Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Inside the hidden carbon plant pulling CO2 from thin air | BBC News" video.

  1. AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE: I'm Australian but did my degree in America (late 80s) and one Friday we had a NASA engineer do a special lecture on Terraforming Mars. We were kind of excited as at that time (despite the Challenger accident) we believed we'd be building the next space station in the 90s, back to the moon early on the 2000s and off to Mars in the 2010s. We were shattered when he started with: "Sorry its impossible and here's why!" He then went and explained how you need think when considering an entire planet. You don't need to be an engineer or geologist or atmospheric scientist just BASIC MATH WILL DO. Once you understand the actual scope of dealing with a planetary issue things like this are irrelevant. For example there's currently around 2.5 Trillion tons of excess Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere and by current estimates it will go past 3.5 Trillion tons by the mid 2030s. So to do a quick time estimate you simply divide 3.5 Trillion by 35,000 and get 100,000,000 years. So if you want to get that 3.5 Trillion tons out in something like 10 years you need about 10,000,000 of these plants built. If you want to do it 20 years then its 5,000,000 plants. As to the costs its even easier to estimate At $1,000 per ton 3.5 Trillion tons will cost $3.5 QUADRILLION tons to remove. 1/10th of $3.5 Quadrillion is $0.35 Quadrillion. So at $300 per ton its (3/10ths) which is $1.05 QUADRILLION And at $400 per ton its (4/10ths) which is $1.4 QUADRILLION So its reasonably easy to estimate that this method will cost between $1 and $1.5 QUADRILLION and that's provided we can find 5-10,000,000 SUITABLE locations and get enough materials to build those 5-10,000,000 plants. Then there's the small task of how do we power it, because power might be reasonably cheap in Iceland where they have enormous natural resources but what about the other 9,999 plants where are they going, how are they being powered and who's paying? By the way if every person on the planet planted 1,000 trees (seedlings) at a cost of $5 per tree. That would be 8 Trillion Trees and if each tree is capable on capturing 1-2tons of Carbon and sequestering it in the wood. Then we'd only need about 1 in 4 trees (~2.5 trillion) to reach maturity to capture that 3.5 Trillion of Carbon Dioxide. Yeah that would cost about $40 Trillion on basic costs which is a staggering amount of money until you consider the alternative is $1-$1.5 QUADRILLION, which is 25 times the cost at the low end. Best of all Trees don't need electricity they just need water and sun light and maybe some fertilizer. Once established their maintenance and upkeep costs are almost zero. If you plant trees that produce food and of building materials then even better.
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  2. AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE: I'm Australian but did my degree in America (late 80s) and one Friday we had a NASA engineer do a special lecture on Terraforming Mars. We were kind of excited as at that time (despite the Challenger accident) we believed we'd be building the next space station in the 90s, back to the moon early on the 2000s and off to Mars in the 2010s. We were shattered when he started with: "Sorry its impossible and here's why!" He then went and explained how you need think when considering an entire planet. You don't need to be an engineer or geologist or atmospheric scientist just BASIC MATH WILL DO. Once you understand the actual scope of dealing with a planetary issue things like this are irrelevant. For example there's currently around 2.5 Trillion tons of excess Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere and by current estimates it will go past 3.5 Trillion tons by the mid 2030s. So to do a quick time estimate you simply divide 3.5 Trillion by 35,000 and get 100,000,000 years. So if you want to get that 3.5 Trillion tons out in something like 10 years you need about 10,000,000 of these plants built. If you want to do it 20 years then its 5,000,000 plants. As to the costs its even easier to estimate At $1,000 per ton 3.5 Trillion tons will cost $3.5 QUADRILLION tons to remove. 1/10th of $3.5 Quadrillion is $0.35 Quadrillion. So at $300 per ton its (3/10ths) which is $1.05 QUADRILLION And at $400 per ton its (4/10ths) which is $1.4 QUADRILLION So its reasonably easy to estimate that this method will cost between $1 and $1.5 QUADRILLION and that's provided we can find 5-10,000,000 SUITABLE locations and get enough materials to build those 5-10,000,000 plants. Then there's the small task of how do we power it, because power might be reasonably cheap in Iceland where they have enormous natural resources but what about the other 9,999 plants where are they going, how are they being powered and who's paying? By the way if every person on the planet planted 1,000 trees (seedlings) at a cost of $5 per tree. That would be 8 Trillion Trees and if each tree is capable on capturing 1-2tons of Carbon and sequestering it in the wood. Then we'd only need about 1 in 4 trees (~2.5 trillion) to reach maturity to capture that 3.5 Trillion of Carbon Dioxide. Yeah that would cost about $40 Trillion on basic costs which is a staggering amount of money until you consider the alternative is $1-$1.5 QUADRILLION, which is 25 times the cost at the low end. Best of all Trees don't need electricity they just need water and sun light and maybe some fertilizer. Once established their maintenance and upkeep costs are almost zero. If you plant trees that produce food and of building materials then even better.
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  3.  @gamers-xh3uc  And WTF is your point? This is the first step in any engineering project. Get an estimate of what its going to take. It doesn't have to be hyper accurate but it needs to highlight the basics of the task. I'll give you another example: Right now here in Australia there's a huge argument over nuclear power and the Australian Liberals have identified 7 sites BUT THEY ARE CLAIMING they don't have the costs yet. I happen to know those sites because I have been trying to get people's attention about our power sector ever since I had a small consulting job back in 2016. If we were to choose European EPR2 Reactors we'd need 1 reactor at each of 4 sites and 2 reactors at the 3 other sites. Based on Hinckley Point C an EPR 2 costs AU$35 Billion so 10 reactors is AU$350 Billion and it takes about that long to have an estimate on the costs. If we were to choose American AP1000 Reactors we'd need 14 reactors across those sites to generate a similar amount of power. Based on Vogtle AP1000s cost AU$26 Billion and those 14 reactors would cost AU$364 Billion and that's about how long it takes to get a second estimate. Sorry mate but engineers have to do estimates all the time.
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  4. AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE: and that's a damn good answer Below is the same answer I gave elsewhere. The difference is your only looking at dealing with what goes into the atmosphere each year, when there's already a massive amount in the atmosphere that needs removing. I'm Australian but did my degree in America (late 80s) and one Friday we had a NASA engineer do a special lecture on Terraforming Mars. We were kind of excited as at that time (despite the Challenger accident) we believed we'd be building the next space station in the 90s, back to the moon early on the 2000s and off to Mars in the 2010s. We were shattered when he started with: "Sorry its impossible and here's why!" He then went and explained how you need think when considering an entire planet. You don't need to be an engineer or geologist or atmospheric scientist just BASIC MATH WILL DO. Once you understand the actual scope of dealing with a planetary issue things like this are irrelevant. For example there's currently around 2.5 Trillion tons of excess Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere and by current estimates it will go past 3.5 Trillion tons by the mid 2030s. So to do a quick time estimate you simply divide 3.5 Trillion by 35,000 and get 100,000,000 years. So if you want to get that 3.5 Trillion tons out in something like 10 years you need about 10,000,000 of these plants built. If you want to do it 20 years then its 5,000,000 plants. As to the costs its even easier to estimate At $1,000 per ton 3.5 Trillion tons will cost $3.5 QUADRILLION tons to remove. 1/10th of $3.5 Quadrillion is $0.35 Quadrillion. So at $300 per ton its (3/10ths) which is $1.05 QUADRILLION And at $400 per ton its (4/10ths) which is $1.4 QUADRILLION So its reasonably easy to estimate that this method will cost between $1 and $1.5 QUADRILLION and that's provided we can find 5-10,000,000 SUITABLE locations and get enough materials to build those 10,000,000 plants. Then there's the small task of how do we power it, because power might be reasonably cheap in Iceland where they have enormous natural resources but what about the other 9,999 plants where are they going, how are they being powered and who's paying? By the way if every person on the planet planted 1,000 trees (seedlings) at a cost of $5 per tree. That would be 8 Trillion Trees and if each tree is capable on capturing 1-2tons of Carbon and sequestering it in the wood. Then we'd only need about 1 in 4 trees (~2.5 trillion) to reach maturity to capture that 3.5 Trillion of Carbon Dioxide. Yeah that would cost about $40 Trillion on basic costs which is a staggering amount of money until you consider the alternative is $1-$1.5 QUADRILLION, which is 25 times the cost at the low end. Best of all Trees don't need electricity they just need water and sun light and maybe some fertilizer. Once established their maintenance and upkeep costs are almost zero. If you plant trees that produce food and of building materials then even better.
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  5. ​ @ldm3027  EVERY CLAIM YOU MADE IS BULLSHlT - 100% BULLSHlT Where do you get this $100/ton from? IN THE VIDEO Douglas Chan COO Climeworks who have built this plant is STATING $300-400 a ton (5:00). Then you say there's 40bn tons a year in emissions and half gets absorbed by the natural environment. That leaves 20bn ADDITIONAL per year. You claim that removing 10bn tons will cost $1tr a year and that we'll have to pay that for 100+ years. What about the remaining 10bn tons of additional CO2 in the atmosphere? WHAT TF ARE WE MEANT TO DO ABOUT THAT? So not only do you make numbers up that you can't justify you then can't do basic math either. I suggest in future you don't argue with an engineer who can actually do math.
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  6.  @kausthubh  There's plenty of open unforested space space. I'm Australian we have several million square kilometers for starters. North Africa has massive amounts of open space and YES I damn well know how hard that will be. But that can also be mitigated with tree selection and planting arrangements. There's some pretty amazing videos here on YouTube on re-wilding and how they are reclaiming lots of open space. One of the really important things that has come out of that is variety. If you try and to it via monoculture it will be a disaster. HERE'S the inescapable fact. We have to get 3.5 Trillion tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere and do it fast. There's a clown down the list here (idm3027) who's pulling numbers out of his butt like it will only cost $100 a ton by DAC. IF THATS TRUE and lets not forget that Douglas Chan COO Climeworks is claiming they hope to get it down from $1000/ton to $3-400/ton, then at $100/ton its still going to cost $350 TRILLION. WHERE TF DOES ANYONE THINK THEY ARE GOING TO GET THAT $350 TRILLION? Then there's the actual energy costs. In how many places would we need new power stations to drive that AND WHO'S going to pay for those power stations. Then that's that whole problem of the environmental cost of all the materials required to build all those plants. I started with a degree in aerospace but have spent 30+ years working in industrial control systems and automation. I have spent time in both manufacturing and mining and I KNOW how much energy those industries consume. Do you know there's mor energy used in making a car than it consumes in its lifetime? people forget it take energy to dig all those materials out of the ground and process it into stuff that you can makes bits out of so you can assemble those bits into a car. Its the same for most manufactured goods. In fact a great way to help save the planet is to STOP manufacturing crap products and instead manufacture everything with better quality to last longer. It would massively reduce energy consumption. The other thing is to triple glaze all those glass towers we've build over the last century. mark Blyth the political economist at Brown U. mentioned an engineering report that said if America just triple glazed all its office blocks and skyscrapers the saving in energy would help America get most of the way to meeting the Paris Accords. Architects might be good for designing aesthetically nice buildings but they don't know a damn thing about energy efficiency.
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  7.  @RobertGonzalez-j1v  Do the math its not that hard. At $1000 per ton removing 2.5 Trillion tons costs $2.5 Quadrillion BUT wait by the mid 2030s it will be 3.5 Trillion tons and by the early 2040s 4.5 Trilllion tons. This guy said they could get it down to $300 per ton. So what even if he got it down to $100 per ton then its still gonna cost $350 Trillion for the basics and 100s of $Trillions after that. The combined wealth of the planet cannot afford that. Being able to use basic arithmetic to get a simple estimate is a necessary skill for an engineer. Here in Australia right now there's calls to go nuclear and 7 sites have been identified. I know those sites and I know I can put an EPR 2 at 4 of those sites and 2 EPR 2s at the other 3 and that's 10 in total. Based of the costs at Hinkley Point C each reactor will be AU$48 Billion each. 10 x 48 = 480 So AU$480 Billion becomes your starting estimate and that simply asks the people pushing that idea to explain where they are going to get $480 Billion from? Because if these sorts of people pushing these sorts of solutions can't answer the basic cost questions then what's the point of discussing anything further?
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