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Avogadro Jones @lemmy.sdf.org

Is "Negative Emissions" Even Attainable?

www.theguardian.com

From the oceans to ‘net zero’ targets, we’re in denial about the climate crisis | Adam Morton

(opinion)

More bad news... Every climate catastrophe indicator is far above what anyone even considered just a year ago. It appears that the rate of climate change is beginning to increase exponentially, further evidence that enough climate tipping points have been reached to render change unstoppable.

8 comments

  • Negative emissions would basically need to exist on subsidisation. There's no tangible product there that can be sold to any individual person. It's not happening in the next couple decades, and after that who knows what the global politics will be. I wouldn't rely on it, though.

    Since 1971 the ocean is estimated to have absorbed heat equivalent to the energy of more than 25bn Hiroshima-scale atomic bombs.

    That's insane. I knew it would be a lot because water carries heat very well, and a million wouldn't be worth a comment, but billions? I wonder how many hours of sunlight hitting the Earth that is.

    Edit: An entire 4 months based on a quick visit to WolframAlpha.

    A study this week by Net Zero Tracker found the bulk of “net zero” commitments from fossil fuel companies were meaningless as they either included no short-term emissions reduction plans, or did not fully cover scope 3 emissions (that is, the pollution released when a company’s products are used).

    No way. /s

    Their whole business is moving carbon from the ground to the atmosphere for energy (with a few percent set aside for chemicals). If anyone thought that included the product they haven't actually thought much about it.

    I'm fully prepared that we're going to live on a different Earth. Here in Canada the indication is some of the forests the fires have wiped out are not coming back as forests but grasslands, for example. I wonder when we'll start farming them.

    I hope we manage to Noah's ark some of the threatened species, or even modify them to survive better.

  • The problem with "offsets" is that they come in two very different forms:

    • Rebranded conservationism
    • Rebranded terraforming

    Conservationism (i.e.: promising not to cut down trees) does not actually affect the status quo, which is not helpful because the status quo is already unsustainable. It's a promise, quite literally, to do nothing.

    Terraforming (i.e.: carbon capture, planting trees) on the other hand represents an active investment in reversing prior damage. Of course, when you frame it this way people get very nihilistic because they realize how incredibly expensive it would be to have a perceivable impact on the planetary scale.

    I think that the terms "net-zero" and "carbon offset" have been deeply poisoned by the incentives at play surrounding them and expect that the idea will quietly die out as a consequence. That's a shame because micro-scale terraforming was how we got ourselves into this mess and it's probably the only way back out.

8 comments