Be Prepared

Be prepared

Be very prepared

Be very very prepared

1. Get Co₂ Out Of The Air

• Not undoing combustion: CO₂ → C + O₂.

• Instead:

  • Sequester CO₂ into underground reservoirs.

  • Speed up natural sequestration:

    • Rock weathering.

    • Ocean CO₂ absorption.

Social Cost Of Carbon

• Logically, sequestration cost is the upper limit to IAMS’ Social Cost of Carbon (SCC).

• Of course, there is no world government.

  • SCC and sequestration cost are both intellectually interesting,

  • but practically irrelevant for the real world.

• What would $20/tCO₂ say about the world’s free-rider problem?

  • When do you think it will change?

Lumber

Cheapest Sequestration Process:

• Foresting with lumber harvesting.

• Local benefits of trees on water, air, etc.

• As cheap as $10/tCO₂!

  • on the margin, even cheaper, and

  • probably for the first 1 GtCO₂/year.

• Nevertheless, not pursued at large scale.

  • Instead, poor farmers burn Brazilian forest.

Environmentalists won’t like tree-felling.

Lumber Farming

• Needs more research:

  • What trees where for most efficiency?

  • How much sequestration at what cost?

    • Is 20 GtCO₂ feasible at $40/tCO₂?

  • Local benefits can justify local subsidies.

• Easy US suggestion:

  • Grant free Federal shrub lands to purpose.

  • Tie Brazilian and Indonesian trade to satellite-measured forestation.

Other Processes

• Algae are potentially even more efficient.

  • Yet perhaps not as economical.

  • Needs more research first.

• Ocean liming

  • Crush and shovel chalk into ocean.

  • Needs more research first.

• Sequester on top of coal smokestack?

  • Maybe yes. Maybe never. Cost?

Crazy Ideas — Why?

• Industrial processes (e.g., Climeworks)

  • Wrestling towards $200/tCO₂.

  • Business Model: Sell carbon credits to environmentalists.

  • What?

• Enhanced rock weathering

  • Wrestling towards $150/tCO₂.

• Research only if cost can go to <$50/tCO₂.

  • (I don’t mean alternative cement research.)

Usually, I am for research, but this seems still-born.

2. Change Solar Radiation

(Reduces warming only, not ocean acidification.)

1. Star Trek Space Shield?

   • Nonsense, too expensive.

2. Sulfur particles into stratosphere.

   • Feasible, cheap, think 1% of CO₂ removal;

   • circulates for 2-5 years.

3. Cloud Seeding.

   • Potentially cheaper yet, shorter-term,

   • but not much known.

Radiation Management Problems

• Dangerous unknown unknowns,

  • but modest interventions can and should be researched.

• We don’t even know for sure if it works

  • though volcanoes have suggested it would.

• Many possible unintended consequences,

  • but so does the current alternative:

    global warming.

Global Cooling

• We may also need solar radiation capture on demand:

  • i.e., heating up earth, e.g., reducing albedo.

  • Think Asteroid Apophis 99942.

• We don’t know enough about this either!

• Much less urgent for now.

Be Prepared

• Solar radiation management is dangerous!

  • It is also potentially the only way to stop a run-away loop (e.g., Permafrost Methane melting) in its tracks,

  • to buy humanity some time.

• Do not deploy!

  • But research and understand,

  • and think about acceptable use scenarios.

Conclusion

• Subsidize lumber farming.

• Research intelligent sequestration.

• Research solar radiation management.