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Earlier this week, Y Combinator, which has backed companies like Airbnb and Reddit, put out a request for startups working on technology that can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
"It's time to invest and avidly pursue a new wave of technological solutions to this problem — including those that are risky, unproven, even unlikely to work," Y Combinator's website says.
Y Combinator is looking for startups working on four approaches that they acknowledge "straddle the border between very difficult to science fiction" — genetically engineering phytoplankton to turn CO2 into a storage-ready form of carbon, speeding up a natural process in which rocks react with CO2, creating cell-free enzymes that can process carbon, and flooding Earth's deserts to create oases.
Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, acknowledged that these ideas are "moonshots," but said that he wants to take an expansive approach to the issue.
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(Score: 2) by Snow on Monday October 29 2018, @04:18PM (5 children)
Trees can die or catch fire and release that CO2 back into the air.
I do wonder about large scale tree farms where the trees are harvested and then buried in a deep, sealed pit.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday October 29 2018, @04:31PM (1 child)
Just what I was thinking. Growing plants is the easy part. Happens naturally all the time. The problem is stopping the vegetation from returning all that carbon to the air when it burns or rots.
As to dumping dead vegetation into the ground (perhaps coal mines would be appropriate?) the energy and effort needed to gather, transport and store the vegetation is the big hurdle. Really that sort of thing should be a last resort. I understand swamps and bogs are great at sequestering carbon. But maybe we're already past the point where natural sinks can handle it and we should employ active measures such as burying trees.
Wonder how much could be saved by cutting back on the lawn mowing? Let people let their yards grow lots more between mowings.
(Score: 1) by Michael on Monday October 29 2018, @08:24PM
Burning off the hydrogen-rich volatiles to leave charcoal would give you a bury-able substance which doesn't decay for centuries. It's also a phenomenal soil amendment for holding water and nutrients, which is likely to give extra carbon capture by increasing biomass in/on soil. Even in a relatively small and poorly insulated system, wood produces more combustable volatiles than are required to heat it to charcoal forming temperature. (A coffee can plastered with perlite and a wood gas burner directed back
Could probably sell charcoal packaged for gardeners and farmers. Make it out of wood, twigs, straw, husks, hulls, shells, cobs, chaff, pretty much anything dry and brownish.
Far as lawn mowing, seems like the carbon content should havea bit more than linear relationship to length. Older stalks get more woody, especially just before seeds form. Let it get that long and you'd create opportunity for extra wildlife, which probably should count towards the carbon content of an area.
(Score: 2) by captain_nifty on Monday October 29 2018, @06:16PM (1 child)
You missed a couple steps, Profit, being the most important.
1. Grow Trees
2. Make stuff out of trees
3. Sell wood Products
3a. Profit!
4. Collect old used goods and charge the customer for disposal
4a. Profit!
5. Bury wood deep underground
Semi serious question: Do landfills generate Carbon Credits?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 29 2018, @07:09PM
You forgot 5a,b,c; bribe legislators and get paid for burying wood too.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Monday October 29 2018, @07:12PM
Here's two solutions you haven't considered:
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base