Between April 2021 and October 2024, British physicist Michael de Podesta paid £40 per month to carbon capture company Climeworks. In return, the company promised to remove 50 kilograms of carbon dioxide each month. But in September 2024, de Podesta wrote that “when I checked the other day they had removed precisely no CO₂ from the atmosphere”.
The following day, de Podesta wrote, “I conclude that I am indeed a gullible idiot.”
Climateworks’ business model involves selling carbon credits for CO₂ that it hopes to capture in the future
Good scam if you can convince people…so have they convinced anyone
Microsoft, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Shopify, British Airways, Lego, Swiss Air, PwC, and TikTok.
Oh /s
I guess “in the future” is a promise you can always give, like “free beeer tomorrow”
“We told you so” (sponsored by 2nd law of thermodynamics)
I like those green algae bubblers set up on the exhausts of thermal powerplants, though, those are fun and work (partially), unlike this carbon capture fairytale bullshit.
It’s also kind of obvious by accounting for concentrations why this kind of carbon capture is a fairytale, isn’t it. Trying to capture from a carbon source like an exhaust, you’ll see a gas that’s easily 80% CO₂, compared to the meager 0,04% (400ppm) concentration in regular air. My guesstimate is that you’ll easily produce more CO₂ than you’re able to capture just trying to move enough CO₂ molecules through the capture device, even if you’re 100% efficient in capture.
Also a sidenote: I think carbon capture at the source has its use in combatting climate change, but we must not forget reduce > reuse > recycle. Carbon capture is very much recycling, so we should be careful to only do it for situations where it’s very hard to decarbonize.