1/ I was tracing out how much carbon we should remove to get a nice climate by 2100, & found that we should realistically remove all we've emitted based cumulative emissions listed in the Global Carbon Project and wrote about it in my preprint paper: doi.org/10.1002/essoar…
2/ The paper says if we act fast enough (i.e. before setting off more tipping points), we just need to remove all the CO₂ we've emitted. I ended up seeing in the experiments, was we must also stop using fossil fuels, to get to about <0.1ºC by 2100. bit.ly/cdrmexprj
3/ The 15 tipping elements are outlined: doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1… & quantified in the supplemental materials. Additionally, an older tipping point was highlighted by @DrJamesEHansen which is that we should definitely not exceed 450 ppm. doi.org/10.2174/187428…
4/ These combined, means we need to hit net-zero fast enough to pull us away from hitting 450 ppm.
How fast do we need to move?
If you extrapolate the Keeling curve, you hit 450 by mid-2030s. I did add a slight decrease ≈2028.
(I pulled the latest Keeling data as of 17/09/2020.)
5/ What to do? Something like what's in the yellow line?
The yellow line reaches 90% of net-zero by 2030 *globally*. This assumes 450 ppm is the major tipping point, and there isn't one before.
See the thread 👇:
6/ How does this compare with the IMAGE SSP1-1.9? SSP1-1.9 moves faster and starts at a lower set of emissions by 2030. We've emitted too much to do exactly IMAGE SSP 1.9, we have to remove more and faster to make up for lost time.
7/ My yellow line does avoid 450 ppm.
If we back that up by immediately deploying Carbon Dioxide Removal, Carbon Capture Storage or Use, & Nature-Based Solutions in the next year, we then can start pulling down gigatonnes of carbon. ...
8/ If we build up the CDR/CCU/NBS solutions over this decade we ought to have enough tech to scale to store 10s of gigatonnes per year. If we reach about 30-36 GtCO₂ per year and continue this till 2100, we will remove the accumulated carbon.
9/ Today, yearly carbon from emissions are about 2% of the accumulated carbon since 1751. Atmospheric CO₂ concentration today is 62% of total FF emissions, the other 38% are in the ocean, & turning it more acidic. ...
10/ When we remove emissions from the air, the ocean will give it's emissions back to the atmosphere. This is why my calculations to remove emissions are 38% larger than most. What CO₂ remove is what we've emitted since 1751, assuming we don't set off more tipping elements. ...
11/ The # of emissions moves based on what we emit. Right now, it's 1652.5 GtCO₂ (based off last years fossil fuel emissions). And we also need to stop using fossil fuels (inc. methane, NOx, N2O, SOx, SF6...)
12/ How do we do this? Take the deepest cuts from @rewiringamerica & @EnergyInnovLLC. Do it globally, such that we hit 90% by 2030.
In rough, globally decarbonize the electric grid & seek to cut coal, & gas. & oil down to 10% by 2030. At the same time, we need to get busy ...
13/ ... building CDR/CCU/NBS & all other negative emissions technologies &process improvements to get as low as we can go. The upshot of all this hard work is we lessen the chances of having more fires that end up smoking out entire coastlines.
14/ If we combine DAC/geothermal/and every solution we have we could end up with something like this:
bit.ly/nco2bal
& bonus, solutions over 250 MtCO₂ are at (NASA) TRL 9.
15/ This field is known as airmining (@airminers), & needs to scale! They need engineers, scientists, specializing in materials sci or eng, chem, chemical eng, chem physics, physical chem, physics, mechanical eng, bioeng, biochem, biophys, architecture design, entrepreneurship...
16/ If we keep pulling down carbon, we'll remove enough to get down to 2010 levels of warming & then continue further to those last seen in the late 1700/early 1800 by 2100. This will take something on the order of 70 years of 30-36GtCO₂ removed per year, & end at 2100.
17/ Our home is worth it.
Vote to #ActOnClimate, by telling the UN. Simply like the interior thread 👉
And consider a STEM or supporting career in CDR/DAC & airmining. We get 10 years to scale this field to become mainstream!
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