[ExI] Elon Musk’s $100 Million Carbon Capture Push

[John Grigg]

"Even if the world rapidly ramps up climate action, most experts agree
that cutting
emissions is no longer enough to avert disaster. We also need to invest in
pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere, and that effort just got a major boost
after Elon Musk announced a $100 million
<https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/elon-musk-offer-100-million-prize-best-carbon-capture-tech-rcna234>
prize
<https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/elon-musk-offer-100-million-prize-best-carbon-capture-tech-rcna234>
for the technology.

For years, talk of technological solutions to directly counteract global
warming
<https://singularityhub.com/2021/01/28/scientists-want-to-fight-climate-change-by-spraying-dust-into-space-to-block-the-sun/>,
known as geoengineering
<https://singularityhub.com/2019/02/03/will-these-massive-geoengineering-projects-fix-the-earth-or-break-it-more/>,
were taboo among climate scientists. The topic was seen as a “moral hazard”
<https://slate.com/technology/2016/01/geoengineering-might-give-people-an-excuse-to-ignore-climate-changes-causes.html>
because it was thought that the promise of a technical fix for global
warming could distract from efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.

But the sluggish global response to climate change has forced a
recalculation. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now
estimates that we will need to be pulling somewhere in the range of three
to seven <https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/> gigatons of CO2
<https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/> out of the atmosphere every year by 2050, and
up to 15 gigatons by the end of the century if we want to meet the goal of
limiting warming to 1.5° C."

https://singularityhub.com/2021/02/01/elon-musks-100-million-push-for-carbon-capture/
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