No matter what we do now, we’ve already baked in increasingly severe consequences from a warming climate.  That said, if we do nothing and stay on the trajectory upon which we are currently headed, the future of our civilization is in extreme jeopardy.  As it stands right now, we will unquestionably have to adopt to some changes but by being proactive to the extreme we can minimize the impacts and possibly reverse the damages we are currently, and in the future, causing.  

No single action will be able to help save our future.  It will take success on multiple fronts simultaneously.  And I used to disregard the idea of our being able to actually suck CO2 out of the atmosphere as a pipe dream.  Thank goodness others have had a different perspective because, it is seeming like this prospect is actually becoming closer to reality. 

Earlier this year on June 16th, I wrote:

we need to promote the R & D in any way possible especially with government incentives.  That seems unlikely under the current Administration but this one won’t be here forever so we need to be debating and designing these alternative measures now so that we can enact them as soon as the “climate” is right for doing so as part of a comprehensive endeavor to save the planet’s climate that supports our civilization.”

The post in which this was written described a project to decarbonize the atmosphere entitled “Can We Develop DAC (Direct Air Capture) Technology to Help Save the Planet? Not Without Help”  (can-we-develop-dac-direct-air-capture-technology-to-help-save-the-planet-not-without-help).  

As a follow up to that, the following article relates that this technology is actually going to be deployed.  

 

“Now a company Keith founded—Carbon Engineering, in Squamish, B.C.—is working to turn those engineering estimates into reality. It’s preparing to construct a plant that’s designed to remove 1 million tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere annually. It will be by far the world’s largest, offsetting the emissions of 250,000 cars. The company announced the million-ton plan in September, just months after saying its goal was a half-million tons a year.”

“Construction is scheduled to begin in 2021 and finish in 2023. If it works, Keith’s company intends to roll out hundreds and eventually thousands of identical plants all over the world.”

relates to A Once-Iffy Form of Carbon Capture Is Getting a Lot Better
A rendering of Carbon Engineering’s large-scale air contactor design.
SOURCE: CARBON ENGINEERING

Furthermore, like all the other technologies, the costs are dropping dramatically from $550 a metric ton to $94.  And that’s today.  Think what continued advancements will develop!   The article describes this.  

In conclusion,

emissions reduction alone won’t be enough to stop the planet from heating up. Some emissions will continue for decades…It’s a race between chemistry and time. In 2015 the National Research Council issued a report estimating it could take 30 years before direct air capture removes 1 billion tons a year, and it might never get as high as 10 billion tons a year. For comparison, the combustion of oil, gas, and coal worldwide last year generated about 34 billion tons of carbon dioxide, according to the 2019 BP Statistical Review.

But hey, you have to start somewhere. “Time is against us,” says Global Thermostat’s Chichilnisky. “We need to be building plants.”

 

No one thing is going to save the planet.  We need to use every tool we can.  It now appears that there will be multiple technologies developed to reverse the buildup of CO2 and help us survive and keep a healthy planet capable of sustaining our civilization in some semblance of its current state.  This is just one encouraging example…

 

A Once-Iffy Form of Carbon Capture Is Getting a Lot Better

Companies appear to be working faster than expected to commercialize a controversial climate weapon.

Peter Coy

December 18, 2019

relates to A Once-Iffy Form of Carbon Capture Is Getting a Lot Better
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: 731; PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES

Halting global warming by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air strikes many people as a dumb idea. It’s complicated and energy-intensive. Why not focus on keeping more greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere in the first place—say, by installing more solar and wind power? Stanford engineering professor Mark Jacobson told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in early December that “carbon capture is the Theranos of the energy industry,” referring to the company that built false hopes for blood diagnostics

Some critics even argue that “direct air capture” of CO₂ is a form of greenwashing—i.e., putting a gloss of environmentalism on the dirty business of hydrocarbon production. They point to the involvement of oil companies Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Occidental Petroleum, which intend to use captured CO₂ to recover more oil from their fields.

BOTTOM LINE – Direct air capture is only one part of a kitchen sink approach to battling climate change, but the science and costs look a lot more promising than they did a few years ago.

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