Research quantifies ‘gap’ in CO2 removal – a climate target with no viable plans?

Carbon cycle [image credit: NASA Earth Observatory]

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Having been told by the UN-IPCC that nature’s own carbon cycle isn’t up to the job any more, the manufactured problem for climate-obsessed governments seems to be the lack of any ‘carbon removal’ method that is (a) affordable and (b) effective, in terms of the scale of the supposed need. Such is the strange world of climate policy today.
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New research involving the University of East Anglia (UEA) suggests that countries’ current plans to remove CO2 from the atmosphere will not be enough to comply with the 1.5ºC warming limit set out under the Paris Agreement, says Phys.org.

Since 2010, the United Nations environmental organization UNEP has taken an annual measurement of the emissions gap—the difference between countries’ climate protection pledges and what is necessary to limit global heating to 1.5ºC, or at least below 2ºC [Talkshop comment – according to unproven IPCC climate theories].

The UNEP Emissions Gap Reports are clear: climate policy needs more ambition. This new study now explicitly applies this analytical concept to carbon dioxide removal (CDR)—the removal of the most important greenhouse gas, CO2, from the atmosphere.

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, was led by the Berlin-based Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) and involved an international team of scientists.

“In the Emissions Gap Reports, carbon removals are only accounted for indirectly,” said lead author Dr. William Lamb, of the MCC Applied Sustainability Science working group.

“After all, the usual benchmark for climate protection pledges is net emissions, i.e., emissions minus removals. We are now making transparent the specific ambition gap in scaling up removals.
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Lead author Dr. William Lamb said:
“This much is clear: without a rapid reduction in emissions towards zero, across all sectors, the 1.5ºC limit will not be met under any circumstances.”

Full article here.
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Image: Carbon cycle [credit: NASA Earth Observatory]