Phys.org November 25, 2022
The target to limit global warming to 1.5℃ this century remains but it is unlikely we’ll meet it. Attention is turning to other options for climate action, including large-scale carbon removal. Proponents argue carbon removal is required at a massive scale to avoid dangerous warming. However, successfully stripping carbon from the atmosphere at the scale our planet requires is a deeply uncertain prospect. The IPCC said in a report this year that large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal was “unavoidable” if the world is to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. According to the IPCC report in 2018 warming could be limited to 1.5℃ with significant emission reductions along with carbon removal of between 100–1,000 billion tonnes of CO₂ by 2100. For context, global annual energy emissions are now approximately 31 billion tonnes of CO₂. One key challenge is making the storage permanent…read more.