Agreed! When are we going to learn that natural systems are far more complex than we think?! Plans to tinker with these systems as if they were some great clockwork machine should have died out with the ‘modern’ enlightenment movement that invented this thinking. Let’s focus on returning carbon emissions to levels within the capacity of the natural carbon cycle to absorb and sequester. If we blow those efforts, maybe we can consider a more drastic solution, but at that point, I’d be even more concerned we’d just be trading one massive problem for another.

I also like Hansen’s approach to coal with CCS. As I’ve said before here and in other venues, I don’t think we should be coming out strongly against ‘clean’ coal (coal+CCS). Rather, we should focus our attention on gaining a moratorium on coal plants that do not sequester their emissions and remain ambivalent about coal+CCS. Leave it as an option on the table, invest some money in demonstrating whether or not it is feasible and safe (i.e. will the carbon stay down, and in what kinds of geologic formations) and work on ensuring we close the externalities that make coal look cheaper than it truly is. Then, if coal+CCS is still a viable option and the private sector wants to finance and build it, let them go for it. I agree with Hansen that it’s likely that renewable energy and particularly increased energy efficiency will seem like far more attractive options, at least over the next several decades, so I don’t think we should waste much energy or political capital fighting coal+CCS.

Also, given the scale of the problem (which Brad and R Margolis both point out), I’m reluctant to take any low-carbon tools off the table. We may just need to get a little bit dirty to solve the climate crisis…

With cheaper energy storage you might be able to do it with renewables, but there had better be a backup plan (fusion? thorium?) if the technology does not pan out in time.

I agree with Amy and Richard that a GMO in the ocean does not sound any more technically practical or politically feasible than the options available now.

Perhaps political feasibility for dealing with climate change will increase once the public accepts the science. It sounds like folks agree carbon is causing warming, but they are reluctant to accept the scientific consensus on the scale of the effects.

If our mitigation is too little, too late it is partly because of people who misunderstand the economics and role of coal power. Coal power is neither 1/6th the cost of Oil and gas to produce electricity nor as cheap as it is made out to be. Coal is cheap because the companies that burn it don’t pay the costs of the environmental, social, or health costs of the fuel. Worldwide electricity demand growth figures for decades have been over-inflated and assume business-as-usual with no accounting for efficiency or a worldwide response to global warming.

Also the idea of India following China in producing similar numbers of coal plants is just silly. Circumstances are very different between the two countries.

Your basic assumption is not that renewable energy, efficiency, design, and economic change cannot mitigate emissions, just that it is politically unfeasible.

How is tinkering with the oceans, Earth’s Life Support system, with the injection of a massively invasive GMO organism (that we don’t even have) that would probably destroy most of the life in the oceans, be more politically feasible than a plan that would save consumers money, produce enormous quantities of domestic employment, improve public health, and reduce our consumption of foreign oil from unstable and hostile regimes?

I am not advocating coal, but it is 1/6th the cost of oil or natural gas to produce energy. Worldwide demand for electricity is expected to double by 2030. Coal is a stable, domestic energy source, especially for developing nations like China and India, whose per capita emissions are far lower than developed nations. China is adding dirty coal-fired plants at the rate of Britain’s entire power grid each year! India will probably follow suit soon. The US generates half of it’s electricity from coal. Are you beginning to see how improbable a moritorium on new dirty coal-fired plants is (and a rapid phase out of existing ones)?

As Dr Hansen says, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology is decades away, the cost to build and operate will be prohibitive, and it is doubtful wheither old dirty coal-fired plants can be retrofitted for CCS.

By the way, one factor that hardly ever is considered is global dimming-it take about 20 years for a new coal-fired plant to cause global warming, because the pollution the coal plant puts into the air also dims the sun, counteracting the effect of the CO2 it also pollutes. Whereas the CO2 stays in the air hundreds of years, the global dimming pollution falls out of the sky within a couple of months. If you stop that coal pollution, we could see a dramatic jump in temperatures immediately, some say as high as 2C!

Instead, I suggest removing the CO2 from the air using the low cost, highly scalable, and technically feasible method called “biosequestration.” I suggest improving nature’s ability to remove the CO2 using genetic engineering-perhaps seeding a GMO into the ocean.

The high cost of completely rebuilding our energy infrastructure is causing politically grid-lock. It is unreasonable to expect mankind to so drastically cut their emissions so fast as to avoid either abrupt climate change or runaway global warming. A moritorium on dirty coal-fired plants is a great example of the difficulty. Besides, in a warming world, natural emissions are expected to increase, while nature’s ability to remove the CO2 from the air is expected to decrease, plus developing nations are expected to continue increasing their emissions-any feasible cuts we make will be overwhelmed.

Biosequestration could save billions of lives and trillions of dollars, whereas the mitigation stategy of cutting emissions will very likely be too little, too late. Dr Hansen is correct when he states that any feasible startegy to rescue the planet must include a method of removing the excess CO2 from the air. I hope we don’t put that carbon from vast coal reserves into the air, but I wouldn’t want to bet the planet on it.