Photo: Ryan T. Flickr Creative Commons.

Be careful what you wish for as this summary of a new scientific study reminds us:

Could carbon capture fuel our carbon addiction?

by Prachi Patel

Until we can shake off our reliance on fossil fuels, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere could slow down global warming. But carbon capture and other negative-emission technologies will only seal our dependence on carbon, according to a paper published in the journal Science.

Scientists and policy-makers don’t know if atmospheric carbon removal technologies will work and deliver on their promises when deployed at a large scale, write the University of Manchester’s Kevin Anderson and Glen Peters of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, Norway.

“Negative-emission technologies are not an insurance policy, but rather an unjust and high-stakes gamble,” they say in the paper…

…In short, the risks of negative-emissions technologies are unknown, Anderson and Peters say. That doesn’t mean these options should be abandoned, they add. But the heavy reliance on them in carbon-mitigation models should be reduced.

“They could very reasonably be the subject of research, development, and potentially deployment, but the mitigation agenda should proceed on the premise that they will not work at scale,” the researchers say.

Source: Kevin Anderson and Glen Peters. The trouble with negative emissions. Science. 2016.