Almost every climate scientist will tell you that we'll need negative emission technologies in addition to reducing emissions. They're not a replacement.
(Which is actually the main problem with all these technologies... even reporting about them makes people think they can skip the hard part...)
> even reporting about them makes people think they can skip the hard part
It also gives many hope. There's a lot of doom and gloom about global warming and climate change. We hear a lot about how we are past the point of no return. But in reality reducing emissions and employing sequestration technologies would make that untrue. It would mean we CAN get back to where we need to be.
I don't buy this whole argument about sequestration just encourages use of dirty energy. Consumers have very little choice and when they do being green has been in vogue for quite some time. I don't think sequestration is going to undo that thinking and popularity. Especially if we keep talking about the importance of both.
If, say, enough of these were deployed to have a total negative balance, is that not enough?
So if you have a limited pot of money to do something about climate change then exclusively relying on sequestration gives you less overall reduction.
A critique about the article: Their 'moral hazard' is a joke. CO2 is fungible. Emitting 10 tonnes and sequestering 10 tons is the same as emitting none. If the former improves people's lives (airplanes, cars, power, etc.) the decision is a no-brainer.
[1] hypothetically beneficial due to variability in sun/wind in addition to geographic limitations. Power has to always be on, CO2 sequestration doesn't have to be.
Batteries may be out due to weight. Hydrogen on the other hand has a higher specific energy than gasoline
> Emitting 10 tonnes and sequestering 10 tons is the same as emitting none.
Emitting 10 tonnes of CO2 and not sequestering will improve people's lives today even more since they don't have to pay the cost immediately. The moral hazard is being lazy because theoretically someone in the future might pull off heroic efforts to save the planet.
Exactly. To restate, not emitting CO2 will make people's lives worse[1] but most of the environmental proposals I see don't seem to realize the sheer unreasonableness of their propositions which generally boil down to 'you' need to suffer (in concrete ways, e.g. a gas tax, not farming a rain forest, etc.) for the (vague) benefit of other people.
[1] Given the current state of technology.
re. putting the cart in front of the horse, I agree, but if air-CO2 sequestration does hit 150$/tonne as (optimistically) projected that works out to be a few bucks per gallon of gas: The economist in me says the optimal solution is to tack that on to every gallon sold (and ear mark it).
That reads fairly one-sided. Let's flip it and say you have to cut back on some luxuries today so our descendants don't die by the millions at the end of the century.
[1] Which is exactly the sort of activity we 'first-worlders' have been benefiting from.
And the best solution people are willing to come up with is putting a million tiny containers in place to catch all the water before we get flooded.
The problem with this method is immediately apparent: we're going to run out of space and also there's no way to be sure we're catching it in all the right places.
Simply fixing the tap so it doesn't spill water anymore is a much better solution.
We don’t just need to get to negative flux, we’ve already put too much CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to actively reduce it - fast. And then once we get back to a baseline, then keep it there.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.technologyreview.com/p/pub/le...
There's been a recent study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10842-5
Like, even matching what the optimistic climate models require (that all depend on rapid emission reductions) requires "more than half of today's energy production".
Ignoring the sheer massive scale of kit that would need to be produced, installed and run to achieve a total negative balance by sequestration, how many years or decades would that take ramping up?
Besides, if people believe there's a magic techie "fix" being rolled out, good reason to carry on chasing their developing country to USA levels of energy use, unsustainably. Forget EVs, insulation etc. Take every cheapest option - just as we always did. With that model you might never finish ramping up. To empty the pool, first turn the taps off.
We need carbon neutral industry and generation. We need negative to bring CO2 ppm back to pre-industrial levels, or even 1950 levels, to stop the year on year of oppressive summers and wildfires, and leave a little ice at the poles.