Hi Renaud Currently there is just one working industrial scale co2 removal facility on the planet attached to a coal fired power station at Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan. It cost 1.5 billion Canadian dollars to build and the cost per tonne of CO2 removal is $100. UK, US, China have no plans to build industrial scale CCS. It is not utopian to stop building coal fired power stations. These kill people and there are alternative power sources available especially for hot countries such as India and Turkey. Extracting coal, building new coal power stations and then expecting US or UK to build plants to draw the co2 back down - that is a far more costly approach than finding ways to incentivise developing countries not to build coal fired power in the first place.
We need pragmatism not Utopianism. That is what the keep it in the ground movement is. Sadly the UNFCCC refuses even to discuss fossil fuels at the CoP meetings. There is no mention of fossil fuels in the 'Paris agreement'. But CDR is an unhelpful distraction from this political failure to grasp the nettle. Best wishes Michael On 20 Apr 2016, at 21:18, Renaud de RICHTER <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Dear Professor Michale NORTHCOTT, I agree with you, all this is needed but as points 2. and 3. are for the moment utopian, maybe original mitigation strategies can also be added to your list. Like non-CO2 GHG removal directly from the atmosphere, as proposed in http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750583616300858 and in http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-016-6103-9. Best regards Renaud de_Richter Le dimanche 17 avril 2016 21:25:14 UTC+2, NORTHCOTT Michael a écrit : Hi John The course of action to slow the rate of warming (it is 0.1 degree per decade not 0.2) and ultimately to stop it requires all of the following. Young people and climate activists the world over are calling for these things and campaigning actively and at cost of their freedom sometimes to bring them about: 1. Ending tropical forest burning 2. Stopping building of new coal and oil fired power stations (Turkey and India and S Africa are planning 100s) and ending coal extraction by China, Indonesia, and even Australia, Germany US and UK who have no conceivable need to continue extracting the stuff given the wealth already at the disposal of their citizens and corporations 3. Closing existing coal and oil fired electric power plants 4. Reforesting uplands, reducing sheep grazing, and increasing uptake of co2 in agric land with biochar, compost etc 5. Ending expansion of air sea and road travel and moving all road and sea travel to electric vehicles and wind. Rationing air travel to gradually shift international and national travellers to other means. 6. Moving all electricity production to renewable power and battery / reservoir storage of back up power. 7. Reengineering older buildings with insulation. 8. Requiring all new builds to generate own power and be zero carbon 9. Reducing shipping and flying of food by favouring local over global food production. 10. Ending large scale animal husbandry and moving mainstream human protein requirements to beans, vegetables etc. 11. Favour pedestrians, cyclists and electric bikes, segways, electric wheelchairs etc in all city planning and movement infrastructure Globally these measures would generate at least a billion of jobs, reduce deaths from pollution, and reduce health costs of cancers, heart disease, obesity and air pollution, and reduce concentrations of wealth by putting capacity to generate power, grow food and move around back in the hands of householders and local communities. None of them require large scale totalitarian and public debt-based technologies of the kind represented by CDR. We need moral alternatives to the present madness. We need to argue for them in every possible forum and embrace them ourselves. Arming the future against the sun is a counsel of despair. Regards Michael Professor of Ethics University of Edinburgh On 17 Apr 2016, at 17:10, John Nissen <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Dear Professor Mann, Most of us would like to keep global warming below 1.5C this century. But we are way off course. Nobody likes to admit in public that we are already in dangerous territory. But we are! The rate of global warming (near-surface temperature rise) could now exceed 0.2 C per decade; CO2 is above 400 ppm (an excess of 120 ppm above pre-industrial 280 ppm) of which most will remain this century due to CO2's long lifetime in the atmosphere; and we have already had over 1 C anthropogenic global warming (AGW). This means that, even with the most drastic cut in CO2 emissions, we cannot avoid an extremely dangerous 3C this century without aggressive CO2 removal (CDR). Indeed, if we want to keep AGW below 1.5 C this century and halt ocean acidification, then we need to get global warming rate down below 0.05 C per decade, i.e. less than a quarter the current rate. Thus climate forcing has to be reduced by 75% within a decade or two, to have a chance to keep below 1.5 C this century. Thus we have to reduce the CO2 level to around 210 ppm (30 ppm above pre-industrial 280 ppm), and reduce methane from 1.8 ppm to around 1.0 ppm in order to reduce their combined forcing by 75%. This assumes we maintain aerosol cooling, especially the SO2 cooling from coal-fired power stations. This is exacerbated by climate forcing from the Arctic, at around 0.5 W/m2 and rising exponentially as albedo loss accelerates. Therefore, in addition to urgent CO2 emissions reduction, we need (i) aggressive CDR so that CO2 is soon being removed from the atmosphere faster than than it is being emitted, (ii) suppression of methane emissions, especially fugitive methane (iii) rapid cooling of the Arctic to restore albedo, and (iv) maintenance of SO2 aerosol cooling, if global warming is to be kept below 1.5 C this century. Do you agree or can you suggest an alternative course of action to avert extreme danger? Kind regards, John Nissen Chair, Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG) On Sun, Apr 17, 2016 at 3:22 AM, Greg Rau <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/15/march-temperature-smashes-100-year-global-record "The UK Met Office expects 2016 to set a new record<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/17/2016-set-to-be-hottest-year-on-record-globally>, meaning the global temperature record is set to have been broken for three years in a row. Prof Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University in the US, responded to the March data by saying: “Wow. I continue to be shocked by what we are seeing.” He said the world had now been hovering close to the threshold of “dangerous” warming for two months, something not seen before. “The [new data] is a reminder of how perilously close we now are to permanently crossing into dangerous territory,” Mann said. “It underscores the urgency of reducing global carbon emissions.” GR - and the need to seriously consider additional ways of managing CO2 and climate. -- 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]<mailto:[email protected]>. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. 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