It's hard for people to visualize removing tons or billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂). I propose we talk about CO₂ removal (#CDR) like a time machine (e.g., this machine will take us back 5 minutes). For example:
Q: How far back in time does planting 100 million trees take us?
A: If one mature tree takes up an average of 25 kg of CO₂ per year, then 100 million trees will take up 2.5 MtCO₂. That's a time machine that takes us back 33 minutes and 6 seconds in a year. It's not a lot.
Another CO₂ removal (CDR) as time machine example:
H&M, the second largest international clothing retailer, recently purchased 10,000 tonnes of CO₂ removal from Climeworks. 10,000 tonnes sounds like a lot, right, but it's a time machine that takes us back only 8 seconds. 😩
https://hmgroup.com/news/hm-group-further-invests-in-the-decarbonisation-of-its-value-chain/
My #CDR friends on twitter got mad at me for pointing out that the four regional Direct Air Capture (#DAC) Hubs under the Inflation Reduction Act (#IRA) specify a minimum CO₂ removal capacity of 50,000 tonnes/year.
Hence, each DAC Hub is a #time #machine that takes us back only about 40 seconds a year!
It's important to point this out because some people think CDR is a replacement for #decarbonization and that can never be the case.
https://www.energy.gov/oced/four-regional-clean-direct-air-capture-hubs
Technological CDR is a total scam...
Every dollar invested and every minute wasted discussing it just removes resources from the most meaningful and effective we can do: stop burning the planet for a few bucks for people that are already so rich they can't spend their wealth in lifetime.
There are several mechanisms why CDR receives so much more funding than reasonable actions:
- CDR doesn't touch the status quo
- the easiest thing for governments is to spend money instead of forcing people/companies to actually change behaviour
- scientists/engineering enthusiasts like the idea of a technology to 'save the world'
- there are plenty of business opportunities and money to make
With 'green CDR' the things might be a little bit different, especially when these initiatives involve a bottom-up improvement of livelihoods of the people. I am not referring to industrialized afforestation projects (!), like the ones usually offered by most offsetting companied, but to initiatives like https://www.evergreening.org/
Or improvements of agricultural techniques benefitting resilience, biodiversity and soil organic matter contents.
Natural Fighters for Nature Watch our short film Restore Africa: Natural Fighters for Nature Watch Now! Accelerating Nature-based Solutions Conference READ MORE What we do The Global EverGreening Alliance works with, and through, its numerous member organisations – and with governments and multi-lateral agencies – to implement massive land restoration programs. In so doing, the…
@mdione @davidho if you do the math on direct air capture based purely on the thermodynamics of extracting co2 from air you'd need something like >5% of the world energy production to make a dent at reasonable timescales, assuming perfect efficiency with 0 losses
it's just not practical without some entirely different approach *and* real decarbonization
@davidho It is absolutely insane to me how we cannot grasp this : we have been taking carbon out of the ground it was buried in for hundreds millions of years. We have been doing this at an ever increasing rate for two centuries with coal, oil and gas (we never globaly stopped coal).
This inactive storage was the reason we are not living in a huge dinosaurs and giant forests era.
How can we think planting trees on the available surface and petrifying a bit of soil (DAC) will offset this ?! How?
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