Carbon Capture Isn't Real

Finally an invention that doesn't suck . . . CO2 out of the atmosphere. Ba-dumm tss.

[brenonweed]

I'm convinced Adam's video creation process is every once in a while he wakes up angry about some comment or trend he sees online, makes a detailed video explaining why he is right, then returns to his regular life until he seems something that sparks the passion in him again.

[goki]

I love how Adam somehow manages to connect everything to why public transport is worth it

[lloganm]

It's definitely not by accident that every oil and gas company is "investing" in carbon capture as a way to say they are doing something "green"

[lateformyownbirth]

‘Do you know what could eliminate the emissions from 870 cars?’
A tra-
‘Buses and bike paths’
Oh… the *one* time the answer wasn’t ‘a train’.

[tayzonday]

Disney should release Carbon Capture as its next fairytale. I’ll write the song.

[jeffasbestos]

We already do have carbon capture *plants* widespread across the world, that can be set up for $1 each and expand automatically over time with the carbon they capture. Not only do they suck up and store carbon using solar energy, they are barriers against floods and even produce water vapour- causing rainfall in dryer regions where they are. They also provide habitats and food for wildlife (not to mention resources like construction-materials for us).

[martinr]

as a chemical engineer/chemist, i see that the most serious uses of CO2 capture are not for taking co2 out of the air, rather to prevent co2 from being emitted in the first place. For certain chemical processes this is essential, not everything is about electricity production

[ForceDev]

I feel like carbon capture is something you run as a last measure to uncarbonify the atmosphere once you've fully changed to green and nuclear sources

[randomsteam]

I remember my dad giving me a lecture on carbon capture a decade. It is worth mentioning that my dad is heavily invested in the oil industry. He told me that the technology wouldn’t work because of exactly what you said.

[typograf]

There is a story from Denmark, about some stupid peasants from Mols. They had a heap of dirt/earth, that they wanted to get rid of. So they thought of digging a hole for that. But one of the more clever guys objected: Where are we going to put the earth we dig up? So they thought it over. I know it, said the brightest guy, we just need to make the new hole double the size. And so they started digging.

[lucaslucas]

Only detail I think he's overlooking is that at night in Denmark e.g. we have overproduction of green energy just going nowhere because everyone's sleeping. Storing large amounts of energy is difficult as I'm sure everyone here knows. Carbon capture could be one thing to spend that surplus energy on.

[ttystikkrocks]

"No! Just don't shlt on the floor!" I almost died laughing!

We already have these truly amazing carbon capture devices that even repair and replicate themselves. Yes! Plants! Amazing!

I'm happy I found this channel!

[MsWatismyname]

Wait no, it is real, we call it trees.

[kptech]

I like the video, and agree for the most part that carbon capture is really not the priority right now. I would note, however, that it is important to consider that green energy sources such as solar and wind often produce more than the grid needs at a particular moment. Since there is not much in the way of long-term or even midterm grid storage, much of this power needs to be dumped anyways. Developing projects that will use excess power in this way, I think, would not be the worst thing to do.

[karthikps]

I love how in all Adam's video, the solutions to every problems are trains/bikes/buses.

[JosefSvenningsson]

The key phrase in this video is "as things stand now". If we substantially increase the level of sustainable energy protection then carbon capture starts to make sense. I see the existing plants as experiments to learn how to make carbon capture efficient once we get to the situation where we really want them. It makes perfect sense to experiment with the technology now so that it can be efficiently scaled up in the future.

[spiritofthewoods]

I always assumed that fossil capture was a more endgame plan after most of the world already switches to green energy, crazy that they're being built right now!

[zag]

Fun fact: If you want to capture massive amounts of carbon with no electricity required passively, you can plant trees!

[SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

This is exactly in line with the official recommendations from the IPCC. They recommend that we go all out on current proven solutions such as converting energy production to solar/wind/geothermal/nuclear, building mass transit and bike infrastructure like crazy, planting trees, rebuilding natural carbon sinks like wetlands, etc.

During all of that we should still research carbon capture tech with the hope that we can start to deploy it around 2035 or later…but it is by no means the main thing that will save us.

[prabhatsourya]

As a research student who has studied this exact field, this is the stupidest way someone has implemented CCS. All the CCS projects in the world use the flue gas from the stacks of coal fired thermal power plants, and not suck up Carbon Dioxide directly from the air. This flue gas is over 90% CO2 by weight, and would just need simple compression before it is pumped into the depleted Oil and Gas wells, or used to pump out oil/natural gas in Enhanced Oil Recovery (a process which previously uses precious natural gas or water resources). That way, this process of CCS consumes way less energy, and serves to mitigate the "super thermal power plants" that countries have raced to build up to get "energy security". Key examples:

1) The Jebel Ali Natural Gas Thermal power station added 700 MW extra capacity in 2019 to gain its energy and desalination security.

2) China massively expanded its Tuoketuo Power Station (coal fired power plant) in 2017 by 1320 MW, making it the largest coal fired thermal power plant in the world.

3) India has comissioned three extensions to its "Vindhyachal super thermal power station" in 2012, 2013, and 2015, increasing the capacity by 500 MW each time.

4) Saudi Arabia commissioned its Qurayyah IPP in 2014, with a combined power output of 3927 MW.

With this sluggish reluctance to move away from thermal power plants, and further expansion of existing thermal capacity to "move away from nuclear", CCS is the only stopgap solution to prevent spontaneously adding billions of tons of CO2 to the atmosphere in a single year, or to waste away precious water resources to extract more fossil fuels.

Also, there is the solution of "planting more trees", but we have seen how companies have exploited the loophole of "carbon offsetting" to get away by basically doing nothing. The entire "carbon offset" market has degenerated into scams, with companies pledging ludicrous projects like protecting national preserves, or planting in absurd places or by forced displacement of local communities.

All this, keeping in mind the fact that there is only around 500 million hectares of land that is left over in the entire world which could be dedicated to new forests for cleaning up the carbon. So unless there is a way where you could bulldoze entire cities to create new lands for forests, there is no way that trees alone would solve our problems. We need to physically pump carbon into the ground to make sure that the atmosphere doesn't get too much of it, in addition to shifting away from the carbon intensive sources of power towards renewables. Both have to work in synergy to solve climate crisis.