I am skeptical of the claim that 'the capture and storage of CO2 would create an industry 10 to 20 percent the size of the energy industry '.
I would think it much safer to assume that the cost of removing CO2 from the atmosphere would be comparable to the cost of putting CO2 into the atmosphere, rather than assuming it would be an order-of-magnitude cheaper (or nearly so). At these higher costs, it makes more sense to put more effort into reducing emissions now. Note also that a lot of these questions about energy system transitions are not questions about what is possible, but what is feasible given the way that human psychology works, the way game theory works, the way modern economies work, the way modern political systems work. It is of course possible that we could emit CO2 today with the intent that our grandchildren remove it from the atmosphere later, but whether our grandchildren's generation will actually be able to organize themselves to generate a massive CO2-removal effort is another thing entirely. I would think it much better for us to make policy assuming that air-capture of CO2 will never be deployed at scale.If it turns out to be cheap, and future generations are willing to pay the price, so much the better. Industrial air capture at climatically important scales should at this time be considered a research topic, not a deployable option. _______________ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 [email protected] http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab https://twitter.com/KenCaldeira My assistant is Dawn Ross <[email protected]>, with access to incoming emails. On Sat, Feb 7, 2015 at 10:16 AM, Alan Robock <[email protected]> wrote: > Does air capture constitute a viable backstop against a bad CO2 trip? > > - Wally Broecker > - Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, > New York, United States > For correspondence: [email protected] > > *DOI* 10.12952/journal.elementa.000009 > - See more at: > http://elementascience.org/article/info:doi/10.12952/journal.elementa.000009#sthash.NRRja8Uu.dpuf > Paper is from 2013, but I had not seen it before. > > Does air capture constitute a viable backstop against a bad CO2 trip? > Wally Broecker > > > http://elementascience.org/article/info:doi/10.12952/journal.elementa.000009 > Does air capture constitute a viable backstop against a bad CO2 trip? - > See more at: > http://elementascience.org/article/info:doi/10.12952/journal.elementa.000009#sthash.NRRja8Uu.dpuf > Does air capture constitute a viable backstop against a bad CO2 trip? > > - Wally Broecker > - Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, > New York, United States > For correspondence: [email protected] > > *DOI* 10.12952/journal.elementa.000009 > - See more at: > http://elementascience.org/article/info:doi/10.12952/journal.elementa.000009#sthash.NRRja8Uu.dpuf > Does air capture constitute a viable backstop against a bad CO2 trip? > > - Wally Broecker > - Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, > New York, United States > For correspondence: [email protected] > > *DOI* 10.12952/journal.elementa.000009 > - See more at: > http://elementascience.org/article/info:doi/10.12952/journal.elementa.000009#sthash.NRRja8Uu.dpuf > > > http://elementascience.org/article/fetchObjectAttachment.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.12952%2Fjournal.elementa.000009&representation=PDF > > -- > Alan Robock > > Alan Robock, Distinguished Professor > Editor, Reviews of Geophysics > Director, Meteorology Undergraduate Program > Department of Environmental Sciences Phone: +1-848-932-5751 > Rutgers University Fax: +1-732-932-8644 > 14 College Farm Road E-mail: [email protected] > New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8551 USA http://envsci.rutgers.edu/~robock > http://twitter.com/AlanRobock > Watch my 18 min TEDx talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrEk1oZ-54 > > -- > 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 [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
