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We seem to be so far from a practically-useful level of CO2 removal that this seems like a shrill level of concern. That said, the logic could apply to much qui

We seem to be so far from a practically-useful level of CO2 removal that this seems like a shrill level of concern. That said, the logic could apply to much quicker solutions that could be distributed globally, such as atmospheric albedo modification or space based solar barriers (the latter being hugely speculative, of course - but I could imagine a few SpaceX starships put to poorly-considered use being able to muster something in a decade or three).

convolvatron 5y ago
I think a more important lesson here is that this is not a simple system. its pretty unlikely that we're going to able to calmly walk it back to the state it was in before
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  The even more wild concept is that the atmosphere’s composition was already changing before human involvement, we just sped up the process by like 1000x. We don’t normatively need the atmosphere to be “natural,” we just need it to be in a state that doesn’t destroy the thousands of years of infrastructure we’ve built.
- landemva 5y ago
  There were many prior states. In fact, it changes. Vikings had pastures on Greenland until it got cold and they were driven off. Greenland is now covered in snow and ice. Will Greenland return to pastures? Probably at some time.
  - jbotz 5y ago
    The Viking colonies on Greenland were during a relatively warm period, but the difference was rather minor... it's not like now Greenland is covered in snow and ice and then it wasn't, the glaciers weren't any smaller then, they were actually a bit bigger. But during this warm period that lasted a couple of hundred years the summers were a bit longer and probably more sunny. The Viking settlements were in the far South of Greenland, actually further South than their prior home on Iceland, on land that's quite green in Summer today as well (just visit Greenland's official tourism site to see what it looks like). Tundra vegetation is actually excellent pasture, very mineral and protein rich... enough so to have supported lots of the largest mammalian mega-fauna!
  - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    Is this correct? I thought that Greenland was always a marketing lie, and that the viking's refusal to absorb Inuit style living meant they simply could not become self sustaining and eventually lost the result ships (vaguely remembered BBC podcast as source)
ttiurani 5y ago
This is an important study because most (all?) scenarios used by the IPCC depend heavily on these (as of now) wildly optimistic CO2 removal levels, either with BECCS or DACs. In order to hit the "brief and rapidly closing window" we have for effective action, we need to look into lowering material flows and energy use by targeting overconsumption. We simply don't have time to wait for a tech miracle, and – as this study points out – the miracle can have huge downsides.
- hannob 5y ago
  I have no idea why this comment got downvoted. It points precisely to the point: Many current climate scenarios have already negative emissions "priced in". We absolutely need to have research to better understand what that means, and we should have a plan b if negative emissions at large scales don't work.
  - landemva 5y ago
    I didn't downvote though I noticed this, 'We simply don't have time to wait ...'. Whatever the topic, I mentally ignore posts which shill the NEXT WORST THING EVER.
    - _3u10 5y ago
      Exactly, we have lots of time to wait. Humanity survives pretty much no matter what we do. Most of the waiting scenarios involve a drastic decrease in farmland for the US/Europe and larger gains in Canada / Russia. The planet quite frankly doesn’t care if NY / LA / London lose 6 to 12 Ft of land. Even if no one moved and everyone just stayed there to drown, humanity still goes on. The whole thing mostly fixes itself anyway once population peaks in a few decades. It’s not global warming that kills humanity, it’s our population eventually reaching zero through sub replacement birth rates tho maybe there is a saving grace where once incomes get high enough it rebounds.
      - drekk 5y ago
        At what cost does humanity survive? I don't want to become a climate refugee. Even the 1.5C model has millions of climate refugees. People still talk about Miami and Dubai as if they'll be around in a century. I am not so arrogant as to think without humans the planet dies. But maybe unlike most Americans I don't want to sacrifice my grandparents so that people can dine in person at Applebee's, nor do I want to live in a worse, less human-friendly world so that oil executives can make another few decades of profit. We can decarbonize with the technology we have today. We know it will be more expensive economically to wait until it's too late, but it'll be more expensive for taxpayers instead of maybe the companies doing so well they can spend millions on lobbying every year. Farming isn't really the issue, we can eke out 10x the calories by cutting pork/chicken/beef. Wet bulb temperatures (where you can't cool off by sweating and die cooked inside out) are a larger issue. Tons of other cycles that we're fucking with besides carbon, like nitrogen and phosphorus. We're also losing arable land to desertification. I don't even have to get started on our available freshwater reserves. To think humanity will just kinda coast by and that it will all mostly fix itself must be a very nice thought, but it flies in the face of what every single person we pay to study this is saying. And they're not saying humans go extinct.
go_elmo 5y ago
Approaches aiming at increasing ocean bio activity, thus carbon capture by providing "ocean desert zones" with nutrients by whirling up ocean floor in those regions seems interesting for that purpose. Still a huge inception into the bio system thus risky.
- detritus 5y ago
  Ah yes, I'd forgotten about iron-seeding - I was thinking entirely in terms of industrial solutions.
  - galangalalgol 5y ago
    I still think iron fertilization is the best bet, not for co2 removal, but for albedo modification. Keeping equatorial kelp or algae mats alive would prevent lots of energy from entering the system. Those mats have albedo close to snow in the infrared, where water is about as absorptive as it gets.
    - detritus 5y ago
      I wonder if we could somehow use strategic placement of fertilisation to encourage processes that laterally help in cleaning up (/collecting) plastic pollution in oceanic gyres? A girl can dream. - ed: I am fascinated by the idea that otherwise horrid floating plastic pollution can act as centres for bio-accumlation leading to local, floating bio-domains. I guess the real problem is plastic bags and fishing nets, not toothbrushes that happen to float.
  - go_elmo 5y ago
    Ive seen stunning simple / passive water column chimney-effect approaches to do this using lower water levels mixing, no sources though, was german tv (arte station)
_3u10 5y ago
That’s largely because we aren’t trying it because most geo-engineering solutions have been made illegal and face significant political opposition from those who are point blank against fossil fuels. (Their opposition agains fossil fuels is second only to opposition to nuclear) Look at the situation in Germany where CO2 emitting Russian oil and gas was preferable by the Greens to zero CO2 nuclear. Net zero CO2 is the ultimate bike shedding issue, because it’s so easy a child could solve it, it devolves into endless bickering.

convolvatron 5y ago

I think a more important lesson here is that this is not a simple system. its pretty unlikely that we're going to able to calmly walk it back to the state it was in before

RC_ITR 5y ago
The even more wild concept is that the atmosphere’s composition was already changing before human involvement, we just sped up the process by like 1000x. We don’t normatively need the atmosphere to be “natural,” we just need it to be in a state that doesn’t destroy the thousands of years of infrastructure we’ve built.
landemva 5y ago
There were many prior states. In fact, it changes. Vikings had pastures on Greenland until it got cold and they were driven off. Greenland is now covered in snow and ice. Will Greenland return to pastures? Probably at some time.
- jbotz 5y ago
  The Viking colonies on Greenland were during a relatively warm period, but the difference was rather minor... it's not like now Greenland is covered in snow and ice and then it wasn't, the glaciers weren't any smaller then, they were actually a bit bigger. But during this warm period that lasted a couple of hundred years the summers were a bit longer and probably more sunny. The Viking settlements were in the far South of Greenland, actually further South than their prior home on Iceland, on land that's quite green in Summer today as well (just visit Greenland's official tourism site to see what it looks like). Tundra vegetation is actually excellent pasture, very mineral and protein rich... enough so to have supported lots of the largest mammalian mega-fauna!
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  Is this correct? I thought that Greenland was always a marketing lie, and that the viking's refusal to absorb Inuit style living meant they simply could not become self sustaining and eventually lost the result ships (vaguely remembered BBC podcast as source)

ttiurani 5y ago

This is an important study because most (all?) scenarios used by the IPCC depend heavily on these (as of now) wildly optimistic CO2 removal levels, either with BECCS or DACs. In order to hit the "brief and rapidly closing window" we have for effective action, we need to look into lowering material flows and energy use by targeting overconsumption. We simply don't have time to wait for a tech miracle, and – as this study points out – the miracle can have huge downsides.

hannob 5y ago
I have no idea why this comment got downvoted. It points precisely to the point: Many current climate scenarios have already negative emissions "priced in". We absolutely need to have research to better understand what that means, and we should have a plan b if negative emissions at large scales don't work.
- landemva 5y ago
  I didn't downvote though I noticed this, 'We simply don't have time to wait ...'. Whatever the topic, I mentally ignore posts which shill the NEXT WORST THING EVER.
  - _3u10 5y ago
    Exactly, we have lots of time to wait. Humanity survives pretty much no matter what we do. Most of the waiting scenarios involve a drastic decrease in farmland for the US/Europe and larger gains in Canada / Russia. The planet quite frankly doesn’t care if NY / LA / London lose 6 to 12 Ft of land. Even if no one moved and everyone just stayed there to drown, humanity still goes on. The whole thing mostly fixes itself anyway once population peaks in a few decades. It’s not global warming that kills humanity, it’s our population eventually reaching zero through sub replacement birth rates tho maybe there is a saving grace where once incomes get high enough it rebounds.
    - drekk 5y ago
      At what cost does humanity survive? I don't want to become a climate refugee. Even the 1.5C model has millions of climate refugees. People still talk about Miami and Dubai as if they'll be around in a century. I am not so arrogant as to think without humans the planet dies. But maybe unlike most Americans I don't want to sacrifice my grandparents so that people can dine in person at Applebee's, nor do I want to live in a worse, less human-friendly world so that oil executives can make another few decades of profit. We can decarbonize with the technology we have today. We know it will be more expensive economically to wait until it's too late, but it'll be more expensive for taxpayers instead of maybe the companies doing so well they can spend millions on lobbying every year. Farming isn't really the issue, we can eke out 10x the calories by cutting pork/chicken/beef. Wet bulb temperatures (where you can't cool off by sweating and die cooked inside out) are a larger issue. Tons of other cycles that we're fucking with besides carbon, like nitrogen and phosphorus. We're also losing arable land to desertification. I don't even have to get started on our available freshwater reserves. To think humanity will just kinda coast by and that it will all mostly fix itself must be a very nice thought, but it flies in the face of what every single person we pay to study this is saying. And they're not saying humans go extinct.

go_elmo 5y ago

Approaches aiming at increasing ocean bio activity, thus carbon capture by providing "ocean desert zones" with nutrients by whirling up ocean floor in those regions seems interesting for that purpose. Still a huge inception into the bio system thus risky.

detritus 5y ago
Ah yes, I'd forgotten about iron-seeding - I was thinking entirely in terms of industrial solutions.
- galangalalgol 5y ago
  I still think iron fertilization is the best bet, not for co2 removal, but for albedo modification. Keeping equatorial kelp or algae mats alive would prevent lots of energy from entering the system. Those mats have albedo close to snow in the infrared, where water is about as absorptive as it gets.
  - detritus 5y ago
    I wonder if we could somehow use strategic placement of fertilisation to encourage processes that laterally help in cleaning up (/collecting) plastic pollution in oceanic gyres? A girl can dream. - ed: I am fascinated by the idea that otherwise horrid floating plastic pollution can act as centres for bio-accumlation leading to local, floating bio-domains. I guess the real problem is plastic bags and fishing nets, not toothbrushes that happen to float.
- go_elmo 5y ago
  Ive seen stunning simple / passive water column chimney-effect approaches to do this using lower water levels mixing, no sources though, was german tv (arte station)

_3u10 5y ago

That’s largely because we aren’t trying it because most geo-engineering solutions have been made illegal and face significant political opposition from those who are point blank against fossil fuels. (Their opposition agains fossil fuels is second only to opposition to nuclear) Look at the situation in Germany where CO2 emitting Russian oil and gas was preferable by the Greens to zero CO2 nuclear. Net zero CO2 is the ultimate bike shedding issue, because it’s so easy a child could solve it, it devolves into endless bickering.