Tech
companies
think
they
can
reverse climate
change with
fancy
new
tools
to
take
carbon
dioxide
out
of
the
atmosphere.
But
new
research
throws
cold
water
on
the
idea
that
cooling
the
planet
after
it
has
already
heated
beyond
a
key
turning
point
can
avoid
serious
damage.
Much
of
the
toll
climate
change
takes
—
from
rising
seas
to
lost
homes
—
can’t
be
undone,
recent
research
published
in
the
journal
Nature
warns.
That
makes
it
all
the
more
urgent
for
governments
and
companies
with
climate
goals
to
slash
pollution
from
fossil
fuels
now,
rather
than
offsetting
or
capturing
their
greenhouse
gas
emissions
after
the
fact.
“Climate
change
comes
with
irreversible
consequences.”
“Climate
change
comes
with
irreversible
consequences.
Every
degree
of
warming,
or
every
point
of
a
degree
of
warming
...
comes
with
irreversible
consequences,”
Carl-Friedrich
Schleussner,
lead
author
of
the
paper
and head
of
the
integrated
climate
impacts
research
group
at
the
International
Institute
for
Applied
Systems
Analysis,
said
in
a
call
with
reporters
before
the
paper
was
published.
Startups
are
developing
a
whole
suite
of
technologies
to
try
to
help
big
polluters
capture
their
carbon
dioxide
emissions
—
from
filtering
CO2
out
of
the
air
or
ocean
to
trapping
CO2
in
rocks
or
concrete.
These
technologies
still
have
to
prove
whether
they’ll
be
able
to
scale
up
to
a
level
that
would
make
a
meaningful
impact
on
climate
change.
Tech
giants
like
Microsoft
and
Google
have
been
among
the
biggest
supporters
of
these
emerging
carbon
removal
tactics.
They’ve
made
commitments
to
eventually
reach
net
zero
or
net
negative
emissions,
but
their
carbon
footprints
have
grown
in
recent
years
as
they
expand
data
centers
for
AI.
And
there
isn’t
enough
renewable
energy
installed
yet
to
run
these
companies’
operations
without
still
generating
greenhouse
gas
emissions.
Increasingly,
tech
companies
are
inking
carbon
removal
deals
to
try
to
reverse
the
impact
their
pollution
has
had
on
the
climate.
Globally,
emissions
need
to
reach
net
zero
around
2050
to
keep
the
planet
from
heating
up
much
more
than
it
already
has.
Nearly
every
nation
on
Earth
has
signed
onto
the
Paris
climate
agreement
of
stopping
global
average
temperatures
from
exceeding
roughly
1.5
degrees
Celsius
above
temperatures
before
the
Industrial
Revolution.
The
world
is
quickly
approaching
that
threshold
— having
warmed
by
around
1.2C
already,
which
is
supercharging
climate-related
disasters
like
monster
storms
and
wildfires.
One
of
the
hopes
with
carbon
removal
is
that
it
can
potentially
reverse
climate
change,
bringing
temperatures
back
down
if
we
overshoot
that
1.5-degree
target.
But
things
won’t
just
go
back
to
normal,
the
new
research
conducted
by
30
scientists
shows.
Melting
ice
from
glaciers
would
continue
to
raise
sea
levels
“for
centuries
to
millennia,”
for
example,
a
phenomenon
that
has
already
pushed
people
from
their
homes
along
vulnerable
coastlines.
And
even
if
the
globe’s
average
temperature
comes
back
down,
it’s
hard
to
say
exactly
what
outcome
to
expect
from
region
to
region.
The
recent
devastation
caused
by
hurricanes
Helene
and
Milton
—
disasters
exacerbated
by
climate
change
—
shows
what’s
at
stake
if
we
wait
to
take
action.
The
number
of
lives
and
homes
lost
to
these
kinds
of
catastrophes
keeps
growing
the
longer
we
fail
to
stop
climate
change.
And
repeated
disasters
take
a
compounding
toll
on
the
communities
that
are
most
at
risk.
Florida
barely
had
any
time
to
recuperate
from
Hurricane
Helene
before
Milton
hit
less
than
two
weeks
later.
Overshooting
climate
targets
“entails
deeply
ethical
questions
of
how
much
additional
climate-related
loss
and
damage
people,
especially
those
in
low-income
countries,
would
need
to
endure,”
the
paper
says.
There’s
also
the
possibility
that
the
planet
could
heat
up
more
than
anticipated.
Scientists
calculate
carbon
“budgets”
to
figure
out
how
much
carbon
dioxide
humans
can
release
before
missing
climate
targets
like
holding
warming
at
1.5
degrees.
But
those
estimates
aren’t
exact.
The
pollution
“budget”
we
think
we
have
left
could,
in
reality,
lead
to
more
severe
climate
change
than
expected.
In
that
case,
we
might
also
need
more
carbon
dioxide
removal
than
expected
to
stabilize
the
climate.
But
scaling
up
carbon
removal
to
that
level
might
not
be
feasible.
If
greenhouse
gas
emissions
raise
temperatures
higher
than
expected,
it
could
take
several
hundred
gigatons
of
carbon
removal
to
prevent
more
severe
climate
impacts,
according
to
the
paper.
“Although
this
concept
is
interesting, it
assumes
that
there
will
be
a
reserve
of
[carbon
dioxide
removal]
capacity
that
can
be
deployed
rapidly
world-wide
—
an
assumption
that
I
would
consider
overly
optimistic,”
Nadine
Mengis,
a
research
group
lead at
the
GEOMAR
Helmholtz
Centre
for
Ocean
Research,
writes
in
a
separate
Nature
article
commenting
on
the
research.
Existing
facilities
that
can
filter
carbon
dioxide
out
of
the
air
only
have
the
capacity
to
capture 0.01
million
metric
tons
of
CO2
globally
today,
costing
companies
like
Microsoft
as
much
as
$600
per
ton
of
CO2.
That’s
very
little
capacity
with
a
very
high
price
tag.
“We
cannot
squander
carbon
dioxide
removal
on
offsetting
emissions
we
have
the
ability
to
avoid,”
study
coauthor
Gaurav
Ganti,
a
research
analyst
at
Climate
Analytics,
said
in
a
press
release.
The
priority
needs
to
be
preventing
pollution
now
instead
of
cleaning
it
up
later.
(Originally posted by Justine Calma)
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