I have been talking about this for years. This was not a difficult conclusion to reach after looking at data going as far back as 800K years (atmospheric sampling from ice cores).<p>I’ll go farther than the author and say that the idea of man-made carbon capture at a planetary scale is, well, laughable. We can’t do it. And we are wasting valuable time and money going after this fantasy.<p>Quoting:<p>“Humanity has never removed an atmospheric pollutant at a global, continental or, even, regional scale — we have only ever shut down the source and let nature do the clearing up. This is the case for chlorofluorocarbons and stratospheric ozone destruction, for sulfur dioxide and acid rain, and for sulfur and nitrogen oxides and photochemical smog. We must be prepared for CDR to be a failure, leaving us to rely on the environment to stabilize atmospheric CO2 over thousands of years. This is another argument for rapid decarbonization.”<p>The truth of the matter is slowly starting to come out, as researchers are forced to work within the bounds of reality and a select few dare speak up.<p>Most might miss the significance of the last portion of that paragraph. I’ll spell it out: If humanity evaporated from this planet tomorrow (this being the most extreme case of decarbonization), it would take in the order of 50K years for atmospheric CO2 to drop by 100ppm.<p>Religion is great, but not when it comes to science.<p>We have turned this climate change thing into a religion.<p>Disagree?<p>OK.<p>What decarbonization method is more extreme than all of humanity and everything we built disappearing tomorrow?<p>We know what would happen in that case with a great deal of confidence. Minimum, 50K years for 100 ppm.<p>To do better one has to propose something massively more extreme than humanity leaving this planet. This is particularly true if the claim is being able to reduce atmospheric CO2 by 100 ppm in a few dozen years.<p>Nobody has and nobody can.<p>The only reason this isn’t laughed off the stage is because politicians can use it to be elected and people, companies and universities are making billions.
Sometimes I think we lost definitively once “net zero” became a popular phrase, it’s worse than the 20 years we lost by replacing “global warming” with “climate change”.