12/2/2017 How Much CO2 Will the World Have to Remove from the Atmosphere?

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HowMuchCO2WilltheWorldHavetoRemovefromthe
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Scientists increasingly agree that the world may need negative emissions to prevent catastrophic
warming

ByChelseaHarvey,ClimateWireonNovember30,2017

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12/2/2017 How Much CO2 Will the World Have to Remove from the Atmosphere? - Scientic American

Adebateisbrewingamongresearchersaboutremovingcarbondioxidefromtheatmosphere.Credit:
NASA

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Scientists increasingly agree that it might be impossible to cap global temperatures at

1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levelswithout first overshooting it and then
using technology to siphon carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, causing
temperatures to fall again.

The problem is there are no rules under the Paris climate accord, or anywhere else,
for how badly the target can be missed and what techniques might be used to lower
the planet's temperatures. And that's a big weakness in the global fight against
climate change, some experts argue.

"Without clearly defined constraints to overshoot, politicians cannot fail and thus
cannot be held accountable for insufficient action," say climate experts Oliver Geden
of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and Andreas Lschel of
the University of Mnster in Germany in acommentpublished this week inNature
Geoscience.

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12/2/2017 How Much CO2 Will the World Have to Remove from the Atmosphere? - Scientic American

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In other words, global temperatures could continue to rise without any clear stopping
point, and policymakers could still claim that they will be brought back within
acceptable limits eventually. Without clearly outlined rules and action plans for
overshoot scenarios, there's no exact definition of what constitutes a failure to meet
global climate goalswhich makes it harder to plan for the type of action needed for
success, they argue.

Although rarely mentioned by policymakers, "negative emissions" technologythe

idea of sucking carbon dioxide out of the air to bring global temperatures downis
essentially built into the models that scientists use to explore different climate
scenarios. Meeting a 1.5-degree temperature target almost certainly relies on it, even
with aggressive emissions reduction efforts starting now. And many modeling
scenarios assume that a 2-degree threshold may require negative emissions, although
it might be possible to reach that goal with heavy-handed mitigation efforts.

A major problem is that the technology isn't developed enough to be useful on a

global scale. In fact, scientists disagree on exactly what methods could be used. Some
have suggested a future in which machines are used to chemically scrub carbon
dioxide out of the sky. But while some projects have demonstrated this type of

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12/2/2017 How Much CO2 Will the World Have to Remove from the Atmosphere? - Scientic American

technology on a small scale, it's nowhere near ready to be deployed at the levels
required.

Other experts have proposed combining bioenergy with carbon capture and storage
technology, an approach nicknamed "BECCS." Under this strategy, trees would soak
up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow and then be harvested for fuel.
The bioenergy power plants they feed would be equipped with carbon-capturing
technology to trap the emissions.

Even this approach may have its shortcomings. Multiple studies in the last year or
two have indicated that it's not feasible to grow enough trees, even on plantations.
Inone such paper, published earlier this year inScience, the authors recommend that
scientists and policymakers seriously manage their expectations about negative
emissions and avoid "cavalier assumptions of future technological breakthroughs."

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Developing negative emissions technology to the point that it's actually capable of
meeting global climate goals is essential for temperature overshoot scenarios to be
considered viable. But in their new paper, Geden and Lschel say policymakers

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12/2/2017 How Much CO2 Will the World Have to Remove from the Atmosphere? - Scientic American

generally "refrain from any political commitment to developing and deploying

negative emissions technologies" at the scale needed for success.

And the lack of urgency may be tied to the fact that there are no clearly defined goals
for when or how the technology should be deployed. What is the last year by which
global temperatures should be back below a 1.5- or 2-degree threshold? How
acceptable is it to overshoot either goal?

Setting these limits is essential, not just for developing negative emission
technologies, but for motivating political action in the first place, Geden and Lschel
say. "Otherwise, climate policymakers, and even more so other branches of
governments, could easily miss the urgent need for drastic mitigation, because they
are under the impression that even inadequate action will never result in political
failure," they write.

Geden and Lschel point to several clear parameters for overshoot scenarios,
including setting a date for temperature stabilization at the end of the century: "If
targets agreed upon in 2015 cannot be met by 2100 then it should be called failure,"
they write. And they also say that future reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change should exclude any overshoot scenarios associated with the 2-degree
threshold, another effort at keeping global climate goals strict and their required
action clearly defined.

Still, there are plenty of other concerns about overshoot scenarios, even with their
limits clearly outlined. Both the 1.5- and 2-degree goals were established to avoid
triggering catastrophic climate effects in the future. But Geden and Lschel point out
that it's "unclear what the overshoot effects would be on issues such as sea-level rise,
ice-sheet loss or thawing permafrost, and whether such impacts might be reversible
when global mean surface temperature falls below the threshold again."

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12/2/2017 How Much CO2 Will the World Have to Remove from the Atmosphere? - Scientic American

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And they're not the only ones to caution against potential unintended consequences
of overshoot scenarios. Other scientists have warned about the dangers of assuming
that negative emissions will solve the climate problem.

In apaperpublished last year inScience, climate experts Glen Peters of the Center for
International Climate and Environmental Research and Kevin Anderson of the
University of Manchester in the United Kingdom warn, "If we rely on these
[technologies] and they are not deployed or are unsuccessful at removing CO2 from
the atmosphere at the levels assumed, society will be locked into a high-temperature
pathway."

Instead, they say, policymakers should proceed with their climate mitigation efforts
as though negative emissions technology will fail. Then, if it proves useful in the
future, it will only add to an already aggressive global climate action plan.

The same spirit of caution is presented in this week's comment. Overshoot scenarios
may be a useful way of looking at the global climate problem if their limitations are
understood, the authors suggest. That could prevent global climate targets from
becoming "mere benchmarks that can be crossed for extended periods of time."

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12/2/2017 How Much CO2 Will the World Have to Remove from the Atmosphere? - Scientic American

ReprintedfromClimatewirewithpermissionfromE&ENews.E&Eprovidesdaily
coverageofessentialenergyandenvironmentalnewsatwww.eenews.net.

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ChelseaHarvey

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