The consequences of this delusion have been profound. Citizens have been left with the impression that a technological pathway to halt the climate crisis is in the works when no such solution exist
Calling Carney’s Carbon Capture Bluff
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2026/07/27/Calling-Carney-Carbon-Capture-Bluff/
6 Comments
fake_meows@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 26d
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz traces the durable appeal of CCUS to government and bankers. It began when Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientists developed computer models that made net-zero emissions look possible with the widespread deployment of carbon capture and storage. The scientists either didn’t realize or didn’t care that governments could not afford to go all in on carbon capture. And politicians grasped at this loophole in the basic case that we must limit fossil fuel use to stave off calamity.
The consequences of this delusion have been profound. Citizens have been left with the impression that a technological pathway to halt the climate crisis is in the works when no such solution exists, writes Fressoz.
He urges: “Accepting the impossibility of net-zero targets is essential to freeing climate expertise from misplaced optimism and technological illusions — and to opening new, more grounded lines of inquiry.”
collapse_already@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 22d
Here is a related article:
https://projects.propublica.org/why-carbon-capture-cant-solve-climate-change/
Maybe it should be its own post.
fake_meows@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 22d
Nice article, I agree that it should be posted!
collapse_already@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 22d
Requiring a technology to be extant, affordable, and politically viable seems like a bare minimum for inclusion in a climate model used for policy planning. We only need like 50,000 more of that $4B Icelandic geothermally powered carbon capture plant to reach net zero (pretending for a moment that it actually works which it doesn't). I am sure that $200T is ready to be spent just as soon as Trump can figure out how to funnel the money into Kushner's bank account. And people think I am insane for predicting widespread crop failure, water wars, heat deaths, and all of the other inevitable horrors that we are currently speed running our way towards.
fake_meows@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 22d
In the IPCC reports they basically needed certain figures for the rate of emissions numbers to even work, so one thing they did was to propose that we could keep on the status quo pathway...
According to the scenario, we were at least 30% overshooting 2° of warming by a certain date.
However the plan always was to invent an atmosphere scrubber IN THE FUTURE and take the CO2 back out so quickly that it didn't have time to increase the temperature.
So basically the mainstream scenario ALWAYS involved inventing a science fiction CO2 removal tech, AND banking on the fact that it would work extremely quickly at scale.
Therefore no need to panic.
The whole "net zero" idea is that we need to keep on growing food and making concrete and so on, but on the other side of the ledger we will delete that carbon using magical tech. This is the mainstream idea. It's completely psychotic.
collapse_already@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 22d
We're here on the Internet agreeing with each other wondering why the obvious isn't obvious. I'm basically at the point where I feel like the species as a whole deserves what is coming for us, but it pisses me off that the suffering will absolutely start with the least deserving of the punishment.