{"id":63125,"date":"2022-07-23T11:46:06","date_gmt":"2022-07-23T16:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63125"},"modified":"2022-07-23T11:46:06","modified_gmt":"2022-07-23T16:46:06","slug":"carbon-reduction-plans-rely-on-tech-that-doesnt-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63125","title":{"rendered":"Carbon-Reduction Plans Rely on Tech That Doesn&#8217;t Exist"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"article-header container \">\n<div class=\"article-header__inner\">\n<h3 class=\"article-header__title t_article-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/carbon-reduction-plans-rely-on-tech-that-doesnt-exist\/\">Carbon-Reduction Plans Rely on Tech That Doesn&#8217;t Exist<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"t_article-subtitle\">Instead of scaling up renewable energy, researchers promote unproved ideas<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-header__divider\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.scientificamerican.com\/sciam\/cache\/file\/F6DCE78E-6DA9-4E9D-808931EF12852D4D_source.jpg?w=590&amp;h=800&amp;31E6AC33-35F0-49C6-A202DBD1C8A2CB0D\" alt=\"Carbon-Reduction Plans Rely on Tech That Doesn't Exist\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"article-progress\" data-behavior=\"article_progress\">\n<div class=\"article-grid-outer container \">\n<div class=\"article-grid\">\n<section class=\"article-grid__main\">\n<figure id=\"image-1\" class=\"article-media \" aria-label=\"media\"><figcaption class=\"t_caption\">Credit: Katie Louise Thomas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<div class=\"article-block article-text\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; margin: 30px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; overflow-wrap: break-word; font-size: 16px;\" data-behavior=\"newsletter_promo dfp_article_rendering\" data-dfp-adword=\"Advertisement\" data-newsletterpromo_article-text=\"&lt;p&gt;Sign up for &lt;em&gt;Scientific American&lt;\/em&gt;&amp;rsquo;s free newsletters.&lt;\/p&gt;\" data-newsletterpromo_article-image=\"https:\/\/static.scientificamerican.com\/sciam\/cache\/file\/4641809D-B8F1-41A3-9E5A87C21ADB2FD8_source.png\" data-newsletterpromo_article-button-text=\"Sign Up\" data-newsletterpromo_article-button-link=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/page\/newsletter-sign-up\/?origincode=2018_sciam_ArticlePromo_NewsletterSignUp\">\n<div class=\"mura-region mura-region-loose\">\n<div class=\"mura-region-local\">\n<p>At last year&#8217;s Glasgow COP26 meetings on the climate crisis, U.S. envoy and former U.S. secretary of state John Kerry stated that solutions to the climate crisis will involve \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2021\/may\/16\/half-of-emissions-cuts-will-come-from-future-tech-says-john-kerry\">technologies that we don&#8217;t yet have<\/a>\u201d but are supposedly on the way. Kerry&#8217;s optimism comes directly from scientists. You can read about these beliefs in the influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Integrated Assessment Models, created by researchers. These models present pathways to carbon reductions that may permit us to keep climate change below two degrees Celsius. They rely heavily on technologies that don&#8217;t yet exist, such as ways to store carbon in the ground safely, permanently and affordably.<\/p>\n<p>Stop and think about this for a moment. Science\u2014that is to say, Euro-American science\u2014has long been held as our model for rationality. Scientists frequently accuse those who reject their findings of being irrational. Yet depending on technologies that do not yet exist is irrational, a kind of magical thinking. That is a developmental stage kids are expected to outgrow. Imagine if I said I planned to build a home with materials that had not yet been invented or build a civilization on Mars without first figuring out how to get even one human being there. You&#8217;d likely consider me irrational, perhaps delusional. Yet this kind of thinking pervades plans for future decarbonization.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Carbon-Reduction Plans Rely on Tech That Doesn&#8217;t Exist Instead of scaling up renewable energy, researchers promote unproved ideas Credit: Katie Louise Thomas At last year&#8217;s Glasgow COP26 meetings on the climate crisis, U.S. envoy and former U.S. secretary of state John Kerry stated that solutions to the climate crisis will involve \u201ctechnologies that we don&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[112,1288,20557,4528,32237,786],"class_list":["post-63125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-carbon","tag-carbon-reduction","tag-decarbonisation","tag-naomi-oreskes","tag-scientific-american","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63126,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63125\/revisions\/63126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}