Hi Peter--Interesting--a couple of questions that might be covered in
the type of assessment that you suggest (and I agree) is worth doing:
1. Were the world to get serious enough to be taking on the issue in the
way you suggest, what are the relative costs and benefits of investing
the same amount of money and effort on mitigation, so not putting the
materials into the atmosphere in the first place? Would it make more
sense to just be investing in CDR research until the cost-benefit leans
to CDR versus mitigation (and considering other effects, such as job
creation, etc. (this point/plateau might vary a great deal by location,
etc.)?
2. Once one captures the C, what does one do with it all? Where does one
put all the captured CO2? What is the cost of
disposal/storage/sequestration, etc. and what are the implications and
risks of the various approaches?
Best, Mike
On 11/12/17 6:15 AM, Peter Eisenberger wrote:
Hi Mike ,
The key issue is your sentence "While CDR can get started now,
scaling up seems likely to take a bit of time, though this depends
mainly on level of commitment." .
A serious Manhatten Project Level Project or Going to the moon effort
would make an assessment of the time versus commitment level for the
only known solution at this time that can scale -DAC where the carbon
is either stored in a material (carbon fiber or cement and sequestered
or sequestered directly
The number of units needed are comparable and less than many things
we already mass produce by sigificant ratios - a shipping container
sized unit of GT technology captures 2000 tpy and is amenable to mass
production .
:For 40 giga tonnes pyr capacity one would need 20 million units
-there are currently 17 million shipping containers used in the world
. Today GT has made two such units in a year say which is conservative
estimate for installed capacity for the industry as a whole .To make
the 20 million one would need would take 22 doublings of capacity. If
one had a conservative 2 yr doubling time this would take 44 years
and if it was a global emergency so one had a high doubling time of 1
year it would take us only 22 years to install 40 gigatonnes per year
capacity with us making 4 million units per year at the end - we
currently make 60 million new cars per year . The capital cost to make
a DAC 2000 tpy unit is about $500,000 which in the end would cost 2
trillion dollars or close to 1 % of GGDP at that time and like solar
it would create jobs. My only point is that these are not
unreasonable numbers and most importantly no one has tried to do a
serious assessment , yet many make statements as if it is obvious that
the needed capacity cannot be reached in a timely fashion . But even
more significant is that we seem content with a research effort rather
than an implementation effort yet we claim we are in an emergency .
As I am prone to say - the only barrier to CDR to remove the needed
capacity (we know how to do it and that it is affordable) is to decide
to do it.
Peter
On Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 4:27 PM, Michael MacCracken
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi Peter--You might be interested that at the hearing Rep. Veasey
(ranking Democratic member on one of the subcommittees at the
hearing--see https://veasey.house.gov) indicated that he would
soon be putting forward a bill pursuing CDR research/efforts. He
has a Subcommittee on Energy minority staffer, Joe Flarida,
working on this issue who sounds both quite well-informed and also
interested in getting input ([email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>). While there was discussion
about might be done on SRM, I did not get the impression that a
bill on that was as far along.
On SRM & CDR issue, both are certainly needed. While CDR can get
started now, scaling up seems likely to take a bit of time, though
this depends mainly on level of commitment. SRM is indeed not a
long-term approach, but it can be an approach that I think could
be applied early in low deployment levels while mitigation and CDR
are building up and getting emissions toward zero. I think this
notion of waiting decades to get started makes little sense,
because of the climate change and impacts that will occur in the
interim, the shock that sudden and significant SRM deployment
would induce, and that by that time it would be nice to have
mitigation and CDR phased up a good bit (so CO2 emissions down, or
at least no longer rising). Ultimately, we of course prefer having
CDR be the dominant approach--for me the question is having a
comprehensive effort that recognizes what needs to get done and
what the capabilities are and deployments can be over time.
Mike
On 11/11/17 2:24 PM, Peter Eisenberger wrote:
Hi Doug,
I wish your statement was factually true but I can provide if you
want many examples of people adovcating SRM using the status of
CDR to justify its need . Furthermore with all respect
even your statement that CDR is in the same state -eg need for
research as CDR is just factually incorrect . CDR is ready to be
implemented , it does not carry the risk of unintended
consequences , and as opposed to SRM it can
address the climate challenge whereas the best SRM can do is
provide more time to address it. This is why I wrote that I too
support research on SRM but do so making clear that CDR is both a
higher priority and more advanced by far than SRM
If we were as we should be all on the same team focussed on
addressing the threat we all agree exists than all who support
research on SRM would also make clear that it is a lower priority
than CDR .
Furthermore as i wrote the failure to do that will result in a
diffusion of effort so that we will make incremental progress on
many fronts without a commtted response on any single effort thus
unwittingly
delaying the critical large scale effort needed while we do
research and thus losing precious time we can ill afford to do .
Unfortunately this is not an academic issue and in the future
experts will look at what we have done and what was really known
at the time and come to their own conclusion. I hope we do not
have to wait for that judgment and somehow develop the internal
capability to develop a consensus on a prioritized plan to
address the threat we face. At this time we need to go beyond
letting a thousand flowers bloom which in itself is paradoxical
with the argument that we have no time to waste .
I of course am willing to be shown that my logic is flawed and
engage in respecful dialogue with you or anyone that would argue
against 1 that CDR is higher priority than SRM , and 2 we need to
have an internal effort to develop a prioritized program for
addressing the threat we face.
Peter
On Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 10:02 AM, Douglas MacMartin
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Peter - I think that the risks of future climate change are
sufficiently concerning that it would be premature to stop
all research on some options on the assumption that other
options are 100% guaranteed to suffice. I think that pretty
much everyone who thinks we need to research SRM also thinks
we need to research CDR quite aggressively. So when you try
to set things up as an “us vs them” framing, I don’t think
you are doing justice to anyone’s perspective that I know
(and I think I can safely say that I know pretty much
everyone who works on SRM). Relax; we’re all on the same
team, and this isn’t a competition.
Doug
*From:*[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
[mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>] *On Behalf Of
*Peter Eisenberger
*Sent:* Saturday, November 11, 2017 12:46 PM
*To:* Greg Rau <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
*Cc:* [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [geo] Climate science foe Lamar Smith -
geoengineering is ‘worth exploring.’
The sophisticated opposition to climate change initiated by
George Bush Senior is to appease by supporting imcreased
knowledge
and thus avoid the need to act. This is just the most awkward
and least nunanced of this pattern -or may I say another
example of how far from knowledge based our political
dialoque has become .
I have stated my view that those who make the case for SRM
by diminishing the status and potential for CDR to address
the challenge of climate change are unwittingly
playing into the hands of those opposed to action. A
coordinated community focussed on the threat and not their
individual idea would insist that CDR be funded and
aggressively pursued
before pursuing SRM - or at least would begin every
interaction with the statement that CDR is a much higher
priority.
On Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 9:21 AM, Greg Rau
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
>
http://grist.org/briefly/climate-science-foe-lamar-smith-says-geoengineering-is-worth-exploring/
<http://grist.org/briefly/climate-science-foe-lamar-smith-says-geoengineering-is-worth-exploring/>
>
>
“Despite Smith’s endorsement of geoengineering, his
opening statement made it clear that he’s still unwilling
to talk about the reasons why the technology is being
researched in the first place: “The purpose of this
hearing is to discuss the viability of geoengineering …
The hearing is not a platform to further the debate about
climate change.”
GR Just in case the climate change hoax is a hoax?
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