RE: [prag] ‘Nature’ | David T. Ho | “Carbon dioxide removal is not a current climate solution — we need to change the narrative”

[Chris Vivian]

Doug,

 

You can submit a letter to Nature to go in the Correspondence/Letters to the Editor – see https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/other-subs. Probably not that easy to get published though.

 

Chris.

 

From: 'Douglas Grandt' via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 4, 2023 7:08 PM
To: Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>; healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: John Nissen <johnnis...@gmail.com>; Herb Simmens <hsim...@gmail.com>; Michael Routh <mwr...@gmail.com>; Peter Fiekowsky <pfi...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [prag] ‘Nature’ | David T. Ho | “Carbon dioxide removal is not a current climate solution — we need to change the narrative”

 

All -

 

My choice of words was not precise:

 

Anybody have ideas how to comment or otherwise publicly respond to the author of this?

 

By “how” I did not mean content, rather avenue or vehicle to convey a reply.

 

apologies for the vague wording

 

Also, apologies to PeterF for inadvertently selecting HCA’s address when I intended to address HPAC

 

(HPAC -please see my initial request below

 

Best regards,

Doug

 

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

On Apr 4, 2023, at 11:41 AM, Michael Routh <mwr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Doug,

 

It seems his premise is to “let nature do the cleaning up”.  I wonder if it has ever occurred to him that humans can use creative ways to optimize and accelerate nature’s scale and processes by, for example, facilitating CO2 uptake by EHUX through providing nutrients, controlling competition, managing bloom cycles, and enabling sinking to the ocean floor?  Of course it’s not simple, but to imply natural processes cannot be facilitated is incredibly short-sighted.

 

Michael Routh

 

On Apr 4, 2023, at 9:29 AM, 'Doug Grandt' via Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 

Anybody have ideas how to comment or otherwise publicly respond to the author of this?

 

<d41586-023-00953-x_25201486.jpg>

Carbon dioxide removal is not a current climate solution — we need to change the narrative nature.com

 

• WORLD VIEW

• 04 April 2023

Carbon dioxide removal is not a current climate solution — we need to change the narrative

<d41586-023-00953-x_25201490.jpg>

Drastically reduce emissions first, or carbon dioxide removal will be next to useless.

• David T. Ho 

 

• https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00953-x

The concluding four paragraphs:

 

In the meantime, research is needed to seek CDR methods that minimize land use and energy consumption, and can be scaled up rapidly and cheaply. Doing that now is essential, so that we have the technology available in the future, when it will be effective, and when it can be used to remove legacy emissions to address intergenerational justice.

Not all techniques that work in the laboratory will work in the real world. Some might come with heavy costs for biodiversity and the environment. Developing methods to verify that CDR works is a major challenge. It will be many years before we have the science to tell us which methods work and whether they harm or benefit the environment.

Humanity has never removed an atmospheric pollutant at a global, continental or, even, regional scale — we have only ever shut down the source and let nature do the clearing up. This is the case for chlorofluorocarbons and stratospheric ozone destruction, for sulfur dioxide and acid rain, and for sulfur and nitrogen oxides and photochemical smog. We must be prepared for CDR to be a failure, leaving us to rely on the environment to stabilize atmospheric CO2 over thousands of years. This is another argument for rapid decarbonization.

The scale of the challenge is immense. We must slow the carbon clock to a crawl before we can turn it back.

Doug Grandt

 

Sent from my iPhone (audio texting)

 

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[Tapan]

Dear Douglas Grandt,

David Ho has a Twitter account and is quite active there.

If you wish to engage him in a dialogue or respond publicly to this article,Twitter would be a great choice.

Twitter.com/_david_ho.

Regards,

Tapan,

RubiscoBlack.

[Tapan]

I made a mistake in my previous email with the Twitter Id of David Ho, the author of the recent Nature article on CDR. I apologize for it.

The correct Id is

https://twitter.com/_david_ho_

(Three underscores)

He is also on Mastodon

@dav...@mastodon.world

- Tapan,

RubiscoBlack.

[Michael Hayes]

[...] We must stop talking about deploying CDR as a solution today, when emissions remain high — as if it somehow replaces radical, immediate emission cuts. [...]

MH]

Emissions reduction can be significantly addressed by some forms of CDR that generate bio oils, H2, OTEC/TG etc. The assumption that the 2 technologies, emissions reduction and CDR techs, must be distinctly different from each other is no longer fully supportable at the technical level. 

The marine-based CDR technologies that generate different forms of renewable energy, mCDR tech that can store energy, and mCDR tech that can reduce pressure on land resources are likely available today using industrual-grade components and well accepted relevant mCDR sciences and technologies. If one focuses upon mCDR techs that have energy conversion and storage potential as a byproduct, the distinction between emissions reduction and CDR largely becomes moot.

Ignoring the marine CDR options that offer energy related byproducts is likely no longer supportable in the policy space.

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[Greg Rau]

For the CDR list, the link to David's commentary is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00953-x

GHR - I've got to read it again, but it seemed a confusing message: "CDR isn't the solution" (sure, it's an essential part of the solution), "further research is neeeded", but then let's "prepared for CDR to be a failure" and assume natural CDR will eventually return CO2 to pre industrial levels thousands of years from now. So is this the old moral hazard argument repackaged?: Humans are only capable of doing 1 thing at a time and if they try to do a second thing they get distracted and fail? Stop work on CDR, focus all of your attention of emissions reductions and we'll get back to you when/if we think CDR is needed? I'm confused.  

This passage also stood out:

"Humanity has never removed an atmospheric pollutant at a global, continental or, even, regional scale — we have only ever shut down the source and let nature do the clearing up."  So true, and there was a time when firemaking, agriculture, spear points, modern medicine, planes  and cell phones didn't exist either. Except this time failure to come up with methods of hastening CO2 removal will effect the habitability of the entire planet for a very long time. I'd say it's worth trying.

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.

[Shannon A. Fiume]

Yes, moral hazard territory.

I outlined a public rebuttal thread https://twitter.com/safiume/status/1643476835471331328. I believe I've been muted by him and due to his large following. My view counts are about 70% down. Peter, I put a link to your book in the thead. I also copied a few of the DAC and CDR companies at the end of the thread.

I've also submitted a comment to Nature Briefing as this is showing up in the Nature Briefing and Apple News via Nature. In it I said, 'I can't look anyone in the eye with children and say, "No, I'm sorry it was mine and your parents' generation that decided it was too hard to figure out how to reverse as much of climate damages as possible, and collectively we humans just gave up." ', added in my more scholarly argument as to why Nature should not be amplifying an opinion that future CDR will fail.

Aside, other atmospheric pollutants aren't in the gigatonne or ppm range, of course removing them post-facto is going to be excessively expensive. Yes, stopping them at the source was and still is the right way to go.

Regards,

~~sa

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/222071123.48139.1680720960530%40mail.yahoo.com.

-- 
Shannon A. Fiume
sha...@autofracture.com
http://www.autofracture.com/research | http://www.autofracture.com/opencarbon
https://linkedin.com/in/safiume | Go Carbon Negative!

[Chris Vivian]

Greg,

 

See these follow up comments on David Ho’s article on Twitter - https://twitter.com/safiume/status/1643476835471331328

 

Chris.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/222071123.48139.1680720960530%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Michael Hayes]

The narrative needs to be CDR scale and speed of scale up, not the technical ability to do so.

Managing roughly 25 times the weight in C that the global sand and gravel industry moves in a year is likely doable at the mCDR tech level. Ramping up both mCDR and renewable energy conversion, or mCDRe, at all costs will likely save on many second order costs. 

https://www.statista.com/statistics/376665/industrial-sand-and-gravel-production-by-top-countries/

Getting to 10 GtC/y of CDR while radically displacing FF usage in the time needed is a large basket of policy issues that are largely dependent upon technical issues. The socioeconomics of such a huge scale up of any type of new tech in the time we have, or not doing so, is largely philosophical until the mCDRe tech is deployed in mass and accepted at the 'C Bank'.

We have around 100M forcibly displaced persons needing rapidly scaleable water, energy, and nutrient nexus support. Rendering that one basket of needs into C negative values is within some mCDR system of systems engineering options. The need for scale and speed of scale up is difficult to fully express.