Comment by civilized
3 years ago
Regarding the trees, I hope they research that claim!
Regarding the concept that it's a distraction, I think that's folk behavioral psychology with an unhealthy dash of moralism. It needs to be substantiated with evidence before I take it seriously. We are talking about a real carbon mitigation research avenue that could have real benefits.
You mean you want quotes of people, who say climate change is not so bad, because we (will) have co2 removal tech?
I want evidence that there are people who wave away climate change because of proposed future CO2 removal tech, who would not wave away climate change if we stopped all research on CO2 removal tech.
I'm not trying to impose an impossible standard here. If you can show examples of something like this happening in contexts other than climate change, I'm open to that. What I don't accept is mere folk behavioral psychology speculation driving what an entire civilization does to mitigate a massive risk.
You really have not heard those people? Lucky you. Anecdotically there are plenty of them, and official sources (like politicians) are of course more careful in their wording, but the sentiment is exactly this.
"No real need to change the gasoline cars, as we will have CO2 removal."
I can probably dig up some ugly quotes, if you like. But those are not really my circles so I have nothing at hand.
(I should probably add, that I am from germany and loud cars and the making of them are important here. But I heard the same from US politicians)
"What I don't accept is mere folk behavioral psychology speculation driving what an entire civilization does to mitigate a massive risk. "
Well, how exactly could technical CO2 removal ever work?
We burn stuff for energy and then need even more energy to recapture the side products?
How would this be powered?
By the sun?
Solar panels still needs to be manufactured and deployed.
So if we would have all energy generation by regenerative sources AND we have overcapacity - then we could also extract some of the old released CO2, true, but have you done some calculations, how much area you would need, to power a significant amount of CO2 removal?
Lot's of it.
Forests on the other hand grow and expand by themself, once established and undisturbed, that's the beauty of them. They also help stabilizing local climate. And the real problem of climate change for lots of people will be desertification. So more Forests reduce CO2 AND provide actual better living conditions for the people affected. A lone symbolic CO2 removal on the other hand is really limited in its usefulness, while the coal plants are burning happily.
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