Vocal Voices

Much is being made about a new technology for removing carbon dioxide from the air around us. It is said to be three times more efficient than current carbon capture and storage processes.

This new method actually does take CO2 from the air we breath rather than removing it from chimneys and flues, so that's novel. Then, using chemicals (from somewhere), it turns it into bicarbonate of soda which we can chuck safely into the sea, but there the good news stops.

None of these schemes will ever reduce the parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere. To do that we need to take out more CO2 per year than we put in, and we are light years away from doing anything like that. That technology will never exist.

We currently release about 37 billion tonnes so we need to produce less, a lot less. Let's say we were to aim for the 1960s figure, about the time the population began to rise exponentially, we would have to get down to 9 billion tonnes per year and while we are doing it we would need to take out billions of tonnes as well. Even at the 1960s level we would still be increasing the ppm of CO2.

What we need to do is reduce the ppm to about 350 or so and that is a pipe dream.

Workingman wrote:What we need to do is reduce the ppm to about 350 or so and that is a pipe dream.

And 350.org is set up for that. But nobody is listening. In fact 350.org will tell you that this is the maximum atmospheric level of CO2 we can reach and expect our civilisation to Survive..

The sea absorbs 50% of the CO2 emitted so far. The more we push out, the larger that 50% in billions of tonnes is. However the real worry is that eventually the sea will begin to die and when it does, the ability of the sea to take up that CO2 will decline. At that time things will go south. FAST.

The message used to be "change or die". The message now is "Change and FIX it or die". This is why we're seeing more and more of these fanciful solutions.

I did a short session with ChatGPT. Compared to square km of mature forest, roughly, we push out 17m sq km of mature forest absorption every year. The US is 10m sq km.

So any solution we put in place to mitigate CO2 emissions would have to have the same CO2 absorption of mature forest covering 1.7*the entire USA. All states and territories.

And we would need to manage them for the next thousand years to ensure we suck out the existing CO2 and don't re-emit when they are harvested. Lots of wooden houses and furniture needed and no throw away.

So the scale of the problem is global and global scale is terrifying if you think about how quickly this is catching up with us.

Last 6 years growth.



Last 40 years growth.



Last 800,000 years. Anyone say "hockey stick"???



The animation is here.

You can see from the top of the 800k that it is slightly out of date. We are much closer to touching 420 than that.

Want to know the scary part? Every climate scientist is agreed that if we breach 450ppm we're on a freight train to hell for the climate. At current trajectory we will hit 450 in no more than 20 years at best and 10 years at worst. That's not just close. That is right here, right now.

Ah, but people do not look at the science or its numerous words and charts...

They look at the headlines thought up by journalists and those words make them feel good: "Oh look, we are saved. Carry on vicar!" The articles are secondary, if read at all.

What is being done is the creation of a narrative that we can win, that technology will save us, that all will be well and we can continue as we are because the cavalry is just over the horizon.

We can't. We need to reduce the CO2 ppm and it is an incredibly difficult task. It might even be impossible.

I'm sure it is possible. First we would need to remove 1bn people from the 1st world then another 3bn people in the 3rd world and then completely bar all fossil fuelled power and vehicle use and then we would need to Reforest the world's deserts using solar and wind powered desalination.

We would also need to flood all below sea level areas to act as weather control sinks.

Keep going for a century or two and we'll be there.

Ah, OK, impossible as in no way to convince humans not to destroy themselves.

Got it.