Re: Carbon Engineering and 'the moral hazard'

[Gregory Slater]

All,

Maybe I am just bad at searching the site, but I haven't found much discussion of the recently announced sale of David Keith's 'Carbon Engineering' to Occidental Petroleum for ~$1.1 billion.  This announcement came only days after Biden announced hi intent to ask for ~$1.2 billion in aid for two CDR demo plants in Texas and Louisiana.  I suppose I should be just grateful as hell that you can sell a pocket CDR test facility for a billion dollars, but I don't trust Occidental's motives in doing this.  If selling a CDR company to big oil at this stage doesn't involve the specter of 'moral hazard', then there's no such thing as a moral hazard (which is constantly laid on SAI).  Occidental is incentivized to put as much CO2 in the atmosphere as possible so they can make even more money pulling it all out.  Gore even had a shocking quote from the Occidental CEO in his recent TED talk (who knows if it was a deepfake).

Did I miss the lively debate over this sale?  Send me a link please.

Thank you,

Greg Slater

[Seth Miller]

Greg, you didn’t miss anything. 

I think the lessons here are that:

1. Oxy is 100% serious about going bit into DAC, using government funded carbon credits in order to extend their existing oil business
2. This makes everyone in the CDR community so uncomfortable that they aren’t celebrating this out loud

Peter Eisenberger wrestled with the uncomfortable part in another thread, which everyone should totally read, but I’ll quote below with formatting cleaned up slightly:

1. One cannot ask or get the developing world to stop using fossil fuels or make their energy costs higher while their people do not have their basic needs met
2. Even as shown in europe for the developed world stopping to use fossil fuels is not feasible 
3. That any industrial revolution has a long transition period - parts of the world are still using wood 
4. The energy industry is the only industry that has the experience and capability to make the transition in the time needed 
5. Acknowledging the above rather than arguing for stopping fossil fuel now and villainizing the energy industry is needed to reach a global accord and coordination needed to make the transition away from fossil fuels and a natural resource based economy to a Renewable Energy and Materials Economy happen as quickly as possible  

Oxy’s decision to pay $1.1 billion for a company with no revenue, and whose technology is still several years away from generating revenue, is bold. It would be unthinkably risky if it did not also offer some hope of extending Oxy's existing oil business. Oxy generates about $20B in profits each year, so even if there is a small chance this purchase of forestalling regulation or obsolescence, they should make the bet.

If nothing else, Oxy seems to be able to think rationally. Oxy has said they are planning to build 100 metago/yr-ish scale DAC facilities globally by 2035. I think the smart money right now is that they intend to follow through. This is obviously contingent on global markets for carbon credits, and Oxy can decide to reverse its investments later. But also, their ambitions are entirely achievable. See Peter’s (4) above in particular.

Is 100 megaton-scale DAC plants bad? I think that yes, the US’s climate credit policy gives some payout to people who don’t give a damn about climate. I also can’t think of an incentive plan that doesn’t have some perverse side effects, and yet we still incentivize and invest. It is very early in 2023 to be saying that we know that this particular set of incentives are bad, or good. Climate is a long game. It seems wrong to judge an investment by its outcome today.

Oxy, being the cold-blooded, rational capitalists they are, is making a bet that might not pay out, but will pay off well if it does. Maybe that last bit is the lesson here. Yes, there is risk to the climate movement that the bet in DAC will go totally sideways. But we are in a crisis. Our future livelihood is threatened. In that context, isn’t it worth taking risk? 

I think ambivalence and caution are justified, but it’s worthwhile to put out an audible “yay!” here. 

Seth

-------

Seth Miller, Ph.D.

www.linkedin.com/in/sethmiller2

Check my blog at: perspicacity.xyz

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[Peter Flynn]

The statement “this makes everyone in the CDR community so uncomfortable that they aren’t celebrating…” is an overstatement.

 

Fossil fuels have conveyed staggering benefits to humanity, with late recognition of a serious and terrible consequence not due to the use of energy but rather to the end byproduct of that energy. If the byproduct were to be fully dealt with, then at least one member of the CDR community, me, is comfortable with ongoing use. I can envision a future in which legacy emissions are captured and paid for by DAC primarily funded by those societies that historically created the emissions, and in which ongoing emissions are captured and paid for by DAC paid for by the user of the fuel. If a fossil fuel is economic in the future with full offset….ok by me. There is much suspicion of all energy producers, warranted in my opinion way more for some than others. We are moving to sufficiently accurate measurement and verification to know whether incremental emissions are truly offset. I think our future is better assured if we focus on results and not villains.

 

Peter

 

Peter Flynn, P. Eng., Ph. D.

Emeritus Professor and Poole Chair in Management for Engineers

Department of Mechanical Engineering

University of Alberta

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

1 928 451 4455

peter...@ualberta.ca

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[Seth Miller]

The statement “this makes everyone in the CDR community so uncomfortable that they aren’t celebrating…” is an overstatement.

This is fair! 

I know that for me personally, I will piss off a lot of friends by cheering for Oxy and CE and the amoral wheels of capitalism. Still, this should be something of a watershed moment? I noticed the same silence that Greg did, and I think he’s right to poke the list to see how everyone is processing this.

-------

Seth Miller, Ph.D.

www.linkedin.com/in/sethmiller2

Check my blog at: perspicacity.xyz

[Anton Alferness]

I think the majority of people are not celebrating due to the yuck factor. Math and reality aside. 

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[Dan Miller]

A few points:

1.  I disagree that we need FF for a long time.  We can ban ICE cars in 2030, FF electricity in 2035 and almost all FF energy in 2040. Any small amount of FF after that (and before!) would need to be offset with permanent CDR. Note that this phase out of FF will save society trillions of dollars because FF is the most expensive form of energy — by far — when all costs are included, and still more expensive even when climate damage is excluded.  As we are learning today, the “external costs” of FF are real and must be paid in Maui and around the world.  If you want to help the developing world, then give them renewable energy. FF are a curse for both environmental and financial reasons in the developing world, draining their resources to pay for a constant supply of FF.

2.  This whole notion of a moral hazard for CDR assumes there will be no serious action on climate and we will ask FF companies to “pretty please” reduce the amount of product they supply.  If we continue to choose to fail then we will, well, fail.  But if we choose to take serious action, then it will not be up to FF companies to continue to produce deadly products by greenwashing with CDR. Perhaps, instead, they will turn into real CDR companies because they know for sure that they must ramp down production of FF.

3.  I’m concerned that we — climate activists — continue to nibble around the edges of a plan that is doomed to fail.  We need to face the fact that the world is taking essentially no serious climate action and try to change that. Subsidizing renewables is great but it does not stop climate change. Phasing out FF helps but there is very little discussion about even thinking about doing that!  CDR and SRM are required to prevent >2ºC and other catastrophic tipping points, including a near-term AMOC shutdown, yet we are dilly dallying about those things.  The fact that Biden can approve the Willow project and talk about providing shade and water to outdoor workers rather than than actually addressing climate change means there is no leadership on climate.  António Guterres is great but no one listens to him. Instead, the head of the UAE oil company is running the upcoming COP!  I think if the public understood that there is no one at the wheel, they might demand some level of real action. As climate damage increases, that day will eventually come, but we need to figure out how to accelerate the call for real climate action.

Dan

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[Greg Rau]

Just to be clear on Oxy motives:

https://www.eenews.net/articles/oil-companies-want-to-remove-carbon-from-the-air-using-taxpayer-dollars/

“ Occidental Petroleum Corp. leader Vicki Hollub has described DAC not as a climate solution but a way to continue producing petroleum.

“We believe that our direct capture technology is going to be the technology that helps to preserve our industry over time,” she said at an oil and gas conference earlier this year. “This gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think it’s going to be very much needed.”

-as I posted on July 17, with lots of followup comments from others. You can sugarcoat this, but the deal is we here in the US can have DAC (and have it hugely subsidized by the US taxpayer) if we agree to prolong FF. All other CDR (that might be cheaper, faster, better, higher capacity in net consuming air CO2, but doesn't serve the FF industry) can find their own partons and votes in Congress.  The interesting exception to this is Climeworks, but even they couldn't resist the US DAC feeding trough: https://climeworks.com/news/u.s.-doe-selects-all-three-dac-hub-proposals-climeworks-participates-in

It's again time for my annual posting of this little observation from the distant past:

“It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.” ― Niccolò Machiavelli, 1513, The Prince 

So, we and the planet are in for a "long experience" with excess CO2 before anything really changes?  

Greg

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[David Hawkins]

Greg, et al.,

OXY’s CEO has indeed rationalized its investment in CDR as a device to prolong fossil fuel use. The US Congress has indeed to date declined to adopt a comprehensive, economy-wide mandatory GHG emission reduction regime (although the Clean Air Act, enacted in 1970, with relevant amendments as recent as 2022 provides EPA with substantial power to limit GHG emissions from new and existing sources, both stationary and mobile, and this authority has been several times confirmed by our Supreme Court, also as recent as 2022).

Does OXY’s stated motive mean we should oppose the DAC project it is constructing?  I don’t think so.  OXY’s statement is not at all surprising.  The primary audiences are those investors who are still backing Big Fossil and those who are investing in OXY in particular.  OXY and other FF companies will no doubt continue to advocate for CDR that is larger than rational and claim that their investments are evidence of their “good faith.”

That’s what they will argue but we who prioritize climate protection have overwhelmingly powerful and stronger arguments.  CDR is not an alternative to radical reductions in FF and FF emissions.  Those reductions must be the core of any strategy.

Even though CDR may play a modest role, cheaper, more energy efficient CDR is a plus.  The DAC subsidies in the IRA are not the best policy but they are a better policy than no policy, if they speed learning for DAC.  

To make a strategy that prioritizes emissions reductions a reality, in a democracy we need to assemble the votes to make it law.  For some politicians, CDR may give them cover to move from opposition to support of the policies we need.  

We will need to fight for terms that keep the focus on emissions reductions and replacement of FF with alternatives.  That is a fight worth having and a fight we will win — later than it should have happened but the job now is to deploy all the tools that will help us win the fight more quickly.  I believe the OXY project, regardless of the CEO’s rationalization, can help create another useful tool in a complete program to limit climate disruption harms and help us assemble the votes we need to deliver that program.

David

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On Aug 23, 2023, at 2:50 AM, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:



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[Klaus Lackner]

If you take a more optimistic perspective, Ms Hollub – the head of an oil company – has publicly admitted that the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels need to be canceled out by sequestration.  Rather than belly-aching whether she does or does not want to continue fossil fuel use (of course she does), we should take the opening and demand that this cancellation must start today for all fossil fuels.  Therefore, the deal should be you can have your sequestration, but you are now responsible for net zero.  Every ton of carbon coming out of the ground, needs to be cancelled out by sequestration.  Since it is unlikely that you have enough sequestration capacity today, the unbalanced part stays on your balance sheet just like any other debt and has to be paid off.  Unless you or someone you pay for this service can give an ironclad guarantee that this future of a sequestration certificate is as good as a treasury bond and insured, you are no longer allowed to extract fossil fuels.

 

That deal is also good for the environment.  If you could have it worldwide, it would guarantee that CO2 levels in the atmosphere will revert back to today’s levels once the mountain of carbon debt has been paid off.  We are too late to just phase out fossil fuels.  We can’t do it overnight, and I think it is a lot better to demand carbon neutrality than to give the industry a time schedule to phase out fossil fuels.

 

Will this approach lead to the perpetuation of fossil fuels?  I doubt it.  In this scenario OXY would suddenly have a very tidy business in CO2 sequestration selling it to all its fossil fuel partners.  For many decades the demand for sequestration could not be met on the spot, and therefore piles up future demand.  In a world that needs to draw down 100 ppm of CO2, you have 1500 Gt of CO2 demand built in.  Alternatively, future obligations  would globally pile up at about 40 Gt/yr, for years to come.  OXY and its friends inside and outside the oil industry, would see this demand, and would have no reason to give you a break on sequestration. The cost of sequestration will not come down until the overhang is successfully removed. And that will take many decades. It won’t take OXY too long to figure out that sequestration is a better business than oil.  No other industry has a mismatch between supply and demand as large as sequestration.  Fossil fuels will have to pay a stiff price for sequestration, because the market will allow it.  If renewable energy technologies can’t compete with that they don’t deserve any better.  In my view, they can and will and will gradually force fossil fuel out.

 

In short, we should take the opportunity and agree with OXY that all carbon has to be cancelled out.  We know how to do it, with all sorts of CDR.  Then we add that the demand that fossil fuel producers must have the obligation to cancel out their carbon release immediately.  Let’s focus on creating credible certificates of sequestrations that guarantee that carbon has been removed on climate relevant time scales and ironclad bonded futures on certificates of sequestration that companies can and must buy today.

 

Since, we can’t get the whole world behind this overnight, why don’t we start at home and require certificates of sequestration for all fossil fuel extraction, for all calcination processes and for all imports of oil, coal, gas, and fuel products.  With that we could become carbon neutral and do our part to stop climate change.

 

Klaus

 

 

 

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[Anton Alferness]

I think it is worth keeping in mind that there will come a point where there simply won't be any more reasons left to deny climate change is real and those clinging to their old paradigms will turn the corner. One way or another.

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[Robert Chris]

Great idea, but ...

In effect what Klaus is proposing is the internalisation of the environmental costs associated with fossil fuel consumption that have hitherto been externalised - the mother of all market failures referred to by many commentators.

Internalising these costs will inescapably cause fossil fuel products to become more expensive.  The good news there is that this will favour the acceleration of the transition to renewables and nuclear.  The bad news is that logistically that it such a vast task globally that it will take decades before the current 80% reliance on fossil fuels is reduced to its irreducible minimum.  Further bad news is that the politicians that would have to mandate this policy globally are very unlikely to do so because their citizens will see this as tantamount to taxation.  Citizens don't like taxation and will not vote those politicians in next time round, or might revolt in totalitarian states where voting isn't available, or at least, the politicians would fear such reactions and would therefore be too timid to go down that route.

Eventually these environmental costs, both those emanating from current and future fossil fuels and those already incurred from past emissions, will have to be paid, one way or another.  The challenge that humanity faces is making that happen in an orderly and reasonably equitable manner.  If we don't find a way to do that in the relatively near future, nature will provide us with the solution.  As far as I'm aware, nature does not have a mechanism for addressing societal orderliness and equity.

The big imponderable is how much time have we got before nature takes the decisions out of our hands.  The answer to that question is subject to considerable uncertainty, however, given what's at stake, prudence might suggest we  embrace that uncertainty by over-reacting.  The last 30 years or so of global climate change policymaking do not augur well in that regard.

Regards

Robert

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[Sarnoff, Joshua]

Perhaps you underestimate the power of delusional thinking and denial?  Think about the “big lie” of the 2020 election.  Admitting that it was false will now require lots of people to acknowledge that they were lying all along or being lied to and duped all along.  Which undermines their belief in the positive association of their identities, not to mention the lack of safety.  Consider the following analysis of climate denialism:

“ “Research suggests that people are attracted to these narratives when one or more psychological needs are threatened,” including the need to have clarity and certainty, the need to feel safe and in control, and the need to feel positive about groups you belong to, she says.”

 

Josh

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[Tom Goreau]

Governments spent more than a trillion dollars last year subsidizing fossil fuels:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/23/g20-poured-more-than-1tn-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-despite-cop26-pledges-report

 

We call for ALL these perverse subsidies to be immediately redirected towards testing all feasible options for stabilizing climate at safe levels.

 

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance

Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.

Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK

37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)

 

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

 

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

 

Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change

 

No one can change the past, everybody can change the future

 

It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think

 

Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away

 

“When you run to the rocks, the rocks will be melting, when you run to the sea, the sea will be boiling”, Peter Tosh, Jamaica’s greatest song writer

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of David Hawkins <dahaw...@gmail.com>

Date: Wednesday, August 23, 2023 at 8:43 AM
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>
Cc: Seth Miller <setha...@gmail.com>, Dan Miller <d...@rodagroup.com>, Peter Flynn <pcf...@ualberta.ca>, Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com>, Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/8D1A7111-CCDB-419E-890B-F8A311F5C251%40gmail.com.

[Anton Alferness]

Perhaps. 

Or maybe I'm delusional about my belief that people can and do change. 

[David Hawkins]

This is the challenge we have to overcome whether OXY builds a DAC plant or not.  

Klaus is correct that the OXY CEO's comments amount to an admission that continued use of fossil fuels without accompanying return of associated CO2 to the lithosphere is incompatible with climate protection.  That moves the argument to the question of how much CDR (and thus how much continued FF production) is feasible and cost-effective.  This is a better ground for us to wage the fight.  Only after most emission reduction and fuel replacement actions have been implemented will it be more cost-effective to deploy durable CDR broadly.  And there are real physical limits to lower cost geologic storage reservoirs and transport to them that mean only a fraction of today's FF use can rely on durable CDR to compensate for emissions.

David

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[Michael Hayes]

The UNFCCC is crafting a global C credit system, and that early effort is already biased against engineered CDR methods in favor of natural CDR methods. 

Moves by the FF industry to buy up patents, regardless if they will/can actually use them, can likely strengthen the UN C credit views further against the overall engineering-based CDR field.

Control of the global C credit industry, by the FF industry, can likely happen as capturing the global C credit market via patent control will be worth far more than buying the patents even if no globally respected C credit scheme emerges. Keith et al. surely understands the market control that patents provide.

(Have the key patents ever been challenged in court?) 

Beyond what the FF folks will do next, I'm wondering what the newly minted millionaires at Climeworks will be dedicating their new wealth to. Will Kieth spend his on cash pushing through acceptance of highly controversial methods like SAI? I'll wager $10 that he does.

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[Jasper Sky]

Let's do some numbers, and see whether DAC is a credible offset solution to an oil company's emissions. I'll posit that it would only be credible if it offset the entirety of the company's life-cycle emissions associated with producing barrels of crude oil. What would it cost to do that?

Unfortunately, the amounts of money and energy that would be required to fully offset an oil & gas corporation’s total CO2 emissions using DAC are so large that IMO it is implausible fossil fuels firms have any intention of fully offsetting their emissions using this technology. It just doesn’t work in business terms. This is easy to show through straightforward calculations. One barrel of oil weighs ca. 136 kg and sells for ca. USD $80 at present. Estimates suggest that the total lifecycle emissions for a barrel of crude oil can range from approximately 415 kilograms to over 700 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) per barrel. Let’s go with a lowball estimate (415 kg). This would mean that one barrel of oil generates 0.415 tons CO2eq emissions. IEA suggests that although DAC costs several hundred dollars per ton CO2 today, it could drop to $100 per ton in future.  If oil companies were responsible for fully offsetting the emissions generated by the product they market, then given the lowball estimate of 0.415 tons CO2eq emissions per barrel of crude oil and an optimistically low DAC price of $100 per ton of CO2, oil companies would have to spend $41.50 per barrel to offset their emissions. This is similar to today’s total production price per barrel at the average oil well (the production price varies greatly depending on the site, as this chart of breakeven prices shows.) In effect, DAC would double the production price per barrel to above $80 per barrel. Given an $80 per barrel sales price (approximately the world crude oil price at time of writing), oil companies would be left with zero or negative net revenues and no business model.  

 

If however life-cycle CO2 emissions per barrel of crude oil were more realistically assumed to be 500 kg or 700 kg (= 0.5 or 0.7 tons), then the price per barrel to offset CO2 emissions using DAC would be $50 or $70 assuming a DAC price of $100 per ton. If we assume an average production price per barrel of $45, the total cost of production (including DAC CO2 offset) would rise to $95 to $115. An average barrel of oil would have to sell in that range of prices just to achieve break-even (zero profit).  

 

Even at a DAC price of just $50 per ton (lower than anyone anticipates even when DAC becomes a fully mature technology), the CO2 offset price per barrel would be $25 or $35 respectively, and the total break-even cost of a barrel (including DAC CO2 offset) would be $70 to $85 given an average breakeven production cost of $45. 

  

Given these numbers, with 81% of the average barrel of oil going to transportation: gasoline (46%), diesel fuel (26%), and jet fuel (9%) in USA, and EVs increasingly providing a ready alternative in road transport applications, it’s hard to see how oil production burdened by fully DAC-offset CO2 emissions can offer a viable business model for oil companies, other than perhaps for non-transportation products such as high-value specialty lubricants and petrochemicals, which constitute less than 20% of the companies’ current volume of business (even these will increasingly have to compete with bio-derived or synthetic hydrocarbons made using renewable energy inputs). 

  
The foregoing calculations are easy to do, and oil & gas company analysts have surely done them. This suggests that if DAC is put forward by oil & gas companies as a proposed solution that will allow them to maintain and even expand operations, even as they continue to put out statements of intent to ramp up their oil production volume over many years to come, they are not being honest. In this light, Oxy’s acquisition of Carbon Engineering can be seen as a PR move, rather than as a bona fide attempt to solve the corporation’s climate impact problem. 

[Dan Miller]

To keep it simple, a $100/ton-CO2 DAC cost (or carbon tax) would add about $1 to the cost of a gallon of gasoline.  This would not leave O&G companies with “no business model” but would make their products less competitive, which is the point of a carbon tax at least. The burning of fossil fuels cause about 8 million death per year and that does not include climate damage. So it’s a good thing to phase out fossil fuels even if you offset the CO2 emissions with CDR. Requiring FF companies to offset their products’ emissions with CDR slows climate change and helps speed the phase out of fossil fuels by making the price of FF products more closely match their costs to society (though their actual costs to society are still much higher). Even if we pass a policy to require FF companies to offset their emissions, we still need policies to phase out FF on a fast timeline.  The bottom line is we need to phase out FF quickly and still do ~50 Gt-CO2/year of CDR to bring CO2 levels back down to a safe level. The last time CO2 was *todays* level, sea levels were about 75 feet higher than now.

Also, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to propose solutions that assume we will not take any serious climate action and that we will continue with business as usual with fossil fuels.  If that is the case, then we will fail for sure and we will go above 2ºC and will cross several major tipping points and the existence of civil society itself will be threatened.  Either we will take action to stop climate change or we won’t.  But we should not assume things will be OK if we don’t take serious action but we do this one particular thing (there are a big choice of those things). We should not fool ourselves into thinking we are taking serious action now and we need to let policymakers know that we know that they haven’t done anything serious yet. Subsidizing renewables is a good thing, but it has not reduced FF use and will not in a timely manner.

Dan

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[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Also, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to propose solutions that assume we will not take any serious climate action and that we will continue with business as usual with fossil fuels.  If that is the case, then we will fail for sure and we will go above 2ºC

When we discovered human sewage was killing millions from diseases related to improper disposal of human sewage pollution in the nineteenth century, we did no stop emitting human sewage pollution.

There is no science that says we must stop doing this thing we have failed to stop doing for 30 years. The science says we must return Earth's atmospheric energy imbalance to levels from the Holocene. The scenarios say we must stop emissions, but the scenarios do not evaluate continued emissions futures. Of the 1,202 scenarios evaluated by IPCC AR6, none are continued emissions scenarios that seek to achieve climate safety at any level.

When we started treating human sewage responsibly, life expectancy increased by 30 percent in 40 years.
Davenport et al., Cholera as a sanitary test of British cities, 1831–1866, The History of the Family, November 3, 2018.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6582458/pdf/rhof-24-1525755.pdf

On the struggle to adopt sanitary drinking water practices: The gowns vs the towns, or elites vs working class... Very similar to the conundrum we face today with climate pollution...
Vanderslott et al., Water and Filth - Reevaluating the First Era of Sanitary Typhoid Intervention 1840–1940, Clinically Infectious Diseases, November 1, 2019.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6792102/pdf/ciz610.pdf

Treating climate pollution like we treated human sewage; like we have treated almost all pollution since we discovered pollution, is an acceptable alternative to climate pollution emissions elimination. This is doubly important now that our future is influenced by tipping collapses and we have so little time to either restore our climate or find the will to geoengineer so that tipping does not become existential.

Still too hot in Austin -- &&& Check these stats out below. I was on a panel on extremes last night and these are Austin's latest:

-MeltOn

Austin's Climate Change-Caused Catastrophes and Disasters

Note: Climate change catastrophes here are labelled as "climate change-caused" because I am an engineer, or an applied scientist. Engineers apply science to life to keep us safe using risk as a criteria for implementation at whatever level is needed for an assumed level of safety. Engineers are not bound by statistical certainty and other scientific norms associated with science, so we can suggest that there is a definitive cause and effect or risk thereof, so that we can justify the solutions we design. There are clues that help understand risk; a big one is unprecedented events. Unprecedented events do occur in our old climate, but almost always, not one after another after another.

2023 - Ice Storm Mara... all-time record
2022 - All Rivers to the Highland Lakes Went Dry For the First Time... all-time record
2021 - Winter Storm Uri... all-time record
2018 - Llano River Flood... 2, 50-year events in a week
2017 - Hurricane Harvey... yeesh
2015 - Blanco Flood... all-time record
2013 - Onion Creek Flood... all-time record
2011 to 2013 - New Drought of Record
2011 - Bastrop Complex Fire - largest wildfire in Texas history at 29,000 acres, burning 1,400 homes, plus the three other unprecedented fires on Labor Day

None of these unprecedented events above could have been avoided because of emissions reductions. They were caused by warming we have already endured and are symptoms of activation of Earth systems collapses that are, or are directly related to climate tipping responses. The only way to return the disaster rate to normal is to remove warming from the sky that is already existing, that has caused these disasters. Emissions reductions help, but emissions reduction and even complete net zero emissions do nothing to reduce the warming already in the sky that is responsible for all of the disasters we have been enduring.

 

Summer Heat Trends in Austin, 100 degree days. etc.

The average number of days at 100 degrees or above in our old climate in Austin was 10.5
The National Weather Service's (NWS)  30-year average 1991 to 2020 is 29 days
The 5-year 2022 average is 47 days
Currently (August 23, 2023) we are in fourth place at 61 days with no relief in site in the 14-day forecast
We broke our above 105 record of 9 consecutive days in 2011 this year, twice
Yesterday ended our new 2023 days above 100 degrees record of 45 consecutive days at 100 or more
The previous consecutive 100-degree day record was 27 in 2011
2022 hottest July ever
2023 hottest July ever, again
2011 hottest August ever and Hottest month ever
2023 Hottest summer ever, June, July and August 89.4
90 degree days record 164 days in 2022, tied with 2011*
* includes 100 degree days in May and September
Annual 100 degree days:
2023 - Through August 23, 2023, 61 days
2022 - 67 days
2011 - 65 days
2009 - 62 days
August average temp to August 23, 2023, 91.7, ties with 2011 at 91.7 for the entire month
30-year 1991 to 2020 NWS average August temperature 86.5
2000 and 2011 at 112 degrees were the all-time maximum Austin temperature
2023 only 110 so far – widespread across the Hill Country, not just the urban heat island.

Bruce Melton PE
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
The Band Climate Change
Twitter - BruceCMelton1

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[Jasper Sky]

Hi Dan,

you wrote that "a $100/ton-CO2 DAC cost (or carbon tax) would add about $1 to the cost of a gallon of gasoline".. I appreciate your input. Could you please show your calculations so that I can follow your argument more closely?

Thanks

Jasper

[Robert Chris]

Treating sewage was a tame problem.  Returning global surface temperature to <1C or even keeping it below 2C above pre-industrial is a wicked problem.  It requires a systemic approach and more or less simultaneous action across the globe.  That action is proving challenging precisely because it is challenging - it requires rewiring the global economy that has for almost three centuries been driven incredibly successfully by fossil fuels.  That rewiring must have at its heart the abandonment of economic growth as the primary driver of 'success'.  Until we can replace our need for 'more' with contentment from having 'enough', we will continue to fail.  We will not engineer away our problems with carbon emissions until we re-engineer our worldviews.  Only that mental leap will unleash the technologies we need to manage an orderly restoration of ecosystem stability.   Effective CDR (and SRM) is contingent upon effective HMM - human mindset modification.

Arguing that we should treat climate pollution like we treated human sewage is to completely misunderstand their respective natures.  If every human activity involved the continuous production of effluent wherever and whenever that the activity occurred so that the entire planet was covered in mounting piles of crap that took centuries to decompose and disappear by natural processes, treating human sewage would not have been the relatively simple engineering problem it turned out to be.

Regards

Robert

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[Peter Eisenberger]

Hi Dan 

I agree with your analysis about serious action.   I have always thought that Klaus's idea for how to administer a carbon tax was a good idea. But as you note without a comprehensive plan that is at the scale of the challenge all we are doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.  

I believe that the scientific and policy community that is dedicated to addressing the climate 

challenges need to change.  Our institutions, including notably the IPCC, have shown themselves incapable of mobilizing the effort needed. The institutions are confronted by experts who are trying to get money and policy support for their idea and in some cases trashing other ideas and efforts. The governments are not getting a clear signal of  what to do and thus the various powerful interests can use the lack of a clear plan to advance their own interests.  We need to appreciate the wisdom of  Einstein's famous adage " one cannot solve a problem with the same thinking(actions) as created it. 

We need to come together in a  Manhattan type Project adapted to the climate challenge. The experts need to  make the difficult decisions needed to have an effective plan to submit to the policy makers. They have do so by agreeing  to give up their own efforts if not chosen and contribute their expertise to the ones that are.  The DAC coalition,  a NFP,  has all the DAC efforts represented. It should take the lead and  provide the best plan to get DAC scaled ASAP. Other CDR efforts should do the same.  

A group with a representative from each CDR approach having gone through the process  would make the hard choices between the various CDR approaches. More discussion is needed on the process,  but how can we expect others who look to the experts for input to be expected to make the hard choices if we are not?  

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[Dan Miller]

Hi Peter:

I agree with you that we need a new scientific and policy community to address the challenge before us.

But the nuance of what I am saying is that climate advocates need to stop assuming that serious policy won’t happen and instead call out policymakers (and everyone else, including journalists, and, yes, FF companies) for their failure. Many climate advocates say CDR is evil because it will prolong FF production. Well, it can only do that if you assume we won’t take any serious climate action! If that’s the case it won’t matter if we do CDR or not, since not much else will be happening!

Let’s face the fact that we aren’t yet serious about taking climate action… that we are choosing to fail.  If the public understood that (I’m pretty sure they don’t), then they might demand that their elected policymakers actually do something about climate.  Biden and the Democrats passed the IRA which they call a “climate bill”.  There are some decent things in there, perhaps 5~10% of what is needed right now. But then Biden approves the Willow project and has a “climate speech” where he talks about giving outside workers water and shade! No action on climate. We are sleep walking our way to climate catastrophe.

I’ll leave with you with a quote from climate scientist Kevin Anderson:

Dan

[Peter Eisenberger]

I agree 100%- with you and Anderson - The question becomes what actions can we and others like Anderson take  that will 

be effective in gathering support in the climate community to agree?    

[Michael Hayes]

Peter, et al.,

The NOAA mCDR team is currently creating standards for evaluating marine methods for policy makers and investors.

The UNFCCC is currently creating standards for a global C credit scheme that will rank CDR methods.

Governance of the highseas, beyond all national jurisdictions, is evolving around biodiversity, specifically considering the environmental impact of mCDR methods. 

Best wishes

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