https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sucking-carbon-from-the-air-becomes-a-lead-strategy/
The U.S. Department of Energy will award up to $100 million for projects that remove CO2 from the atmosphere
Very bad strategy "no need to fix things ASAP, we can reverse it later". Not to mention that the massive amounts of energy need to come from somewhere.
I agree, but it's this or nothing, as of the past couple years. Halting emissions in a world where major petroleum producers are engaged in warfighting, alongside the rise of fascism, is untenable.
Fascists see not just hydrocarbons, but humans as a resource, to be used. You better believe they give no fucks about climate. Pain and suffering are considered good things. And besides, would global warming really hurt Russia's long term prospects?
If that's madness, I'd point out that sanity by our standards is not the direction of very recent times.
If we can't even reduce emissions, then we can 10x less remove CO2 directly. That is like a gambling addict trying to cure the addiction by playing a different addictive game in parallel, instead of playing the one game less and less.
We can reduce our emissions, and we will. We just can't make everyone else reduce theirs too. Which is why we will need multiple approaches, not just one or two.
I'd prefer we try anything and everything, to be honest. We're out of time for the luxury of waiting for the perfect solution.
Look at the MAC diagram here and then tell me we need to start with the least sensible thing first.
Good thing we're not just 'starting' with carbon capture first, and that it's part of a wide ranging series of solutions, including solar, wind etc all of which contribute positively to climate change mitigation. Indeed, it's a good thing we can achieve more than one solution at once, isn't it?
I think logically you need the same order of magnitude to remove CO2 from the atmosphere as you gained form burning the fossil fuels. But I'm not sure where the practical limit is.
The only solution that makes remotely sense is using large areas of the ocean where nothing grows anyway and have a fleet of hundreds of ships that seed out algae that grows, absorbs sunlight and CO2 and then rains down on the ocean floor to sequester the carbon. Otherwise we don't have the land, energy and resources and money to do any of this.
It does not make sense. Like replacing the light on your oven with an LED instead of the massive flood lights lighting up your castle. Look at the MAC diagram here to see what the low hanging fruits are and which fruits are so high up that no ladder reaches them.
You mean we should just cut emissions and not try to remove CO2? Or am I missing something in the article?
I don't think we can do enough off that list to make enough difference. And we're already hitting positive feedback cycles so we need some way to remove CO2. I doubt either of those things will happen, but theoretically we need both now.
You have a finite amount of resources. Your want to reduce/limit global warming add much as possible. So you need to spend the resources as effective as possible, not in applications that cost 10x as much for the same effect.
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is fixing things ASAP. The alternative is leaving it in the atmosphere.
There's no chance that they can remove the yearly added CO2. If they were serious, net zero would be 2025
Look at the MAC diagram here and then tell me we need to start with the least sensible thing first.
The issue is not removing it or leaving it, it is not emitting even more and at growing rates on top of that.
Good news, I have just hooked up my vacuum to a carbon filter, I'll take my 100 Mil whenever you're ready
But that doesn't take CO2 out of the air. Unless you've invented new technology that extracts it from the air.
Isn't this just greenwashing? What an exercise in futility to pay to extract CO2 from the atmosphere whilst pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
If done instead of reducing current emissions, 100%. That said, there is a real need to invest in carbon capture technology now so that it can be more useful in the future. It's a small part of the overall strategy to improve our climate future, but an important one as we get further along in the century and emissions already are reduced. So, yeah, if people hold up this technology and say "see, let's keep drilling", fuck that. But as long as it's an "and" not an "or", this is a good thing.
Excess CO2 is wreaking havoc on our planet and quickly getting worse. Why wouldn't we try to pull it out of the atmosphere?
Because no CCS method has worked. Besides the sea equilibrium means CO2 will be favoured and replaced.
There are no free rides on the thermodynamic train, this energy will probably come from fossil fuels depending on where in the US. I'm not against the idea, but it's been a false promise of hope for a decade or so.