And why not solve the negative emissions the same way that nature has done it for the past 4.5 billion years , by the weathering of basic silicates? If that hadn’t operated well, there would be no life on our planet Admittedly, because we burn in a few hundred years all the fossil fuels that have taken hundreds of millions of years to form, we have created the need for removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, but we can upscale the efficiency of the natural process by mining, crushing and spreading the most effective rock-type (olivine rocks) to capture CO2 in a sustainable way, Olaf Schuiling
From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Greg Rau Sent: vrijdag 21 oktober 2016 6:56 To: olivermor...@economist.com; geoengineering Subject: [***SPAM***] Re: [geo] The trouble with negative emissions Further musings: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/10/13/were-placing-far-too-much-hope-in-pulling-carbon-dioxide-out-of-the-air-scientists-warn/?utm_term=.1c798d78a14e#comments Quoting - "In a new opinion paper, published Thursday in the journal Science, climate experts Kevin Anderson of the University of Manchester and Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research have argued that relying on the uncertain concept of negative emissions as a fix could lock the world into a severe climate-change pathway. “[If] we behave today like we’ve got these get-out-of-jail cards in the future, and then in 20 years we discover we don’t have this technology, then you’re already locked into a higher temperature level,” Peters said. In a new opinion paper, published Thursday in the journal Science, climate experts Kevin Anderson of the University of Manchester and Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research have argued that relying on the uncertain concept of negative emissions as a fix could lock the world into a severe climate-change pathway." GR - Well, at this late date we may have zero get out of jail cards. If we are not going to or are unable to adequately play the emissions reduction card then how about investigating additional possibilities? As for IPCC-assumed savior BECCS, Dan Kamen states in the article that it is “nowhere near ready to be considered a component of a viable carbon reduction strategy.” Fortunately, neither is BECCS the only negative emissions strategy out there, e.g.,: https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm16/meetingapp.cgi/Session/15506 nor is it obvious why we need to focus exclusively on land-based , biology-based and/or CCS-based systems: http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-94-007-5784-4_54#page-1 And more ideas are likely to emerge if encouraged (by policy) to do so.That won't happen if we are instead told to circle the wagons, trust that sufficient emissions reduction will happen in time, and to demonize any thoughts to the contrary. In the words of Albert Einstein, “Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.” Given our rather dire circumstances, isn't it time to encourage rather than discourage thinking that does beyond emissions reduction, in the hope that something else might prove useful if not essential? By analogy, while we can plan a global transportation system based on horse and buggy technology, might it also be useful to encourage exploring alternative methods, just in case something better emerges (even considering that human flight is impossible (Lord Kelvin 1895, and many others), and considering the hazard posed to buggy manufacturers)? ________________________________ From: Oliver Morton <olivermor...@economist.com<mailto:olivermor...@economist.com>> To: geoengineering <geoengineering@googlegroups.com<mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com>> Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2016 3:21 AM Subject: Re: [geo] The trouble with negative emissions Michael You ask: "How can producing enough biofuel to displace FFs to a large degree, or adjusting the pH of wide areas of the oceans, or moving vast amounts of sustainable marine carbon into the terrestrial space via 'Blue Biochar', or producing protein at the most efficient level, or producing globally significant amounts of freshwater (etc.) [be] a moral hazard? If you talk about it well enough to allow people, who may be otherwise motivated to do so, to act as if you will do it, and then you don't. On Thursday, 20 October 2016 06:13:49 UTC+1, Michael Hayes wrote: Hi Folks, I believe that the misconceptions about carbon negative technologies are getting so far out of hand in the media, and even in peer reviewed papers, that a strong statement needs to be made to the press (and or to a peer reviewed journal) concerning the common errors being cemented into the CDR/BECCS/CCUS literature. As an example of a common misconception; Growing biomass for bioenergy is routinely pointed out as being too problematic as it will crowd out food crops, use too much water, and take way too long to scale up (etc.). This line of logic is constantly being inserted into the criticism of CDR/BECCS/CCUS yet no author that I know of has realized, much less pointed out, that by growing biomass in the marine space (which has happened on this planet once or twice before), using currently available STEM in innovative ways (which has also happened on this planet once or twice before), makes most if not all objections to biomass production for CDR/BECCS/CCUS largely moot. As Greg and others have pointed out for years, the marine space offers vast scale renewable resources in terms of making a reasonable impact upon the carbon cycle, the pH of the oceans, and even...if we actually have to...the production of renewable energy. Attaching to those important production needs the production of food, feed, fertilizer, biochar, polymers and even freshwater is easily achieved...It's called routine engineering! Moral Hazard??? How can producing enough biofuel to displace FFs to a large degree, or adjusting the pH of wide areas of the oceans, or moving vast amounts of sustainable marine carbon into the terrestrial space via 'Blue Biochar', or producing protein at the most efficient level, or producing globally significant amounts of freshwater (etc.) a moral hazard??? We, at this time, can do those things and much more if provided the funding! Attaching the Moral Hazard argument to such activities is much like arguing against using eunuchs as school crossing guards as they...might...be pedophiles. We need school crossing guards, eunuchs or not, far more than we need paranoia and confusion in extremis. Bucky Fuller once stated: “There is no energy crisis, food crisis or environmental crisis. This is only a crisis of ignorance.” I assume he did intend that statement to be understood in a non-pejorative spirit yet I sometimes truly wonder about the validity of my assumption. Best, Michael On Friday, October 14, 2016 at 12:46:49 PM UTC-7, Greg Rau wrote: To quote the article's conclusion: "Negative-emission technologies are not an insurance policy, but rather an unjust and high-stakes gamble. There is a real risk they will be unable to deliver on the scale of their promise. If the emphasis on equity and risk aversion embodied in the Paris Agreement are to have traction, negative-emission technologies should not form the basis of the mitigation agenda. This is not to say that they should be abandoned (14<http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6309/182.full#ref-14>, 15<http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6309/182.full#ref-15>). They could very reasonably be the subject of research, development, and potentially deployment, but the mitigation agenda should proceed on the premise that they will not work at scale. The implications of failing to do otherwise are a moral hazard par excellence." GR - It's always great to wake up in the morning to read that my research and that of my colleagues is an unjust, moral hazard and a threat to the planet "par excellence". We are indeed in a very "high stakes gamble", especially if we continue to rely exclusively on emissions reduction. This is the clear conclusion of the IPCC, otherwise there would have been no need for them to bet their reputations (and Earth) on unproven negative emissions. That we do not yet know if or how we can do what the IPCC views as essential negative emissions should be seen as clarion call for supportive policies and R&D to find out what our options might be rather than framing any such action as dangerous. Curiously, the authors do state that research on such alternatives should not be abandoned (how generous!), but then (cynically?) suggest that emissions reduction should proceed under the assumption that alternate pathways "will not work at scale". To the contrary, more than half of our emissions each year is already removed from the atmosphere by natural CDR "at scale", while there is little evidence that an equivalent amount of emissions mitigation/avoidance will ever be implemented, including the "aspirations" of the Paris Accord. It would therefore seem more realistic if not safer to assume that emissions reduction will continue to seriously under-perfom and that now is the time for high profile policy and R&D to foster and support the search for and evaluation of possible additional CDR approaches or augmentations. So, are the science and policy communities really prepared to let the perfect solution, emissions reduction, be the enemy of all other possible solutions without first open-mindedly searching for alternatives and carefully evaluating their merits? Shouldn't the common goal here be to avert planetary meltdown by whatever means that prove to be timely, safe and cost effective? Or is that really too threatening to current, conventional (and limited) wisdom? ________________________________ From: Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com> To: geoengineering <geoengi...@googlegroups.com> Sent: Thursday, October 13, 2016 4:09 PM Subject: [geo] The trouble with negative emissions http://science.sciencemag.org/ content/354/6309/182<http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6309/182> The trouble with negative emissions kevin.a...@manchester.ac.uk; glen....@cicero.oslo.no Science 14 Oct 2016: Vol. 354, Issue 6309, pp. 182-183 DOI: 10.1126/science.aah4567 Article In December 2015, member states of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement, which aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. The Paris Agreement requires that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission sources and sinks are balanced by the second half of this century. Because some nonzero sources are unavoidable, this leads to the abstract concept of “negative emissions,” the removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere through technical means. The Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) informing policy-makers assume the large-scale use of negative-emission technologies. If we rely on these and they are not deployed or are unsuccessful at removing CO2 from the atmosphere at the levels assumed, society will be locked into a high-temperature pathway -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineerin...@googlegroups. com. To post to this group, send email to geoengi...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/ group/geoengineering<https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering>. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/ optout<https://groups.google.com/d/optout>. 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