For April Fools' Day, I was going to suggest a ridiculous CO₂ removal (#CDR) method but everything I’ve come up with has already been proposed as a real solution.
There are proposals to implement enhanced rock weathering on farms for CO₂ removal (#CDR), and studies have shown that spreading rock dust on farmland can boost crop yields and help increase fertilizer use efficiency.
So, I'm quite resigned to not being able to entirely restore the reputation of carbon offsets using carbon dioxide with everyone and I entirely appreciate the damage that has been done to this budding new part of the circular economy we need to transition into.
@jgkoomey@matthewtoad43 since y'all have been some of the fiercest opponents to this new industry, I'm curious what you think of this American University's group rebranding.
I'll discuss more about their rebranding (I hate how corporate that sounds) from Carbon Removal Policy and Law Institute into the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal later in this thread, but I want to post the link to this new program to promote this circular economy down under that I also just discovered last night right away as this seems like an excellent potential paradigm shift (even if only centimeters shifting Overton Window).
To me biochar is one of the most promising Direct Air Capture Carbon Dioxide Removal technologies because it is so accessible to the most people to take part in especially all of the farmers that we need to recruit into the struggle to transition away from fossil fuels and to minimize greenhouse gas emissions.
Someone should air a CO₂ removal (#CDR) commercial during the Super Bowl because if CDR’s gonna happen, it has to evolve from something that almost no one’s heard of to the largest industry the world has ever known in a relatively short time.
We need CO₂ removal (#CDR) to reach net zero, but it's incorrect to say we must ramp up both decarbonization and CDR today.
Minimizing CDR deployment will decrease fossil fuel use, greenhouse gas emissions, and air pollution.
For climate and human health, we should focus current efforts on deploying renewables, electrification, carbon-neutral/negative fuels, and efficiency, instead of betting on our ability to scale CDR in the future.
If the estimate is correct, it would take 14 billion tonnes of olivine to remove 10 billion tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere. This is a CO₂ removal (#CDR) target for 2050.
We currently ship 11 billion tonnes of goods every year. Imagine shipping 14 billion tonnes of olivine on top of that.
Roads2Removal.org is a collaborative public outreach initiative from Climate Now and the Livermore Lab Foundation trying to help us to save our planet by scaling up our drawdown of carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere.
As those of us working to address our climate crisis manage to get more renewable energy and batteries deployed, it's become imperative for all Americans that at all afford it to switch from an ICEV to an electric vehicle.
It's also cheaper to operate them btw: National average cost of charging an EV is equivalent of $1.41 per eGallon.
(this map also shows where electricity is the most expensive in the U.S. too btw)
Humans have always treated the ocean as a dumping ground: toxic chemicals, munitions, plastics, and now we want to dump massive amounts of terrestrial biomass in the ocean for CO₂ removal (#CDR).
@davidho that article suggests chemical reactions breakdown methane in sulfate-rich waters. Do you know what that assertion is based on? I suspect it’s SRB metabolism; and if it is, then it’s wildly optimistic to believe that much OC decomposition won’t lead to methane ebullition.
Even if CO₂ removal (#CDR) can remove 100% of the CO₂ that we emit from burning carbon, we still have 7-9 million deaths from combustion-related particulate matter to deal with.
@davidho it can only remove a tiny fraction of co2, and it won’t replace fuel in some odd notion of net zero… but there are some applications where petroleum products can’t be replaced, like military and emergency vehicles, emergency generators, or certain polymers
At some point niche uses won’t be enough to make normal extraction viable
Kein Ersatz für Emmissions-Reduktionen.
Wirkungslos ohne deutliche Emmisssions-Reduktion.
Nur für unvermeidbare Emissionen.
Die Lösung der Klimakrise besteht aus vielen Teilen.
Ein interessanter Ansatz zu #CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal) mit Hilfe hydrothermaler Quellen am Ozeanboden.
Die Methode hat prinzipiell das Potenzial, das gesamte durch die Menschheit in die Atmosphäre eingebrachte #CO2 wieder zu entfernen. Man müsste dazu einen natürlicherweise ablaufenden Prozess durch aktives Pumpen von Tiefseewasser beschleunigen. Dabei entsteht auch noch grüner #Wasserstoff den man ernten könnte.
@christianschwaegerl Ich habe vor Kurzem erst gelesen, dass es natürliche geologische Quellen von H2 gibt. Die könnte man statt Öl und Gas anzapfen und hätte kein CO2-Problem.
Nach diesem Artikel verstehe ich jetzt auch, wieso an diesen Quellen überhaupt H2 frei wird.
My biggest fear about CO₂ removal (#CDR) isn't that someone will try to deploy it at scale now (who will pay trillions of dollars for that?) but that voters and decision-makers will think we have magical solutions and don't need to decarbonize ASAP.
@davidho what would you say to a well made argument around: it's useful to have pilot programs and people invest in solutions early to develop institutional.knowledge and lessons learned in a field, so that when you're ready to move forward (possibly many decades later) you have people with the skills and expertise ready to support a rapidly expanding industry?
@davidho today’s CDR efforts must be nonparasitic; thus operators should 2x their energy use with renewable energy assets that are “additional”. Done smartly, this increases decarbonization rate while building out needed CDR capacity. So far, Fervo Energy is only example though…
I think enhanced rock weathering (#ERW) has the potential to scale as a CO₂ removal (#CDR) technique, but there's no f**king way that they can be sure that they've removed 50 tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere right now. We don't have the #MRV techniques to do this today.
@chrisnelder It doesn’t mean ERW won’t work. But we can’t do MRV right now. Anyone who tells you differently is selling you something, most likely CDR.
Hot take: The world is divided into those who think ocean iron fertilization will work as a CO₂ removal (#CDR) technique because of stoichimetry, and those who know it won’t work because of everything else.
