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447 points Brajeshwar | 1 comments | 03 Sep 23 14:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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alexchamberlain ◴[03 Sep 23 17:11 UTC] No.37372056[source]▶
I'm starting to wonder whether the conventional wisdom of reducing carbon emissions in favour of more electricalisation is really solving the actual problem. As is often pointed out on HN, electrical cars are substantially heavier than their fossil fueled alternatives, and generate other pollution along the way. Furthermore, we're digging our lithium brines from the environment, without really understanding what all this lithium will do once it's leached out into the environment or what impact the mines themselves will have.

With the recent advances of turning CO2 into other substances, such as propane, should we be focusing more on closing the carbon cycle and simply be producing fossil fuels from the waste products of yesteryear?

Naively, it feels like we understand C, O and H, better than we understand some of the rare metals we're now introducing in the name of climate change.

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1. hannob ◴[03 Sep 23 18:16 UTC] No.37372760[source]▶
> With the recent advances of turning CO2 into other substances

The "advances" are relatively modest efficiency improvements, but they don't change fundamental realities like the laws of thermodynamics.

"Unburning CO2" will require enormous amounts of energy. You may shave off a few percent of losses here and there, but the amounts are so huge, it is absurd to think that you could do that and just continue business as usual.

For your example of cars it makes even less sense. You have no practical way of capturing the CO2 from cars short of taking it from the air. So you added another extremely energy intensive process.