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Can We Really Stop Climate Change By 'Capturing' Carbon? (vox.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The recently-ratified Paris Climate Accord calls on countries to keep the rise in average global temperatures under 2 degrees Celsius (a threshold which would bring extreme weather, water shortages and reduced agricultural production). But a recent article on Vox warns that "the world has to zero out net carbon emissions...for a good chance of avoiding 2 degrees, by around 2065. After that, emissions have to go negative... We are betting our species' future on our ability to bury carbon."
That's why everyone's watching the W.A. Parish Generating Station in Texas, which came online this week -- on schedule, and under budget. "The plant will use a newly installed system to capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide created during combustion."
Alas, Slashdot reader Dan Drollette brings bad news from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: To fight climate change with carbon capture and storage technology, we'd have to complete one new carbon capture facility every working day for the next 70 years. It's better to switch to a diet of energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables, rather than rely on this technology as a kind of emergency planetary liposuction.
That's why everyone's watching the W.A. Parish Generating Station in Texas, which came online this week -- on schedule, and under budget. "The plant will use a newly installed system to capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide created during combustion."
Alas, Slashdot reader Dan Drollette brings bad news from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: To fight climate change with carbon capture and storage technology, we'd have to complete one new carbon capture facility every working day for the next 70 years. It's better to switch to a diet of energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables, rather than rely on this technology as a kind of emergency planetary liposuction.
So what is it going to be: mess up the entire planet, or build the safest nuclear plants we can and perhaps mess up one tiny spot every few centuries? Keep burning coal in endless quantities, or choose a completely emission-free technology?
And no, pointing to decades old plants that were in at least one case made by people with zero safety standards does not count as evidence of danger. The true danger is destroying our world; we will certainly do better if we limit that danger to the best nucleair plants we can build.
Exactly. There's only so much carbon plants can fix. The idea that photosynthesizing organisms just magically fix unlimited amounts of CO2 emissions is absurd, but it's the sort of mindless Heartland Institute-created meme that the pseudo-skeptics throw around, because it saves them from having to ever actually understand the science.
The thing is, it seems pretty clear that Planet Earth used to support much more lush plant and animal life than it does today.
If you look at the evidence of growth rate of hadrosaurs, for example, they grew extremely fast and went on very long migrations after a season of growth after hatching. They put on huge amounts of bulk very fast, way faster than anything alive today. They were herbivores. There must have been a LOT of very fast growing vegetation to support these huge herds of fast growing herbivores. Its like the Serengeti but bigger and faster; wildebeest are similar but smaller and go on a shorter migration. And they are fueled and bulked out by very special conditions involving very special volcanic fertilization of the grass they feed on.
When you look at plants, the bulk of what you are looking at is carbon that was sucked out of the atmosphere and is inflated with water. The only way to get very fast growth of huge amounts of plants is with lots of CO2 and fresh water.
I get the feeling that the Earth that the human race has 'grown up with', the Earth that we think is 'normal' is carbon-starved relative to its state in the past. 'Normal' is just a relative term. The 'normal' of the world the hadrosaurs inhabited was very different from this. Our 'normal' isn't the only one. The world of the hadrosaurs changed and could no longer support them. Our world will change and maybe won't be able to support us, this is inevitable whether its because of something we do or because of natural changes; the Earth changes and changes drastically. But it'll almost certainly support life. Live on Earth has survived almost being frozen into a snowball, almost being paved with volcanic eruptions and being hit with asteroids a couple of times.
Look at the big picture. We tend to look at just the last 5000 years and think thats what Earth is SUPPOSED to be like. Before that, for example, the Sahara Desert was lush and green; there is a remnant population of crocodiles in the middle of that desert.
We cannot count on maintaining the planet how it is now, not even with advanced future tech. What we should focus on is being adaptable, like most of the other life on this planet.
This meme did not come from a Heartland Institute.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
First, we have to phase out CO2 by 2050 or 2040 (1.5 deg C). Second, we do not need fancy carbon capture tech. We can rely on plant growth and reforestation programs which actually work. We had a few of those. Also we have to help countries to protect their forests. Also helpful would be to reduce meat production.
And nobody claims that global warming is a threat to life on Earth. For the biosphere in general it's probably great. Hell, it's not even a threat to human life on the planet, we are an adaptable species and global warming won't be enough to drive us to extinction. The danger of global warming is to human civilisation as it exists right now - it will cause coastal metropolises to flood and will mess with agriculture in many places. Nobody (who has an actual clue anyway) is worried about the end of the world here but that doesn't mean the consequences cannot be truly catastrophic.