Posted on 04/30/2019 9:16:37 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
It is one of the great dilemmas of climate change: We take such comfort from air conditioning that worldwide energy consumption for that purpose has already tripled since 1990. It is on track to grow even faster through mid-century - and assuming fossil-fuelfired power plants provide the electricity, that could cause enough carbon dioxide emissions to warm the planet by another deadly half-degree Celsius.
A paper published Tuesday in the Nature Communications proposes a partial remedy: Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (or HVAC) systems move a lot of air. They can replace the entire air volume in an office building five or 10 times an hour. Machines that capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere - a developing fix for climate change - also depend on moving large volumes of air. So why not save energy by tacking the carbon capture machine onto the air conditioner?
This futuristic proposal, from a team led by chemical engineer Roland Dittwanker at Germanys Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, goes even further. The researchers imagine a system of modular components, powered by renewable energy, that would not just extract carbon dioxide and water from the air. It would also convert them into hydrogen, and then use a multistep chemical process to transform that hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
The result: Personalized, localized and distributed, synthetic oil wells in buildings or neighborhoods, the authors write. The envisioned model of crowd oil from solar refineries, akin to crowd electricity from solar panels, would enable people to take control and collectively manage global warming and climate change, rather than depending on the fossil power industrial behemoths.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
Wouldn’t it be like opening your refrigerator door to cool your kitchen?
Scientific American WAS a good magazine. It is now a wussy science for dummies for social justice. EVERY article is 100% PC.
How about a large vacuum cleaner with planet-sized CO filters. It would vacusuck the atmosphere, and then restore it back to health.
***The researchers imagine a system of modular components, powered by renewable energy, that would not just extract carbon dioxide and water from the air.***
There is already an item for this. It converts CO2 into oxygen. It is called a “tree”. I’ve planted many of them.
I remember some nitwit proposed that Southern California put a row of giant fans on top of the mountain ridges to blow the smog into the Central Valley.
No.... (hee hee)...comment... (hee hee).
“would not just extract carbon dioxide and water from the air. It would also convert them into hydrogen”
That must just be a badly written statement. There’s no way to turn carbon dioxide into hydrogen. I’m guessing there are chemical reaction formulas shown in the article that gives a better description of the process.
The bottom line, as always: do the benefits exceed or at least equal the costs?
We are reaching the technological ability to actually affect the weather in a serious way and, as with all things technological, if it can be done it will be done. It cannot be known what the results of meddling will be because the computer models on which the meddlers rely are mostly fantasy based because no one knows what are all the variables. The end product is much more likely to be weather disaster than anything beneficial. EPA has admitted to or announced that it is engaged in a planet cooling attempt by putting a reflective layer above the buld of the atmosphere at 80k feet or so. And industry has published that removing CO2 from the atmosphere is now feasible by tech that can make fuel out of that CO2. So. The climate reality right now is a sunspot minimum. Previous minima have brought us Little Ice Age the Maunder, Sporer and Dalton minima. The Viking Greenland colony was frozen out by one and the last one may well have triggered the French Revolution because the peasants and urban poor were actually starving due to the read widespread crop failures due to cold springs and cool summers. So our technology promises to come on line and be used just as we are going into the current Little Ice Age which is probably just beginning due to the sunspots being not there.
Everybody just crank your A/C up to full.
If it could then it would have happened long ago because I can’t believe I’m the only one who left a door open as a kid and had their dad yell, “What, are you trying to air condition the whole outdoors?”
Popular Morons.
Partly due to John Gorrie in Florida trying to cure bad air aka malaria.
I learned that from James Burke’s Connections documentary.
It’s no longer Scientific and no longer American.
It ain't broke,
Perpetual motion...
Yeah. Totally helps change the climate from hot and sticky to cool and dry.
The planet is suffering from an Epoch level CO2 DROUGHT
Silence all climate hoaxers would reduce carbon dioxide emissions and hot air dramatically! Seriously, this hoax is really old!
Staggering. You might be able to split the “C” from the “O2” but the energy cost to do so will be worse than leaving it alone.
Why don’t we have a national “tree drive”? Everything these folks say just sounds like they’re trying to create the technical equivalent of a tree!
Great documentary and better book
I think the intent is to remove ambient co2 from the air as it is pushed through the condenser coil. They still are idiots, but at least that concept could work, as long as the co2 made powering the a scrubber is less than the co2 adsorbed. Still begs the question of whether or not co2 is an issue or a blessing. Science they say... Myarse.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.