> Stripe's climate scientist Zeke Hausfather

Who?? The ecommerce website wants us to listen to the climate scientist they bought?

Strange timeline indeed but Stripe is a big backer for climate solutions and climate research, including a $2B carbon dioxide removal initiative called Frontier: https://stripe.com/climate

Amazed that I have never heard of this. Feel like the positive PR would be a large incentive for them doing this at all.

On every stable planet, pollution is accounted for in every transaction. Stripe is just building where the puck is going!

How will carbon be removed by Frontier?

Planting trees? Capturing carbon from industrial plants / byproduct from LNG extraction?

Where will the extracted carbon be sequestered?

Reading Frontier’s website it’s very unclear how much they’re going to remove and how they’re going to do it - though there’s a lot of mentions of biomass

Trouble with techies is they tend plumb for techie solutions like carbon capture aka ClimeWorks rather than low tech options like trees or seagrass

Trees and seagrass don't really address the sequestration side though, do they?

The carbon they latch onto and temporarily hold onto is still within the land / sea surface +/- a few metres layer.

The current largest scale carbon capture projects are catching a small amount of vented CO2 from LNG projects and pushing that back into the subsurface fields - they only capture 10 ton by releasing over a 100.

We're in need of readily powered true air capture of CO2 then sequestered deep underground.

Things like www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036031992602269X have promise.

Trees and seagrass can address the sequestration side.

You can find examples here on Frontier's site of companies that are taking biomass (plant stuff like tree waste) and sequestering it in mines or other storage deep underground.

When thinking about sucking carbon from the sky, I find it useful to separate how I think about grabbing on to carbon dioxide from how to store carbon dioxide, rather than thinking of it as one step. I find it's easy to get lost and either over or undervalue things otherwise.

Plants and trees are excellent at grabbing on, for example, and with a good process they can lead to very cheap methods to store/remove carbon dioxide for a thousand years.

I appreciate the response and note that it's precisely because I already separate both the acquisition of CO2 from the sky and direct acquisition from industrial processes well apart from the storage side that I correctly stated trees and seagrass aren't storage methods.

How it's stored (and the energy used to store) matters. As you know - there's not much to argue about here, just a nod that it's best to be careful with words.

As a further question, what's the most effective Direct Air Capture method actually working on your books so far, in terms of greatest tonnages, and where is that captured CO2 being stored.

Link to Frontier's biomass storage portfolio: https://frontierclimate.com/portfolio?pathway=biomass_carbon...

Thanks I’ll have a proper read of the paper when I’m on a larger device

Generally I’m skeptical of Carbon Capture and Storage schemes (and Hydrogen) as it’s a way for oils and gas companies to delay the transition to cleaner energy

IMV hydrogen does have something of place in industrial processes e.g. reduction of iron ore, and maybe fuel cells but not for general combustion

Here's Frontier's whole portfolio: https://frontierclimate.com/portfolio

Marine carbon removal: 16

Biomass carbon removal & storage: 13

Direct air capture: 12

Field weathering: 8

Mineralization: 8

> Feel like the positive PR would be a large incentive for them doing this at all.

Media focus on bad news. Average person seems to be more interested in emotionally charged, bad, or controversial news. Not positive stuff.

Huh, that’s actually really cool.

i hear you, however:

> …but Stripe is a big backer for climate solutions…

his post reads pretty clearly as funding “solutions” to adapt to coming climate change rather than “how do we mitigate climate change”

this is why i’m skeptical of people who work for an economic org.

it’s like some these companies are salivating at the idea of Disaster Capitalism.

“it’s going to open up so many chances to make trillions!”

i recognize how jaded i am, but this just feels slimey “there’s much more money to be made if we exacerbate the disaster rather than slow it!”

Which post is that?

Let's say I take it that whatever post you're referencing is slimy, built on disaster capitalism, and downright bad. And your being jaded is totally understandable.

To that I remind you: "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing"

What could you do to do drive the world in a different direction? (see my other posts for projects if you want help out with our El Niño Ready dashboard)

> In 1877, 50 million people starved to death from El Niño. The charts are looking far worse in 2026 (thankfully our supply chains and infrastructure are much better today)

Yes, much better supply chains and infrastructure are examples of how growth and innovation make us more resilient.

Indeed! Umbrellas, poofy jackets, backup batteries, we've created lots of innovations to make society more resilient when the weather gets weird.

And, at the same time, polluting the climate makes the climate system far more susceptible to flipping to a chaotic system unknown to humanity.

As Stewart Brand says, "We are as gods and might as well get good at it."

Not sure why folks downvoted you.