As part of that, the Commission began work this summer on a carbon removal strategy, and for the first time is seeking views on possible options to suck up carbon, including “intensive” efforts to plant new trees, using forests and croplands, and “direct air capture” of carbon. It’s also testing public views on various carbon capture and storage (CSS) technologies, where carbon is caught, often from industrial smokestacks, and sequestered underground. [...]
Whatever the worries about diverting effort from cutting fossil fuel use, the Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) argued in early July that there is no other viable option. “Carbon dioxide removal is … no longer a choice, but a necessity for limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” it wrote in a commentary to accompany a paper in Nature Climate Change. [...]
Some scientists talk of putting mirrors in space to deflect the rays of the sun; spraying sulfur high in the atmosphere to seed clouds; or dumping iron into the sea to foster growth of carbon-absorbing algae.
But those ideas of overt climate manipulation are still far from the mainstream policy agenda. In early August, Germany decided that ocean seeding will only be allowed for research purposes and under strict conditions.
No comments:
Post a Comment