Climate analysis: “CO₂ vacuum cleaner” – artificially cooling the earth just isn’t a utopia | EUROtoday

The director of the famend Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) believes it’s potential that within the battle in opposition to local weather change it is going to be potential to artificially cool the earth within the second half of the century. “There is an opportunity to reverse the trend of global warming by – in addition to rapidly reducing emissions towards zero – also targeting CO_₂-Extraction from the atmosphere,” mentioned PIK director Ottmar Edenhofer to the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”.

One device for that is the so-called CO_₂-Vacuum cleaners, i.e. giant filter methods. They suck in air, extract local weather gasoline, which is then directed into the earth’s crust and turns into stone, defined Edenhofer. “There are also other options, such as growing fast-growing biomass to burn with CO_₂“Deposition or the application of crushed minerals to soils to accelerate weathering,” the local weather scientist added. “I am convinced that the CO_₂-Removal and storage can still protect you from the very worst.”

That’s why Edenhofer urged the Western world to construct an trade for CO₂ extraction and storage. “We can support European emissions trading through trading in certificates for CO_₂supplement extraction and storage,” he mentioned. “I also see the industrialized countries as having a moral duty here. Our emissions from the past have caused climate problems for the world, and the damage is most serious in the global south,” defined the scientist within the “NOZ”. “If we go through CO_₂-Reducing the temperature again would only be fair. We can and should create a planetary garbage disposal on a large scale to get the crap out of the atmosphere that we have dumped into it.”

The PIK director emphasised that there would solely be an actual probability of overcoming the local weather disaster if emissions had been really diminished to nearly zero. “If we don’t succeed, and we don’t manage to do so, we will release huge amounts of CO into the atmosphere in the second half of the century_₂ “Then we will have to come to terms with an earth that is hostile to humans in large regions,” warned Edenhofer.

The tempo that politics is setting remains to be removed from being proper. “The 1.5 degree target has become unattainable by direct means, the only way is an ‘overshoot’ and subsequent adjustment,” mentioned the PIK director. “Without a more ambitious climate policy, the world is heading towards warming of around three degrees by the end of the century. The consequences – also for Europe – would be simply fatal. The state of knowledge no longer leaves any doubt about this.”