I try to give equal access to those who want to comment professionally on reports here, here is one such example. This is commentary on the WUWT story Princeton: Direct removal of carbon dioxide from air likely not viable – Anthony
Guest post by Peter Eisenberger
Global Thermostat LLC
The American Physical Society Report on Direct Air Capture of CO2 (DAC) http://www.aps.org/about/pressreleases/dac11.cfm
follows a strange logic. It evaluates a DAC embodiment very different from ours, which no one would use, then estimates a high cost of $600 or more per metric tonne of CO2 removed. From this it concludes that DAC in general is very costly. The report identified no technical show stoppers, and it did not raise any issues we have not considered and addressed in our research and development program. We fail to understand how the report can come to a general conclusion about the ultimate cost of DAC technology from evaluating a specific example known at the outset to be expensive.
This goes against the long history of innovation experience in which early difficult and costly processes became easy and low cost. We have in fact demonstrated proprietary breakthroughs in our pilot facilities at SRI International (see photographs) that will lead to a low cost DAC process.
However, the committee was unwilling to sign a non-disclosure agreement, thereby ensuring the nature of its conclusions at the outset. I quote from the report:
“Peter Eisenberger, David Keith, and Klaus Lackner, all three of them physicists working independently to develop field demonstrations of direct capture of CO2 from air, contributed their knowledge to this study, believing that the strategy of direct air capture needed independent evaluation. They have been extremely helpful, sharing their technical insights and giving the committee the benefit of many hours of their time. As a matter of policy the Committee sought to avoid learning any of their ideas that could not be made public.”
We even offered to privately share proprietary information, including experimental data, with a small select group of the committee to enable the committee to understand that their cost conclusions are too high by more than a factor of ten. Thus the committee, by choosing to “avoid learning…ideas that could not be made public,” cut itself off from the only information that could help them determine the true potential of DAC. I note that the prestigious Royal Society of England did a study of DAC where they included the following statement in their report:
“ Proposals for new methods [of air capture] are still appearing (confidential submissions received) and it is very likely that substantial cost reductions are possible in future.”
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/09/air-capture-in-royal-society.html
The APS report also states, “No demonstration or pilot-scale DAC system has yet been deployed anywhere on earth…” . The photographs of our pilot unit show the existence of a unit that development engineers characterize as “pilot-scale.”
Readers may be interested to learn that there is no current public funding for DAC because of past vigorous opposition by experts pursuing flue gas capture of CO2 from fossil fuel power generation plants. Many of the experts on the APS panel and those who testified to the panel are working on flue gas capture, some with processes they are commercializing. Our efforts are totally supported by private investors. Unfortunately, DAC is often mistakenly viewed as competitive with flue gas capture of CO2 when it is in fact strategically and technically very different. In particular DAC can also be driven with renewable energy and has the potential to actually reduce the ambient CO2 concentration while flue gas capture can only slow its increase.
We believe that DAC has the potential to provide an important option for reducing CO2, while maintaining access to low cost energy needed for global economic development. We will in due course issue a public release of our approach, and we will let the facts speak for themselves.
Those interested in learning more about our efforts are welcome to visit our website at
You have to see this as another example of the corrupt system that has given us the bogus science that we have been fed for decades. Eisenberger may or may not have something in the long run, but at least it is privately funded and not part of the government-science establishment. It will succeed — or not — based on its merits in the marketplace.
The real con is that rising CO2 levels is not a problem. Those who think with such certainty that CO2 is just a trace gas that can’t have any significant effect, or that it’s influence on climate has been disproven are deluding themselves, and unfortunately others.
Actually Carbon Capture is easy, and direct costs are nearly nothing. What is difficult, is refraining from cutting down the trees.
A few questions for this learned group.
1) Is CO2 evenly dispersed in the atmosphere or is it concentrated more in the lower atmosphere due to it’s relative weight?
2) Vegetation effectively converts CO2 to O2 and stores the carbon in it’s biomass, so why do we need to invent a machine to do the same thing?
3) Where is that promised cold fusion?
Thanks in advance for any responses.
Ok, I’ll say it: Why the HELL would anybody in their right mind want to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere? I simply can’t believe it!
(Ok…. If this get’s snipped, I’ll deserve it. But it won’t quell my anger.)
To answer Sal Minella above: Cold fusion is on its way! You’ll be hearing a lot more about it this fall (even by some of our Lame Stream Media–first calling the CF people “denier” physicists, then their reports will tolerate them, then they’ll write glowing reports claiming to have discovered a whole new area in physics.)
Wouldn’t it be easier to remove water vapor from the air? It’s the most abundant greenhouse gas anyway. I think i’ll call my company “Global Shockfrosting LLC.”
Snake oil salesmen.
DAC and Flue Gas Capture are pointless endeavors beyond demonstration of a capability
#1 – There is no supporting evidence that increased CO2 is harmful to either flora or fauna
#2 – There is no product identified other than sequestration (burial).
So, Clara Peller might ask “Where’s the Market”?
If a private company did capture CO2 on a massive scale, it would be no different than what exists in terms of water rights. In other words, you could capture it, but you cannot withold it forever. You could not sell the water, only charge for the act of delivery. Since free CO2 is not a deposit, it can no longer be sold as a commodity, like LNG or Oil.
So, where’s the market? Will the companies that extract CO2 from the atmosphere be selling a service that delivers tanked CO2 to home greenhouses?
This rebuttal contains no information, other than an objection. They didn’t even make the standard claim that they could do the job for 1/2 the cost, or something like that.
It reminds me of when Dr. Larry Fine invented a fountain pen that could write under whipped cream: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQti6nrQbU4
another little louse chasing crumbs at the cannibals’ dinner.
got no class
got no principles
got no sense
climate sluts are the cheapest and filthiest
And your evidence for these claims is. . . ?
/Mr Lynn
The best tool for CO2 abatement is phytoredmediation.
What a happy circumstance for us!
Keep eating, guys!!
I know what to do with all that research money!
Let’s spend ALL the climate research money on solar panel research and try to get the ROI time down from a bazillion years.
While we’re at it, let’s desalinate and irrigate africa and grow the plantable regions of the developing world!
Let’s develop hardier winter wheat strains that will expand the growing regions!
Corn for ethanol means you can’t have tortillas? LET’S PLANT MORE OF IT! Woo WOOOO
While we’re at it, let’s deal with the bee mite epidemic and save the modern honeybee, thus securing pollinated food production!
Oh, I’m sorry. Back to schemes to create global governance. I got off message there for a bit.
phytoremediation, not redmediation.
doh
If you could cheaply pull CO2 out of the air and convert it to carbon and oxygen then you might have something useful since you could sell the carbon fior use as fuel. Of course doing it cheaply is the problem and now you require energy to both capture the CO2 and break the molecules apart to generate the carbon and oxygen. Perhaps if this could be done with a solar energized catalyst one could envision the equivalent of a solar panel that drops carbon powder into storage container. Who knows, after a few days or weeks you might have enough carbon to cook a burger or two on a campfire!
The need to pull CO2 out of the air has NOT been demonstrated.
The consequences of artificially lowering the CO2 content of the atmosphere is at the risk of depleting on a natural down-cycle.
Thank you, Peter Eisenberger, for setting the record straight. I mean that sincerely.
Now that the deck chairs on the Titanic have been properly aligned, we can move on to more pressing business.
My advice for Globalthermostat: Recapture your brain and get a life
It really is astonishing that these lemming-like humans, mesmerized by the imaginary fears of the evil ‘carbon’, would if they could contrive doomsday machines that would suck all the CO2 out of the atmosphere, dooming all life on Earth to death by starvation.
Fanciful? Remember the Xhosa:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-parallels-in-our-time-the-killing-of-of-cattle-vs-carbon/
There is no limit to the folly of which mankind is capable. These fools must be stopped. How? By exposing their insanity for what it is, and by cutting off their funding. Call your Congressman.
/Mr Lynn
Could some REAL scientist out there tell me approximately how much CO2 60 acres of deciduous trees remove from the atmosphere annually? If it is somewhere in the neighborhood of several hundred tons, maybe I can get a government grant or subsidy for my woods. My idea is at least as good as this machine, and the trees don’t cost anything to operate or maintain.
Such papers give me the shudders. Some ideas may be unworkable but some carbon destruction is already occurring, viable or not. And it is all murder. Murder of people, slaughter of endangered species, killing of plants. All these depend on carbon dioxide the gas of life.
Maybe somebody can inform these wackos that “organic chemistry” is CARBON chemistry. We are carbon-based life-forms.
As china makes all our stuff, and as a by product produces all that extra scary plant food. Shouldn`t we really strip every penny from carbon initiatives, buy nuclear reactors and `gift` them to the chinese?
What was that ? no? …Oh i see. .
Apparently, they`re not THAT bothered about co2, but the con-dems still want your money.
And this,today.
http://www.chad.co.uk/news/national/campaigners_welcome_emission_pledge_1_3382272
When those professors can show it is cheaper per kg of CO2 to do what they plan to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere than to plant a a palm oil or any other tree or grow a crop…get back to me.
But you can turn a profit on trees. That will be difficult to beat.
Graciela Chichilnisky is a Co-Founder & Managing Director of Global Thermostat
http://globalthermostat.com/team/graciela-chichilnisky
and according to her own website
;…is the author of the carbon market of the UN Kyoto Protocol that became international law in 2005. She also created the concept of Basic Needs voted by 153 nations at the 1993 UN Earth Summit to be the cornerstone of Sustainable Development, and in 1996 created the formal theory of Sustainable Development that is used worldwide.’
http://chichilnisky.com/
http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&rec_id=37656
Some difficulty in finding the models Chichilnisky developed 1993, 1996 and also referenced as 1981 and 1986.
http://chichilnisky.com/pdfs/books/Development_and_Global_Finance_The_Case_for_an_International_Bank_for_Environmental_Settlements.pdf (8.7MB)
(1993) North-South trade and the dynamics of renewable resources, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics V4(2) December, p219-48
doi:10.1016/0954-349X(93)90017-E
onion2 says:
May 14, 2011 at 5:17 am
“The real con is that rising CO2 levels is not a problem. Those who think with such certainty that CO2 is just a trace gas that can’t have any significant effect, or that it’s influence on climate has been disproven are deluding themselves, and unfortunately others.”
The planet Earth is showing that it is indeed not a problem. Care to show any evidence that does not count models. (these are not evidence) The real problem is people like you trying to convince others that it is a problem with no scientific evidence it is. Since when has 1c increase with a doubling of CO2 been a problem? There is no positive feedback detected which the models rely on. The only real problem is con artists won’t beable to increase their own bank funds when it becomes absolutely clear it is not a problem.