungs, sulphuric acid. Yes, it stinks like rotten eggs, but it was why Venezuelan oil was banned in most places. In the third world you could smell it. And I remember the stink in Birmingham, UK. But just when they all worked out how to remove it, the EU legislated diesels which produced No2 which becomes nitric acid in water. Just as deadly. Acid rain also. A bit of basic chemistry would be wonderful with legislators, but they are all lawyers.

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        Lucky

        NO2 surely. Nitrogen dioxide is a poison.
        (The original abbreviation sent my mind off in a quite different direction)

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    Graeme No.3

    I wonder if the bureaucrats read the latest on NoTrickZones – about the original paper that started the idea.
    David Evans might like it.

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    Lucky

    https://notrickszone.com/2024/07/12/seminal-1967-paper-introducing-co2-radiative-forcing-is-based-on-assumptive-imaginary-world-modeling/
    .. is the ref.
    Seminal 1967 Paper Introducing CO2 ‘Radiative Forcing’ Is Based On Assumptive Imaginary-World Modeling
    By Kenneth Richard on 12 July 2024

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