[anonporridge]

By "petroleum industry CCS is a scam" I assume you're referring to efforts to make fuels from atmospheric carbon, which is only means we burn it again and put it right back in the atmosphere?

If so, then I disagree that this is a scam. Liquid carbon fuels are going to continue being mission critical for civilization for many decades to come. So much of our infrastructure is built with the assumption of liquid carbon fuels that it's going to take a very long time to migrate completely. And there may be some applications that can never be carbon fuel free.

So, projects like these are still very valuable, because they potentially reduce the need to extract and burn fossil fuels, which necessarily inject additional carbon the atmosphere. Slowly down the rate we add is just as important as permanent capture projects like this one that can actually reverse the trend.

Also, I am increasingly of the opinion that permanent carbon capture tech is absolutely critical to civilization sustainability. I think humans are going to burn every ounce of volatile carbon fuel stored up in the Earth's crust. The incentives to do so are just too great. Converting the excess carbon to a non volatile form is the only way we'll be able to control how much remains in our atmosphere.

[chriswarbo]

> By "petroleum industry CCS is a scam" I assume you're referring to efforts to make fuels from atmospheric carbon

Petroleum industry CCS also includes pumping captured CO2 directly into underground reservoirs. Not only is this unstable (it's not chemically transformed), and inefficient (solid chemical forms take less space, less pressure, don't need cooling to remain liquid, etc.), but those reservoirs are typically old oil/gas wells: "capturing" CO2 in those wells will push out any remaining oil/gas, which the company can then sell for burning.