The Climate Change Hoax

Climate Solutions or Corporate Mirage? Direct Air Capture

• Karl Michael • Season 1 • Episode 24

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Are climate change solutions merely a mirage in the desert of environmental responsibility? Join us as we unravel this provocative notion with Patrick Scott, dissecting Climeworks' direct air capture technology. We question whether companies like Microsoft and Shopify are genuinely championing sustainability or simply buying into a slick climate action narrative. Comparing these high-tech solutions to the ocean's natural CO2 absorption capacities, we question their true efficacy and raise concerns about the significant energy demands required for their operation.

Our conversation doesn't shy away from tackling the broader implications of carbon capture efforts and renewable energy solutions. We critically examine the environmental and operational concerns, from the noise pollution and wildlife impact of Climeworks facilities to the unintended consequences of wind turbines on bird populations. By challenging the practicality of net-zero emissions goals and scrutinizing the aesthetic and ecological repercussions, we call for a clear-eyed reassessment of these purportedly green technologies. Do their benefits outweigh their drawbacks, or are we merely chasing shadows in our quest for climate solutions?

Announcer:

The Climate Change Hoax. If you're suspicious that this climate change stuff may be exaggerated or just total BS, you've come to the right place. Welcome to the Climate Change Hoax Podcast With your host, carl Michael. Here you'll learn the truth about the deceivers who want you to believe we can actually control the weather. We cannot. The real goal is to control you. This is the climate change hoax.

Karl:

Greetings crisis deniers Greetings Crisis Deniers. Well, I'm here with Patrick Scott and we're going to talk about a company called Climeworks. This company deals in the latest global warming scam direct air capture and, pat, we actually touched on this in Episode 16, and we made fun of it. But these guys have developed a sweet little grift and it's all centered around, of course, the climate action BS. I call it a soft-serve protection racket. Businesses and individuals can quote-unquote, buy protection and maybe some quasi-forgiveness from all the climate kooks. These woke companies like Microsoft, bcg, stripe, square, shopify and many other well-known corporations and businesses are on Climework's sucker list. Same thing for individuals, wackos that want to prove their loyalty to climate action, and with all the bragging rights. Now, these guys, climeworks they claim they will suck CO2 right out of the air on your behalf, even provide a document showing how much CO2 you helped eliminate. Yes, yes, yes, folks, they even provide a receipt. They are actually a company. They have a website, climeworkscom, and I encourage you to check them out.

Karl:

Now, I discovered these guys when I signed up for a Stripe account. Now, I discovered these guys when I signed up for a Stripe account. They Stripe offers the option to have part of my proceeds from this show go to Climeworks, you know, to help fight climate change. Now, folks, as you know, this show deals with exposing the climate change scam, so I figured giving money to these guys, climeworks, would be a bit disingenuous, would it not? So, needless to say, I said no to the hell, no. So rest assured, if you support this show, not one thin dime is going to these bums.

Patrick:

Pat, these guys and others like them are creating empires and it's all based on one big fat lie, that is, I can think of something that's out there that's totally free, that does the exact same thing, really.

Karl:

Yeah, it's called the ocean yeah, you said you did a lot of research well, you know one of these things.

Patrick:

You go to these websites and they don't a lot of these things they don't talk about. They talk about how much CO2 they're going to suck out of the air, but what they don't talk about is why they're I guess you would say business model or whatever they're trying to do. It just doesn't make sense, I mean because the ocean is a constant entity. Right, it's there, it has been there, it has been there, it's been there longer than we've been here. The best way to look at it is the ocean has been measured to absorb 25% of the total Earth's CO2, while at the same time absorbing 90% of the heat generated. Percent of the heat generated.

Patrick:

Being a constant entity, meaning means the ocean has been absorbing 25 percent of co2 out of the atmosphere, regardless of whether we, as humans, were on this planet or not, right? Um, then you know. Then you have to kind of ask yourself well, 25 percent of what? Yeah, what? It's been reported that between 1994 and 2007, the ocean absorbed 34 gigatons of CO2. So with some simple math, you, if you span 13 years, you could say roughly that per year, that's 25%, which translates to 2.62 gigatons of CO2.

Karl:

But wait, these guys have a prototype. Actually, they have a bigger prototype. They started off with a little thing called the Arctic Fox and it's not very big, it looks like an air conditioner on top of Walmart, but it claims up to 50 tons of CO2 per year. So 50 tons, that's a lot, isn't it? That's more than what you just said, isn't it?

Patrick:

No 2.62 gigatons of CO2.

Karl:

Gigatons of CO2.

Patrick:

Oh, gigatons, that is 2,620,000,000 tons of CO2 per year. Thank you, ocean.

Karl:

But wait, wait, there's more If you order. Now they've got another one called. It's the first large-scale plant that they build and they called it Orca, and it will suck up to 4,000 tons of CO2 per year much, much, much better than the 50 tons Little Arctic Fox sucks up. So there you go, and they got another facility that's under construction right now. This thing is freaking huge it's. It's as big as it's as big as a Walmart, so, um, and it's going to cup. It's going to capture up to 36,000 tons of CO2, which, to your point, is is dropping a bucket. It's not even a drop in the bucket, it's a thought in the bucket. This's not even a drop in the bucket, it's a thought in the bucket. This is nothing compared to what the oceans and what the Mother Earth does for us on a daily basis. I mean, it's just crazy.

Patrick:

They do have some literature out there saying that they want to scale this thing to capture up to a billion tons of CO2 per year by the year 2040, which probably translates to a much. You know that means that plant must get huge, these direct air capture plants. To capture one billion tons per year, it would have to be enormous and still, yet the one billion still doesn't come to even half of what the ocean does in a year. And I guess the I guess the question is one of the things that they don't tell you about is um, what is the power requirements to run these plants? You know, the the more they want to suck, the bigger these things are. Where does the power come from?

Patrick:

well, it's probably runs on batteries well, you know, if to be successful, one might think that these machines will need to run 24 7, otherwise what's the point exactly? Well, so that takes solar and wind power out, because we know those things, those are not really reliable, yeah, especially here. The current power requirements I did a little bit of research and I think this is rough, but it's in the ballpark. But the current power requirements to run a direct air capture plant is, conservatively around 7 gigajoules, or nine hundred and forty four kilowatts per hour yeah, for you non-electricians out there, that's a lot of juice so let's take, just take the cleanest form of energy that we could that we could come close to supporting, and in the cleanest energy.

Patrick:

Well, the cleanest energy would be nuclear, but they, they don't like nuclear, no, they hate that stuff. So the cleanest next would be natural gas and it would produce 8.3 billion tons of CO2 per year to power a DAC plant that removes only 36K tons of CO2 per year. Per year, and even if you fast forward to 2040 and magically they have increased the removal rate of 1 billion per year without magically increasing the power requirements to run such an enormous beast, they are still generating 8.3 billion tons of CO2 per year to power this plant that removes only 1 billion a year. Now, nowhere on their website will they talk about that Of course not.

Karl:

Why even turn it on? It's just crazy. And when I discovered these guys, like I said, when I signed up for a Stripe account I went what, really? And the first thing that came to mind was it's a grift. I mean, they have figured out a way, and a lot of these leftists have done that. They've figured out a way to make money with. Of course, it's a scam to make money. Well, you know, there's a saying that goes it's really hard to get credit for something that never happens. You know there's a saying that goes it's really hard to get credit for something that never happens. Well, these guys and all the climate kooks out there have figured out a way to do that. They're going to get credit when nothing happens to the planet. That's what you know, what they predict will happen. So, and these guys actually not only get credit, but they figured out a way to make a lot of money.

Patrick:

Oh yeah, jp Morgan just pledged $200 million to these guys. Well, it gets even better, because I mean, not only do they want to produce more CO2 to power their co2 removal, but uh, they, they also want I don't know if you read this but they also want to use geothermal to convert the co2 capture. Yes, to rock uh, underground, yeah, and oh, what they don't tell you on the website is geothermal produces 38 grams of co2 per kilowatt hour. So to power that process is going to generate guess what?

Karl:

even more co2 and they do divulge. Something that I find interesting is, uh, you know, they talk about that the geothermal plant that they've partnered with, and that is, uh, you know, this stuff gets the CO2 gets pumped into the ground and it somehow chemically reacts with some other substance in the ground and it turns into rock. Well, they also tell you that this rock can be safely stored for up to 10 years 10 years.

Patrick:

What happens after that? Yeah, exactly.

Karl:

Well, they don't cover that yet because they really don't know, but it's just the biggest scam I've ever seen. I mean, if you get on their website and again I encourage all my listeners to do that you'll be appalled. If you really are convinced and we certainly are, and most of my listeners are I think there might be a few fence riders out there, but I think we're pretty much convinced that this is all just a way to make money, and a lot of it. It's just crazy town. This company was started by a couple of doctors, Started by a couple of doctors, Christopher Gibald and Jan Wurzbacher and they just looked like a couple of you know nice guys you'd have dinner with, but they're con artists, bottom line. That's all you need to know, I mean, and again, I was just appalled.

Karl:

Oh, by the way, now you're talking about how much power it takes to make these things run no-transcript. But you look at these things and you see hundreds of fans just surrounded a large building. I don't know what powers these fans. I'll tell you what it looks like. It looks like an evaporator on a refrigerator. I don't know how many people can relate to that, but it looks like a radiator with a couple hundred fans and my question is what's the decibel level of this thing when it's running? And would you want it, you know, like next door? I kind of doubt it Any motor with a rotor and stator, whether it's, you know, electrically commentated or just a regular old AC motor, it's going to make a noise, especially when they start breaking down. Can you imagine like 100 of those start squeaking overnight? Yeah, when they start breaking down, Can you imagine like 100 of those start squeaking overnight?

Patrick:

Yeah, and you know they're tailoring for corporations, for the feel good. We're doing our part. So they're going to install one of these things on top of buildings and things that everybody knows that these facilities are powered with coal and natural gas and power plants, because I mean you have to. Yeah, it's solar. You look at any of these images with these things, any of the images on the website. Do you see any solar panels or windmills anywhere near these facilities? You don't, it's, it's, it's it's it's ridiculous.

Patrick:

I mean, if you really cared about them, you really cared about the planet and you're really thinking the co2 is really going to be a problem. Um, if you did the math, it would be better not to support client work and their effort if you really cared about the client. I mean, because it's it's they. They are not solving a problem there. If, if it was an actual problem and if you believe the CO2 is an actual problem, they are adding to the problem.

Announcer:

Yeah.

Patrick:

I don't personally believe that we have a problem, but talk about doing something for nothing. It's just ridiculous.

Karl:

It doesn't make any sense and again, like all the climate kooks, they're talking net zero, this silly-ass net zero stuff which is impossible to get to yeah, which is crazy town impossible. There's no such a thing. It's a buzzword. The left uses Net zero by 2050. It's a buzzword, the left uses Net zero by 2050. And of course, our crackpot president is really pushing that net zero stuff. But I really don't think Ojo believes in this climate stuff, I mean.

Patrick:

But he just reads what's on the teleprompter anyway? Oh, he's a warm seat in a wet pen.

Karl:

Yeah, that's a problem. That was his problem with his old boss too. Anyway, I digress. So, folks, Climeworks is a scam. Hey, feel free to send them, drop them a line or write them a letter and tell them just to stop it, because what you're doing is just silly and what a waste of space, of beautiful Iceland, beautiful countryside, sticking these things out there.

Karl:

Yeah, and what's the noise level? Again, if you get on their website and you look at their newest facility that's under construction or they say it is, it's huge. What's the noise level? What's it going to do to the wildlife If these you know most of these climate kooks are also you know PETA people and you know conservationists, and do you think they would be concerned about what these things are doing to the wildlife around there? I bet it's scaring the hell out of them.

Patrick:

I mean, it's Well they think they're solving a problem they don't even have. You know it's safe to store underground for 10 years. They don't even know. It seems like. Well, let's try to solve a problem and create four more.

Karl:

Yes, you know about the big windmills that you see them all over now, all up and down Illinois, indiana, pretty much everywhere you go where there's open prairie in this country there's a bunch of stinking windmills, which, by the way, in my opinion, really screws up the view. I mean, it just does. You can't see the forest from the windmills. They're ugly. Not only that, but they're killing our birds. These things, these big windmills, go around and their wings just knock birds right out of the sky. There's even a video of one of these damn things. It knocked a bald eagle right out of the sky and killed it. It's very, very sad. But along that line, these guys are doing probably the same thing. They're building something that's going to hurt the planet in one way or another and which, by the way, reminds me I like CO2. You know it's a happy little gas that makes things green, so why do you want to get rid of it? Well, we've said this before.

Patrick:

You can't model the Earth. It's too complex. They can't tell me if it's going to with reliability. They can't tell me if it's going to rain four days from now, let alone tell me that the world's going to end 12 years. So these people just need to stop it. They really need to stop.

Karl:

So on that note, again, climeworks that's C-L-I-M-E workscom Check out their website and drop them a line telling them to just knock it the hell off because you're making things worse. And telling them to just knock it the hell off because you're making things worse.

Announcer:

You've been listening to the Climate Change Hoax. We hope you've enjoyed the show. If you did, make sure to like, rate and review.

Announcer:

See you next time on.

Announcer:

The Climate Change Hoax.