GCC: Report finds says “negative emissions technologies” need to play a large role in mitigating climate change

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GRA

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https://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/10/20181029-nas.html

To achieve goals for climate and economic growth, “negative emissions technologies” (NETs) that remove and sequester carbon dioxide from the air will need to play a significant role in mitigating climate change, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The report—“Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration”—calls for the launch of a substantial research initiative to advance these technologies as soon as possible.

Although climate mitigation remains the motivation for global investments in NETs, the committee that carried out the study and wrote the report determined that advances in NETs also could have economic rewards, as intellectual property rights and economic benefits will likely accrue to the nations that develop the best technology. . . .

Unlike carbon capture and storage technologies that remove carbon dioxide emissions directly from large point sources such as coal power plants, NETs remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or enhance natural carbon sinks. . . .

The committee concluded that the NETs available today could be safely scaled up to capture and store a significant fraction of the total emissions both in the US and globally, but not enough to keep total global warming below two degrees Celsius, the target of the Paris agreement.

Therefore, a concerted research effort is needed to address the constraints that currently limit deployment of NETs, such as high costs, land and environmental constraints, and energy requirements.

Four land-based negative emissions technologies are ready for large-scale deployment at costs competitive with emissions mitigation strategies, the report says. These technologies include reforestation, changes in forest management, and changes in agricultural practices that enhance soil carbon storage. The fourth NET ready for scale up is “bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration”—in which plants or plant-based materials are used to produce electricity, liquid fuels, and/or heat, and any carbon dioxide that is produced is captured and sequestered.

However, these four NETs cannot yet provide enough carbon removal at reasonable cost without substantial unintended harm, the report says. Repurposing a significant amount of current agricultural land for growing new forests or feedstocks for bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration could have significant effects on food availability. Repurposing tropical forest would harm biodiversity. Research could identify ways to soften the land constraint, for instance, by developing crop plants that take up and sequester carbon more efficiently in soils, or by reducing food waste or demand for meat.

Two other negative emissions technologies could be revolutionary, the committee said, because they have high potential capacity to remove carbon. Direct air capture employs chemical processes to capture carbon dioxide from the air, concentrate it, and inject it into a storage reservoir. However, it is currently limited by high cost. There is no commercial driving force for developing direct air capture technologies; therefore, developing a low-cost option will require sustained government investment.

Carbon mineralization—which essentially accelerates “weathering” so carbon dioxide from the atmosphere forms a chemical bond with reactive minerals—is currently limited by lack of fundamental understanding.

The committee also examined coastal blue carbon, which involves changing land use and management practices to increase carbon stored in living plants or sediments in coastal ecosystems such as tidal marshlands. Although it has a relatively low potential capacity for removing carbon, the committee concluded that coastal blue carbon warrants continued exploration and support. The cost of the carbon removal is low or zero, because investments in many coastal blue carbon projects target other benefits such as coastal adaptation. An increase in understanding of how sea-level rise, coastal management, and other climate impacts could affect future carbon uptake rates is needed. . . .
 
Idiotic.
Not only is it cheaper to simply not pollute in the first place, the politics of so called negative emissions is a veiled call to pollute now with abandon and leave the clean-up (and mitigation) to a future generation. The oil companies love this idea.
 
SageBrush said:
Idiotic.
Not only is it cheaper to simply not pollute in the first place, the politics of so called negative emissions is a veiled call to pollute now with abandon and leave the clean-up (and mitigation) to a future generation. The oil companies love this idea.
This.

This is exactly what I think every time I read about removing CO2 from the air.

Also, who is going to pay for this? There is no profitable business model that can be made, so it's highly doubtful that it will come to fruition. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it wouldn't be worth doing. I'm saying that the western world is strongly motivated by greed, which is why capitalism has a stronghold here.
 
My understanding of "negative emissions technologies" is that at this point, we have emitted enough CO2 that just reducing our net emissions to zero over the next decade or two may not be enough to avoid serious negative effects later in the century. In which case it may make sense to also pursue negative emissions.

Of course, what humanity actually does will likely diverge from its best interests.

Cheers, Wayne
 
wwhitney said:
My understanding of "negative emissions technologies" is that at this point, we have emitted enough CO2 that just reducing our net emissions to zero over the next decade or two may not be enough to avoid serious negative effects later in the century. In which case it may make sense to also pursue negative emissions.

Of course, what humanity actually does will likely diverge from its best interests.

Cheers, Wayne
Exactly right.

  • Negative emissions technologies are essential to offset carbon dioxide emissions that would be difficult to eliminate and should be viewed as a component of the climate change mitigation portfolio. Most climate mitigation efforts are intended to decrease the rate at which people add carbon from fossil fuel reservoirs to the atmosphere. We focused on the reverse—technologies that take carbon out of the air and put it back into ecosystems and the land. We determined that a substantial research initiative should be launched to advance these promising technologies as soon as possible.

    —Stephen Pacala, the Frederick D. Petrie Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University and chair of the committee. . . .

The committee found that NETs have not yet received adequate public investment despite expectations that they might provide approximately 30% of the net emissions reductions this century. A substantial research investment is needed as soon as practicable, the committee said, to improve existing land-based NETs, make rapid progress on direct air capture and carbon mineralization, and advance NET-enabling research on biofuels and carbon dioxide sequestration.
As for who will pay for this:

The report presents multiple reasons to pursue research on NETs. First, states, local governments, corporations, and countries around the world now make substantial investments to reduce their net carbon emissions and plan to increase these expenditures. Some of these efforts already include negative emissions technologies. This means that advances in NETs will benefit the US economy if the intellectual property is held by US companies.

Second, as climate damages mount, the US will inevitably take increased action to limit climate change in the future.

Third, the US is already making a substantial effort, including the new 45Q rule that provides a tax credit for capture and storage, which would leverage the value of new investments in NET research. . . .
Reductions in total energy use (not just gains in efficiency) are critical, but the level of reduction that is realistic (barring some catastrophic war or pandemic) almost certainly won't be enough on its own. For example, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) agreed to at COP 21 won't do it, assuming most countries even make those (the wide-spread failure of countries to meet their equally voluntary targets under Kyoto doesn't make for optimism), so we need to consider and develop additional methods, including atmospheric capture and large-scale geo-engineering. We may not be able to do either for political, economic or environmental reasons, but it's best we find that out sooner rather than later.
 
As for why we might need these techs, via GCR:
New report shows oceans warming much faster than anticipated
https://www.greencarreports.com/new...s-oceans-warming-much-faster-than-anticipated

A new study published Wednesday in the journal "Nature" shows global warming has already accelerated far beyond what scientists anticipated.

The study uses new methods to measure global ocean temperatures, which showed the oceans have retained 60 percent more heat than earlier estimates showed. Scientists measured the volume of oxygen and carbon dioxide gases evaporating from the oceans' surface, rather than inexact direct measurements that led to uncertainty before the new equipment was deployed in 2007. . . .

The new findings have dramatic impacts for policymakers aiming to reduce the impact of climate change. Under the Paris Climate Accord, global leaders set a target to limit global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius), a target that will require carbon emissions to be cut in half by 2030. That effort has involved dramatic economic changes that have been difficult to implement, such as efforts to spur the widespread adoption of electric cars.

If the new study is correct, those cuts would have to be increased by 25 percent, and policymakers will have to launch new efforts to adapt to the effects of global warming along with mitigation measures. . . .

Scientists have been clamoring for measures to mitigate human contributions to climate change, but uncertainty about the degree of ocean warming contributed to stalling debate and limiting action.

"We thought that we got away with not a lot of warming in both the ocean and the atmosphere for the amount of CO2 that we emitted" under old measurements, Laure Resplandy, a geoscientist at Princeton University who led the new study told the Washington Post.

Paul Durack, a research scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, calls the new report "alarming," and says that if verified, it will mean that planner have to "go back to the drawing board" on how to mitigate the effects of climate change.
 
GRA said:
wwhitney said:
My understanding of "negative emissions technologies" is that at this point, we have emitted enough CO2 that just reducing our net emissions to zero over the next decade or two may not be enough to avoid serious negative effects later in the century. In which case it may make sense to also pursue negative emissions.

Of course, what humanity actually does will likely diverge from its best interests.

Cheers, Wayne
Exactly right.
Complete nonsense.

Many negative effects have been predicted, but none have been detected.

The positive effects of additional CO2 in the atmosphere are unmistakable: a rapid greening of the planet. The idea that we should remove CO2 from the atmosphere is an idiotic one, even if it were free to do.
 
RegGuheert said:
The positive effects of additional CO2 in the atmosphere are unmistakable: a rapid greening of the planet. The idea that we should remove CO2 from the atmosphere is an idiotic one, even if it were free to do.

0.5C warming is very likely a net positive. We have likely released enough CO2 to skip the next glacial advance, and likely the glacial advance beyond that. Takes the climate back to about 8,000 years ago. We passed this already. I agree that the first 100PPM should not be removed.

1C warming might be a net positive. Maybe. We are about here today. Takes the climate back to the last interglacial period.

index.php


2C warming probably is a net negative.

4C warming is just a bad idea.

10C warming? Do you really need to ask?

And 20C warming is probably possible. Maybe we are not that dumb.

Assuming linearity isn't useful.
 
WetEV said:
RegGuheert said:
The positive effects of additional CO2 in the atmosphere are unmistakable: a rapid greening of the planet. The idea that we should remove CO2 from the atmosphere is an idiotic one, even if it were free to do.
0.5C warming is very likely a net positive. We have likely released enough CO2 to skip the next glacial advance, and likely the glacial advance beyond that. Takes the climate back to about 8,000 years ago. We passed this already.
Huh? It seems the fact is that sea ice in both Antarctic AND the Arctic are near their highest levels in the past 10,000 years.

But more pertinent to this discussion, the sea surface temperature has been dropping and the sea ice has been increasing in the Southern Hemisphere in recent decades:

Holocene-Cooling-Southern-Ocean-1979-2011-Fan-2014.jpg


Sea-Ice-Extent-Southern-Hemisphere-Comiso-2017.jpg


In addition, glaciers in the Alps used to be much smaller than they are today. They peaked during the Little Ice Age, which was a period of terrible climate that killed many creatures on this Earth, including humans. I have no desire to return to those times.
WetEV said:
I agree that the first 100PPM should not be removed. 1C warming might be a net positive.
That's a virtual certainty. Conditions on Earth have indeed gotten much better as we have climbed out of the Little Ice Age.
WetEV said:
Maybe. We are about here today.
Agreed we are likely there today. Do you have evidence that there is something negative related to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere to date?
WetEV said:
Takes the climate back to the last interglacial period.
Climate? You were talking about CO2. You have a LONG way to go in order to link climate to CO2.

Scientists have measured the greenhouse effect on Earth. It is unchanged in the last 25 years. In other words, increases in CO2 levels in our atmosphere do NOT result in increases in the Earth's greenhouse effect. This is not at all surprising, since CO2 is a very minor player in the greenhouse effect on this planet.
WetEV said:
2C warming probably is a net negative.

4C warming is just a bad idea.

10C warming? Do you really need to ask?

And 20C warming is probably possible. Maybe we are not that dumb.
Predictions of that type of warming are just that: predictions. They are based on poor science which ignores the fact that the warming experienced at the end of the 20th century corresponded directly with a reduction in cloud cover over the Earth. The forcing due to that several-percent change in cloud cover is orders of magnitude higher than any change due to CO2 thus far. Plus, reduction in cloud cover allows sunlight to warm the ocean directly. The temperature of the surface of the ocean is the main control of the temperature of our atmosphere, as can be readily seen by the effects on an El Nino event. And the Sun is what heats the waters in the oceans. Currents in the ocean move water of different temperatures around.

But the idea that the surface of the oceans, as a whole, will increase by 4C or more due to very small changes in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (and hence, the greenhouse effect) is ludicrous. In other words, predictions of that magnitude are completely non-credible. Believe them at your own peril.

BTW, living in an interglacial period is a great thing for life on this planet. If you want to worry about something, I suggest you worry about the onset of the next glacial period. THAT is when things will get bad.
 
RegGuheert said:
GRA said:
wwhitney said:
My understanding of "negative emissions technologies" is that at this point, we have emitted enough CO2 that just reducing our net emissions to zero over the next decade or two may not be enough to avoid serious negative effects later in the century. In which case it may make sense to also pursue negative emissions.

Of course, what humanity actually does will likely diverge from its best interests.

Cheers, Wayne
Exactly right.
Complete nonsense.

Many negative effects have been predicted, but none have been detected.

The positive effects of additional CO2 in the atmosphere are unmistakable: a rapid greening of the planet. The idea that we should remove CO2 from the atmosphere is an idiotic one, even if it were free to do.
Reg, it's well known that you don't believe in AGCC, so obviously this has no importance for you. It is of importance to those who do believe it's happening, or those like me who think it likely and believe that it's an experiment we simply can't afford to run. This is not the topic to argue for or against the reality of AGCC - you and others have done that at length many times elsewhere. As a matter of courtesy to the OP of this thread, I'd ask that you, WetEV and others refrain from repeating those arguments here; anyone who wants to do so has many other threads to repeat their arguments in.
 
Anybody who thinks we puny humans could change global warming still believes in unicorns and fairies....

Also, anybody who thinks driving a Leaf stops global warming is also in that club.

I will not get into the details....
 
We puny humans have been dumping into our lands, seas, and skies consistently since the dawn of the industrial age. All of that adds up to a whole lot of accumulated dumping. The belief that this is not having any effect on our climate is nearly untenable.
 
powersurge said:
Anybody who thinks we puny humans could change global warming still believes in unicorns and fairies....
There is a long history of life forms modifying the environment and atmosphere, starting with the release of free oxygen by photosynthetic organisms about 3 billion years ago. Prior to the "Great Oxygenation Event" about 2.5 billion years ago, there was no free oxygen in the atmosphere.

Cheers, Wayne
 
Well, first of all, it is easy to say the humans have been polluting since the dawn of time... However, the earth is a giant fish tank that is a closed system. Throughout evolution, whatever crap is released by living or dead plants, animals, volcanoes, fires, or humans is absorbed by the earth, and reused to make other natural compounds. The earth cleans itself, so if we are always yelling about carbon dioxide, the earth is able to handle that. In the past humans burned so much wood, leaves, coal, and other crap, and the world was "clean"..

Also, the real issue is... Is there DATA to prove that humans can affect world climate to either improve, or at the very least slow down the presence of CO2? Try to convince the third world countries to change their behavior, with them being the vast majority of humans in the world.. We idealistic Americans and Europeans have more to worry about than being GREEN. We should be more worried about turning RED... And you should know what I mean..
 
Sure, we've been polluting since humankind's discovery of fire. But the world population didn't hit 1B until about the time of the industrial revolution (19th century). We are now over 8B. And we're burning a whole lot more per capita to boot.

And no, I don't know what you mean about turning RED. The first thing that comes to mind is a political statement, but even then it's not clear if you are referring to neo-conservatives or communists let alone whether you are implying we should or should not turn red. So color me ignorant; I have no idea what you mean by that last sentence.
 
Maybe getting really drunk, as Lincoln's second Vice President did right before his inauguration.

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/VP_Andrew_Johnson.htm
 
GetOffYourGas said:
Sure, we've been polluting since humankind's discovery of fire. But the world population didn't hit 1B until about the time of the industrial revolution (19th century). We are now over 8B. And we're burning a whole lot more per capita to boot. <snip>
A small correction: as of July 1st, the world pop. is estimated to be 7.633B: https://www.google.com/search?q=wor.....69i57j0l5.5578j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Anyone interested in the details of total and per capita energy use over time both globally and in specific countries should read:
Energy Transitions: Global and National Perspectives, 2nd Edition
by Vaclav Smil: https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Trans...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=SSWGDMARP0GGVJ4WJG34

Pre-industrial age per capita energy usage (primarily biomass, with some water and a tiny bit of wind) was very low. I don't have the book handy, but the advent of fossil fuels, steam engines and then steam turbines, ICEs, electricity, meatier diets etc. has increased per-capita energy use massively, especially among the wealthiest countries. Some current numbers I remember (in GigaJoules - to convert to kWh divide by (3.6 x 10^6)): EU (as a whole) annual p.c. use 130 GJ; France 155 GJ; Germany 160 GJ; Japan 150 GJ; China (now, owing to their massive industrialization since 1980) 90 GJ; India (just beginning industrialization), 20 GJ. By comparison the incredibly wasteful U.S. has per cap. energy use of 300 GJ. Some of the U.S. difference compared to Germany and France (the two EU states with the most heavy industry) is due to larger size and lower population density (boosts transportation energy) and some due to climate (lots of HVAC use), but much if it is due to housing types (large detached homes in suburban sprawl versus smaller urban townhomes/apts.), and sheer profligacy due to low energy prices (e.g. unneeded SUVs, lack of insulation). U.S. per capita energy use in 2015 was actually 10% lower than it was in 1970 or 1980, and it's far easier for us to improve our efficiency and reduce our energy usage by a large percentage than it is for countries which are already much more efficient.

It wasn't until sometime in the 1890s that coal overtook biomass as the majority energy source, and not until 1964 that oil overtook coal (but will never reach 50%, as NG and other energy sources have increased). Even so, although the % of the world's energy that comes from biomass has dropped, the total amount has increased owing to the increase in population, and large numbers of people in poor countries still depend on it for cooking and heating. In India, 300M people still don't have access to electricity. Here's what Smil has to say:

My best estimate of wood consumption (including wood for charcoal) for the year 2000 is about 2.5Gt of air-dry matter (2 Gt of absolutely dry matter, or 35 EJ) and crop residues (about 20% of their total mass) added about 10 EJ for the grand total of 45 EJ or an equivalent of 3 Gt of air-dry wood. For comparison, Yevich and Logan (2003) estimated that 2.06 Gt (about 31 EJ) of traditional biofuels were consumed in in 1985 in low-income countries; Turkenburg et al. (2000) put the end-of-the-century total 45 +- 10 EJ; and Fernandes et al.
(2007) estimated 2.457 Gt of solid biofuels (roughly 37 EJ) in the year 2000, with wood contributing 75% and crop residues 20%, and with households burning 80% of the total and productive activities the rest. Despite major uncertainties all of these numbers cluster around 40 EJ (35-45 EJ, 2.3-3.0 Gt of all solid biofuels) and imply the doubling of wood and crop residue harvests for fuel during the 20th century accompanied by a steady decline of average per capita consumption rates everywhere except in some parts of the sub-Saharan Africa.
Emphasis added.
 
I was able to check my memory with the Smil book for the per capita energy consumption by country, and I boobed big-time. I got the numbers mostly correct, but the exponent too high by a factor of 1B! ExaJoules (EJ, 10^18) should have been GigaJoules (GJ, 10^9). Exajoules are national and global totals. What's an error of 9 orders of magnitude between friends :oops: I've corrected EJ in my previous post to GJ, and also changed Japan's 130 GJ per cap. to the correct figure of 150GJ, fixed some typos and added a quote and some additional comments.
 
GCC has updated their article from the first post here: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=26771#p540080, as follows:
Update: The scientists behind this study have updated their report in the journal Nature acknowledging key errors in the study. The note that the data regarding scientific uncertainty was mishandled, which inflated the amount of heat the oceans have absorbed. The central finding that the oceans have absorbed more heat than previously reported remains in line with other studies. In a statement to the Washington Post, a Nature spokesman said: “Maintaining the accuracy of the scientific record is of primary importance to us as publishers and we recognize our responsibility to correct errors in papers that we have published."
Bolding mine.
 
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