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Carbon Dioxide Removal

Engineered and natural methods that remove atmospheric CO2 and store it long-term, including mineralization, weathering, and land-based sinks.

Current stories

scienceOne report1 publisher

Danish model has a weakened AMOC regaining strength within decades of cooling

Danish Meteorological Institute researchers report that the AMOC starts strengthening within decades of global cooling in one climate model. Getting that cooling at 0.2C a decade would take carbon removal equal to current annual emissions.

Publishers:newscientist.com

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence45
scienceOne report1 publisher

KIN-commissioned report judges every available carbon removal technology unready for Dutch scale-up

Researchers led by the University of Twente conclude in a KIN-commissioned report that no available carbon removal technology is ready for Dutch scale-up. They want rules on land, water, energy and fair burden-sharing in place before any national push toward deployment.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence35
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap
Not scored
Incentives30
Confidence40
scienceOne report1 publisher

University of Tasmania researchers recast ocean alkalinity enhancement as a local carbon tool

Tasmanian researchers argue ocean alkalinity enhancement, once billed at gigatonnes a year, should serve local targets such as a city's wastewater emissions. They say the chemistry is predictable, but current models cannot yet handle delivery from point sources or its effects on local marine life.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence35
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives45
Confidence40
scienceConfirmed5 publishers

UNEP's route back to 1.5C rests on removing 10 gigatonnes of CO2 a year

UNEP now accepts the overshoot and describes a way back to 1.5C by 2100 that needs global emissions halved by 2035 and then removal running at a scale one outside researcher puts at 100,000 times today's.

Perspective Coverage

5 publishers
Builder
Builder 28%
Operator
Operator 53%
Investor
Investor 19%

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption6
Hype gap+45
Incentives50
Confidence60
scienceOne report1 publisher

Counting what happens without lime turns Mississippi Basin liming into a net CO2 sink

A Yale-led team writing in Nature argues that crushed limestone spread on farmland across 41 percent of the contiguous United States removes more CO2 than it releases, because the acid it neutralises would have released CO2 anyway.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption40
Hype gap+25
Incentives65
Confidence50
scienceOne report1 publisher

In IIASA's fair-share pathways, limiting transfers lowers 2040 fossil fuel use by 3% to 21%

A new IIASA-led study allocates a 2C carbon budget to world regions by responsibility and capability, then solves for the cheapest way to satisfy both. The transfers implied run from US$10.1 trillion to US$44.8 trillion.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence58
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives58
Confidence52
scienceOne report1 publisher

Salk takes a one-tonne-per-hectare soybean carbon estimate out of the lab and into Illinois

The Salk Institute has $18 million from the Bezos Earth Fund to measure in four states' fields what its lab work estimated at one metric ton of carbon dioxide per hectare a year, with the first results due this fall.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence38
Adoption8
Hype gap+16
Incentives68
Confidence52
scienceOne report1 publisher

Carbon-removal simulations end with the Southern Ocean releasing three times what it absorbed in 2001

A Science Advances team ran two idealized mitigation scenarios. Southern Ocean uptake weakened and then reversed in both, and in the negative-emissions run the globally averaged flux turned from sink to source in 2154.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+12
Incentives30
Confidence50
scienceOne report1 publisher

Southern Ocean feedbacks put a floor under atmospheric CO2 in a carbon-removal model

A new model has the world's largest carbon sink turning into a source once concentrations start falling, with two heat-driven feedbacks amplifying the outgassing for centuries after net zero and capping what removal delivers.

Publishers:newscientist.com

Reality

Evidence57
Adoption12
Hype gap+15
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence50
investOne report1 publisher

UNEP report: world faces decades-long overshoot of 1.5C before fossil fuel cuts and carbon removal bring it back down

The UN's first overshoot report puts warming at 1.4C now, 1.8C at the optimistic peak and 2.6C on current policy, which turns the climate trade from preventing a breach into paying for the return trip.

Publishers:fortune.com

Reality

Evidence62
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+15
Incentives55
Confidence58
scienceOne report1 publisher

Siderophore-engineered bacteria weather olivine 2.6 times faster in flowing seawater

Enhanced rock weathering's problem has always been rate rather than chemistry, and a Nature Biotechnology result attacks the rate directly. The 2.6-fold gain was measured on kilograms of mineral in a flow reactor.

Publishers:genengnews.com

Reality

Evidence52
Adoption12
Hype gap+44
Incentives58
Confidence50
productOne report1 publisher

Engineered ocean bacterium strips the rust that stalls carbon-capturing olivine

The 2.6-fold speedup came from deleting the microbe's own off switch. That leaves the hard part of this work to whoever writes the discharge permit for a basin full of it.

Reality

Evidence42
Adoption8
Hype gap+60
Incentives66
Confidence38
scienceOne report1 publisher

Cornell's engineered bacterium strips 75% of the magnesium out of olivine in 15 days

A modified Gluconobacter oxydans releases nickel and cobalt from ultramafic rock while parking carbon in magnesium oxalate, which holds two carbons per magnesium. It is still flask-scale work.

Publishers:phys.org

Reality

Evidence46
Adoption6
Hype gap+24
Incentives62
Confidence44