Slashdot Mirror
Hoping That Sucking CO2 From the Air Will Fix the Climate? Good Luck (easac.eu)
From a study published on Thursday by scientists on the European Academies Science Advisory Council: Senior scientists from across Europe have evaluated the potential contribution of negative emission technologies (NETs) to allow humanity to meet the Paris Agreement's targets of avoiding dangerous climate change. They find that NETs have "limited realistic potential" to halt increases in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at the scale envisioned in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios. This new report finds that none of the NETs has the potential to deliver carbon removals at the gigaton (Gt) scale and at the rate of deployment envisaged by the IPCC, including reforestation, afforestation, carbon-friendly agriculture, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCs), enhanced weathering, ocean fertilisation, or direct air capture and carbon storage (DACCs).
Just because these technologies and actions might not work well enough does not mean they will not help, and that they should not be pursued, unless there are viable options into which we should put our available resources.
Reforestation / afforestation is the best option, from what I understand. That and cutting down trees at a furious rate so we can bury them in abandoned mines and plant more.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Fact: there is no global warming. The world is getting cooler, and as sunspot activity ceases, we enter another Maunder Minimum.
First I thought that you are clueless denialist, but seeing that you stated that there is no global warming in bold totally convinced me.
Care to share you opinions about vaccines, HAARP, 9/11 or landing on Moon?
...but humans are lazy. To which end, note the following:
I read somewhere recently, that - since the big campaigns for CO2 reduction started - humanity has increased CO2 output at an average rate of 1.6%. Before all this attention was focused on climate change, CO2 output was increased at an averate rate of... 1.6%. Even granting that reducing CO2 output is a good thing to do, it is quite apparent that we are not going to do so. None of the sequestration technologies make much sense, none of them (other than possibly reforestation) scale, and frankly some of them are hugely dangerous in their own right.
tl;dr: There's no point in fighting the inevitable. CO2 is going to continue to increase. Fortunately, this also means that there is no longer any reason to continue making exaggerated end-of-the world claims. The planet is warming, some anthropogenic, some natural. it will probably warm by a degree or even two in the next 80 years. Figure out what impact that's going to have, and deal with it.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
So here we have an approach that actually removes CO2 from the air. Even if it can't solve the problem completely, at least it's actually doing something to remove CO2 from the air. It's a net win.
Yet despite this approach actually removing CO2, we have leftist types telling us that it's useless.
What do leftist types suggest we use instead? Carbon taxes!
It should be obvious that carbon taxes themselves can't actually remove any CO2 from the air. Carbon taxes aren't physical in nature.
Realistically, carbon taxes won't even discourage the production of more CO2. As we've seen time and time again, when taxes or other economic distortions are imposed on an industry, the cost is just passed down to the end users, who just suck it up and pay more for the product/service in question.
It's like those on the left go out of their way to deny and belittle any approach to this problem that will make a real, measurable, physical impact.
They say "NO!" to actually removing CO2 from the air.
They say "NO!" to extraordinarily clean, relative to the amount of power obtained, energy sources like nuclear power.
But they say "YES!" to things like carbon taxes, which don't actually do anything to help solve the CO2 problem!
I think it's becoming clearer and clearer that those on the left don't really care about the environment, or dealing with the CO2 problem. All they want to do is impose yet more pointless taxes so they can take their cut.
Anyone who suggests carbon taxes as a "solution" for the CO2 problem doesn't, as far as I'm concerned, give a damn about the environment or sustainability.
There is two fundemental fallacies in your argument.
1) because climate changed without humans, then humans can't cause climate change.
So, if lung cancer occurred before cigarettes, then cigarettes don't cause lung cancer.
2) changing human behavior is not the same as tinkering with nature. The tinkering/manipulation comes from emitting CO2, not from stopping CO2 emissions. So, limiting CO2 emissions is more analogous to NOT interfering with fires.
Now Slashdot has become a mouthpiece for Leftist Luddites. It is now the handmaiden to a New World Order of oligarchs and bureucrats enriching themselves thourgh manipulatioin of the truth and scare tatics. Fact: there is no global warming. The world is getting cooler, and as sunspot activity ceases, we enter another Maunder Minimum.
Scientists have been searching for a correlation between sunspot activity and climate for over a hundred years, and not found one. It's one of the most heavily researched topics in climate science. (And do note, that the Maunder minimum occurred well after the beginning of the so-called "little ice age".)
We measure the solar output from satellites, and have been doing so for many decades. One thing that measurements tell us with certainty is that the global temperature rise is not due to increases in solar output.
Next time Al Gore or Hillary Clinton tell you about "Global Warming", remember cui bono? Who benefits?
Al Gore is not a climate scientist, and, you know what? He isn't even cited by climate scientists. In fact, the only people I ever hear mention him are people trying to deny climate science.
In answer to your "cui bono" question, fossil fuels are a trillion dollar per year industry. Who do you think benefits?
Not sure why this is marked as flamebait since it's true.
It's like marketing. You can have the best product in the world but if your marketing sucks then nobody will buy it.
GP has a good point but started their response off like a douchebag. GGP has a perfectly good question that should be addressed.
Yes, the Sahara is a desert and no there isn't much life there -- but there is native life. Turning it into planted forest would seriously disturb that life. Is it worth it?
People conveniently forget that the planet was a greenhouse planet long before humans were ever here, back when dinosaurs were around. Humans donâ(TM)t have anything to do with the planetâ(TM)s natural warming and cooling cycles.
Higher average temperatures may end up causing many of the desert species to go extinct anyway. Life existing there is already tenuous.
Besides, no reason such an endeavor would have to be 'all or nothing'. The interior portions of the desert would be the least accessible to water anyway.
https://xkcd.com/285/