Corralling Carbon Before It Belches From StackIf there is any hope of staving off the worst effects of climate change, many scientists say, this must be part of it — capturing the carbon that spews from power plants and locking it away, permanently. For now, they contend, the world is too dependent on fossil fuels to do anything less.
If all goes as planned, the effort in Saskatchewan will be the first major one of its kind at a power plant, the equivalent of taking about 250,000 cars off the road. And at least in theory, that carbon dioxide will be kept out of the atmosphere forever.
“Think about how far we’ve come,” said Mr. Zeleny, who recently retired after four decades here, most recently as plant manager.
Despite President Obama’s push to rein in emissions from power plants across the United States, coal is not going away anytime soon. The administration expects coal will still produce nearly a third of the nation’s electricity in 2030, down from about 40 percent today, even if Mr. Obama’s plan survives the political onslaught against it.
nytimesTen reasons why policy makers should take direct air capture seriouslyDespite the fact that the impacts of manmade climate change are already being felt and that failure to mitigate these effects by lessening fossil fuel CO2 emissions could result in dire consequences, policies enacted to reduce these emissions have been grossly insufficient. While there is no one silver bullet to "solve" climate change, many technologically feasible solutions exist that together can work to close the carbon loop and account for net zero carbon emissions.
Though still nascent, and requiring more research and development, direct air capture, a technology that extracts CO2 from ambient air, represents an option to be technologically optimistic. It is economically viable in several areas and can permit negative emissions to eventually stabilize atmospheric concentrations. However, as this technology scales up from demonstrations to pilot scale to commercialization, the deployment is not without risks and challenges that could delay or distract from its use as an effective means to manage our carbon footprint. While current support for the pioneers in this industry comes from private and philanthropic investment, below are 10 reasons why policy makers should take direct air capture seriously.
1. Direct air capture represents a technological fix to climate change
phys.orgGeoengineering - Insanity? All the More Reason to Discuss ItIs geoengineering the key to solving the global climate change problem? That’s the kind of question that evokes a knee-jerk reaction from those who consider it, including me. I believe we’re already doing enough geoengineering on the planet, albeit unplanned and perhaps unintended. For me, geoengineering like the kind environmental engineer David Keith speaks of in the TED Talk video below, is a fool’s errand.
Keith, who has done extensive research into geoengineering, doesn’t necessarily disagree. But he does caution that to make an informed and morally justified decision about whether to employ it or not requires a more nuanced approach in how we think about it.
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