• mazzilius_marsti@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    19 hours ago

    so the AI stuff causes too much CO2, instead of fixing their own hardware, the best they could do is to offset that CO2 amount by burying shit?

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      18 hours ago

      Yes, burying fertilizer traps biomass CO2 and then they can use that as carbon credit equivalent to claim CO² neutrality.
      Of course, there’s a reason why fertilizer is an inexpensive source of fixated carbon biomass and this means all fertilizer will increase in price by the amount value of it’s CO2 carbon credit equivalent

      Then maybe the buried fertilizer will become so valuable that it can be dug out and sold as fertilizer again.

      I don’t see any problems with this plan !

  • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    48
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    Apart from the questionable practice of buying CO2 credits (or whatever the practice is called), pumping shit underground does not seem like the best way to save the ecosphere. It could’ve produced energy and/or useful products in various ways but oh no, that would have been too expensive.

    This prevents it from being dumped at a waste disposal site, where it would eventually decompose and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

    This is the only reason this practice is deemed carbon-emission-friendly. Color me skeptical.

    • SupraMario@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      24 hours ago

      My first thought was…how is this a good thing, we get a lot of our water from ground water…and now we’re pumping toxic shit into the ground. The fuck

      • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        23 hours ago

        Devil’s advocate says: 5000 ft is probably below groundwater level. But tbh idk. Hell, they could even use spent oil reservoirs.

        • remotelove@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          17 hours ago

          use spent oil reservoirs

          Ok, that lead to some giggles thinking about some company drilling in the future thinking they were about to hit a strangely untapped oil field.

          Add a hundred years of methane pressure build up and that could be really interesting gusher.

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      17 hours ago

      It’s also precious cheap carbon credit, don’t worry it will only increase world wide fertilize costs by the value of the carbon credits but thing of all the methane they can burn to make electricity.

      It’s like converting our fertilizer directly into electricity, except its carbon sequestered 5000 feet under ground !

      Maybe the fertilizer prices will increase so much it will become worththile to dig that 5000 feet mine and get that fertilizer back in the bio carbon cycle in 30 years when fertilizer costs more than aluminium does today !

  • brsrklf@jlai.lu
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    We truly are in the metaverse era.

    They found a way to convert physical shit into virtual shit.

    • justsomeguy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      57
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 day ago

      It’s usually nonsense. I remember some carbon offsets being a guy owning a forest and essentially selling his inaction as a carbon offset. Give me a million dollars so I don’t chop all those trees down which I totally would’ve done otherwise. It’s just pushing numbers around on a spreadsheet.

      In this case I can imagine their calculations being wildly off. How much CO2/methane does a ton of poop actually release? How much CO2 is released to transport that ton and build the facilities that hold it?

      • squaresinger@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        35
        ·
        1 day ago

        There’s even worse stuff: Planting trees is sold as carbon offset. But where do you plant trees? Certainly not on valuable farmland. Instead they drain bogs to plant trees instead.

        The issue is that bogs can store about 10x as much CO² as a forest can, and by draining the bog, that CO² is released.

        And bog land isn’t exactly well-suited for growing trees, and also the carbon offset only pays for planting the trees, not for keeping them alive. So the trees die almost instantly, thus releasing their stored CO². But the upside to it is that on the now re-deforested land, more trees can be planted.

        It’s complete greenwashing with at best no effect and at worst terrible effects.

        The main issue with planting trees to remove CO² is that a forest doesn’t consume CO² but instead just stores it. Once a forest is fully-grown, no more CO² is sunk in there. A hectare of forest stores ~400t CO2. Germany creates about 650 million tons CO² per year. So to offset that, Germany would need to plant 1.6 million hectars of forest a year, which is about 4.5% of the surface area of Germany. 32% of Germany is already forest, so that leaves a theoretical maximum of 14.5 years of CO² emissions that Germany could offset by planting trees.

        But Germany has been creating CO² for much longer.

    • ik5pvx@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      73
      ·
      1 day ago

      In the eyes of the board of directors, sure . Plantings a billion worth of trees would probably have been too green

      • Saprophyte@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        20
        ·
        1 day ago

        Technically it’s more common to pay investment firms with forest land to not cut down the trees they weren’t going to cut down to begin with.

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      1 day ago

      Some poop releases methane, a much worse greenhouse gas than Co2.

      Fun fact, when striking oil, you often encounter methane pockets as well, the gas is commonly just burned in a giant flare, this is mainly done for safety, to prevent gas from accumulating on the ground and risking an explosion, but also far reduce the greenhouse effect of the gas.

      • Kairos@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        1 day ago

        The thing is that these carbon credits make it so that things which would otherwise reduce CO2 in the atmosphere don’t happen unless some money changes hands. Most of the time credits effectively do nothing.

    • Saleh@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 day ago

      Depends on how the wastewater would have been treated before.

      Wastewater treatment does release CO2, however the sludge can be fermented to biogas. So in relative terms not that much. Also the sludge contains phosphate that could be recovered for fertilizing or chemical industry purposes.

      It would probably be far more effective to build renewables with that money than to bury things for which a treatment process already exists.

    • justsomeguy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      1 day ago

      Microsoft burying the steaming pile of poop that is teams will be enough to “offset” all their data centers.