[HN Gopher] CO2 removal 'gap' shows countries 'lack progress' fo...
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CO2 removal 'gap' shows countries 'lack progress' for 1.5C warming
limit
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 66 points
Date : 2024-05-03 17:06 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.carbonbrief.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.carbonbrief.org)
| darby_eight wrote:
| I realize carbon capture may be some part of reducing total
| carbon in the atmosphere, but it's disproportionately brought up
| as a potentially effective one. It stinks to high heaven of
| chasing public "investment" rather than actually holding
| industries accountable for actually reducing emissions.
| renewiltord wrote:
| People when carbon capture: This stinks of redirecting tax
| money. Hold accountable.
|
| People when carbon tax: You made inflation high. Get out!
|
| The ideal voter gets to ask for things he'll never get but
| complain about them if he does get them. That way he can act
| free of sin and simultaneously vote out people who give him
| that. There's always some other pretext. "I'm not voting him
| out for his carbon tax. I'm voting him out because X". Because
| the space of actions a political leader must do is large enough
| that nothing is perfect, the voter can always claim he is
| optimizing to some good.
|
| In the West, people get what they vote for and my experience is
| that they're quite representative of peoples' views.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > People when carbon capture: This stinks of redirecting tax
| money. Hold accountable.
|
| > People when carbon tax: You made inflation high. Get out!
|
| This is quite a funny observation. And true. The general
| psychological bias is when immediate known losses are
| standing against unknown future gains. Also Americans in
| particular are allergic to the term tax.
|
| A carbon tax would be the most hands-off way to solve the
| problem. Ideally phased in slowly and with a clear price
| structure from the get-go. All you need is:
|
| - industry needs to know how much they will be taxed in X
| years, so the bean counters can put it in their projections
| so execs listen
|
| - the tax needs to be tight enough so you can't escape
| through tax "planning" aka move operations to unregulated
| countries
|
| The rest takes care of itself. Once there's a tangible
| measurable cost things will change quickly from green leaf-
| decorated "we care"-pamphlets to fire in the ass of the
| decision makers.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I generally agree with you, but in terms of CO2 output the
| West is not really the problem anymore. It's developing
| countries, and the general argument they have is that "why
| should we have to suffer with slower economic output when you
| didn't?"
| adrianN wrote:
| "The West" is absolutely still the problem. No country is
| on a path that is compatible with 2deg warming.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| No country in the world is on a path compatible with the
| supposed 2 degree goal, and it's not mainly a problem of
| the West. I think the whole climate freakout is a scam in
| the first place. In any case, the West should not cripple
| itself as other countries continue business as usual. We
| can't survive like that, and it won't be the climate that
| gets us either.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, but that's not going to work because we used carbon
| to fuel growth and then decarbonized. Everyone else saw
| that China did the same thing to raise half a billion out
| of poverty. Everyone remaining saw that India raised more
| than that out of poverty burning carbon.
|
| It's not like we're going to give developing countries
| nuclear power so their choice is coal, natural gas, wind,
| and solar. And inevitably they follow that specific chain
| of energy build-out as their growing economy starts
| cleaning up. No one has demonstrated a high-scale success
| that is not that.
| pshc wrote:
| If anything the West needs to to be a model and driver for
| a carbon neutral or negative lifestyle. We burned all the
| carbon in the first place, and developing countries will
| suffer the consequences disproportionately.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Let's look at the data [1], which should be a table of per
| capita emission/country, sorted by 2022 numbers. The
| countries at the top have to make the largest changes in
| their socio-economic systems in order to get close to zero
| emissions. While countries at the bottom have to make
| minimal changes. They simply have to not emit in the future
| by using carbon-neutral methods to attain improved human
| well-being.
|
| You will note in the table [2], that at the top are the oil
| producing countries in the Middle East, followed by Canada,
| USA, and Australia. Most of the large European countries
| are far below. The bottom half of the table obviously
| contains no West countries.
|
| China has half the per capita emissions of
| USA/Canada/Australia, and the same as current Europe, and
| it's already decreasing both its population and soon its
| per capita emissions.
|
| It's precisely the people in the Middle East and
| USA/Canada/Australia have to make the largest changes in
| their systems. China+Europe have to follow the same
| downward trajectories.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=table&time
| =2011...
|
| [2] Please ignore small countries, which have negligible
| total emissions.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| >People when carbon capture: This stinks of redirecting tax
| money. Hold accountable. > >People when carbon tax: You made
| inflation high. Get out!
|
| It's almost like the voting population consists of people
| with various different opinions. Personally if I could be
| assured that a carbon tax would be spent mostly on low-
| overhead tree/algae farming, and to a lesser extent _useful_
| research, I would be ok with it. Otherwise, it 's just a cash
| grab that impoverishes people more for no benefit.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha, of course. Carbon taxes can't be a cash grab if
| they're revenue neutral which is easy to do: just evenly
| split by each taxpayer+dependents and send it back as a tax
| credit. In fact, that's exactly how it's done right now in
| many places that implement it.
|
| But no algae farms, sorry. Sort of illustrates the point
| perfectly hahaha.
| janice1999 wrote:
| Pretty much the same way that plastic recycling turned out to
| be huge scam.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Scientist knew plastic recycling was impossible. But
| marketing companies working for plastics producers came up
| with the idea of lying to the public about it to stave off a
| ban they were looking at.
|
| Today, it's basically impossible to convince people that
| plastics are not recyclable - at least not in the same way
| that glass or metals are - because of that little recyclable
| symbol ever piece of plastic has on it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Plastics can be beneficial for global warming. They need
| less energy for making them and for transporting them than
| the alternatives. And they sequester CO2 when they are
| landfilled at the end of their useful life. We should be
| pushing them back underground through the same holes we
| used to dig up the carbon.
| legitster wrote:
| And honestly, the a lot of the problems with plastics are
| actually a very specific and fixable problem. 90% of the
| plastics in the Pacific Ocean come from 2 rivers.
| janice1999 wrote:
| It's 10 rivers [1] passing through some of the largest
| population centers on earth. That is still a big problem.
| Micro-plastics is, imho, a scarier one since they're now
| showing up in many water supplies.
|
| [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-
| polluti...
| scotty79 wrote:
| The problem is that those populations lack the
| infrastructure and organization so they made the rivers
| ad-hoc trash disposal system. And it works too well for
| them.
|
| It's not the plastic that's a problem. It's poverty and
| lack of organization of those regions. If humanity never
| invented the plastic those rivers would still be the most
| polluted (with population waste) rivers on the globe.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I'm more concerned about the microplastics in my blood,
| to be honest.
| hx8 wrote:
| The reason I am reducing my plastics use in personal life
| is because of all the new issues with plastics we are
| discovering. I'm worried about unknown dangers of
| plastic. First it was 10 years ago we were worried about
| BPA, now we are worried about microplastics and pfas.
| What is next.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Next is nanoplastics. Present in bottled water, can reach
| every part of your body, effects unknown.
| nerdawson wrote:
| BPA-free shouldn't offer any comfort.
|
| Manufacturers simply replace BPA with similar
| alternatives which aren't as widely known by consumers
| (BPS or BPF for example).
| jncfhnb wrote:
| The fact that a large portion of the plastic ends up in
| just two rivers does not make the broader problem easier
| to manage.
| nerdponx wrote:
| How do they sequester CO2?
| scotty79 wrote:
| They consist of mostly carbon. If you don't burn them,
| that carbon doesn't end up in the atmosphere.
| ianstormtaylor wrote:
| Plastics don't sequester additional carbon. You literally
| have to pump oil out of the ground, where it was already
| sequestered naturally, to create plastics in the first
| place.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Yeah, but we are pumping oil anyways and there's all the
| money in the world against stopping it.
|
| If we convert some of that pumped oil into a plastic that
| won't be burned but landfilled then we prevented some
| release of CO2.
|
| If we use the plastic for packaging (instead of glass or
| metal) we saved energy (which translates today to CO2)
| and we saved fuel by transporting lighter packaging.
|
| Plastic is pretty much the best thing that happened to
| humanity in relation to CO2 emissions.
|
| Too bad we want to get rid of it because we find it
| unsightly, because we fail to properly sequester it at
| its end of life.
| gwervc wrote:
| Plastic recycling was a lie, but the next related thing put
| in public mind totally isn't haha.
| adrianN wrote:
| Plastic recycling is not impossible, it's just not
| economical to turn plastic back to essentially oil if you
| can pump the stuff from the ground essentially for free (by
| comparison). That could be changed by taxes, but there is
| no political will to make plastic expensive.
|
| In the same way, carbon capture is not impossible (plant
| some trees and bury charcoal), it's just that nobody wants
| to pay for it.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| We have built our society on a lot of incentives that are bad
| for the planet unfortunately so we now have some conflicting
| requirements for tackling climate change.
|
| 1. Cut back on emissions
|
| 2. Nobody anywhere is allowed to lose money
|
| How can this possibly work? How do you cut emissions which are
| a proxy for consumption/production without anybody losing out?
| vkou wrote:
| We can't, we won't, and we'll regret it.
| kranke155 wrote:
| It's as if human civilization is reaching adulthood, late
| 20s early 30s, where the errors of being young and foolish
| start catching up to you.
| vkou wrote:
| Those errors don't really catch up to you until your late
| 40s, when your health is shot, your bank account is
| empty, and you don't really have enough time left to dig
| your way out of the hole you're in.
|
| That's about the stage we're at.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Efficiency, which is what we have been (sort of) doing and
| why things are moving so slowly.
|
| For instance, efficiency is what has made solar panels both
| effective enough to use, and cheap enough to install.
| ben_w wrote:
| Fortunately #2 isn't correct - any given person is absolutely
| allowed to lose money, just so long as "society as a whole"
| is making more.
|
| How you draw the bounds of society, that's hard; Saudi
| Arabia, Iran, and Russia may well _hate_ the idea of the
| world turning away from oil and towards renewables, but have
| no power to stop it.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Fair point. I suppose I meant no Americans are allowed to
| lose money. I am not an expert but what springs to mind
| (for me) is the oil/gas industry. If the cost of fuel
| increases for any reason that's it- your next election will
| not go well. So we usually end up keeping subsidies, tax
| cuts, etc. but adding more incentives to something else
| such as green energy- or at least it seems that way. You
| can't take a thumb off of the scale but you can always add
| more thumbs. Because nobody is allowed to lose money.
| causal wrote:
| Likewise Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about how sustainability
| hype in general is oriented toward sustaining consumer
| lifestyles, which will never really be compatible with living
| in a closed ecosystem.
| scotty79 wrote:
| We can capture carbon before emitting it. For example if we can
| use carbon to make plastic that saves us energy (especially in
| areas where energy doesn't come from renewables) then it's a
| huge benefit. Especially if we don't burn the plastic
| afterwards, just put it under ground instead.
| adrianN wrote:
| We can either leave the oil in the ground, or turn it into
| long lived products. But we can't economically suck carbon
| from the air and turn it into long lived products, but that's
| exactly what we need to do to prevent catastrophic warming.
| We have already emitted too much carbon dioxide.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Not only it's a small part of the effort, it's also only really
| effective after we stop generating that huge amount of CO2, and
| almost all the initiatives around are snake-oil that can't grow
| enough to make an impact.
|
| Some accountability would go a long way here. Most of the stuff
| around carbon capture are plainly fraudulent.
| vvvvvvvvvvvvv wrote:
| I agree with this in principle, but only insofar as it applies
| to western countries. Emissions from the developing world will
| continue to increase (rightfully so, given we had such massive
| head start) and they will have little incentive to curtail
| emissions, even when climate-related disasters become more
| frequent. The only unilateral solution seems to be a
| technological one, therefore necessitating carbon capture.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Just like late-development countries didn't avoid getting
| celphones and investing in mobile internet before they could
| put their wired internet in place, developing countries will
| stop their emissions on about the same time as developed
| ones.
|
| Nobody is making any bit of extra work towards cleaning the
| planet. And that's a really big shame for the developed
| countries.
| hackerlight wrote:
| > The only unilateral solution seems to be a technological
| one
|
| Or a political one. Developed countries provide them a small
| financial incentive to build out renewables instead. Some
| kind of UN fund. It doesn't have to be a large incentive, it
| just needs to tip the financial decision over at the margin.
| The economic logic: it's a retroactive carbon tax, of sorts,
| given the extreme inequality in emissions per-capita since
| the industrial revolution. It's also a pragmatic solution,
| because it's cheaper to prevent the emissions than extract it
| after they've been released.
| LargeWu wrote:
| The only argument for investing in carbon capture today seems
| to be to allow the technology to mature. We'd probably be
| saying similar things about the effectiveness of solar panels
| if we started developing that technology now. The idea is that
| maybe, and that's a big maybe, by the time we get to a point
| where all of our power generation is low emissions, we will
| have matured carbon capture tech enough to make it viable.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Good thing we invested in solar when did then because if CC
| has any chance of success, then it will heavily depend on
| solar.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The difference is that thermodynamic analysis of solar
| panels, even before building them or improving them, tells us
| that it is a winning bet. We can't say the same for carbon
| capture. It's a thermodynamically losing bet.
|
| The humongous amount of entropy we will have to generate to
| offset any significant part of current emissions via carbon
| capture (let alone already emitted CO2) basically tells us
| that carbon capture can only be used in exceptional
| circumstances where there are no feasible methods of reducing
| emissions. If there are, then the winning method is to not
| emit in the first place.
| rasz wrote:
| >allow the technology to mature
|
| just like recycling plastics matured, right? :)
| r00fus wrote:
| "Carbon capture" == "clean coal". Different decade, same scam.
| scratcheee wrote:
| One potential value of CC today is as a final and most flexible
| solution. Even with the limited and experimental technology of
| today, which is obviously economically insane, we have a way
| (with enough money) to make anything carbon neutral. The value
| is not that we actually do that (humanity cannot afford it, in
| general), but instead to give us the number to beat, the
| correct carbon tax, the absolute cost of failing to
| decarbonise.
|
| It's easier to justify improved efficiency when the cost of
| spilling carbon is a big number of dollars rather than a tiny
| slither of a global problem.
|
| That said, I do agree investment should be limited, it's
| obviously only going to be the "best" solution in the rare
| circumstance that there is no good solution.
| mywittyname wrote:
| CO2 removal is the least-effective solution we have for
| mitigating climate change. Renewables have the potential to
| displace fossil fuel sources through market forces by eventually
| becoming cheaper. Demand reduction via taxes and requiring
| energy-efficient products can be effective for the same reasons.
|
| But there's no way to fit CO2 removal into the economy in the
| same way. Nobody wants to pay for CO2 removal, and we'll be
| relying on government agencies to coordinate, fund, and verify
| the process. It's always going to be prone to corruption, fraud,
| and mismanagement.
|
| So I'm not surprised that everyone is behind on CO2 removal.
| m4x wrote:
| Do you think we can avoid multiple-degree temperature increases
| with the amount of CO2 (and equivalents) in the atmosphere
| already?
|
| If not, how do we mitigate those increases without CDR?
| silverquiet wrote:
| > Do you think we can avoid multiple-degree temperature
| increases with the amount of CO2 (and equivalents) in the
| atmosphere already?
|
| If we ceased all economic activity today, then probably, but
| I assume you'd have to nuke most of the population or
| something equally catastrophic.
|
| > If not, how do we mitigate those increases without CDR?
|
| The half-assed approach (which I assume we'll take), is solar
| radiation management.
| mikestew wrote:
| _If not, how do we mitigate those increases without CDR?_
|
| Maybe we don't, and the magical CDR unicorn isn't going to
| come and save us. I don't mean to speak for parent, but CDR
| is the "least effective way", yet many are speaking as if
| it's the most viable solution. And maybe it is, because
| $DEITY forbid that a dollar of CO2-producing profit be left
| on the table, but if that's the case then we are most
| certainly doomed.
| staunton wrote:
| > It's always going to be prone to corruption, fraud, and
| mismanagement.
|
| A lot of things get done despite corruption, fraud and
| mismanagement. As soon as people decide to _actually_ do
| something about it, it will be done. The amount of investment
| required is significantly less than what a world war cost, for
| example. A lot of people thought such a war was impossible
| because nobody could (or at least would) afford it but here we
| are.
|
| The main question is how much pain it's going to take to push
| people into action, and how much additional pain will be no
| longer avoidable by then. Looks like it's going to be a lot but
| humanity will survive.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I think we should still fund it, but it's probably a huge
| boondoggle. The issue is more that by placing so much emphasis
| on carbon capture, we are ignoring things that work. So, it is
| similar to plastic recycling. Some plastics can be recycled,
| and at the very least they don't always end up in a
| landfill...but the whole idea of recycling lets a bunch of
| companies responsible for the big mess off the hook. Carbon
| capture, and carbon offsets all do this. That's my main issue
| with it.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I try to keep up with the latest science on climate change. From
| what I understand we're currently on course for ~ 3.4C of
| warming, no where _near_ 1.5.
|
| It's not all doom and gloom. China's 'dumping' of cheap solar and
| evs are actually a hugely good thing for the world. We're not on
| as dire a path as we once thought but 3+C of warming is still bad
| enough that I ultimately think we'll resort to geoengineering to
| stop it. No matter how dangerous geoengineering is, it's cheaper
| than completely revamping our economic system, and for whatever
| reason we seem to care far, far more about the 'cost' of a
| solution over it's risk.
| legitster wrote:
| Well, yeah, it's really hard to send money to carbon capture when
| it's hard for 99.99% of voters to even begin to quantify the
| value of a ton of carbon captured.
|
| I'm all for carbon capture as a technology, but if a company was
| to take $100 from me as a service for capturing my carbon, I
| literally have no way of knowing what I am even getting for my
| money. And it sounds like the same is true even at a
| utility/national level.
|
| Go back to economics 101. Rational consumers purchase _at the
| margin_. Carbon capture is still only an irrational action.
|
| If we want to have any progress on global warming, CRD or not, we
| really need to start price setting the value of carbon.
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| It's hard to sell CO2 capture unless all governments start
| enforcing it, don't expect free market forces to solve it by
| itself. CO2 capture has to be the side-effect of other useful,
| incentivised and subsidised economic activity.
|
| E.g. we build everything in concrete and glass nowadays (a huge
| source of CO2) while we could build with wood (an actual proven
| form of CO2 capture), but there are zero incentives for timber
| production and construction.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Such a shame there are so few initiatives to increase the
| quality, speed, reliability and nr of public transport(esp
| trams). So much travel can be done with good pub transport while
| reducing car dependency and related emissions + freeing so much
| space (parking and roads)
| dweinus wrote:
| Carbon capture from the air is at best a tiny fraction of the
| solutions we need. Right now our time is better spent on
| emissions reduction.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00953-x
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| The 1.5 train has long gone and we are about to miss the next one
| too.
| dangilostmywang wrote:
| Oh, are they back to "warming"? I thought the preaching was
| "climate change" for the past, like, 5y?
|
| Remember to pay your voluntary carbon offset fees and being a
| good citizen. Never question the narrative or follow the money.
| coolhand2120 wrote:
| A lot of people are intellectually devoted to this idea in the
| same way Ptolemaic devotees believed in geocentrism, it will be
| hard to get anything but emotional reactions. We know for a
| fact that more than 50% of science is wrong
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis), but at the
| same time the people who downvote you are sure as a Christian
| in Christ that this science about climate change is _always_
| flawless. When science turns political it dies.
| RetroTechie wrote:
| In articles like this, there's recurring themes:
|
| 1) However much C is stored by protecting forests / planting
| trees, is peanuts compared to humanity's GHG emissions.
|
| Read: phasing out fossil fuels is the #1 task that we should
| focus on, as it has the biggest effect - by far. Planting trees
| etc helps, but it's not what will get us where we need to be.
|
| 2) Re-forestation is hard. Saplings die, growing trees takes
| time, and they may fall victim to drought/forest fires later on.
| Correspondence between [trees saved/planted] and [carbon credits]
| is... well, _not_ 1:1. To put it mild.
|
| 3) Carbon capture is mostly a fantasy. Existing plants capture a
| _minute_ fraction of human-emitted C at high cost, and this won
| 't change for the foreseeable future.
|
| _Maybe_ CC will work at scale, some day. And for that reason,
| exploring the tech is worthwhile. But as it is, it 's not a
| 'solution' in any way, shape or form. A different but similar
| story goes for geo-engineering.
|
| 4) We're racing past 1.5degC warming, no matter what. We'll
| probably run past 2degC warming, too. 2.5deg? 3deg? Even more?
| Don't rule it out! Prepare.
| betaby wrote:
| Those discussions are irrelevant given the population growth. UN
| is consistently wrong about populating growth. Earth population
| doubled in last 50 years.
| vixen99 wrote:
| I don't know the cost of the measures that have been put in place
| to date to reduce CO2 emissions globally but undoubtedly it's a
| massive sum. On looking at this graph, it seems that whatever the
| sum it's had no discernible effect whatsoever on atmospheric CO2,
| irrespective of quoted emission reductions.
|
| https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
| Glench wrote:
| Glad to see other comments bringing this to light. As Saul
| Griffith likes to point out, physics indicates that stuffing CO2
| back into the ground is not an easy or cost-effective job.
| Stopping it from entering the atmosphere is much simpler. Also
| Saul mentioned that the IPCC models have a disproportionate
| amount of faith in CO2 removal technologies which at this point
| is an unproven and uneconomical option and for physics-related
| reasons will probably remain so.
|
| Also, there doesn't seem to be an appreciation of the speed at
| which we need to stop emissions to meet 1.5C or even 2C of
| warming. It's at the point where if we don't replace almost every
| car, furnace, stove, etc with its electric counterpart and power
| them with clean electricity (due to the continuous emissions of
| those machines for their lifetime, assuming no early retirement),
| we can guarantee breaching the 1.5C limit. We need a World War 2
| level buy-in from government, industry, and consumers. I wish
| this was more widely known.
| wilg wrote:
| In my heart I still think we should be able to make negative
| carbon wood for construction and paper products. Surely this is
| doable, right? Trees sequester the carbon so we just have to make
| the supply chain clean and not re-release it back into the
| atmosphere via decomposition.
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