Now, maybe we can
It looks like our efforts to reduce carbon emissions may not happen in time as planned. Countries are not actually executing their commitments, although they definitely state their committed. One of the many efforts to fix human induced climate change is carbon capture. The idea is to extract the carbon from the air, emitted by the burning of fossil fuels.
As stated on the climate NASA government web site “In 1900, almost 2 billion metric tons of CO2 were released due to fossil fuel usage. By 1960, that number had more than quadrupled to over 9 billion metric tons.” In 2014, the world emitted 35 billion metric tons of CO2. What is a “metric ton” you ask. A metric ton is 1000 kg, or 2204.62 lbs. (pounds).
This plot was copied from the climate.NASA.gov website without permission. I hope they don’t mind.
For more info see these sites:
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3020/how-much-carbon-dioxide-are-we-emitting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ton
Earth’s energy budget is a balance between the energy the earth receives from the sun and the energy released into outer space. When the incoming and outgoing energies are in balance the climate system will be relatively stable. Of course, there are changing earth orbital cycles and other factors that change earth’s weather. We are in balance when the CO2 is around 260ppm (that’s 0.026% CO2 in our atmosphere). For all of our human existence, the CO2 level has been below 300ppm.
If our atmosphere did not have CO2 in the air, we would go into another ice age. We need the CO2 to absorb the suns energy and keep our planet warm. Unfortunately, we have too much. The earth now has a net energy gain of 0.6 Watts for every square meter. We are not in balance and we are warming.
Essentially, we need to stop emitting CO2 and remove what we have added since the start of the industrial revolution. We need to bring the concentrations down to 260 ppm in order to stop global warming.
Fortunately, there are methods to extract CO2 from the air. One of these is called Direct Air Capture or DAC. It seems to be the front runner On June 15, 2021 the Department of Energy gave 12 million to fund 6 R&D projects to advance the Direct Air Capture with the goal of being carbon neutral by 2050. This is when we extract the same amount of CO2 that we put in.
See these sites for more detailed information:
https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-12-million-direct-air-capture-technology
https://news.asu.edu/20210702-carbon-collect-mechanicaltree-selected-us-department-energy-award
The Department of Energy’s project goals is to build three commercial scale passive carbon capture facilities designed to capture 100,000 metric tons of CO2 per year are being built. We emit 35 billion metric tons of CO2 yearly. So, you ask, how many of these facilities do we need? Dividing we get 35X10^9 / (1×10^5/3) = 1.05 million facilities. And that’s just to break even from the yearly emissions alone, not the accumulated CO2 emitted since the start of the industrial revolution.
I don’t know how much each facility will cost, but clearly, we need to reduce and stop our emissions and start carbon capture, ASAP. A million facilities, is not that bad. We have vast empty areas that aren’t being used, like the Sahara Desert and the Pacific Ocean to name a few. This may sound depressing, but this is by far the best news we have to address our climate change challenges. Press on, we can get there.
MIT Climate Portal: