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I don't understand how climate researchers can seriously have concerns about sequestration technologies distracting us from the efforts to limit emissions. It s

I don't understand how climate researchers can seriously have concerns about sequestration technologies distracting us from the efforts to limit emissions. It seems an argument that is easily dispensed with, with a bit of simple math. Right now it seems like even if we max out both efforts, we'd still have to be lucky to get there. I have a question about these various carbon-buying efforts. Whether it's climeworks, or buying carbon offsets, or signing up for a service with your power company... do these things scale? I mean, here in Portland I think you can sign up with PGE for having 100% of your electricity come from renewable sources, but I think that only 40% of their power comes from renewable. So really probably only 40% of their customers can sign up. As it is, not enough people have signed up, so they can still say so, but big picture, you're still really only getting 40%. And that's just the electrical part of our carbon footprint, which isn't the whole picture. Same with the carbon-offset buying sites. I mean, they don't really work past a point, right? Like if every citizen in the world signs up, it implies we'd have the entire problem solved. But we wouldn't really, don't they all have upper limits? So how much do they actually scale? 50%, 10%, 1%?

acdha 7y ago
> I don't understand how climate researchers can seriously have concerns about sequestration technologies distracting us from the efforts to limit emissions. It seems an argument that is easily dispensed with, with a bit of simple math. The people who need convincing aren’t there due to math: it’s become a political loyalty test for Republicans in the U.S. and some other groups internationally, for many people accepting that climate change is real means major changes in their lifestyle and business, and there’s a huge industry supporting fake experts, think tanks, etc. pitching the message that you don’t need to do anything. In that light, it’s not unreasonable to worry that people will use it to push the “no need to sacrifice now, new technology will fix everything” message, not unlike the people hoping we can avoid making simple infrastructure fixes because self-driving cars will solve everything real soon now.

acdha 7y ago

> I don't understand how climate researchers can seriously have concerns about sequestration technologies distracting us from the efforts to limit emissions. It seems an argument that is easily dispensed with, with a bit of simple math. The people who need convincing aren’t there due to math: it’s become a political loyalty test for Republicans in the U.S. and some other groups internationally, for many people accepting that climate change is real means major changes in their lifestyle and business, and there’s a huge industry supporting fake experts, think tanks, etc. pitching the message that you don’t need to do anything. In that light, it’s not unreasonable to worry that people will use it to push the “no need to sacrifice now, new technology will fix everything” message, not unlike the people hoping we can avoid making simple infrastructure fixes because self-driving cars will solve everything real soon now.