4 ms·

With my layman understanding this is correct in principle but according to the linked paper in the article the climate target of 1.5 C will already be surpassed

by chki 6y ago

With my layman understanding this is correct in principle but according to the linked paper in the article the climate target of 1.5 C will already be surpassed in the year 2100 – even without any further CO2 emissions. And yes, the tail effects of global warming beyond our usual time horizon of 2030/2050 were already known.

loceng 6y ago
I've thought the consensus among experts is that we'll have to not only stop pollution but also re-capture a lot of what we've already released?
- bognition 6y ago
  And recapture isn’t going to be easy. We’d have to figure out how to drive the global economy off of the recapture process
  - Aachen 6y ago
    If there are no significant emissions to tax, then fixing environmental damage done by past generations sounds like something for governments to pick up with public money. We also spend public money on forest management, wildlife bridges to create reasonably sized habitats, etc. It's also a while out. We have bigger issues today than "who's gonna suck back out some CO2 once we cut emissions sufficiently". We'll get to that in due time. For what it's worth, if you have unavoidable emissions today that you want to compensate, and want to also fund the people working on CO2 capturing technology, see https://climeworks.shop https://climeworks.shop for a pay-what-you-want option. I don't really believe in planting trees (which is way cheaper per ton of CO2 it claims to absolve you of), and these machines apparently emit "only" 10kg for every 100kg of CO2 captured (90% effective sounds reasonable), and it's accounted for who claimed which share of the machine's captured volume so it sounds directly effective to me. It's just that the scale is peanuts and will remain so until public bodies and companies start to run out of emission reduction options and decide to use it - but at that point we better have this tech geared up.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      It's easier to just drive the prices of CO2 certificates up. A EU CO2 certificate for 1 ton of CO2 costs 25€. If you buy it and resell it at a higher price like 100€ it's either too expensive and will never be bought or if it will be bought you will be economically harming CO2 emitting companies.
      - Aachen 6y ago
        My initial thought is that funding those participating in an ineffective scheme does not strike me as the most helpful option. But I really don't know enough about it to comment on whether that is the case here, or if it might indeed make sense for me to do this. Do you know of any research (doesn't have to be published, a blog post with a good analysis is just as helpful) that looked into whether this is a good idea?
- chki 6y ago
  I think the argument is that if we stopped all our CO2 emissions right now we would comply with the 1.5 C target in 2050 but would "only" break it in 2100. Since stopping all our emissions is not even close to what's happening (actually CO2 emissions are rising right now) that's not a viable model. So we will probably need to recapture CO2 as well – or rather we will need to develop the necessary tech first.
  - rgossiaux 6y ago
    >So we will probably need to recapture CO2 as well – or rather we will need to develop the necessary tech first. Maybe this is a stupid question, but isn't the necessary tech "planting trees"?
    - NineStarPoint 6y ago
      The main problem with trees is they’re very slow. It would take decades after we started planting billions of trees a year before they’d have grown to the extend where they’d have captured reasonable amounts of carbon. So, yes, it’s an option. But it’s a slow option we’d need to start implementing immediately if we wanted it bear fruit. (We produce enough CO2 that it takes 40 billion hardwood trees growing for 40 years to sequester as much CO2 as we make in a year. We’d have to plant a lot of trees, and then not touch them for years, to affect the course of things)
    - Thiez 6y ago
      A tree captures CO2 temporarily. We would have to bury the wood to actually remove it from the atmosphere.
      - pmiller2 6y ago
        You are aware that "temporarily" in this context is the lifespan of a tree, right? Trees live anywhere from several decades to 20+ centuries, and their remains, once broken down, provide nutrients to the soil so more trees can grow.
        6y ago

by chki 6y ago

loceng 6y ago

I've thought the consensus among experts is that we'll have to not only stop pollution but also re-capture a lot of what we've already released?

bognition 6y ago
And recapture isn’t going to be easy. We’d have to figure out how to drive the global economy off of the recapture process
- Aachen 6y ago
  If there are no significant emissions to tax, then fixing environmental damage done by past generations sounds like something for governments to pick up with public money. We also spend public money on forest management, wildlife bridges to create reasonably sized habitats, etc. It's also a while out. We have bigger issues today than "who's gonna suck back out some CO2 once we cut emissions sufficiently". We'll get to that in due time. For what it's worth, if you have unavoidable emissions today that you want to compensate, and want to also fund the people working on CO2 capturing technology, see https://climeworks.shop https://climeworks.shop for a pay-what-you-want option. I don't really believe in planting trees (which is way cheaper per ton of CO2 it claims to absolve you of), and these machines apparently emit "only" 10kg for every 100kg of CO2 captured (90% effective sounds reasonable), and it's accounted for who claimed which share of the machine's captured volume so it sounds directly effective to me. It's just that the scale is peanuts and will remain so until public bodies and companies start to run out of emission reduction options and decide to use it - but at that point we better have this tech geared up.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    It's easier to just drive the prices of CO2 certificates up. A EU CO2 certificate for 1 ton of CO2 costs 25€. If you buy it and resell it at a higher price like 100€ it's either too expensive and will never be bought or if it will be bought you will be economically harming CO2 emitting companies.
    - Aachen 6y ago
      My initial thought is that funding those participating in an ineffective scheme does not strike me as the most helpful option. But I really don't know enough about it to comment on whether that is the case here, or if it might indeed make sense for me to do this. Do you know of any research (doesn't have to be published, a blog post with a good analysis is just as helpful) that looked into whether this is a good idea?
chki 6y ago
I think the argument is that if we stopped all our CO2 emissions right now we would comply with the 1.5 C target in 2050 but would "only" break it in 2100. Since stopping all our emissions is not even close to what's happening (actually CO2 emissions are rising right now) that's not a viable model. So we will probably need to recapture CO2 as well – or rather we will need to develop the necessary tech first.
- rgossiaux 6y ago
  >So we will probably need to recapture CO2 as well – or rather we will need to develop the necessary tech first. Maybe this is a stupid question, but isn't the necessary tech "planting trees"?
  - NineStarPoint 6y ago
    The main problem with trees is they’re very slow. It would take decades after we started planting billions of trees a year before they’d have grown to the extend where they’d have captured reasonable amounts of carbon. So, yes, it’s an option. But it’s a slow option we’d need to start implementing immediately if we wanted it bear fruit. (We produce enough CO2 that it takes 40 billion hardwood trees growing for 40 years to sequester as much CO2 as we make in a year. We’d have to plant a lot of trees, and then not touch them for years, to affect the course of things)
  - Thiez 6y ago
    A tree captures CO2 temporarily. We would have to bury the wood to actually remove it from the atmosphere.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      You are aware that "temporarily" in this context is the lifespan of a tree, right? Trees live anywhere from several decades to 20+ centuries, and their remains, once broken down, provide nutrients to the soil so more trees can grow.
      - 6y ago