How Much CO2 Will the World Need to Remove from the Air? - Scientific American

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Greg Rau

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Nov 30, 2017, 9:09:33 PM11/30/17
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“Developing negative emissions technology to the point that it's actually capable of meeting global climate goals is essential for temperature overshoot scenarios to be considered viable. But in their new paper, Geden and Löschel say policymakers generally "refrain from any political commitment to developing and deploying negative emissions technologies" at the scale needed for success.

And the lack of urgency may be tied to the fact that there are no clearly defined goals for when or how the technology should be deployed. What is the last year by which global temperatures should be back below a 1.5- or 2-degree threshold? How acceptable is it to overshoot either goal?”

See Geden and Löschel: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-017-0026-z


Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas

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Dec 1, 2017, 1:24:08 PM12/1/17
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So many negative emissions articles! It's sad that they are all bound up by consensus reporting, but still--any mention is a good thing. They are making the conundrum of our legacy emissions reductions strategies mainstream and now even getting into overshoot. Very cool ~ ~ ~

One of the conflicts I have always seen with negative emissions that I have never written about here is, "why do we put negative emissions last in line for implementation?" I mean, I know "why," but why doesn't everyone else understand the leverage of CDR? For every ton of CO2 we directly remove from the atmosphere, we can count two tons of CO2 emissions avoided because of natural sequestration. This is huge. It literally means the the true cost of CDR, DAC specifically, is only half of whatever it may end up being once industrialized.

Also relative to true costs, if the Great Spirit wills it and DAC costs are as economic as they appear they could be, $10 or $20 trillion could deal with a teraton of CO2. In World War II, we spent $11 trillion dollars globally in five years on industrial expansion and mostly heavy manufacturing. This spending was 52% of five years of 1938 GDP. Today, $11 trillion is 2.8 percent of 5-years of 2016 GDP.  If we spent $11 trillion in ten years, this is 0.3 percent of ten years of 2016 global GDP.

Lord Stern's (2006) annual 1 percent of global GDP for costs of all emissions reductions strategies (revised to 2 percent in 2008), is $24 trillion ($48 trillion) by mid-century, and does not decrease atmospheric CO2.

Happy Friday,

B

Bruce Melton PE
CEO, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham
Austin, Texas 78736
512 799-7998

www.ClimateDiscovery.org -- over 400 reports on the most recent climate science.
www.MeltonEngineering.com -- Specializing in residential flooding solutions.

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Peter Eisenberger

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Dec 1, 2017, 1:41:01 PM12/1/17
to Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Bruce you asked the critical question:"why do we put negative emissions last in line for implementation?"

This is the major distortion in our climate related assessments . The only short term opportunity to change this is the Academy Study. If they fail to point out the low cost potential of DAC and its strategic importance they will join the APS study in being recognized as an historic misconception motivating mny retroactive studies of why the scientific community failed to do such a realtively easy assessment so incorrectly . I am sure the APS study will live in historic infamy and I hope that the academy study will avoid that fate .    

On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 10:24 AM, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net> wrote:

So many negative emissions articles! It's sad that they are all bound up by consensus reporting, but still--any mention is a good thing. They are making the conundrum of our legacy emissions reductions strategies mainstream and now even getting into overshoot. Very cool ~ ~ ~

One of the conflicts I have always seen with negative emissions that I have never written about here is, "why do we put negative emissions last in line for implementation?" I mean, I know "why," but why doesn't everyone else understand the leverage of CDR? For every ton of CO2 we directly remove from the atmosphere, we can count two tons of CO2 emissions avoided because of natural sequestration. This is huge. It literally means the the true cost of CDR, DAC specifically, is only half of whatever it may end up being once industrialized.

Also relative to true costs, if the Great Spirit wills it and DAC costs are as economic as they appear they could be, $10 or $20 trillion could deal with a teraton of CO2. In World War II, we spent $11 trillion dollars globally in five years on industrial expansion and mostly heavy manufacturing. This spending was 52% of five years of 1938 GDP. Today, $11 trillion is 2.8 percent of 5-years of 2016 GDP.  If we spent $11 trillion in ten years, this is 0.3 percent of ten years of 2016 global GDP.

Lord Stern's (2006) annual 1 percent of global GDP for costs of all emissions reductions strategies (revised to 2 percent in 2008), is $24 trillion ($48 trillion) by mid-century, and does not decrease atmospheric CO2.

Happy Friday,

B

Bruce Melton PE
CEO, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham
Austin, Texas 78736
512 799-7998

www.ClimateDiscovery.org -- over 400 reports on the most recent climate science.
www.MeltonEngineering.com -- Specializing in residential flooding solutions.

On 11/30/2017 8:09 PM, Greg Rau wrote:

“Developing negative emissions technology to the point that it's actually capable of meeting global climate goals is essential for temperature overshoot scenarios to be considered viable. But in their new paper, Geden and Löschel say policymakers generally "refrain from any political commitment to developing and deploying negative emissions technologies" at the scale needed for success.

And the lack of urgency may be tied to the fact that there are no clearly defined goals for when or how the technology should be deployed. What is the last year by which global temperatures should be back below a 1.5- or 2-degree threshold? How acceptable is it to overshoot either goal?”

See Geden and Löschel: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-017-0026-z


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Douglas MacMartin

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Dec 2, 2017, 10:47:07 AM12/2/17
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Bruce – just to correct one thing, you don’t get a 2 for one.  To reduce the atmospheric burden by 1 ton, you need to remove 2; the natural sequestration is reversible.

Andrew Lockley

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Dec 2, 2017, 10:57:27 AM12/2/17
to Douglas MacMartin, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, Carbon Dioxide Removal
But there's an amplification-avoidance effect due to attenuation of carbon cycle feedbacks (permafrost, etc). Additionally, any cooling achieved also aids ocean dissolution.



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Peter Eisenberger

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Dec 2, 2017, 11:43:28 AM12/2/17
to Andrew Lockley, Douglas MacMartin, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, Carbon Dioxide Removal, David Keith
This is a very important interchange that a least I have not heard resolved in the climate debate .  Namely both statements seem to be correct to me - the ocean sequestration statement is correct but so is the larger feedback issue Andrew raised. 
In fact I believe the larger feedback issue maybe much  more important  if our objective is to avoid catastrophic climate change triggered by passing through a tipping point. The inherent nonlinearity of the climate system literally means that an incremental 
increase of one co2 atmospheric molecule can be the butterfly wing that transforms our climate . In that case the value of sequestering that co2 molecule as Andrew described approaches essentially infinity. This is why CDR is so critical and why getting to the point where we can remove more CO2 than we are adding ASAP is the critical milestone that all our efforts should be focussed on. Of course switching to renewable energy and reducing our emissions are also important but we know that without a vigorous CDR effort we will overshoot and the more we overshoot and the longer we do so the higher the risk of passing a tipping point. 

I have argued in other contributions that because of the nonlinearity inherent in  our efforts created by the positive feedback of  learning by doing that the fastest path for us to minimize the risk of passing a tipping point is via CDR .  That here again the two truths exist - the current notion of first focussing on emissions reductions  renewables first , with their being no short term difference in the atmospheric CO2 concentration - yet at  the same time that it raises the risk of passing a tipping point in the future because it will delay when we are able to reduce the amount of atmospheric CO2 . The latter is by far the real risk we face and so we need to align our efforts accordingly. 

I think coming to a consensus on this issue in the CDR community  is very important. If the argument above is correct than it should in fact be the central message the CDR community adds to the ongoing debate on how best to address the climate threat we all face. I encouage others to participate and see if we can reach a consensus . If we cannot who can?          

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Douglas MacMartin

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Dec 2, 2017, 12:09:21 PM12/2/17
to Peter Eisenberger, Andrew Lockley, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, Carbon Dioxide Removal, David Keith

Agreed – but there is zero difference to the climate system from not emitting one molecule of CO2, or emitting it and then removing it. 

 

One might say that as long as we still have positive emissions one should therefore do whichever is cheaper, except that since we know we will need negative emissions, we need to develop that capacity even if it isn’t cheaper in the short term.  

 

(And insofar as there are lots of reductions in emissions that don’t cost anything at all, then in the very short term, not emitting the molecule is certainly cheaper, but that won’t be true in the long run.)

 

From: Peter Eisenberger [mailto:peter.ei...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, December 02, 2017 11:43 AM
To: Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com>
Cc: Douglas MacMartin <dgm...@cornell.edu>; Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>; David Keith <david...@harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: [CDR] How Much CO2 Will the World Need to Remove from the Air? - Scientific American

 

This is a very important interchange that a least I have not heard resolved in the climate debate .  Namely both statements seem to be correct to me - the ocean sequestration statement is correct but so is the larger feedback issue Andrew raised. 

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Andrew Lockley

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Dec 2, 2017, 12:24:17 PM12/2/17
to Douglas MacMartin, Carbon Dioxide Removal
There is a clear practical difference between mitigation and CDR, as per timing. We do currently have mitigation at some scale (significant fuel substitution, some energy efficiency). We do not have much CDR at scale. The intention is to deploy CDR mid century and beyond, giving some 50 years of action to the emissions conducted today. That's not a trivial difference.

A

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Wil Burns

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Dec 2, 2017, 12:42:25 PM12/2/17
to Douglas MacMartin, Peter Eisenberger, Andrew Lockley, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, Carbon Dioxide Removal, David Keith

Peter Eisenberger

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Dec 2, 2017, 12:54:29 PM12/2/17
to Douglas MacMartin, Andrew Lockley, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, Carbon Dioxide Removal, David Keith
I believe you missed a critical point in my response and in fact in my opinion the critical agrument for CDR . You are correct that in the short term there is zero difference between the two paths. But as i argue because learning by doing is a nonlinear 
feedback -the more you do the lower the cost which in turn makes it easier to do more - the two paths are not equivalent in the longer term .
This is simple to show mathematically by comparing two cases - first start with emissions reductions and have the effort and capital cause a learning by doing benefit but since that will not solve the problem one will then switch to CDR .
That will in turn take a time driven by its learning by doing . The sum of those two times and the COST of that path is higher than just putting the same effort in CDR from the beginning . The reason for this is that in doubling the capacity for each case the biggest rate of change and the cost is determined by the last doublings . the last four doubiings of capacity determine 94% of  both the rate and cost . So say for example it takes 20 doublings of capacity with doubling period of two years overall but only ten can be done by emissions reductions. Say the learning by doing is 10 % for each case. Than in case I 10 doublings of each squentially will in forty years produce much less reduction  and cost more than 20 doublings of CDR . It is not even close. By the way the most powerful example of this is what is happening in solar -for over forty years it has been on a leaning by doing path and we are now entering where the doublings and cost reductions are at a very high rate and will in the next 5 doublings dominate the energy system .   

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Peter Eisenberger

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Dec 2, 2017, 12:57:41 PM12/2/17
to Wil Burns, Douglas MacMartin, Andrew Lockley, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, Carbon Dioxide Removal, David Keith
I agree but DAC does not have negtive feedbacks -it takes little land and in the end the machines can be made from carbon fiber thus avoiding any resource constraint or environmental damage -eg the machines them selves will be sequestering carbon  

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voglerlake

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Dec 2, 2017, 1:57:38 PM12/2/17
to Carbon Dioxide Removal
All excellent points. The real viability of exponential scale up, within the marine space, however, is not being factored for.

Offshore marine operations can be designed using off-the-shelf equipment which will become self-replicating at the first phase of deployment.

Scale up, for Direct Ocean Capture and Conversion of Carbon (DOC3), is not a limiting factor. The technology basket used by DOC3 operations is credit card ready.

Background notes are available.

Great discussion,

Ronal W. Larson

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Dec 2, 2017, 3:23:41 PM12/2/17
to Wil Burns, Douglas MacMartin, Peter Eisenberger, Andrew Lockley, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, Carbon Dioxide Removal, David Keith
Wil and ccs:

I would add that there are CDR approaches (e.g biochar) that in their removal phase also a) supply (not consume) energy, and b) have continuing (out-year) impacts characteristic of an investment, not an expense.

Ron


On Dec 2, 2017, at 10:42 AM, Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org> wrote:

 
 
<image001.jpg>
Dr. Wil Burns
Co-Executive Director, Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment, School of International Service, American University
650.281.9126 | w...@feronia.org | http://www.ceassessment.org | Skype: wil.burns |
2650 Haste St., Towle Hall #G07, Berkeley, CA 94720| View my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=240348

Ronal W. Larson

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Dec 2, 2017, 5:56:59 PM12/2/17
to Andrew Lockley, Douglas MacMartin, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Andrew and ccs

We should take a poll - but my guess now is that very few on this list believe we should wait to mid-century to deploy CDR.

Ron




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Andrew Lockley

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Dec 2, 2017, 7:32:21 PM12/2/17
to Ron Larson, Douglas MacMartin, Carbon Dioxide Removal
It's not a matter of should, it's a matter of technology gaps, scientific gaps, and a lack of political momentum - not to mention affordability.

For the record, I remain of the view that CDR, save beach olivine and land use change, is wholly impractical 

A

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voglerlake

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Dec 2, 2017, 9:18:39 PM12/2/17
to Carbon Dioxide Removal
I have left the link of this discussion in the comments section in a UN Science/Business summit video.

https://youtu.be/auEMOGSm5dk

I encourage any of those that are critical of CDR post their logic there.

Citizen Science is championed in this forum.

What better forum?

Michael

Ronal W. Larson

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Dec 2, 2017, 11:27:46 PM12/2/17
to Andrew Lockley, Douglas MacMartin, Carbon Dioxide Removal
Andrew and ccs

Ok.  The vote is now 1 to 1.

As to your words “,,not a matter of should  ”,  I was responding to your:  “The intent is to deploy CDR mid century”, which had noattribution.

Ron


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Robert Tulip

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Dec 4, 2017, 5:44:25 AM12/4/17
to Carbon Dioxide Removal, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, Peter Eisenberger
"why do we put negative emissions last in line for implementation?"

This question discussed below by Peter Eisenberger and Bruce Melton should be the central question in climate politics. However, the failure to address negative emissions in public debate illustrates a failure of human psychology.  The main problem is an inability to discuss the evidence that should inform public policy when the evidence conflicts with widely held assumptions.  When people feel a crisis may be overwhelming they tend to only tinker at the edges, unable to engage strategically with the big picture.

To achieve the two degree target, let alone the 1.5° aspiration of the Paris Accord, the world must remove about 6000 GT of CO2e from the air this century.  However, the emission reduction plans presented at Paris would remove less than 1% of this stability target, reducing total carbon level by only 60GT of CO2e over its implementation period to 2030. 

That disparity between means and ends means that all the achievements of Paris are essentially useless for climate stability. We have a broken paradigm. But worse, the emission reduction achievements are harmful to the climate, because they deflect attention and investment from strategies aimed at the other 99% of the stability requirement, which can only be achieved by physical removal of carbon from the air in much larger quantity than total addition.

Why is the policy framework so fractured?  To answer that difficult question requires analysis of climate politics.  People tend to see scientific questions through a political prism.   There is no question that climate science is settled, but that does not at all imply that the science is settled on climate response, the priorities of addressing global warming.

Attitudes about what to do reflect people’s values and commitments, and in these areas, people are tribal.  Concern about environment and climate is primarily on the left side of the political spectrum, while support for fossil fuel extraction is mainly on the right side of the spectrum.  The unfortunate results of this polarity include that people develop tribal attitudes about the moral worth of opposing political positions.  We are all aware of the crazy denial of science from right wingers. The climate lobby has also formed a strong political ideology, centred on the false idea that emission reduction is the main climate agenda.

What is wrong with that?  It confuses the means and the ends.  Emission reduction is justified in political ideology by the fallacy that it is the only way to achieve the end of climate stability.  However, as I explained above, the numbers show it won’t work. The real 'terrifying new math' of global warming is that everything we can do to reduce emissions will still leave the amount of carbon in the air remorselessly increasing. In paradigm terms, that is called an anomaly.  But rather than explore this logic without emotion, the tendency is to double down and treat the supposed means as an end in itself. 

Symptoms of this confusion include first, the belief that attacking fossil fuels is central to stopping climate change, even though many countries will continue to use emitting energy at high level regardless of climate agreements.  The election of Trump shows the capacity of climate politics to mobilise reaction, illustrating that attacks on fossil fuels will encounter vigorous opposition. 

Second, the IPCC, as the home of climate ideology, has apparently defined climate mitigation as only achieved through emission reduction, even though emission reduction does almost nothing to mitigate climate change.  The real priority for mitigating climate change should be carbon removal.

Third, and worst, there is a widespread attitude among climate activists, whether overt or covert, that actions to insure against climate change by removing carbon from the air should be opposed because they undermine political pressure to achieve emission reduction.  Questioning emission reduction is as politically deplorable as questioning gay marriage.

The sad fact is the means has completely displaced the end in climate politics.  The result is that it seems the climate movement is more concerned about building a popular left wing political front against fossil fuels, based on the failed emission reduction paradigm, than actually stopping climate change.  It is as though the old political battles of the last century between socialism and capitalism have subconsciously been used as the map for climate politics.  

Unfortunately, this focus on political conflict is a recipe for disastrous ongoing warming.  It is even possible the fossil fuel industries and their allies could install military governments in some countries if elected governments insisted on policies that would shut them down.  Meanwhile the sixth extinction marches on, with the collapse of planetary biodiversity and extreme risks to economic and climate stability.

My view is that this conflict on climate policy can be overcome if carbon removal is accepted as a strategy for a unified approach, presenting ways for fossil fuel industries to work in cooperation with climate science by investing money, resources, skills and political support in carbon removal, with a main focus on marine biology.  

If new technology can be developed that can remove more carbon from the air than total emissions, emissions can continue, and there is no need for emission reduction.  That would even mean the stock price of coal could be sustained.

Negative Emission Technology is last in line because it undermines emission reduction and destroys the political strategy of a popular front against fossil fuels, both of which are considered more important by the climate lobby than actually doing anything about global warming.

Robert Tulip


From: Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>
To: "Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas" <bme...@earthlink.net>
Cc: Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, 2 December 2017, 5:41

Subject: Re: [CDR] How Much CO2 Will the World Need to Remove from the Air? - Scientific American
Bruce you asked the critical question:"why do we put negative emissions last in line for implementation?"

This is the major distortion in our climate related assessments . The only short term opportunity to change this is the Academy Study. If they fail to point out the low cost potential of DAC and its strategic importance they will join the APS study in being recognized as an historic misconception motivating mny retroactive studies of why the scientific community failed to do such a realtively easy assessment so incorrectly . I am sure the APS study will live in historic infamy and I hope that the academy study will avoid that fate .    
On Fri, Dec 1, 2017 at 10:24 AM, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas <bme...@earthlink.net> wrote:
So many negative emissions articles! It's sad that they are all bound up by consensus reporting, but still--any mention is a good thing. They are making the conundrum of our legacy emissions reductions strategies mainstream and now even getting into overshoot. Very cool ~ ~ ~
One of the conflicts I have always seen with negative emissions that I have never written about here is, "why do we put negative emissions last in line for implementation?" I mean, I know "why," but why doesn't everyone else understand the leverage of CDR? For every ton of CO2 we directly remove from the atmosphere, we can count two tons of CO2 emissions avoided because of natural sequestration. This is huge. It literally means the the true cost of CDR, DAC specifically, is only half of whatever it may end up being once industrialized.
Also relative to true costs, if the Great Spirit wills it and DAC costs are as economic as they appear they could be, $10 or $20 trillion could deal with a teraton of CO2. In World War II, we spent $11 trillion dollars globally in five years on industrial expansion and mostly heavy manufacturing. This spending was 52% of five years of 1938 GDP. Today, $11 trillion is 2.8 percent of 5-years of 2016 GDP.  If we spent $11 trillion in ten years, this is 0.3 percent of ten years of 2016 global GDP.
Lord Stern's (2006) annual 1 percent of global GDP for costs of all emissions reductions strategies (revised to 2 percent in 2008), is $24 trillion ($48 trillion) by mid-century, and does not decrease atmospheric CO2.
Happy Friday,
B
Bruce Melton PE
CEO, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham
Austin, Texas 78736
512 799-7998
www.ClimateDiscovery.org -- over 400 reports on the most recent climate science.
www.MeltonEngineering.com -- Specializing in residential flooding solutions.
On 11/30/2017 8:09 PM, Greg Rau wrote:

“Developing negative emissions technology to the point that it's actually capable of meeting global climate goals is essential for temperature overshoot scenarios to be considered viable. But in their new paper, Geden and Löschel say policymakers generally "refrain from any political commitment to developing and deploying negative emissions technologies" at the scale needed for success.
And the lack of urgency may be tied to the fact that there are no clearly defined goals for when or how the technology should be deployed. What is the last year by which global temperatures should be back below a 1.5- or 2-degree threshold? How acceptable is it to overshoot either goal?”
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Peter Eisenberger

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Dec 4, 2017, 10:08:34 AM12/4/17
to Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, David Keith
Robert ,

You have clearly and effectively analyzed and verbalized what I and others have experienced . To all those who are concerned  about the climate threat we face I encurage you to read what Robert wrote. I  hope you will join in a constructive dialoque of how we can reverse this situation and have the correct framework for evaluating our best strategy replacing  the distorted one that currently is driving our actions . This I believe is our responsibiity as knowledg workers .

Thanks Robert for you thoughts and effort .
Peter  

On Mon, Dec 4, 2017 at 2:44 AM, Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
"why do we put negative emissions last in line for implementation?"

This question discussed below by Peter Eisenberger and Bruce Melton should be the central question in climate politics. However, the failure to address negative emissions in public debate illustrates a failure of human psychology.  The main problem is an inability to discuss the evidence that should inform public policy when the evidence conflicts with widely held assumptions.  When people feel a crisis may be overwhelming they tend to only tinker at the edges, unable to engage strategically with the big picture.

To achieve the two degree target, let alone the 1.5° aspiration of the Paris Accord, the world must remove about 6000 GT of CO2e from the air this century.  However, the emission reduction plans presented at Paris would remove less than 1% of this stability target, reducing total carbon level by only 60GT of CO2e over its implementation period to 2030. 

That disparity between means and ends means that all the achievements of Paris are essentially useless for climate stability. We have a broken paradigm. But worse, the emission reduction achievements are harmful to the climate, because they deflect attention and investment from strategies aimed at the other 99% of the stability requirement, which can only be achieved by physical removal of carbon from the air in much larger quantity than total addition.

Why is the policy framework so fractured?  To answer that difficult question requires analysis of climate politics.  People tend to see scientific questions through a political prism.   There is no question that climate science is settled, but that does not at all imply that the science is settled on climate response, the priorities of addressing global warming.

Attitudes about what to do reflect people’s values and commitments, and in these areas, people are tribal.  Concern about environment and climate is primarily on the left side of the political spectrum, while support for fossil fuel extraction is mainly on the right side of the spectrum.  The unfortunate results of this polarity include that people develop tribal attitudes about the moral worth of opposing political positions.  We are all aware of the crazy denial of science from right wingers. The climate lobby has also formed a strong political ideology, centred on the false idea that emission reduction is the main climate agenda.

What is wrong with that?  It confuses the means and the ends.  Emission reduction is justified in political ideology by the fallacy that it is the only way to achieve the end of climate stability.  However, as I explained above, the numbers show it won’t work. The real 'terrifying new math' of global warming is that everything we can do to reduce emissions will still leave the amount of carbon in the air remorselessly increasing. In paradigm terms, that is called an anomaly.  But rather than explore this logic without emotion, the tendency is to double down and treat the supposed means as an end in itself. 

Symptoms of this confusion include first, the belief that attacking fossil fuels is central to stopping climate change, even though many countries will continue to use emitting energy at high level regardless of climate agreements.  The election of Trump shows the capacity of climate politics to mobilise reaction, illustrating that attacks on fossil fuels will encounter vigorous opposition. 

Second, the IPCC, as the home of climate ideology, has apparently defined climate mitigation as only achieved through emission reduction, even though emission reduction does almost nothing to mitigate climate change.  The real priority for mitigating climate change should be carbon removal.

Third, and worst, there is a widespread attitude among climate activists, whether overt or covert, that actions to insure against climate change by removing carbon from the air should be opposed because they undermine political pressure to achieve emission reduction.  Questioning emission reduction is as politically deplorable as questioning gay marriage.

The sad fact is the means has completely displaced the end in climate politics.  The result is that it seems the climate movement is more concerned about building a popular left wing political front against fossil fuels, based on the failed emission reduction paradigm, than actually stopping climate change.  It is as though the old political battles of the last century between socialism and capitalism have subconsciously been used as the map for climate politics.  

Unfortunately, this focus on political conflict is a recipe for disastrous ongoing warming.  It is even possible the fossil fuel industries and their allies could install military governments in some countries if elected governments insisted on policies that would shut them down.  Meanwhile the sixth extinction marches on, with the collapse of planetary biodiversity and extreme risks to economic and climate stability.

My view is that this conflict on climate policy can be overcome if carbon removal is accepted as a strategy for a unified approach, presenting ways for fossil fuel industries to work in cooperation with climate science by investing money, resources, skills and political support in carbon removal, with a main focus on marine biology.  

If new technology can be developed that can remove more carbon from the air than total emissions, emissions can continue, and there is no need for emission reduction.  That would even mean the stock price of coal could be sustained.

Negative Emission Technology is last in line because it undermines emission reduction and destroys the political strategy of a popular front against fossil fuels, both of which are considered more important by the climate lobby than actually doing anything about global warming.

Robert Tulip


From: Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>
To: "Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas" <bme...@earthlink.net>
Cc: Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDioxideRemoval@googlegroups.com>
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Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas

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Dec 4, 2017, 12:54:36 PM12/4/17
to Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Peter Eisenberger

Great additions Robert. Where did you find the 6,000 GT CO2e? Hansen 2017 has 860 ppm CO2 and 4 C warming, at 4660 Gt CO2. I guess these are about the same but I would like to have the ref for my archive.

Let me link the climate culture dilemma you have described to the 2:1 negative emissions leverage concept and a couple of other global warming psychology things...

The cost of delay and 6,000 GT CO2e by 2100 speaks directly to the negative emissions leverage concept. The atmospheric removal vs. emissions avoidance ratio--in time frames that matter--is not 1:1 as it is in longer time frames. It approaches 2:1 because time frames that matter are at most 10 to 20 years. If we did it all today, removal would be 1,000 Gt. If we wait, five times more.  Because half of emissions are basically instantaneously removed from equation (not physically, but through accounting and relative scale of emissions over loading and natural removal), 1,000 GT atmospheric removal this afternoon is equal to 2,000 Gt emissions. If we do it all in 10 or 20 years, we only have fifteen percent of emissions and feedbacks to deal with and return of already sequestered CO2 is small until we get to multiple generations.

On the Efficacy of Emissions Reductions: Annual missions are only (+/-) 3.6 percent of atmospheric loading. When half of emissions are naturally sequestered (again--instantaneously), this means annual emissions are only 1.8 percent of what is doing the warming.

I want to add a little about climate tribalism too, relative to "Support for fossil fuels is primarily conservative." This is true in the broadest terms. When looking directly at public thought though, north of 70 percent believe climate change is real, north of 50 percent believe it is caused by man and importantly, north of 70 percent believe we should have carbon regulations (Yale Climate Opinion Maps.) These numbers are national and astonishingly similar from state to state--even in deep blue states ( y'all gotta see these maps!-- they are broken down by county and congressional district too!)  So there is ample support for policy. It's time frames that are the challenge once again. The challenge is that widespread thought says "it's just climate change--no big deal, we'll figure it out before it's too late..."

The Moral Imperative: It's driven not just by advocates, but by likes of the keyboard player in the most important climate change band on Earth who is definitely not an advocate; he's a transportation engineer, nothing more (except for a jammin keyboard player.) "Keys" thinks CDR, DAC, geoengineering and etc. are all attacks on Mother Nature. Mess with Mother Nature and we lose--every time.

So what do we do?

Thank's to Peter F., we have a brain science tool. If we convince people that we need a healthy climate (who doesn't believe this?), then by definition they must accept very strong negative emissions are needed regardless of risk and cost because strong negative emissions is the only way that a healthy climate can be achieved. We have to back them into a corner with logic and their own needs and wishes. Once they accept that we need a healthy climate, not one that is borderline dangerous or however dangerous it is today, their own logic prevails upon them to listen lest they conflict with themselves.

Climate Salud,

B


Bruce Melton PE
CEO, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham
Austin, Texas 78736
512 799-7998

www.ClimateDiscovery.org -- over 400 reports on the most recent climate science.

www.MeltonEngineering.com -- Specializing in residential flooding solutions.

Douglas MacMartin

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Dec 4, 2017, 1:01:19 PM12/4/17
to Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Peter Eisenberger

Bruce,

 

Re your 2:1, you should back that up with references.

 

Long term, of course, everything we put in the atmosphere gets absorbed by the ocean.  The reason that only half of what we emit in a given year adds to the atmospheric concentration is that the *short term* absorption by the biosphere and oceans takes the other half.  That’s obviously an over-simplification, but the biosphere part is certainly short time scale, and the ocean includes a broad range of time-scales (see Long Cao’s 2011 paper, for example).  The 2:1 estimate for our emissions vs concentration increase is based on what we’ve emitted in the last few decades, so the time-scale is entirely commensurate with time-scale of solving the problem.

 

d

Image removed by sender.www.ClimateDiscovery.org -- over 400 reports on the most recent climate science.
Image removed by sender.www.MeltonEngineering.com -- Specializing in residential flooding solutions.

On 11/30/2017 8:09 PM, Greg Rau wrote:

 

“Developing negative emissions technology to the point that it's actually capable of meeting global climate goals is essential for temperature overshoot scenarios to be considered viable. But in their new paper, Geden and Löschel say policymakers generally "refrain from any political commitment to developing and deploying negative emissions technologies" at the scale needed for success.

And the lack of urgency may be tied to the fact that there are no clearly defined goals for when or how the technology should be deployed. What is the last year by which global temperatures should be back below a 1.5- or 2-degree threshold? How acceptable is it to overshoot either goal?”

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Michael MacCracken

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Dec 4, 2017, 1:40:42 PM12/4/17
to Peter Eisenberger, Robert Tulip, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, David Keith

Dear Robert--There is sort of a similar discussion going on on the [geo] site. A couple of comments seem needed here as well.

1. The implication in Robert's write-up is that negative emissions can keep us below 1.5 C. For that to happen, given the slow decrease in emissions, the negative emissions likely have to be pulling out of order 10 GtC/yr starting in the early 2020s to keep the CO2 concentration from continuing to increase. That would require quite a phase up.

2. If one looks at the IPCC FOD 1.5 C special report, when they talk about getting back to 1.5 C by the end of the century, their pathways lead to overshoot warming to 2.5, 3, or even 3.5 C or more before eventually being brought back to 1.5 toward the end of the century or beyond. Labeling such pathways 1.5 C is really misleading, as impacts are likely related to peak warming rather than the eventual equilibrium value.

3. Finally, stabilizing at 1.5 C will have very serious impacts, especially given there would have been an overshoot and returning to this value. The IPCC report does not really emphasize how serious I think these impacts will be--we need to be aiming to something like 0.5 C to get to a level where there were not serious impacts being initiated, and to lower than that if we want to try to refreeze the ice sheets. So, this means a good bit more will need to be removed.

I'm all for research on negative emissions, but would just note that thinking that this type of climate intervention would be sufficient does not yet seem to me to be justified. I'd be happy to be proven wrong--that only CDR needs to be added, but I don't think we are near that point yet.

Mike MacCracken

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Robert Tulip

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Dec 4, 2017, 8:29:44 PM12/4/17
to Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Peter Eisenberger
Hi Bruce, thanks.

The source for the 6000 GT CO2e is an article in The Australian Newspaper by Bjorn Lomborg, citing UN data.

I have noticed that Lomborg tends to be the object of personal attacks that do not engage with the content of his claims.  So it is important to note that his 1% observation is comparing all the Paris commitments to 2030 (13 years) with the requirement to achieve 2 degrees this century (83 years).  To make a more comparable figure, perhaps we should extend Paris at the same level to 2100, in which case it would achieve about 6% of the two degree carbon removal need, still a trivial amount.  But on the other hand, part of the problem with that is that the Paris Accord is like Kyoto, an exercise in spin and lies, and its failed decarbonisation model has already generated intense political hostility from the US government and a cynical focus on development aid from the poor world, so even the 2030 targets look impossibly ambitious.

I am currently working on Iron Salt Aerosol as the best available climate stability method.  I will discuss with my colleagues whether we should share our summary proposal in public.


Since it is behind a paywall I have attached a copy, including both the Australian article and a similar article he wrote in the New York Daily News.

Best Regards

Robert Tulip
From: "Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas" <bme...@earthlink.net>

To: Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 5 December 2017, 4:54
Subject: [CDR] Re: "why do we put negative emissions last in line for implementation?"

Great additions Robert. Where did you find the 6,000 GT CO2e? Hansen 2017 has 860 ppm CO2 and 4 C warming, at 4660 Gt CO2. I guess these are about the same but I would like to have the ref for my archive.
Let me link the climate culture dilemma you have described to the 2:1 negative emissions leverage concept and a couple of other global warming psychology things...
The cost of delay and 6,000 GT CO2e by 2100 speaks directly to the negative emissions leverage concept. The atmospheric removal vs. emissions avoidance ratio--in time frames that matter--is not 1:1 as it is in longer time frames. It approaches 2:1 because time frames that matter are at most 10 to 20 years. If we did it all today, removal would be 1,000 Gt. If we wait, five times more.  Because half of emissions are basically instantaneously removed from equation (not physically, but through accounting and relative scale of emissions over loading and natural removal), 1,000 GT atmospheric removal this afternoon is equal to 2,000 Gt emissions. If we do it all in 10 or 20 years, we only have fifteen percent of emissions and feedbacks to deal with and return of already sequestered CO2 is small until we get to multiple generations.
On the Efficacy of Emissions Reductions: Annual missions are only (+/-) 3.6 percent of atmospheric loading. When half of emissions are naturally sequestered (again--instantaneously), this means annual emissions are only 1.8 percent of what is doing the warming.
I want to add a little about climate tribalism too, relative to "Support for fossil fuels is primarily conservative." This is true in the broadest terms. When looking directly at public thought though, north of 70 percent believe climate change is real, north of 50 percent believe it is caused by man and importantly, north of 70 percent believe we should have carbon regulations (Yale Climate Opinion Maps.) These numbers are national and astonishingly similar from state to state--even in deep blue states ( y'all gotta see these maps!-- they are broken down by county and congressional district too!)  So there is ample support for policy. It's time frames that are the challenge once again. The challenge is that widespread thought says "it's just climate change--no big deal, we'll figure it out before it's too late..."
The Moral Imperative: It's driven not just by advocates, but by likes of the keyboard player in the most important climate change band on Earth who is definitely not an advocate; he's a transportation engineer, nothing more (except for a jammin keyboard player.) "Keys" thinks CDR, DAC, geoengineering and etc. are all attacks on Mother Nature. Mess with Mother Nature and we lose--every time.
So what do we do?
Thank's to Peter F., we have a brain science tool. If we convince people that we need a healthy climate (who doesn't believe this?), then by definition they must accept very strong negative emissions are needed regardless of risk and cost because strong negative emissions is the only way that a healthy climate can be achieved. We have to back them into a corner with logic and their own needs and wishes. Once they accept that we need a healthy climate, not one that is borderline dangerous or however dangerous it is today, their own logic prevails upon them to listen lest they conflict with themselves.
Climate Salud,
B

Bruce Melton PE
CEO, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham
Austin, Texas 78736
512 799-7998
www.ClimateDiscovery.org -- over 400 reports on the most recent climate science.
www.MeltonEngineering.com -- Specializing in residential flooding solutions.
On 11/30/2017 8:09 PM, Greg Rau wrote:

“Developing negative emissions technology to the point that it's actually capable of meeting global climate goals is essential for temperature overshoot scenarios to be considered viable. But in their new paper, Geden and Löschel say policymakers generally "refrain from any political commitment to developing and deploying negative emissions technologies" at the scale needed for success.
And the lack of urgency may be tied to the fact that there are no clearly defined goals for when or how the technology should be deployed. What is the last year by which global temperatures should be back below a 1.5- or 2-degree threshold? How acceptable is it to overshoot either goal?”
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The global Paris climate failure.docx

Greg Rau

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Dec 5, 2017, 1:50:17 AM12/5/17
to Robert Tulip, Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas, Carbon Dioxide Removal, Peter Eisenberger
Thought-provoking posts all. I share your concerns about the lack of policy for actively exploring CDR options and the psychology behind that. Case in point, the recent US National Climate Assessment.

Searching the terms "carbon dioxide removal" and "negative emissions" in this document yielded few hits (below), while entire chapters were devoted to "mitigation" and "adaptation".  The space given to the later topic implies that i) we either have failed or will fail to adequately manage GHGs, ii) it will be possible to adapt to the preceding failure and/or we're fine spending lots of money to find out, and iii) we somehow don't have to worry about the moral hazard of assuming that we (and the rest of biology) can adapt to emission reduction failure.  No such generous policy gloss-overs are extended to CDR in this document (see below).

Interestingly, their narrow view of acceptable CDR is neatly tucked into mitigation; "Mitigation can involve increasing the uptake of carbon through various means of expanding carbon sinks on land through management of forests and soils." That much larger abiotic, marine, engineered and/or hybrid carbon sinks can't or shouldn't be part of the conversation places a very big bet on already overtaxed land biology (apparently reflecting a long, human, carbon management experience that is deeply if not fatally rooted in land plants).

Yes, some explanatory psychology is in order here, assuming it would or could change the outcome.

Greg


"Five Research Goals
  • Improve understanding of the climate system and its drivers
  • Improve understanding of climate impacts and vulnerability
  • Increase understanding of adaptation pathways
  • Identify the mitigation options that reduce the risk of longer-term climate change
  • Improve decision support and integrated assessment"
  • [And let's not encourage or investigate any other ideas that might be helpful, they're way too threatening to our preceding agenda.]

"Over the remainder of this century, aggressive and sustained greenhouse gas emission reductions by the U.S. and by other nations would be needed to reduce global emissions to a level consistent with the lower scenario (B1) analyzed in this assessment." [What happens if those emissions reductions goals are not attained?]


"Carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere by natural processes at a rate that is roughly half of the current rate of emissions from human activities. Therefore, mitigation efforts that only stabilize global emissions will not reduce atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, but will only limit their rate of increase. The same is true for other long-lived greenhouse gases. [So why not investigate increasing this removal rate?]

"To meet the lower emissions scenario (B1) used in this assessment, global mitigation actions would need to limit global carbon dioxide emissions to a peak of around 44 billion tons per year within the next 25 years and decline thereafter. In 2011, global emissions were around 34 billion tons, and have been rising by about 0.9 billion tons per year for the past decade. Therefore, the world is on a path to exceed 44 billion tons per year within a decade."  [Now what?]

"Mitigation can involve increasing the uptake of carbon through various means of expanding carbon sinks on land through management of forests and soils." [And we aren't going to tell you about the other published possibilities even if we knew what they were.]


"For example, one of the scenarios included in the IPCC’s latest assessment assumes aggressive emissions reductions designed to limit the global temperature increase to 3.6°F (2°C) above pre-industrial levels. This path would require rapid emissions reductions (more than 70% reduction in human-related emissions by 2050, and net negative emissions by 2100"  [By what proven means?]


"Geoengineering has been proposed as a third option for addressing climate change in addition to, or alongside, mitigation and adaptation. Geoengineering refers to intentional modifications of the Earth system as a means to address climate change. Three types of activities have been proposed: 1) carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which boosts CO2 removal from the atmosphere by various means, such as fertilizing ocean processes and promoting land-use practices that help take up carbon, 2) solar radiation management (SRM), which reflects a small percentage of sunlight back into space to offset warming from greenhouse gases, and 3) direct capture and storage of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Current research suggests that SRM or CDR could diminish the impacts of climate change. However, once undertaken, sudden cessation of SRM would exacerbate the climate effects on human populations and ecosystems, and some CDR might interfere with oceanic and terrestrial ecosystem processes. SRM undertaken by itself would not slow increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and would therefore also fail to address ocean acidification. Furthermore, existing international institutions are not adequate to manage such global interventions. The risks associated with such purposeful perturbations to the Earth system are thus poorly understood, suggesting the need for caution and comprehensive research, including consideration of the implicit moral hazards."  [While at the same time we have no problem spending pages claiming that continued dependence on emissions reduction and adaptation isn't risky, uncertain and morally hazardous(?) ]


" In theory, it may be possible to reverse global warming through technological interventions called geoengineering. Three types of geoengineering approaches have been proposed to alter the climate system: 1) enhancing the natural processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; 2) altering the amount of the sun’s energy that reaches the Earth (referred to as “solar radiation management”); and 3) direct capture and storage of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Various techniques for removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere have been proposed. At this time, however, there is no indication that any of them could be implemented on a large enough scale to have a significant effect. Investments in limiting emissions, combined with capturing and storing carbon, could possibly reverse the warming trend, but it remains to be seen if this is feasible." [But don't expect this report to recommend any such investments, research or feasibility tests because that would cut into our belief that emissions reduction and adaptation can and will save the day. Besides, what country can possibly pursue three strategies at once on which the fate of the world hangs?]
_________________________________________________________________________
Bruce Melton:
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From: 'Robert Tulip' via Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
To: "Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas" <bme...@earthlink.net>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, December 4, 2017 5:29 PM
Subject: Re: [CDR] Re: "why do we put negative emissions last in line for implementation?"

Hi Bruce, thanks.

The source for the 6000 GT CO2e is an article in The Australian Newspaper by Bjorn Lomborg, citing UN data.

I have noticed that Lomborg tends to be the object of personal attacks that do not engage with the content of his claims.  So it is important to note that his 1% observation is comparing all the Paris commitments to 2030 (13 years) with the requirement to achieve 2 degrees this century (83 years).  To make a more comparable figure, perhaps we should extend Paris at the same level to 2100, in which case it would achieve about 6% of the two degree carbon removal need, still a trivial amount.  But on the other hand, part of the problem with that is that the Paris Accord is like Kyoto, an exercise in spin and lies, and its failed decarbonisation model has already generated intense political hostility from the US government and a cynical focus on development aid from the poor world, so even the 2030 targets look impossibly ambitious.

I am currently working on Iron Salt Aerosol as the best available climate stability method.  I will discuss with my colleagues whether we should share our summary proposal in public.


Since it is behind a paywall I have attached a copy, including both the Australian article and a similar article he wrote in the New York Daily News.

Best Regards

Robert Tulip
From: "Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas" <bme...@earthlink.net>
To: Robert Tulip <rtuli...@yahoo.com.au>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 5 December 2017, 4:54
Subject: [CDR] Re: "why do we put negative emissions last in line for implementation?"

Great additions Robert. Where did you find the 6,000 GT CO2e? Hansen 2017 has 860 ppm CO2 and 4 C warming, at 4660 Gt CO2. I guess these are about the same but I would like to have the ref for my archive.

Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas

unread,
Dec 6, 2017, 9:51:28 AM12/6/17
to Carbon Dioxide Removal

Anyone seen any details about these two? This popped across my desk this morning and I haven't seen before. Scroll down for Sunfire.

https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/environment/ineratec-produces-eco-fuel-out-of-the-air

B

Bruce Melton PE
CEO, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham
Austin, Texas 78736
512 799-7998

www.ClimateDiscovery.org -- over 400 reports on the most recent climate science.

www.MeltonEngineering.com -- Specializing in residential flooding solutions.

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