Re:It's Time to Start Talking About Geoengineering
by willholloway on Friday November 06, 2015 @07:17AM
(#10519065)
We are already removing carbon from the atmosphere at industrial scale, 550,000 tonnes per year with bio-energy with carbon capture and storage [1].
We can get a lot better at this, with engineered simple organisms like algae growing fuel to be consumed and the carbon captured.
“If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from [current levels] to at most 350 ppm.”
Dr. James Hansen
Right now we are at 398 ppm, and we are already seeing weird climate effects, more, bigger wild fires etc.. I don't think the modern, developed world will tolerate 450 ppm. Things will get too weird.
I think we will be forced to capture carbon.
> a facility to remove all of the 29 billion tonnes of CO₂ emitted by human activities annually would cost C$4 trillion to build
We will get these costs down, but to me, even 4 trillion looks downright affordable, the US spent that much invading and occupying Iraq.
We can get a lot better at this, with engineered simple organisms like algae growing fuel to be consumed and the carbon captured.
“If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from [current levels] to at most 350 ppm.”
Dr. James Hansen
Right now we are at 398 ppm, and we are already seeing weird climate effects, more, bigger wild fires etc.. I don't think the modern, developed world will tolerate 450 ppm. Things will get too weird.
I think we will be forced to capture carbon.
> a facility to remove all of the 29 billion tonnes of CO₂ emitted by human activities annually would cost C$4 trillion to build
We will get these costs down, but to me, even 4 trillion looks downright affordable, the US spent that much invading and occupying Iraq.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture...