| Just use any carbon monoxide source (e.g., pyrolysis of pretty much anything that'd release carbon dioxide when burned works, followed by some cleaning to get rid of some problematic catalyst poisons (notably sulfur compounds)), add hydrogen, and do Fischer-Tropsch.
You get your high quality diesel fuel, often higher quality than what you can easily get from crude oil, btw. If you don't have anything to pyrolyse, use a sodium or potassium hydroxide wet scrubber to extract it from ambient air and recover it from the solution with burnt lime; it preferentially bonds to the carbonate, becomes nearly insoluble; you take the lime stone powder, heat it with a high temperature blow dryer until the carbon dioxide cooks out (you can use pure carbon dioxide atmosphere for that! Just let out excess buildup of CO2 pressure to your output cooler/storage.), have regenerated the burnt lime, take the resulting CO2 and hydrogen to perform water gas shift to turn the mix into CO and H2O, condense out the H2O, then use the CO + H2 mix for your Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. You can use incineration facilities to tap off concentrated CO2 and mine landfills until they are empty to keep the incinerators fed to get the CO2 possibly-cheaper than from the direct air capture units. Start by using more solar cell glass laminate for exterior surfaces of new construction and as roofs over whatever parking lots you do want to keep around longer-term. Synthetic non-fossil fuel is going to need plenty of electricity and probably much of that "just" to electrolyze water into hydrogen which is reasonable for seasonal energy "storage" (run them during the high-solar 25~50% of the year, use underground caverns (former natural gas wells) or liquify it to store for the winter, run the synthesis plant that consumes it year-round. Don't just burn the hydrogen in power plants, though you can keep existing fossil fuel plants around for a while to run them during the worst week or two of an average winter. But expect the power to be as expensive as each kWh you get today from a small gasoline generator fueled with fully-taxed highway gasoline... |
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| ▲ | openasocket an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I think that's a bad frame of mind in general. One of the primary ways industry tries to prevent regulation is by putting the burden on the individual. People think the only way we can have a healthy environment is by sacrificing things for the average person. And one of the worst things environmentalists can do is play along with that. In the US there's a push to ban plastic straws, which is annoying to the average consumer, while basically every item you can purchase comes wrapped in tons of plastic packaging. Industry LOVES things like this because it does little to actually reduce plastic consumption, and pits the average person against the environmental movement. As another example, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes is several times less than the amount of methane that leaks out of natural gas pipelines every year (here I'm weighting emissions by their global warming impact). The overwhelming majority of those leaks can be prevented with minimal effort, but industry hasn't been incentivized to do so. Maybe before we start banning tourism, we have some inspectors checking pipelines for pinhole leaks? | | |
| ▲ | leni536 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The difference between removing plastic straws and reducing air travel is that reducing air travel would have an impact. | |
| ▲ | steve1977 5 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Oh we can and should absolutely do both. Travel and tourism has other downsides which make it worth reducing it, like the fast spread of diseases for example. |
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| ▲ | WillPostForFood 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So no tourist travel for the poor or middle class, just the elite rich? And no tourist income for the poor and middle class? This is a policy only the top .1% will enjoy. | | |
| ▲ | fc417fc802 37 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't support the idea as described, but playing devil's advocate presumably it would shift demand towards train and boat travel. That would push tourism closer to home and largely eliminate visiting other continents for those who couldn't either afford the air travel tax or to take several months off of work if going by boat. But it wouldn't eliminate tourism by any means. Even the poor could still easily travel the better part of a given continent. | |
| ▲ | mdp2021 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | But the purpose of money is exactly to be a currency to be spent on choices. And, I must unfortunately repeat myself with regards to what I wrote nearby, externalities can be charged as a cost - and it is probably the way to handle it. "You pollute, you pay" - then, you acquire money to invest it, especially in activities with downsides. | |
| ▲ | steve1977 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I didn't say tax everyone the same amount. Make it hurt. Tax the elite a million per flight. And yes, no tourist income. It's dirty money. |
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| ▲ | toomuchtodo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Electrified high speed rail solves this, with flying reserved for transoceanic needs. Private jets should not exist outside of scientific, medical, or other non luxury/personal use cases. Travel and tourism will always be with us, and should be imho. Carbon taxes, laws, whatever is needed to accomplish it. | | |
| ▲ | mdp2021 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > should not exist outside of Externalities can be made to bear a cost. | | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Currently, there is no effective way to put carbon back in the ground, and therefore no way to make the externality bear the cost. This is an excuse to justify high emission, low efficiency use cases. It’s capitalism cope meets buying a Catholic indulgence. “I am wealthy and deserve this and so I will pay a token amount that is meaningless to continue to justify this excessive, unnecessary consumption.” If the use case does not require fossil fuels, certainly, carry on. Same if your biofuel isn’t going to cause the Amazon to be clear cut and can be economically produced at scale. But until then, have to aggressively impair the consumption of fossil fuels, because it’s only going to keep getting hotter, year after year, long after we reach net zero (which is still a decade or two away). Maybe one day we’ll have a mechanism to sequester carbon, and enough low carbon energy to suck all of the CO2 emitted since the industrial revolution started out of the atmosphere for long term, stable storage to mitigate climate change. But not today, and therefore, these are the facts that must drive policy until the facts change. Climeworks' capture fails to cover its own emissions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44017317 - May 2025 > Al Gore gave a TED talk in 2023 where he discussed the carbon capture and disposal industry and specifically mentioned Climeworks. He made fun of the company, calling the capture industry nothing more than a cover for oil and gas companies to keep their businesses afloat. Even if you don’t like Al Gore, the math remains the math. | | |
| ▲ | mdp2021 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > there is no effective way to put carbon back in the ground, and therefore no way to make the externality bear the cost The cost applied to externalities can be spent to amend the specific damage, which is sometimes impossible, or can be commensurate to the estimate damage in order to create different benefit. > indulgence I concour with the analysis, but not necessarily with the moral evaluation. I have already mentioned nearby that money is a token to be spent on freedom in a framework of choice in allocation: Economics, science of Optimization, is the science of the management of Scarcity to some authors - and that scarcity is structural, existential (as evident in the case of Time). The purpose of resources is to invest them according to preference - some choices more loaded, but the computation compares the values of said "load" with the "preference" and the "resource (money etc.)". The actual rebuttal: if you had to go "black vs white" in preferences, vs the continuous framework I proposed, than heating for example would be a problem - an externality bearing investment that we could not compensate with a reversal of the damage. But should we do without heating? You yourself defend touristic travel. Where can we put a threshold? At that point, it is best to quantify damages and charge the externalities. | | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Mental model: Electricity->Batteries, renewables, geothermal, hydro, transmission, cross country interconnectors HVAC->Heat pumps, low carbon district heating, insulation, sand heat batteries Mobility->Electric vehicles, bikes, scooters, light rail, heavy duty electric vehicles Marine traffic->Low carbon produced methanol or ammonia For air travel that must remain and cannot be replaced with an electrified or low carbon alternative (until low carbon solutions exist), the component that must remain be made as efficient as possible. Regardless of wealth, you fly commercial, just like everyone takes the subway, regardless of wealth or status, in cities with high quality mass transit. Your need is met, just within our collective societal tolerance for the harm incurred for the travel desired (Point A->B). We may disagree, and that’s fine. I believe the climate data is clear as an input to this decisioning. Whether you’re wealthy should not be a factor in outsized carbon emissions (private jet travel, specifically) simply because the socioeconomic system is defective on this. I assume the appetite for this goes up as climate change consequences become more dire, compelling more appetite for extreme actions to course correct. |
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| ▲ | fc417fc802 33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Just because there are currently (economically motivated) shams doesn't mean the concept is impossible or the tech not understood. As I see it the primary issue is cost. There's the price tag put forward by the PR shams and then there's the real price tag which at present remains entirely unpalatable. There's nothing except the political preventing the governments of the world imposing the unpalatable price on the market and policing the capture operations for net effectiveness. |
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| ▲ | runako 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Electrified high speed rail solves this Curious -- what speed are you assuming for such a high speed rail? | | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The last high speed rail I was on was Fuxing Hao series in China, ~200mph. If we can go faster, go faster. Shanghai Maglev can do ~260mph. Japan’s Shinkansen tops out at ~199mph, a bit higher than the TGV in France (~186mph during commercial operations, but has achieved speed records as high as ~360mph). Within the scope of land travel, it’s clear it can be built. If it isn’t built, of course, that’s a choice. But it’s a lie to say it cannot be done. | | |
| ▲ | runako 29 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Obviously a choice, but also at 200mph it's obviously a vastly slower experience in a lot of way for many of the most-trafficked US domestic routes. Even at 300mph, which IIRC is much faster than normal operations on existing system, transcontinental travel becomes "too slow." The opposition would be insurmountable to making it take 12+ hours to travel from NYC to LA, for example. Effectively would split the continent in a way that it hasn't been for generations. Rountes like NYC<->Chicago would get annoyingly slower, but long routes like DC<->Seattle would become an "almost never" trip by train @ 200mph (even assuming direct, as-the-crow-flies). Practically, you're talking "east coast to Asia" durations to cross the continent. Non-starter. Disclaimer: I love trains. I want high speed trains deployed widely in the US. | | |
| ▲ | triceratops 17 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > The opposition would be insurmountable to making it take 12+ hours to travel from NYC to LA, for example. It already takes 6 hours to fly. Add in security, checked bags, getting to and from the airport and it's close to 10 hours. Also you waste a day or ruin a night's sleep on the redeye. Compared to that an overnight train with a bed sounds delightful. People could do almost-day-trips, coast-to-coast, with no ill effects. Leave LA tonight, shop/sightsee/eat all day in NYC, take in a show, hop on the late train back to LA the following day. This is pretty near impossible today unless you have a private jet. | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 24 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is ~400 million to ~4 billions excess deaths over the next ~50 years worth it? How many excess deaths is it worth? Everything is about trade offs. How much mortgaging of the future with are we comfortable with for today’s luxuries? Because this is a debt that will need to be paid back, potentially by someone not even yet born, through no fault of their own. At least the future can default on sovereign debt, it cannot default on the energy and resources required to repair physical systems required for survival, that debt is the ultimate recourse debt. There is nowhere to run from it. https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.p... (page 32 risk impact matrix) (day job is risk assessment and management) |
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