Jerry Brown's plan for "negative" CO2 emissions is based on "science fiction"

• California Democratic Governor Jerry Brown ordered the state to "maintain negative emissions" after 2045.
• However, the very idea of ​​"negative emissions" is based on "magic thinking," depending on exports.
• It's "like a lightsaber, incredible but not real," said a negative emissions technology expert.

California Democratic Governor Jerry Brown issued a decree on Monday calling for "carbon neutrality" by 2045, then directing the state to "maintain net negative emissions thereafter."

Brown's decree came the same day he signed a law requiring California to obtain 100% of its electricity from renewable energy sources and "zero carbon" energy sources. Brown is also preparing to host a summit of global warming activists on Wednesday.

"California is committed to doing all that is necessary to address the existential threat of climate change," Brown said Monday. "But do not be fooled, California and the rest of the world have miles to go before we reach zero carbon emissions."

Brown is right in a sense. California has "miles to go" to satisfy Brown's decree, as it relies on "magic thinking" and "science fiction," according to experts.

Existing executive orders are asking California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050 and the law requires to cut emissions by 40% by 2030 Models of nations.

What Brown has ordered is not only to reduce emissions, but to suck more greenhouse gases than human activities in his state – not just for electricity. Brown's order applies to the entire economy, including transportation and agriculture.

What does negative emissions mean in practice? Well, no one really knows it, but experts have advanced ideas for sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Brown's office said the negative emissions would be achieved through "an increase in carbon sequestration in forests, soils and other natural landscapes," according to his press release. But how would it work? (RELATED: A new report details how non-profit organizations channel millions to democratic governors to continue their global warming agenda)

Scientists have also proposed technologies to literally suck carbon dioxide from the air and store it underground or in the ocean. Experts also suggested reforestation, ocean fertilization, and what is known as improved weathering.

The improved weathering is the rather hilarious idea that one can use rocks to store CO2 emissions. In theory, rocks would react with CO2 and water to form an alkaline solution that flows into the ocean.

However, all these proposals remain "a magical thought" at this stage, according to an editorial of the journal Nature.

Improved aging, for example, would require "an area about the size of Texas … American farmland each year" simply to "absorb 13% of annual global emissions from agriculture," according to Nature .

Another technology proposed by the IPCC is Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). This essentially removes CO2 through growing plants, which are then burned for energy. Emissions are then captured and stored underground.

Of course, BECCS is another magical solution that has been incorporated into IPCC models of what needs to be done to limit future global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado, recently published an article on the problems associated with the use of BECCS by the UN to sell the Paris climate agreement.

"The elimination of carbon dioxide on a large scale is science fiction – like a lightsaber, incredible but not real," wrote Pielke.

"Yet, BECCS plays a very real role in the arena of climate policy," wrote Pielke, "by helping to maintain the climate policy envelope and avoid making the extremely difficult carbon dioxide work in the world." Atmosphere differently from what we have since the 1980s and 1990s. "

"If nothing else, the full implementation of the BECCS" on a scale "would require the use of a global area equal to one and a half times the size of India, wrote Pielke.

Indeed, the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Academies concluded in early 2018 that negative emissions technologies "offer only a limited realistic potential for removing carbon from the atmosphere and not at all. the scale envisaged in certain climate scenarios ".

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