Sucking Up CO2 Will Cost Hundreds of Trillions

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608293/sucking-up-co2-will-cost-hundreds-of-trillions/

Sucking Up CO2 Will Cost Hundreds of Trillions

Study finds that if the world doesn’t begin cutting emissions soon, the price of capturing and storing carbon dioxide will soar.

by James Temple | July 19, 2017

Start saving your money, kids.

Unless we start cutting carbon dioxide emissions soon, it’s going to cost today’s young people as much as $535 trillion to clean up the atmosphere by 2100, according to a study published on Tuesday evening. By way of context, that’s around seven times the size of the entire global economy.

In contrast, if the world starts reducing emissions 6 percent a year by 2021, it will only cost $8 to $18.5 trillion to extract enough carbon dioxide to avoid the worst dangers of climate change, or $100 billion per year on the low end.

It isn’t news that lowering greenhouse-gas emissions by switching to clean energy sources will ultimately be far less expensive and risky than any unproven technological means of sucking up carbon dioxide. But the study, led by the well-known climate researcher James Hansen, a professor at the Columbia University Earth Institute, sought hard figures to add scientific weight to a closely watched case in which 21 young plaintiffs have sued the federal government for failing to adequately combat climate change. Earlier this year, a federal judge in Oregon ruled that the case could move forward.

…

[defacto7]

1. The difference is actually

The difference between human survival into the 22nd century vs. a quick extinction.

We certainly are the most expensive creature and we're not very cost effective.

[Not Ruth]

2. By 2100, nearly everyone around today will be dead

What happens if we simply stop having children, just in case? Seems sensible until we know how things will turn out.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. What happens if we simply stop having children (until 2100?)

That would virtually assure the extinction of the human race. (i.e. only a minority would still be alive, and they would be beyond child rearing.)

However, the question is moot. There is no way that the entire human race would agree not to reproduce.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Press Release: Removing CO2 from the air required to safeguard children's future

http://www.egu.eu/news/347/removing-co2-from-the-air-required-to-safeguard-childrens-future/

Press Release: Removing CO2 from the air required to safeguard children’s future

18 July 2017

Reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is not enough to limit global warming to a level that wouldn’t risk young people’s future, according to a new study by a team of scientists who say we need negative emissions. Measures such as reforestation could accomplish much of the needed CO2 removal from the atmosphere, but continued high fossil fuel emissions would demand expensive technological solutions to extract CO2 and prevent dangerous warming. The study is published today in Earth System Dynamics, a journal of the European Geosciences Union.

“Continued high fossil fuel emissions would saddle young people with a massive, expensive cleanup problem and growing deleterious climate impacts, which should provide incentive and obligation for governments to alter energy policies without further delay,” says lead-author James Hansen, a professor at the Columbia University Earth Institute in the US, formerly at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The team estimates that today’s young people may have to spend up to 500 trillion euros on technologies to extract carbon dioxide from the air, if high emissions continue.

In contrast, if rapid phase-down of fossil fuels starts soon, CO2 could be removed from the atmosphere at relatively low cost. Better agricultural and forestry practices, including reforestation and improving soils, would then be able to achieve most of the CO2 extraction needed to prevent global-warming’s most dangerous consequences.

…

The Hansen-led team says that atmospheric CO2 should be reduced to less than 350 parts per million (ppm) from its present level of about 400 ppm. Global average temperature reached +1.3°C above pre-industrial levels in 2016 and will increase at least a few tenths of a degree more during the next few decades because of the delayed response to past increases in CO2 and other gases. Reduction of CO2 below 350 ppm will cause temperature to peak and slowly decrease to about +1°C later this century. This goal requires negative CO2 emissions, that is, extracting CO2 from the air, in addition to rapid phase-down of fossil fuel emissions.

…

…