A Comedy in Subsidies – Watts Up With That?

If you heard a distant wailing this week, don’t worry—it was just The New York Times realizing their beloved carbon capture techno-fantasy is, once again, face-planting in the real world. In a recent Climate Forward newsletter piece titled “Carbon Capture Comes Back Down to Earth”, Times writer David Gelles practically had to mop his keyboard with tears over the news that the carbon removal market—once projected to be a trillion-dollar juggernaut—is now wheezing toward irrelevance.

Not that we mind. After all, here at Watts Up With That, we never bought into the carbon panic to begin with. CO2 isn’t a pollutant—it’s plant food. But watching the climate-industrial complex flop around trying to vacuum molecules out of the sky is pure entertainment.

From “The Next Big Thing” to Layoff Bingo

Just a few months ago, the hype machine was at full throttle. Bill Gates was investing. Google, Amazon, and Airbus were snapping up “carbon credits” like trendy NFTs. McKinsey—ever the oracle of bad ideas—declared carbon capture a $1.2 trillion market by 2050. One venture capitalist even called it “the single greatest opportunity I’ve seen in 20 years.” You almost have to admire the brazenness of the grift.

Fast-forward to now: 24 government grants worth $3.7 billion have been scrapped, Climeworks axed 22% of its staff, and permit applications have tanked. The “market” is imploding because—brace yourself—no one wants to fund something that doesn’t work.

Meanwhile, Climeworks’ headline-grabbing Iceland plant managed to remove only a sliver of its projected CO2. Naturally, the execs blame “ramp-up issues.” Of course they do. It’s never the technology’s fault—it’s always “early days” or “transitional challenges.” You’d think they were launching a moon mission, not running industrial shop vacs for the atmosphere.

The Laws of Physics Want a Word

Let’s be crystal clear: carbon capture is a thermodynamic clown show.

Pulling CO2 from ambient air—where it exists at a wispy 0.04%—is like trying to find a particular grain of sand on a beach… using tweezers… while blindfolded. It takes more energy to remove CO2 from the air than was released burning the fossil fuel in the first place. And even then, you still have to compress it, transport it, inject it underground, and pray it doesn’t leak back out.

This isn’t cutting-edge climate tech. It’s an energy-intensive Rube Goldberg machine designed to appease green investors, virtue-signaling corporations, and bureaucrats allergic to basic physics.

Bonus: It Boosts Oil Production!

Now here’s the kicker: the CO2 some of these companies do manage to capture is often used for enhanced oil recovery. That’s right—after spending billions to “fight climate change,” the carbon is injected into wells to squeeze out even more oil.

And yes, Occidental Petroleum—the same company running a giant DAC project in Texas—openly touts this as a feature, not a bug. The Times, ever reverent, quotes CEO Vicki Hollub promising that the project will help achieve “energy security” and “produce vital resources and fuels.” Translation: we’re going to burn more hydrocarbons and call it green.

The NYT’s Tiny Violin Section

What really makes this article sing is the melodramatic tone. The author laments layoffs, canceled subsidies, and a “retrenchment” in the industry like it’s some noble cause under siege.

And when the DOE finally did something rational—canceling $3.7 billion in vaporware grants—the Carbon Capture Coalition, which is about as unbiased as a pharma lobby, called it a “major step backward.” For whom? Rent-seeking climatepreneurs?

Even Climeworks now admits they’re going into “consolidation mode” and focusing on “efficiency.” Translation: the gravy train is slowing, so it’s time to pretend we’re tightening belts while keeping the PR spigot open.

Final Thoughts: Not Our Problem

Let’s be honest: the entire carbon capture craze was never about saving the planet. It was about:

1. Making rich people feel less guilty about flying private.
2. Giving bureaucrats a talking point.
3. Creating a new market for companies like Microsoft to “offset” emissions without changing a single behavior.

The NYT can whimper all it wants about Trump pulling the plug, but the real villain here is reality. Physics doesn’t care about good intentions, ESG scores, or narrative arcs. It just keeps tallying the kilowatt-hours.

So while The Times continues wringing its hands over CO2 removal dreams deferred, we’ll be here pointing, laughing, and perhaps warming ourselves with the comforting glow of all that wasted taxpayer cash being vaporized in yet another doomed climate gimmick.

Coming Soon:

• Direct Air Capture vs. a Leaf: Guess Which One Works Better
• Climate Grifters, Part VII: Where Are They Now?
• Bill Gates’ Carbon Unicorn: Anatomy of a Bad Idea