A team of scientists from Harvard University and the company Carbon Engineering announced on Thursday that they have found a method to cheaply and directly pull carbon-dioxide pollution out of the atmosphere.
If their technique is successfully implemented at scale, it could transform how humanity thinks about the problem of climate change. It could give people a decisive new tool in the race against a warming planet, but could also unsettle the issue’s delicate politics, making it all the harder for society to adapt.
Second, if this miracle solution works, then why would “society” need to “adapt” to a problem that no longer exists?
Let us read further:
Their research seems almost to smuggle technologies out of the realm of science fiction and into the real. It suggests that people will soon be able to produce gasoline and jet fuel from little more than limestone, hydrogen, and air. It hints at the eventual construction of a vast, industrial-scale network of carbon scrubbers, capable of removing greenhouse gases directly from the atmosphere.
Hmm. “Seems”. “Suggests”. That really inspires confidence.
Above all, the new technique is noteworthy because it promises to remove carbon dioxide cheaply. As recently as 2011, a panel of experts estimated that it would cost at least $600 to remove a metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The new paper says it can remove the same ton for as little as $94, and for no more than $232. At those rates, it would cost between $1 and $2.50 to remove the carbon dioxide released by burning a gallon of gasoline in a modern car.
Now wait just a second. A gallon of gas in the U.S. costs between $2.50 and $3.
In what way, exactly, does increasing that cost by between 30 per cent and nearly 100 per cent constitute any kind of bargain basement solution?
“If these costs are real, it is an important result,” said Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “This opens up the possibility that we could stabilize the climate for affordable amounts of money without changing the entire energy system or changing everyone’s behavior.”
Says Ken Caldeira. That neutral, utterly dispassionate authority on energy issues responsible for this tweet:
Is natural gas better than coal? Is heroin better than cocaine? #climate#energy
The co-author of a – subsequently debunked – 2017 paper insisting that global warming was going to be even worse than we thought?
Yeah. Sure. He hasn’t got a dog in this fight.
This is rubbish. Arrant rubbish. The kind of politicised, junk-science drivel you would of course expect The Atlantic to run.
What really depresses me is when it gets taken, even half seriously, by the kind of people you don’t associate with doctrinaire leftist stupidity and ignorance.
“This opens up the possibility that we could stabilize the climate for affordable amounts of money without changing the entire energy system or changing everyone’s behavior.” https://t.co/jdWlkMJSPI
I applaud the sentiment of that recent Wall Street Journal commentary by Steven Hayward arguing that “Climate change has run its course.”
(Hayward’s line was that political scares go in five phases and that, with “global warming,” we’ve reached the final one: “prolonged limbo—a twilight realm of lesser attention or spasmodic recurrences of interest” — aka overwhelming boredom).
But it seems to me that the damage is already done. If we’ve reached the stage where scientists propose an insane and eye-watering expensive scheme to suck a beneficial, plant-feeding trace gas out of the atmosphere and the response is not, “Wait! Why is that necessary???” but rather, “Sounds great! When can we start?” then the world has become a madhouse and may be beyond salvation.
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