“Direct air capture is expensive, unproven, and will ultimately make almost no difference in reducing climate pollution… Capturing just a quarter of our annual carbon emissions would require all of the power currently generated in the country.”
“Direct air capture is expensive, unproven, and will ultimately make almost no difference in reducing climate pollution… Capturing just a quarter of our annual carbon emissions would require all of the power currently generated in the country.”
We need to stop fighting "green energy OR sequestration. It NEEDS to be AND. Trust the scientists who are asking for this.
Copying this from an earlier comment thread on the same topic.
Actually this solves a very important problem. If we stop all pollution and carbon emissions today the earth will still be heated up significantly for the next thousand years or so. Enough that life will be more than uncomfortable, we’ll have massive water shortages, widespread desertification, and wholesale extinctions of many plants and animals.
We need carbon sequestration if we want to control the damage already done.
No, what they are arguing is that sequestration is an illusion that has no practical effect. And that impractical effect can even be a negative one. They are saying “no, sequestration people shouldn’t get money for their BS”.
What they actually fear is that the process to build and operate a sequestration facility would actually result in net-positive emission.
If you read their argument in this context, AND is also unacceptable. So, OR in their mind.
Honestly, I feel like restricting the discussion to “green energy and sequestration” like you did can be a tactic by sequestration proponents. Likely the green energy part is not the entire demand by the green party, and the restriction feels as if it’s trying to turn the attention from the larger picture. Also, who are those scientists, and can you cite studies from the larger (scientific) environmental community who concludes that sequestration is a feasible solution?
We need to research it to know more. That’s what this funding is for.
The reason green energy is usually brought into the conversation is that while many sequestration strategies require nearly zero energy inputs, many do. What’s the point of cutting into the effectiveness of the solutions by emitting more greenhouse gasses? At least in my case the sentiment here is genuine, no alterior motives, it just makes sense. Can’t say the same for everyone, but big projects often make for strange bedfellows.
Green energy has had steady funding and advances for 30 years. Sequestration is largely still relegated to lifecycle studies and truly needs testing.
Evaluation of lifecycle of a popular solution, with calls for more study. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26278/a-research-strategy-for-ocean-based-carbon-dioxide-removal-and-sequestration (news blurb with summary here: https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2021/12/new-report-assesses-the-feasibility-cost-and-potential-impacts-of-ocean-based-carbon-dioxide-removal-approaches-recommends-u-s-research-program)
Report to US Congress with worthy citations and feasibility findings. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R44902
article from Yale with a good interview with a researcher with lots of solid citations https://e360.yale.edu/features/negative-emissions-is-it-feasible-to-remove-co2-from-the-air
There are more, but you get the gist. There’s a familiar pattern in these studies and interviews with scientists and academics- we need negative emissions, and every day we don’t have them we have even more work to do in the same time span. At the same time, we need to study this further because geoengineering will likely have far reaching impacts beyond what we primarily need.
Some of these projects are as simple as reforestation and/or biochar sequestration into rich soils. Some are moonshots like molecular pumps and nanoparticles lattices (charmingly being nicknamed the giant vacuum solution by MSM today). But over and over those studying it seem to agree we need more research and investment. That’s literally what is being announced in this article and everyone is acting like this money was ripped away from someone building a huge green energy plant. Realistically this isn’t how funding for projects and research works.
I don’t think they should get $1B investment when we’re supposed to reduce emissions by 100% in 3 decades, which in a simple calculus means 30% in a decade.
Am I right to think that those reports were from scientists who study sequestration? If so, the receiving end of the fundings will, of course, demand “more studies”.
We’re probably better off accepting the worst case scenario and ban fuel.
The “greedy scientists just want more money for studies” angle makes me an little uncomfortable since it is the same one used by the side arguing we shouldn’t be spending any money on green energy.
The fact that the fossil fuels industry supports this research is a way better argument, IMHO. Also, we do have these great carbon sequestration machines already. They are called trees.
No, I’m acting pointing out that OP cited the ones I specifically asked not to.
My request was to cite statements from the wider community, not the scientists who study carbon capture themselves. With the green energy you can find those easily from basically any era because it has clearly been a strong option to fight the climate change.
But you’d get way more bang for your buck if you put that money towards reducing carbon emissions.
Both are needed. Both. It won’t work with only one.
The problem is focus. This is a bit like a building flooding and breaking out the mop while gallons are still pouring in - you’ll need that mop eventually, but right now there are much more important things that need your attention.
That’s not a good metaphor. A better one would be:
“A building is flooding and you need to invent the concept of a mop. While you are plugging the leak, send one of your people to start working on creating a mop to use later, everyone in the room can’t be plugging the hole anyway.”
Sequestration tech isn’t there at the moment. If we wait until we we figure out green energy entirely, we will then have to wait again while we figure out sequestration.
We need to be doing both, but we need them to have separate budgets and separate people working on them, because otherwise, yeah, we’ll be in a bad situation where we are diverting green energy time/money into sequestration. The problem is that we are fighting against people who don’t want to spend any money on any of it. If the fossil fuel people want to work on sequestration instead of green energy, fine, let them. Hell, force them to. Pass laws making them be net-neutral on carbon and that can either be from shutting down plants or capturing everything they put out. If they don’t choose to shut down, they’ll spend R&D on capture, and we can use that tech more widely in the decades to come.