Net Zero

[spot]

This five-year successor conference to the Paris Climate Accord, coming up next month in Glasgow of all places. COP26.

Everyone is talking about "Net Zero" as the ultimate goal, possibly suffixed by "2050".

Net Zero, as far as I can see, involves driving atmospheric carbon dioxide levels higher and higher until they reach a maximum plateau, after which the level reached will be maintained indefinitely.

I don't see any ambition to then reduce the maximum plateau level. That would be called Net Negative.

Google search shows 6 million hits for Net Zero, and 75,000 hits for Net Negative. That's a ratio of 80:1

I don't see how Net Zero is capable of reversing the climate change anticipated by 2050, or that the result of climate change by 2050 is at all desirable.

Why has Net Zero been chosen as a target?

If anyone thinks I'm posting Fake News, please inform the thread by saying so.

[LarsMac]

This five-year successor conference to the Paris Climate Accord, coming up next month in Glasgow of all places. COP26.

Everyone is talking about "Net Zero" as the ultimate goal, possibly suffixed by "2050".

Net Zero, as far as I can see, involves driving atmospheric carbon dioxide levels higher and higher until they reach a maximum plateau, after which the level reached will be maintained indefinitely.

I don't see any ambition to then reduce the maximum plateau level. That would be called Net Negative.

Google search shows 6 million hits for Net Zero, and 75,000 hits for Net Negative. That's a ratio of 80:1

I don't see how Net Zero is capable of reversing the climate change anticipated by 2050, or that the result of climate change by 2050 is at all desirable.

Why has Net Zero been chosen as a target?

If anyone thinks I'm posting Fake News, please inform the thread by saying so.

I have not been following much of the global discussion, lately, but from where I am sitting, Net Zero would be a vast improvement to where we now find ourselves.
Once There, we can begin to work on reducing the CO2 and Methane emissions further. Assuming we survive that long.

[spot]

I have not been following much of the global discussion, lately, but from where I am sitting, Net Zero would be a vast improvement to where we now find ourselves.
Once There, we can begin to work on reducing the CO2 and Methane emissions further. Assuming we survive that long.

Will you be content to have today's weather patterns or would you prefer to go back to the state of, say, 1980?

Today's are far more mild than you'll see when Net Zero arrives. Weather conditions under Net Zero will be wild, sea levels will continue to rise, long-term migrant refugees will be counted in hundreds of millions. It would take at least as long again under Net Negative to bring atmospheric carbon back to today's concentrations, and longer still to get back to your preferred baseline, 1980 or otherwise. You're talking about a century at least to get back there with the most optimistic assumptions.

I do not like or trust what we have now. I will like even less what we'll have under Net Zero. I think Net Zero, or stabilized peak carbon as a better term, will be far worse than today. I don't believe Net Zero should be a target. It's a complacent target. So far it's the only target on offer by the world's government agencies or the pressure groups.

I'm not sure a world consensus will even want to reduce below stabilized peak carbon. Imagine, for example, the whole of Siberia becoming the most fertile crop growing region on the planet, or most of Greenland. Would you expect Russia or the European Union to give up an advantage like that? Any country can maintain Net Zero indefinitely once it's reached, if everyone else is trying to bring atmospheric carbon concentrations down - all the rogue country needs to do is start burning enough coal again. And nobody today is committing to ever reduce from that stable Net Zero peak, or even thinking of doing so. Nobody, in short, is saying that Net Zero is actually an undesirable state to aim for.

[LarsMac]

Well, unless I'm missing something, "Net Zero" means a no increase in the Carbon Dioxide and Methane emissions, year over year.
While, given the enormous amount of those gases being dumped into the atmosphere now, it is going to be a significant problem, it is a step in the right direction.
The goal still must move along, and and once we can claim that we have stemmed the increases in emissions, then we must immediately raise the bar to go for a net reduction in gas emissions immediately.
Even if we were to completely halt emissions of those gases, we are pretty much screwed for a number of decades before we can see a real benefit to reducing "Greenhouse gas" emissions.
The damage has been done. It is going to be a lot worse before it gets better. We old farts will likely not live to see the benefits of any reductions that world accomplishes.

[FourPart]

As I see it, nder the current plan Net Zero is not only unachieveable, but will make matters worse.

The greatest contributor to Global Emissions is with the generation of Electricity, closely followed by Road Haulage.
If everything moves over to Electricity usage then the demand for Electrical Generation increases & accordingly, so do Emissions.
Having worked in the Domestic Energy industry, I know for certain how expensive these Heat Pumps are to operate. Economy 7 Storage Heaters are bad enough, but Heat Pumps are far worse - typically about 30% more expensive to run.
Most Electricity is still generated by the use of Fossil Fuels. This works by the heating of water into Steam to power the Turbines. The amount of of Electricity is based on projected usage on a Stand-By basis. It is then transported along the Power Cables, where it loses about 10% of output from Electrical Resistance. It then reaches the Substation to be stepped down, where it loses about another 20% of remaining output. It is then converted back into Heat Energy by the end user.
On the other hand, if the end user had a Gas Boiler they would only be using the amount of Gas required On Demand at the point of use, thus gaining maximum efficiency.

The point is that the Government is projecting the Emissions savings onto the point of usage when that is not the problem. The REAL way to look at things would be to look at the amount of Emissions created in order to generate sufficient Power for a set number of users who are all Electric & then compare that with the amount of Emissions created to provide power for the same number of users who are using Gas directly to heat their homes at the point of use.

Furthermore, on the environmental point of view one also has to consider the damge done to the environment with the mining of the ores required for the manufacture of batteries. This is already proving to be unsustainable in the manufacture of Phone Batteries. The ores are strip mined & the toxic runoffs then find their way into the Water Table & consequently into the Rivers & Oceans, thus killing off Flora & Fauna along the way, to say nothing about the carcinogenic effects it can have on humans who come into contact with the toxins.

[LarsMac]

Well, I've been looking for, and failing to find a clear definition of "Net Zero" in the context of emission of "Greenhouse Gases" for a while now.
I find a lot of wild ideas, that seem to focus on carbon emissions by various industry sectors.
It seems unclear what they actually mean by the notion.

But, with a deadline for beginning this "Net Zero" being 2050, it seems like expecting an Alcoholic to pledge to stop Drinking when he is placed on Dialysis.

By 2050, I suspect the Ice caps will have melted and most of our forests will have burned away.

I guess it might still be better than going on the way we are doing things today, but I fear we have already crossed that line.

Just the average exhalation of the human population now dumps nearly 8 Billion Kg of CO2 into the Atmosphere in a day.
and millions of vehicles dumping billions of Kg every hour
And that is not even in the top ten of CO2 producers.
We're basically fucked.

[LarsMac]

OK, reading more, and think i've got it.
So, they somehow think that they can actually reach a zero output of carbon emission, at some point. They plan to be able to absorb Carbon gasses back from the atmosphere and find a way of storing it. ???
Interesting. I guess that we can pack away frozen CO2, somewhere. Perhaps we can capture Methane and re-freeze it?
Eject the stuff into Space? Probably not.

Spot is right. at the rate we are currently increasing CO2 output, in 30 years we will have reached a far too high level of CO2 in the atmosphere, and will likely not bae able to sustain a living environment.

And I don't see the population of the planet suddenly agreeing on anything that will simply halt such emissions in the next few years.

Maybe we should have colonized Venus, after all. It may soon have a much nicer atmosphere than Earth.

[spot]

I'm not convinced that "reach a zero output of carbon emission" is as clear as it needs to be. There will still be carbon emissions. To get to Net Zero, the removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere has to balance the emissions, so that the concentration neither increases nor decreases. It's the refusal to start decreasing that I find shocking.

[LarsMac]

I'm not convinced that "reach a zero output of carbon emission" is as clear as it needs to be. There will still be carbon emissions. To get to Net Zero, the removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere has to balance the emissions, so that the concentration neither increases nor decreases. It's the refusal to start decreasing that I find shocking.

Well, what I found is, it seems that corporate entities could simply put up money to somehow offset their overages in emissions, and somehow that money could be applied to various schemes to help offset the extra Carbon that finds its way into the atmosphere.

It seems to me we are just creating yet another bureaucratic money hole.

[Bryn Mawr]

I'm not convinced that "reach a zero output of carbon emission" is as clear as it needs to be. There will still be carbon emissions. To get to Net Zero, the removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere has to balance the emissions, so that the concentration neither increases nor decreases. It's the refusal to start decreasing that I find shocking.

Is it a refusal to start decreasing or an admission that we will not be in a position to start decreasing for a long time an setting an achievable intermediate target?

Absolute minimum requirement is to stop the increase, then look at undoing the damage and starting to decrease.

[spot]

PM says people to be given more time to switch gas boilers to heat pumps, and ban on sale of new petrol and diesel cars delayed

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/li ... itics-live

The Prime Minister finished announcing his major policy shift on responses to climate change around five minutes ago.

I asked my 12 year old what his initial impressions were. "It seems even our leader can procrastinate", he said.

I thought I'd pass that on.

[LarsMac]

I'm not convinced that "reach a zero output of carbon emission" is as clear as it needs to be. There will still be carbon emissions. To get to Net Zero, the removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere has to balance the emissions, so that the concentration neither increases nor decreases. It's the refusal to start decreasing that I find shocking.

Is it a refusal to start decreasing or an admission that we will not be in a position to start decreasing for a long time an setting an achievable intermediate target?

Absolute minimum requirement is to stop the increase, then look at undoing the damage and starting to decrease.

Well, we may have actually reached something resembling a milestone.
For the last few years we seem to have leveled off global consumption at something under 100 million barrels per day.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/265 ... s-per-day/
Just stopping the increase in consumption might be a positive step.
I'm trying to be positive. Help me out here.

[spot]

Well, we may have actually reached something resembling a milestone.
For the last few years we seem to have leveled off global consumption at something under 100 million barrels per day.

I'll plot the world variation by time of absolute CO2 equivalent atmospheric anthropogenic addition, from the most authoritative and credible source I can find. The lines are annual and 5-year average increase or decrease in the absolute figure.

Getting to grips with the graph, look at the Depression of the 1930s. Look at 1946 and the end of World War 2. Then from 1950 industrial growth runs smoothly to the oil crash of 1972. There's a permanent drop in the rate of increase in annual production at that point. There's another around 2010, thirteen years ago. I think the 2010 fall is permanent and represents the start of the world climate change debate taking effect.

The second graph is the actual CO2 added annually. The description of the data is "Annual total production-based emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂), excluding land-use change, measured in million tonnes. This is based on territorial emissions, which do not account for emissions embedded in traded goods." The fall in rate of increase in the 5-year rolling average by 2013 is visible.

Note that both graphs relate to anthropogenic CO2 added to the existing background CO2 level. That's why the CO2 starts at 0 megatonnes.

Net Zero is defined as the third graph, CO2 parts per million, reaching a plateau and not increasing any further as time goes by. That's what the words "Net Zero" mean.

To do that, the second graph has to first reach a maximum, then turn down and go low enough that it matches the amount of anthropogenic CO2 disappearing annually from the atmosphere. The objective is to manage that by 2050. The test will be that the first graph dips negative to pull the amount released each year downward. The dip for Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020 is very evident but even that only reaches 0% change on the 5-year average for one year - that means for a single five-year period we added the same amount of CO2 on average as each of the previous 4 years added. None of that indicates the slightest reduction of the amount of CO2 being added to the atmosphere in any year on the graph.

Those first two graphs indicate that Net Zero is never going to happen without additional change, not in thirty years nor in three hundred. The first two graphs show that the rate of production continues to go up with no beginnings of a plateau much less a downturn. The third graph, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, nowhere shows any hint of a slowdown. That graph shows the rate of growth increasing along its entire length, that's why it not only goes up but the curve bends up too.

Even if Net Zero is achieved, the downside is that the maximum atmospheric CO2 concentration, having been reached, is never going to go away. For the maximum concentration to fall, the aim has to be Net Negative. At the moment, the objective is to set the planet on a simmer setting and let it cook through, losing biodiversity constantly. To start to reduce loss of diversity requires Net Negative combined with releasing a large fraction of farmed land and sea back to its original use, supporting wildlife. The first two graphs show that far from moving toward Net Zero, we continue to move further and further away from it.

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For reference, here's my code...

Code: Select all

#! /usr/bin/python3
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

df = pd.read_csv('co2_concentration.csv')
world_data = df
start_year = world_data['year'].min()
end_year = world_data['year'].max()
window_size = 5
world_data['smoothed_co2'] = world_data['co2'].rolling(window=window_size).mean()

plt.figure(figsize=(14, 7))
plt.plot(world_data['year'], world_data['co2'], marker='o', linestyle='-', label='Original')
plt.plot(world_data['year'], world_data['smoothed_co2'], marker='', linestyle='-', color='red', label=f'{window_size}-Year Moving Average')
plt.xticks([year for year in range(start_year, end_year + 1, 10)])
plt.title('ForumGarden: CO2 atmospheric concentration ppm, Mauna Loa. Data: ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_annmean_mlo.txt')
plt.xlabel('Year')
plt.ylabel('CO2')
plt.grid(True, which='both', linestyle='--', linewidth=0.5)
plt.legend()
plt.tight_layout()
plt.show()

[LarsMac]

Well, thanks. I feel so much better, now.
Basically, we are probably doomed. The world our grandchildren will pass on to their own grandkids will likely be a far less pleasant place. And the resistance to the necessary changes dashes hope at nearly every turn.
Though the conversation is changing, slightly. High school children are at least talking about the things that must be done. But as long as the pre-millennial generations are running things, the changes necessary to begin truly slowing down the CO2 production will be resisted with vigor. The US will likely see a major turn to the Right next year, and any hope of actual progress will be stifled.

[Bryn Mawr]

Well, thanks. I feel so much better, now.
Basically, we are probably doomed. The world our grandchildren will pass on to their own grandkids will likely be a far less pleasant place. And the resistance to the necessary changes dashes hope at nearly every turn.
Though the conversation is changing, slightly. High school children are at least talking about the things that must be done. But as long as the pre-millennial generations are running things, the changes necessary to begin truly slowing down the CO2 production will be resisted with vigor. The US will likely see a major turn to the Right next year, and any hope of actual progress will be stifled.

Do you think the election already lost?

[spot]

Well, thanks. I feel so much better, now.
Basically, we are probably doomed. The world our grandchildren will pass on to their own grandkids will likely be a far less pleasant place. And the resistance to the necessary changes dashes hope at nearly every turn.
Though the conversation is changing, slightly. High school children are at least talking about the things that must be done. But as long as the pre-millennial generations are running things, the changes necessary to begin truly slowing down the CO2 production will be resisted with vigor. The US will likely see a major turn to the Right next year, and any hope of actual progress will be stifled.

Children are, as you say, talking, and that's a good thing.

I know I'm going to take a lot of screen room for the next two posts but screen room is free, I'm on topic, and these graphs seem not to be easy to find on the Internet.

Some countries are bulldozing ahead burning every fossil fuel they can get their hands on, and some are on target for 2050. This post is all the good guys, and the next post will be all the bad guys. A third post will be the chaps who are good but for entirely the wrong reasons.

Here's a summary. The good are Belgium Bulgaria Czechia European_Union_(27) France Germany Greece Hungary International_transport Italy Japan Mexico Netherlands Romania South_Africa South_America South_Korea Spain Sweden United_Kingdom United_States.

The bad, totally disregarding the necessity of 2050, turning up at COP meetings and saying how much they agree, and then doing nothing at all except worsening the situation, are Africa Algeria Argentina Asia Australia Bangladesh Brazil Canada Chile China Colombia Egypt India Indonesia Iran Iraq Kazakhstan Lower-middle-income_countries Low-income_countries Malaysia Nigeria Oceania Pakistan Philippines Qatar Saudi_Arabia Taiwan Thailand Turkey United_Arab_Emirates Upper-middle-income_countries Uzbekistan Vietnam - the entire world with the exception of the good guys.

The odd ones are pushing out less CO2e than at their maximum - Belarus Kuwait North_Korea Poland Russia Ukraine Venezuela - but not because they choose to. It's because of sanctions, or not recovering from the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1990, or (Kuwait) Iraq burning their oilfield after Gulf 1, or (Ukraine) screwing up their foreign relations.

For the good guys, the first two thirds of the trip to 2050 is the easier, it consists of retaining their industrial production capacity while converting to renewable energy production. The final third will be sequestering a lot of fossil fuel which has to be used regardless, to fly aircraft or run the armed forces or the space program, all the things that renewables can't deal with. Maybe someone will work out how to do all of that with electrically-generated hydrogen and create that with renewable sources, in which case sequestering isn't needed in this specific area (though it will be, big-time, for other major reasons).

In general, you can see a dive in CO2e output in Eastern Europe when the Soviet Union collapsed, then you see accession to the European Union. For all the graphs, a political decision to aim at 2050 for Net Zero is followed by a straight, short, stubby line beginning the journey in pretty much the right direction. The purple bit it the required path from now until the deadline.

So, with that out of the way, here is a half-mile of graphs. I can't make them smaller while retaining the information, and I do want them visible on the Internet.

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[spot]

Here's the odd ones mentioned above. Sanctions pushed Venezuela off a cliff, it might be the first to get to Net Zero at this rate but it's not actually trying to get there.

These few are because of sanctions, or not recovering from the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1990, or (Kuwait) Iraq burning their oilfield after Gulf 1, or (Ukraine) screwing up their foreign relations.

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[spot]

Finally, here are the irredeemable rogue countries making no effort whatever to convert to renewable resources.

The one at the beginning is the world as a whole - these bad guys are swamping the efforts of those which are trying.

Look at Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Look at India, Bangladesh, Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan.

Look at Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan and particularly China which really ought to know better and get on board - the deliberate choice of these five high-tech innovating countries to perpetuate massive CO2e production is shameful, and they produce 40% of all worldwide CO2e emissions just on their own.

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[spot]

I'll offer one other category, micro-nations with interesting patterns.

Afghanistan shows the consequence of hosting Americans for twenty years. That's around a thousand tons of CO2e per year per enlisted occupier, what on earth were they smoking.

Cambodia has no such excuse but it is the worst example I can find of self-serving disregard for reality.

Angola shows what an African country can do when it makes its mind up to join in. Barbados does the same for the West Indies and Israel for being Israel.

Bahrain, on the other hand, is absolutely typical of the Middle Eastern oil states. To quote Max Bialystok, When you got it, flaunt it. Show your assets, let them know you're proud. Your goodies you must push, stick out your chest, shake your tush, when you got it, shout it out loud.

Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland are interesting for capping pollution so early.

Moldova is a double whammy, first the fall of the Soviet Union and then total anarchic criminal corruption destroying the economy. They're already 90% toward Net Zero without lifting a finger.

Syria and Yemen show what a foreign-funded civil war - or being repeatedly bombed by Saudi Arabia - does to a country.

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[spot]

I will, if I may, offer my conclusions from this country-by-country exercise.

I have, I think, demonstrated there are some countries which have in practice shown a will to reach Net Zero by 2050. I don't believe any will get there significantly before 2050, and I don't think they'll get all the way with just renewables, but I do think they'll implement carbon sequestration on such a scale that they will achieve their goal.

I also think there are 120 countries which have in practice shown no interest whatever in even starting to try. If we freeze their current emissions at the latest figure and keep it from inflating for the next 27 years, which I regard as optimistic, we can work out how far short they will fall.

There's also one anomaly of a country. China. One consequence of it not yet having started to reduce emissions is that it's putting very large resources - and I rarely use the world "very" - into providing the world with renewable energy hardware. Without Chinese production, no country on earth would be making any significant progress in reducing their carbon footprint. China is a special case. I have no reason to doubt that China is both capable and sufficiently far-sighted to achieve Net Zero by 2050, it's one of the advantages of a command economy and China's political masters have the power to make it happen.

On those assumptions I note the following figures.

43% of all present emission rates will reach Net Zero on time from those countries currently on course.
29% of all present emission rates will also reach Net Zero on time from China.
28% of all present emission rates will still be ongoing from the 120 countries currently making no effort to implement any scheme for reduction.

My conclusion is that the countries which eliminate 72% of global emissions, by a combination of renewable energy sources and sequestration, will also have to carry the burden of sequestering that ongoing 28% from the rogue nations.

If an estimate for the route to Net Zero for the 72% is by 2/3rds renewable and 1/3rd sequestration, that makes 24% of all global emissions (theirs) and 28% (from the rogues) which must be sequestered, which is 52% in total. Which, given the vagueness of the future, is best described as a half.

In summary (a phrase I'm rapidly learning from ChatGPT), an annual mass of half the current world emissions will have to be annually sequestered after 2050 by the group of nations which have taken steps to achieve Net Zero. That's the size of the sequestering industry which needs to be in place in 2050 for Net Zero to be implemented, to run alongside all the renewable energy hardware which will have been put in place by then: 50-50.

At an absolute minimum this amounts to18 gigatonnes of CO2e annually replaced by renewable energy, and 18 gigtonnes of CO2e annually removed from the environment by sequestration.

So far, the world has no mass sequestration industry and none demonstrated at any credible scale. We have 27 years to implement it fully.

Other than that, everything is peachy.

Which countries are rogue? Would anyone like a list?

I assert, from the graphs, that up until 2022 the following countries have put no remediation of CO2e production into effect at all. Absolutely none. In order of the magnitude of their current CO2e emissions, the are:

India
Iran
Saudi_Arabia
South_Korea
Indonesia
Canada
Turkey
Australia
Vietnam
Thailand
Taiwan
Malaysia
Egypt
Pakistan
United_Arab_Emirates
Algeria
Philippines
Nigeria
Qatar
Bangladesh
Chile
Turkmenistan
Oman
Austria
Morocco
Libya
Peru
Mongolia
Ecuador
Azerbaijan
Bahrain
New_Zealand
Myanmar
Tunisia
Dominican_Republic
Lebanon
Jordan
Bolivia
Sri_Lanka
Sudan
Laos
Guatemala
Kenya
Ghana
Ethiopia
Cambodia
Nepal
Tanzania
Senegal
Panama
Cote_d'Ivoire
Afghanistan
Georgia
Honduras
Brunei
Tajikistan
Paraguay
Costa_Rica
Papua_New_Guinea
Zambia
Benin
Congo
Botswana
El_Salvador
Armenia
Uganda
New_Caledonia
Burkina_Faso
Mauritius
Guinea
Madagascar
Namibia
Mali
Mauritania
Iceland
Palestine
Haiti
Guyana
Suriname
Niger
Montenegro
Chad
Maldives
Rwanda
Malawi
Bhutan
Fiji
Sierra_Leone
French_Polynesia
Eritrea
East_Timor
Burundi
Belize
Cape_Verde
Gambia
Seychelles
Saint_Lucia
Turks_and_Caicos_Islands
Guinea-Bissau
Grenada
Comoros
Samoa
Saint_Kitts_and_Nevis
Palau
Central_African_Republic
Vanuatu
Tonga
Marshall_Islands
Sao_Tome_and_Principe
Cook_Islands
Kiribati
Saint_Helena
Niue

- and the four in bold are notably shamefully behaved.

[spot]

After 2050? If all of the preceding post turns out to be roughly correct?

The CO2e concentration in the atmosphere, which is driving global warming, will reach a maximum and stay at that maximum level indefinitely.

The effects of global warming will have reached their worst and will stay that way at their worst indefinitely. They will be a great deal worse than anything we have yet seen, there are 27 years' worth of additional CO2e still being added before the level stabilizes and the effect on climate change will be dramatic.

Both those statements assume that the non-anthropogenic processes which give rise to the background CO2e don't rise because of positive feedback effects (like for example losing the reflectivity of the Arctic Sea Ice in summer). I've made no effort to include that problem. I think it will be a problem, but nothing like so big a problem as it would be if we fail to reach and maintain the 2050 Net Zero target. This year's Arctic Sea Ice minimum was the second or third worst on record, and the Antarctic Sea Ice maximum was the lowest ever by an astonishing margin, so feedback is starting to show.

In order to reduce the effects of global warming back to acceptable levels, additional sequestration on top of what has been described will be needed, a process called Net Negative.

Good luck with that bit.

Here's a bonus list for reeding this far. These are the rogue countries with CO2e per year greater than 5 tonnes per person, again in descending order. The ones which clearly have the money to get their collective finger out and act now instead of freeloading.

Qatar
Bahrain
Brunei
United_Arab_Emirates
New_Caledonia
Saudi_Arabia
Oman
Australia
Canada
Mongolia
South_Korea
Turkmenistan
Taiwan
Palau
Iceland
Libya
Iran
Malaysia
Turks_and_Caicos_Islands
Austria
New_Zealand
Seychelles
Turkey

[Bryn Mawr]

As far as I can see the possibility of sequestering eighteen billion tonnes of atmospheric CO2 per year is approximately zero. By my calculations, if the output was pure carbon, would be a cube a kilometre on a side and the volume of air that would have to be processed would be over two hundred trillion cubic metres at sea level and 20C.

I would like to propose an alternative, select the points in the world’s oceans where the deep sea waters rise to the surface and convert all of the carbonate ions to a form that will precipitate, then let the currents distribute the resultant solids. This will result n a reduced carbonate level in the surface water and therefore a greater uptake of atmospheric CO2 by the ocean.

[spot]

I note the following Guardian news item:

The jet set: 200 celebrities’ aircraft have flown for combined total of 11 years since 2022

Jets belonging to entertainers, CEOs, oligarchs and billionaires produce equivalent to emissions of almost 40,000 Britons

Private jets belonging to 200 celebrities, CEOs, oligarchs and billionaires have spent a combined total of 11 years in the air since the start of 2022.

The carbon footprint of all those flights – a jaw-dropping 44,739 journeys – would be the equivalent of the total emissions of almost 40,000 Britons.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... since-2022

I'm delighted to be told the problem of aircraft owned by the super-rich is so mind-numbingly trivial that it could be totally offset annually merely by persuading 40,000 Britons to stop flying that year. That is stunningly good news. The problems of aircraft emissions caused by 200 worldwide influencers' aircraft is, we are told, less than one thousandth as significant as the emissions of all Britons en masse.

I commiserate with the rich folks involved. Assuming every one of those flights has carried an average of one wealth-burdened owner, the owners average one return flight a week in their own personal aircraft. I find that estimate quite believable and I sympathize with every bubble-headed super-rich personage who equates that level of numbness with good living.

All I now need to discover is a reasonable definition of news, as understood by the UK's dominant quality newspaper.

The Guardian should try to discover the equivalent number of flights taken by flag rank officers for comparison, though I doubt those chaps pay for their flights.