@thomasfuchs I'll say it then: carbon capture and storage will never work.
Storing it as a gas underground makes no sense whatsoever.
Converting it to other forms takes more energy than we get from turning it into a gas in the first place.
I can always be proven wrong but as things are I am 100% confident that the way forward is to treat it as a laughable form of greenwashing by the most evil lobbies on the planet.
Jun 27, 2026, 2:09 PM@renardboy @thomasfuchs Investments should go to parties that actually create solutions, like Carbonaide:
@liiwi @renardboy @thomasfuchs Does it come in glacier freeze flavor?
Jun 27, 2026, 2:28 PM@shadows @renardboy @thomasfuchs I don't think there is budget for that scale of things, but the curves definately point into that direction.
@liiwi @renardboy @thomasfuchs sorry, this is also a Gatorade joke.
@shadows @liiwi @renardboy @thomasfuchs I have recently come back from the Alps, and the largest glacier has been reduced by half. There are huge cracks in the mountains growing millimetre by millimetre as the support from the ice disappears. It is heartbreaking 😢
@connynasch good thing you took the train. Right?
@lil5 I do not have a car.... @shadows @liiwi @renardboy @thomasfuchs
@renardboy we’re gonna need it eventually to fix the damage that’s already been done (i.e. even if we somehow manage to stop CO2 emissions).
but I’ve no idea what it will take.
the only thing other than “more trees” that I’ve seen that maybe goes into the right direction is building materials, e.g. concrete; but obviously even if that’s done on a large scale it’s not going to make a huge dent.
@thomasfuchs The first part, before anything else, is to eliminate use of fossil fuels. There is no amount of effort we can invest in sequestration that would not be better invested in reducing fossil fuel use in the first place.
@renardboy @thomasfuchs yes this.
Stop pissing on the floor before trying to make a robot cleaning fast enough that the piss doesn't stain the floor
We really did good when we replaced and reworked the CFC gases everywhere we could, and with strong incentives (legal and monetary). And now that some solutions are technically in reach, but only need to be deployed at scale + stopping the ancient. The LAST people to be followed should be the oil industry
(I'm glossing over some hard industries reliant on oil, but on the energy front, nuclear, wind, solar could replace most of the 80% of oil to be burned)
@renardboy @thomasfuchs
Exactly right.
@renardboy @thomasfuchs this is what I keep wondering. Best I can figure is we release the carbon to get energy in one place then use energy to store it in another place. I am not a scientist. I just don’t understand how it actually balances out except at a superficial level.
@shadows @renardboy @thomasfuchs it doesn't. we have to stop emitting.
@shadows @thomasfuchs If we use renewables to re-sequester carbon dioxide, what we should be doing is use those renewables to displace fossil fuels in the first place.
My provincial government (a long-ago captured petro-state) has doubled down on CCS as the “solution” … it pays for them and the industry to “invest” $M to be allowed to increase extraction and maximize their yacht money before it all collapses and they run off to leave us with the clean up.
@DavidM_yeg @thomasfuchs Man, fuck these guys so much.
I seriously cannot understand how someone can be so twisted as to pawn off our children's future like that.
@renardboy @DavidM_yeg @thomasfuchs but they're YOUR children not theirs
@DavidM_yeg @thomasfuchs @renardboy And didn't I just see in the news that the CCS companies are pulling out, because Alberta's new carbon tax rates are too low to make it economical? (Of course, they're crying to federal Liberals rather than the people who ACTUALLY screwed them over, but what else is new)
Carbon capture works pretty darn good, when PLANTS AND SOIL get to do it...
@violetmadder @thomasfuchs Absolutely true, but we can't increase that meaningfully, so relying on that as a solution to the increased emissions since the industrial revolution makes no sense whatsoever.
We can absolutely increase that, VERY meaningfully.
First off, cease to destroy it.
Then, use the amount of resources currently being pissed into atrocities like data centers and war, instead for massive landscape rehabilitation projects. For example:
Jun 27, 2026, 3:52 PM@renardboy
It will never be profitable whatsoever but I think we need to capture and convert it. And invest the energy. It's the best method to make sure this is not getting back into the atmosphere.
I don't see it as a valuable business, more like a necessity to keep us all alive.
@thomasfuchs
@momo @thomasfuchs Perhaps. To this end I'd say gassify biomass in retorts, use the creosote as a wood preservative for railroad ties and such, use the gas for fuel, and crush the charcoal to use it as soil amendment.
But before biomass as fuel can even be considered we must reduce our energy use by like an order of magnitude.
@renardboy @momo @thomasfuchs or two
Jun 28, 2026, 8:43 AM@renardboy
No, you are mistaken. We need the carbon dioxide to get out of the atmosphere and stay out of the atmosphere. That means no conversion into fuel and burn it back into the air.
It means turn it into carbon so that it can be stored without gassing out by accident reverting all the capture effort.
Using CO2 from the air for combustion fuel means "This current heat stays as it is". Storing it means "We start to revert the climate catastrophy." and the price tag for that is not measured in costs for capturing, transforming and storing, its measured in extinction prevented.
@thomasfuchs
@momo @thomasfuchs well yeah. But the quickest and currently most effective carbon sequestration mechanism is photosynthesis, and the most reliable way to sequester it making charcoal, since charcoal doesn't degrade and when mixed into the soil it makes it impractical to recover and use as fuel.
Charcoal contains about 30% of the energy in the wood used to make it, and the creosote contains another fraction; using it to preserve wood also prevents it from decaying and releasing its carbon.
@momo @thomasfuchs so this improves outcome. But pyrolysis also produces gas which is much more difficult to sequester, so it's probably put to better use as fuel, possibly directly to help perform the pyrolysis.
Of course, that's for the long term. For the shorter to mid term, biomass carbon should be sequestered by making buildings out of wood, especially instead of making them from concrete or steel. Also a compounding effect there.
@momo @thomasfuchs Cause photosynthesis stores carbon but then releases most of it as biomass rots. Mature forests are more or less carbon neutral, not carbon sinks.
I'm not overly worried about deforestation from these practices, since by far the leading cause of deforestation is, per my understanding, clearing land for agriculture.
@renardboy @thomasfuchs
Yup. Preventing emissions is 1000x more efficient than capture and storage. If and when we have so much surplus of green energy that we can use it to clean the air, go for it, but otherwise, it's replacing one shitstain with another.