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Record temperatures from July 2023 - March 2024

According to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), not only have the oceans seen 12 consecutive months of record high surface temperatures, the average surface air temperature of 14.14 °C (or 57.45 °F) in March 2024 was 1.58 °C higher than the month’s average for 1850-1900, the pre-industrial reference period, while in the year 2023 it was 1.48 °C warmer. “Temperatures during 2023 likely exceed those of any period in at least the last 100,000 years. [...] The transition [in July, from La Niña] to El Niño alone does not explain all of the increase in ocean surface temperatures at a global scale in 2023.” And, “2023 marks the first time on record that every day within a year has exceeded 1 °C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level. Close to 50% of days were more than 1.5 °C warmer then the 1850-1900 level, and two days in November were, for the first time, more than 2 °C warmer. [...] This does not mean that we have surpassed the limits set by the Paris Agreement (as they refer to periods of at least 20 years where this average temperature anomaly is exceeded) but sets a dire precedent.”

However scary this is, I found myself wondering, what exactly is that pre-industrial level, and what do these claims exactly say. It was slightly more intricate than I had expected, and much more difficult to find. The search led to an unexpected result; a back-of-the-envelope estimation of a value for an equilibrium temperature correlating to the present CO2 concentration. And no, it is not reassuring, and leaves no room for doubts about the necessity of cleaning up the atmosphere. For just cutting emissions we are too late.

Temperature variations before the human-induced raise of CO2 levels

Average temperatures on Earth have always varied; earlier periods with different average temperatures were for instance the quite recent Medieval Warm Period, when average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were higher,* and the Little Ice Age when they were lower. There is some uncertainty in the values for the temperatures because they were measured indirectly, being derived from tree rings, ice cores, ocean sediments etc., yet it is possible to use them to predict what future temperature variations could be expected if the changing CO2 concentration was not an influence. Combining them with other known patterns of temperature variation, which are connected to for instance sunspots and changes of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, in 2006 it was predicted that “if the cycles continue as in the past, the current warm cycle should end soon and global temperatures should cool slightly until about 2035, then warm about 0.5 °C from ~2035 to ~2065, and cool slightly until 2100.” Obviously, with a warming of 0.78 °C between the 1880s and the 2000s, these predicted temperature variations stayed close to a 1 °C range, but the then current warm cycle did not end.

The pre-industrial baseline

With atmospheric CO2 concentrations expressed in parts per million, or ppm, already before the second half of the 19th century, the CO2 levels had been slowly rising. After the first large scale use of steam for mechanical work during the 18th century, more and more steam engines were used for, for instance, transport by steamship and train. Yet it all had been on a comparatively small scale, and because of the instrumental temperature records made using thermometers, barometers, etc., which started in the second half of the 19th century and made measurements much more precise, the average temperature during 1850-1900 CE is now used as a reference, the so-called ‘pre-industrial baseline’, measuring 13.7 °C. The CO2 concentration having been around 283 ppm in 1800, it had risen to around 285 ppm in 1850, and to around 296 ppm in 1900. During the pre-industrial baseline period, 1850-1900, the average global temperature of 13,7 °C thus corresponded to an average CO2 concentration of around 290 ppm.

Paris agreement

The 2015 Paris agreement was to limit the rise to 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial baseline temperature, i.e., keep it below the 1.5° warming limit of 13.7 + 1.5 = 15.2 °C, because of the devastating consequences of an even larger rise. Although at first a rise of 2 °C was taken as a threshold, apparently late in 2020 it was written, “in recent years, world leaders have stressed the need to limit global warming to 1.5 °C by the end of this century. That is because the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates that crossing the 1.5 °C threshold risks unleashing far more severe climate change impacts, including more frequent and severe droughts, heatwaves and rainfall. To limit global warming to 1.5 °C, greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 at the latest and decline 43% by 2030.”

Near-surface air, and sea surface temperatures

To find absolute values for the temperature anomalies given by various sources, which enables comparison with the 1.5 °C climate threshold, it has to be noted that global average temperatures are the averages of both near-surface air and sea surface temperatures. The European C3S’ record temperature values for July 2023 to March 2024 were global surface air temperatures, and they yield values which differ from ‘global land and ocean’ temperatures. It means that comparing various sources is not always straightforward, yet all datasets show the same terrifying developments which, if we do not clean up the atmosphere, will inevitably lead to a further increase in human fatalities.

Hottest year and hottest months

The pre-industrial global temperature having been 13.7 °C, that of the 20th century was 13.9 °C. The NOAA using the latter value as a baseline, various time series of temperatures can be plotted here. In accordance with the claims of C3S, they show 2023 as the hottest year since 1850, with 13.9 + 1.19 = 15.1 °C, which is only a meager 0.1 °C away from 15.2 °C, the climate threshold. Furthermore, the deviations from the average temperatures per month for 1901-2000 can be plotted. With these average monthly temperatures, the deviations from this baseline for the months October 2023 up to and including March 2024 were plotted. Then realising that the average temperatures in the 20th century were 0.2 °C above the pre-industrial baseline, the deviations from this baseline were: October 2023 1.28 °C, November 2023 1.34 °C, December 2023 1.39 °C, January 2024 1.42 °C, February 2024 1.45 °C, and March 2024 1.46 °C. February and March having come very close to the Paris threshold, even with the unavoidable error margins, the pattern of soaring global average temperatures is very clear.

The CO2 blanket

To every concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere belongs an equilibrium temperature, and it seems to be a nearly linear relation. That does not hold for the other greenhouses gases, because even if they can have even stronger effects than CO2, they remain in the atmosphere for a much shorter period of time. Long enough to severely enhance problems, but not long enough for the Earth system to reach an equilibrium. CO2 molecules can remain in the atmosphere for many decades or even longer periods, which means that the Earth has enough time to adapt to it. It can be compared with putting an ice cube in a glass of soda; it will take some time to melt. Indeed every natural process needs some time to reach an equilibrium.

The reason CO2 traps energy from the sun is that it does not interfere with visible light, but it does with infrared light. The solar radiation enters our atmosphere as visible light, and then warms up the Earth’s surface. Having been warmed up, after sunset the surface will cool again by radiating infrared light, which we experience as warmth, back into space. If infrared radiation, which in the form of a photon comes from the surface and is on its way to space, bounces against a CO2 molecule, it will be absorbed, causing the molecule to vibrate. Some time later, the CO2 molecule will stop vibrating and emit the photon again, but because in the meantime it was moving around, the emission is not necessarily in the direction of space; the infrared photons become scattered. In principle, this cycle of absorption and emission is endless, and only a part of the infrared photons will be scattered in the direction of space and disappear from the Earth system.

When there is no CO2 in the atmosphere, and no continuous and evenly spread addition of other greenhouse gases, after emission by the surface the infrared photons move directly into space, which would be a problem because the Earth would be too cold for us to live on. That is what is called the greenhouse effect; CO2 forms a blanket around the Earth which we need to stay alive. But when there is too much CO2 in the atmosphere, too many infrared photons become trapped, and the temperatures on Earth rise. And because to generate useable energy humanity started to burn fossil fuels, rests of dead plants which contain CO2 molecules which had been stored under ground for millions of years, the blanket has now become too thick.

The relation between CO2 concentrations and temperature

It has been stated that “historical data as well as future climate models show that global warming is (approximately) directly proportional to the increase of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. More specifically: every time the CO2 concentrations rise by 10 ppm (parts per million), the mean global temperature increases by 0.1 °C,” which means that the slope of the graph is 0.01. The pre-industrial baseline having values of around 290 ppm and 13.7 °C, the current CO2 concentration of 424 ppm would correlate to 15.0 °C. Yet, although the correlation between CO2 concentration and temperature is apparently linear, the rise we cause in the CO2 concentrations is not; “the 10 warmest years in the 174-year record have all occurred in the past decade (2014-2023),” which means that the Earth has entered an exponential phase of climate change. Also knowing that 2023 was already at least 0.1 °C warmer than the correlation predicts, I assumed that current temperatures are lagging behind the extremely rapid rise in CO2 concentration; an iceberg does not melt instantaneously, neither does an ice cream after having bought it on a hot summer day at the stall by the wayside. I therefore searched for temperatures and CO2 concentrations of previous periods, to use for a back-of-the-envelope estimation of the current equilibrium temperature.

Past equilibrium temperatures

The most distant period for which CO2 levels could be estimated is the Ordovician period which, following the Cambrian Period, began 485 million years ago (Ma), and ended 444 Ma; the CO2 concentration was estimated as 3000 to 9000 ppm. Still, the average temperature was ‘only’ about 25 °C because the Sun was about 4.5% cooler, and the Earth’s astronomical parameters distinctly differed from today. We could not have evolved then; people still can tolerate CO2 concentrations of for instance 5.000 ppm for many hours, but apparently not as the overall condition.

The most recent period with average global temperatures higher than today, about 2-3 °C above the pre-industrial baseline, was during the Piacenzian, the last period of the Pliocene, 5.3 to 2.6 Ma. The warmest period of the Piacenzian, the so-called the mid-Piacenzian Warm Period, lasted from 3.35 to 3.15 Ma. It had an average CO2 concentration of around 360 ppm, an average global temperature of around 3 °C above the pre-industrial baseline, ie., around 16.7 °C, and the Netherlands was largely non-existant, because it was almost completely below sea level.

During the last ice age of the Pleistocene, 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, which was called the Last Glacial Maximum and lasted from roughly 23,000 to 19,000 years ago, the global average temperature was around 6 °C below the average temperature in the 20th century, or around 8.0 °C, going with CO2 concentrations of ca 190 ppm.

The values for 1850-1900, the pre-industrial baseline, were given above, as 13.7 °C going with an average CO2 concentration of around 290 ppm.

During the 20th century, when the variations were still not what they are now, the average temperature was 13.9 °C, going with an average CO2 concentration of around 334 ppm.

And in 2023, with an average CO2 concentration of 419 ppm, the average global temperature was 1.45 °C above the pre-industrial baseline of 13.7 °C, or, rounding off to the lower value because otherwise it would neglect the tiny fraction 2023 still was below the Paris threshold, 15.1 °C.

Plotted temperatures

Excluding the Ordovician because then the Sun was cooler, and the Earth’s orbital cycles were different, I plotted the average CO2 concentrations of the other five foregoing periods against the corresponding global average temperatures: the last ice age of the Pleistocene, 190 ppm and 8.0 °C; the pre-industrial baseline (1850-1900), 290 ppm and 13.7 °C; the 20th century, 334 ppm and 13.9 °C;, the Piacenzian warm period within the Pliocene, 362 ppm and 16.7 °C; and 2023, 419 ppm and 15.1 °C. Some of the estimations are indeed very crude; it might be argued that the 20th century should have come in at least two parts because around 1950 our emissions started to accelerate, yet I decided to leave it in because just as for the other periods it is an average, and the plots are not against time. The year 2023 can hardly be an equilibrium temperature already because while the Earth system was adapting we raised the CO2 levels. I therefore also looked at the trendlines when leaving out 2023. When I also left out the last ice age of the Pleistocene because it may be argued that that was an extreme situation, I found, for the current CO2 concentration of 424 ppm, a value of 18.5 °C for the current equilibrium temperature. But because it can also be argued that the value of the last ice age is nothing more than a temperature going with a CO2 concentration I also plotted that, and found an even higher equilibrium temperature, 19.2 °C, respectively. What I found was disheartening; in all variations the temperatures of 2023 appear to have been below the trendlines which represent, roughly, equilibrium temperatures going with the CO2 concentration.

If the ice age, with 190 ppm and 8.0 °C was used as the starting point, for 2023 the earlier mentioned correlation of 10 ppm and 0.1 °C would predict a temperature of 10.3 °C, which obviously is too low. Starting from the pre-industrial baseline, with 290 ppm and 13.7 °C, it would indeed be 15.0 °C. But now we know that also that temperature is too low, and it would appear that the correlation is too weak. Leaving out 2023 because the Earth was unable to reach an equilibrium, in this back-of-the-envelope estimation, the other four datapoints change the correlation from 0.1 °C per 10 ppm to 0.48 °C. And even if the Piacenzian warm period would be regarded as unrealistically high, the other three datapoints still give a correlation of 0.41 °C per 10 ppm.

Heading towards the conditions of the Pliocene ...

That we are heading towards the conditions of the Pliocene, or even beyond that, is also shown in this graph of global temperatures over the last 65 million years; the question just was how fast we are approaching these conditions. My back-of-the-envelope estimation is disheartening, yet the pattern of soaring global average temperatures is very clear. Next to the scientists who already knew what was happening in 1959, after decades of changes only recognised by elderly people thinking about their youths, now we all can see the changes clearly. And from our ice creams it is known that from the moment their melting becomes noticeable, they soon start to leak and then melt completely.

We, that is Europe and the US, have to stop pretending it was not our fault, and that humanity as a whole should solve the problem. We started it, we were the main polluters, and now we also have to start cleaning up the atmosphere. When we start, others will follow because everywhere people are worried. This cleaning-up has to start very quickly, and on a mssive scale. We cannot wait until we reached zero emissions any more.

And at the same time we have to criminalise the fossil fuel industries. If we successfully do that, again others will follow. It is the only way we might still save ourselves; we cannot wait until every human being is convinced and willing to change.

... and how to avoid reaching them

Yet there still is hope; the linear correlation between CO2 concentrations and temperature also holds when the CO2 concentrations decrease again. Severely reducing emissions and at the same time cleaning up, reaching negative emissions will have impact. And on the cleaning-up front, lately I was told about an, in my eyes and until now, brilliant idea for CO2 removal, (a form of?) ‘Enhanced Rock Weathering’ (ERW). Which, again obviously, should not replace all other ideas of cutting emissions and extracting CO2, we desperately need them all. But it is too good not to be mentioned here; for carbon sequestration, the process of capturing and storing atmospheric CO2, for which the use of silicates was suggested for the first time by Walter Seifritz in 1990, this idea makes use of grained basalt, the most common volcanic rock type on Earth.

It is known that when “carbon dioxide is dissolved in water and interacts with reactive rock formations, such as basalts, [it forms] stable minerals providing a permanent and safe carbon sink.” The idea of injecting CO2 in basalt has successfully taken wing already on Iceland, yet ERW makes even more use of natural processes, which is always cheaper, and can be done on a much larger scale. One of the factors determining the speed of chemical reactions is the surface area, and graining provides a large surface area per amount of substance. This is used for ERW; strewing basalt dust or grains on farm land and into the oceans. Instead of, in case of injecting, bringing the CO2 to the basalt, now the basalt is brought to the CO2.

As regards the farmlands, “CO2 from the air combines with rainwater to form a weak acid which reacts with the basalt. Harmless carbonates are created in the process and the CO2 is bound for thousands of years. Plus: The basalt releases nutrients for the plants and improves the soil.” And as regards the oceans, it is known that when from seawater “acidity is consumed, carbonate saturation is increased and atmospheric CO2 is sucked out of the atmosphere.” Or, when these basalt grains have been strewn into the ocean, they will react with the CO2 in the water, which had made them acidic. While taking up CO2, the basalt grains will swirl down and remain at the bottom, just as all sand does that flows into the sea with river water, or is blown into it. The ocean water will become less acidic and more alkaline, and therefore able again to absorb new CO2.

The processes using CO2 injection into basalt need special conditions, “favorable rocks, water, and a source of carbon dioxide.” These conditions are indeed met with CO2 from the air, water from rain and oceans, while mining basalt can be done on many more places, although we have to be careful not to create new massive problems. The places to mine it have to be chosen well, limiting transport which also uses energy, and the basalt has to be grinded using solar energy, or equivalents to the windmills the Dutch used to grind grain into flour. It is of no concern if it is only done when the sun is shining, or the wind is blowing, as long as no fossil fuels are used.

Because the oceans take up such a large part of the Earth, strewing it into the oceans can be done on an even larger scale than strewing it on land. If all the ships crossing the oceans take an amount, perhaps some fraction of their weight, of basalt grain with them, to slowly spread it into the oceans along their routes, sea life will not be harmed; when at times every car in Europe shows traces of Sahara sand, no special harm was done to the lakes, seas and oceans it fell into because they are completely used to it. The then more alkaline oceans will be able again to extract the atmospheric CO2, which will be stored on the ocean floors forever. Or, until some time when volcanoes blow it back into the atmosphere, but that is an ongoing story, and in our times only became a problem after we started to pollute the atmosphere with fossil CO2. And it does not change the fact that it would be a good idea to extract warmth from them directly, as Iceland does.

Yet none of the arguments here can be taken as a plea to stop extracting CO2 from the atmosphere; we need everything. And to come to zero emissions, which we have to achieve or we are doomed, recycling CO2 is crucial.

Februari 2023. Having been wondering why so many people are against directly capturing CO2 from the air, to my surprise at least some people appear to be afraid to intervene in natural systems. We certainly should have been afraid to do that, but we did intervene by using the atmosphere as a waste bin. The consequence is that therefore the CO2 blanket, which used to keep our Earth a planet we could thrive on, is not a balanced natural system any more; we have disrupted it.

Many climate activists are also afraid to start extracting CO2 from the atmosphere because it would soothe major polluters into carelessly emitting CO2 again. Although that certainly is what they would do, we cannot afford to wait any more; we have to start extracting at the same time as doing something about the major polluters. Moreover, who are the richer countries to say that the poorer countries would not have the right to first stabilise themselves economically, and come at a par with the richer countries, who are and were the major polluters in the first place.

The question the activists should ask themselves how many people they are prepared to sacrifice in order to try to convince Big Oil and the fossil fuel supporting money lovers of this Earth, who are not (yet) in danger personally, unless we finally start to criminalise them for knowingly and willingly endangering our lives. The answer must be that there are no acceptable numbers of casualties, and that we have to start immediately. Especially the rich countries have to start now; we have to clean up the mess we polluted the world with.

There have been estimations about the number of machines we need to extract the legacy CO2 from the atmosphere, and a billion is not in any way a bad estimation. Beforehand assuring these machines will not use water in the process, and work on solar power because the sun is our only sustainable power source, if we want to have them operational in ten years we will have to start now, on a very large scale. For so many machines to come into production many processes have to be set up, and because it is in no way possible to completely stop emitting today, the only feasible thing is starting today.

Because we do not have any choice any more. We have missed the opportunity to clean up by natural means; in some hundred and fifty years we have blown into the air what Nature had stored during millions of years. We geo-engineered us into trouble, we have to re-geo-engineer us back. Whether we like it or not.

and we have to start extracting now, even though we do not know yet what to do with it. If the money lovers of this Earth allow nuclear plants being built without knowing what to do with the waste, let the common people not be more righteous about stored CO2 which is far less dangerous, and many lives are now at stake. When we do not drown from rising seawater, or be washed away by too much rain, or lose our harvests because of draughts and fires, we have enough time to think about good use for the CO2 in storage. And, different from the enormous nuclear waste and various other problems, feasible and less feasible ideas are springing up everywhere.

Happily, more practical ideas about how to use the captured CO2 are being developed, but even storing it for now would be acceptabe; we simply have to start extracting before we hit the tipping points.

If governments react too slowly to the threat from the sky, and allow some people to become filthy rich, let us combine these two detriments into our rescue; let the rich of this world come into action, and start, next to the Space Race, the Earth Race: who will become the person who saved the world.

Fantasizing about solutions helps to clear up the barriers in our thinking

At the same time as extracting the CO2 surplus from the atmosphere and searching for ways to store it permanently, we have to stop emitting it in the amounts we emit it now. Whether by cutting down CO2 emissions or starting to recycle it. To my happiness, ever since (but doubtless already long before) my 2020 Norway-climate panic caused by experiencing the high winter temperatures myself, ever more clever ideas are launched to reduce our CO2 emissions. One such an idea, perhaps as unpractical as my ideas above, are algae biopanel windows. But unpracticality is no problem, perhaps they will soon find solutions, and what is even better, freely coming up with ideas, however unpractical or undoable, helps to erase barriers in our thinking. We are running out of time so we desperately need that.

Cutting down emissions

Suggestions for cutting down emissions often use 1990 levels to compare with. That is arbitrary because also then glaciers were retracting already, and we therefore ultimately need to reduce to much earlier levels, but it is good to start with a goal which can be reached. If 1990 is also chosen for determining the surplus of CO2 in the air, from this atmospheric CO2 graph we take the 2021 level as 418 ppm, and that of 1990 as 354 ppm; then we have a surplus of 62 ppm.

This surplus of CO2 in the atmosphere is part of the legacy CO2, the fossil CO2 which was safely stored for millions of years, but we used it and dumped it into the atmosphere, as if that was an infinite waste bin. Because a large proportion of CO2 will stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years we created a greenhouse blanket which is much thicker than it used to be.

The Earth needs such an atmospheric greenhouse effect; it is necessary to protect us from the cold of the universe. But the CO2 blanket has now become so thick, and CO2 stays in the atmosphere so long, that even if, theoretically, we would reduce emissions to zero today, the weather would remain as erratic as it is now, and the ice still would keep melting. We simply lost the luxury of just having to reduce emissions.

But a trait of humanity is that we can deplete almost all raw materials. Let us use that normally unfavourable trait to clean up the atmosphere.

So capture the CO2 where you will use it,
then recycle it into the bubbles in your soda,
and store it in CO2 containing bricks.

If we start now we may be just in time to save ourselves.

17 April 2024. A bit of good news, the EU may leave the so-called Energy Charter Treaty, as well as the UK. The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) is a treaty which once seemed useful, but is used to gain profit from efforts to transition to renewable energy. That is in itself no wonder, because the treaty was signed in 1994, when the fossil fuel industry already knew for a long time what was happening, and had started hiring PR bureaus to deny the problems which we were clearly facing already.
Even after having left the ECT, countries can be sued by people who lost their profits from fossil fuels, or even, will lose prospected profits, up to a staggering twenty years after exit. But it should not be too difficult to turn such behaviour around; we can simply criminalise the people who make money out of the destruction of our environment.* Although we cannot criminalise everyone who hinders progress, with the ECT comes a clearly pinpointed group which can be shown as willing to sacrifice people for gain: everyone who after say 2019, when Urgenda won from the Dutch government, or 2021, when Milieudefensie et al. won from Shell, or 2024, when the Swiss women won from the Swiss government, made a claim via the ECT can be called a criminal against humanity. And, not the companies are the criminals, but the investors who made claims, and the people who were leading the company at the time of the claims.

2 December 2023. The World Meteorological Organization writes, “2023 shatters climate records, with major impacts”; this year is set to be the warmest on record, and finally it seems that hardly any one is doubting any more. Yet the problem is that even if we stop emitting any CO2 today, the greenhouse blanket in the atmosphere is still too thick for us to survive. We need it in order to protect us from the cold of the Universe, but at the same time, we have to keep it as thin as possible. Therefore, what else is there to do except clean up the atmosphere which we used as if it was an infinite waste bin, and resolve to never misuse it in such a way again.
The total weight of the atmosphere is about 5 billiard ton (US 5 quadrillion), and if now the amount of CO2 is about 420 parts per million (ppm) or about 400 ton per million ton of air, the total amount of CO2 is about 200 milliard ton (US 200 billion). In the year I was born, 1958, the measurements at Mauna Loa began, and by April 1959 the average level of CO2 in the atmosphere already was 315.47 ppm. It had been below 280 ppm in the period between a million until 10,000 years ago, and then around 280 ppm until the mid-1700s. The latter period was a time of climate equilibrium, in which most of mankind as we know it now evolved. So if we want to reduce the level of CO2 to 280 ppm again, about two-third of what it is now, we have to extract about 130 milliard ton (US billion ton). Then Nature can play with it again, in an always slower pace than we managed to change it, and therefore in any case easier to adapt to.
How to extract the CO2 is not the problem any more, yet the problem what to do with it is far from solved. There are ever more good ideas however. One of them is to use concentrated sunlight to split CO2 + H2O into CO, H2 and O2, and use the CO and H2 to produce synthetic fuels. But that is still recycling, and what we need is both recycling in order to reach net zero emissions, and annihilation of CO2 in order to clean up. To achieve the latter, it would be best to split the CO2 into O2 and C directly. The problem is that that would need temperatures of around 6000 Kelvin, and even solar furnaces do not reach such temperatures. Therefore, for now it seems that we need every safe mineralisation plan we can come up with.
A very nice one certainly is baking CO2 negative bricks. Assume that the claim, that a metric ton of such bricks stores 60 kg of CO2, is correct, and that an average brick weighs around 2 kg. An average-sized house is built with about 10,000 bricks, which means that these bricks would store 1200 kg CO2, or about one metric ton per house. If, as was also claimed, in the coming years around 100,000 houses are needed every day, or about 35 million per year, the total amount of CO2 stored is 35 million metric tons. That number sounds quite high, yet the total yearly emission of CO2 is estimated at around 40 billion metric tons. The bricks therefore would not seem to be very significant, but it is CO2 that never enters the CO2 cycle any more; we just need many more of such good ideas.

July 2023 was hottest month on record. And I was surprised, because my usually highly valued popular magazine for science and technology was writing about how the climate can be “hacked.” All sorts of ideas passed the revue; all meant to cool the planet but costing a lot of money. Like creating bubbles on the surface of the oceans to making them more white and therefore reflecting more sunlight back into space; placing mirrors in space to prevent two percent of the sunlight to reach the Earth’s surface; scatter iron sulphate into the oceans hoping the algae will grow extremely rapidly and sink to the bottom.
It shows that there are people who think it is a good idea to spend billons in some currency to cool off the planet, and accept the death of life in the oceans as collateral damage, but who do not consider the most simple idea of just taking out the CO2 we have dumped into the atmosphere. Just as some people talk as if we can get used to the hotter weather, as if we will reach some new equilibrium which is just a bit more inconvenient that what we were used to. But there will not be a new equilibrium; until our emissions have gone to zero, climate change is increasing. And even if we reach zero emissions, the blanket around the Earth formed by the CO2 in the atmosphere is way too thick.
Using all these billions to thin the blanket by capturing the legacy CO2 directly from the air does seem by far the most effective idea. And looking at photos of July’s extreme weather shows that we do not have time for all those other megalomaniac ideas. If you wake up at night because your blanket is too thick and you feel uncomfortably hot, what would you do? Turn on a ventilator or paint your house in lighter colours, or would you just take a thinner blanket? That is how simple it is.
But in a way, this simplicity is also alarming. The danger of climate change was known already in 1959, and understood and explained very well by Shell in 1991, but it only led to their denial of the problem. Instead of searching for solutions, Big Oil set up large PR campaigns to prevent us from using simple logic and recognise the danger we were in. And now the same thing seems to be happening again. The most logical solution, extracting the CO2 surplus from the atmosphere, is staring us in the face, yet it hardly ever is mentioned in public contemplations about the dangers we are facing. The question is why, and the answer may again be simple.
Making use of our growing fears, multinationals can earn enormous amounts of money with megalomanic plans to “cool the planet,” and it therefore can safely be assumed that again like forces are at work. The goal being to discourage us from solving the problem, it does not even seem too far-fetched to assume that lobbyists have entered political parties, media and climate activist groups to ensure they keep believing that direct air capture will mainly cause problems. Writing headlines that it “could spark big rise in food prices” and only mentioning late in the article that that does not have to be the case, or turn us against each other by whispering that “the others” will take advantage and instead of also cutting emissions will live luxurious lives at our costs.
Indeed, if we would spend all our money on solving the problem, Big Oil and the multinationals will not only earn less, but even face the risk of being accused of having endangered our lives. Saving us with expensive and megalomanic solutions will not only make them even richer, but will also make them seem the heroes instead of the criminals.

It is May 2023 now, and the polar ice is melting even more rapidly than was expected. The IPCC acknowledged that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have to be brought down; not only do we have to cut emissions, but we also have to remove the extra CO2 which has been and still is wasted into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. “CDR is not a substitute for deep emissions reductions, but it is an important tool that should be deployed in tandem with other mitigation methods.” But still nothing in the media, and politicians are completely silent.
Of course, knowing what to look for it is easily found, but nothing urgent in the headlines, telling people what can and should be done. Whenever I talk with people about CO2 extraction, why it is needed, and that it can be done already, there is amazement. Which means that within the CO2 extraction bubble people believe everyone knows, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Wondering what is going on, I searched on the BBC's Sience and Environment, and too easily found an article from 20 March 2023, Five things we've learned from UN climate report with the claim, “Coming back from overshooting will need expensive, unproven technology to pull CO2 from the air, something known as carbon capture.” Searching for like remarks there are plenty, and not only in articles by the BBC, which was just an example. Just claiming in some sentence that direct capture is “expensive and unproven” will not help conveying the urgent message to the public.
Next to loose unfounded claims, another problem is that in such articles the CO2 extraction and what to do with it afterwards is mixed into one vaguely problematic story. We have to unravel that: we have to start extracting now, on a huge scale, and in the meantime think about solutions. Why would we allow nuclear plants to produce energy without a solution for its extremely dangerous waste, but wait with extracting CO2 until we have something beautiful. The world cannot wait any longer.

Not so much news but a contemplation is that writing about climate change I more and more become aware of the generation problem. Many people at the top of big oil, and the filthy rich money lovers who support them, are of my generation or older. Speaking generally, and in averages, we grew up in the times before we knew big oil was lying to us; times we thought the Earth was “makeable”. If it had been up to my mother, no slanting little blade of grass would have been allowed to grow on the neat berms of the fifties and sixties, and my father happily used the flitspuit while we, curious, were looking over his shoulder to see the nasty ants die. (Only now I see that the flitspuit was filled with ‘flit’, a product made by Esso. Really. We undoubtedly can find deliberately concealed reports already warning for the dangers before the DDT was found in our food.)
Again speaking in averages, the view of nowadays’ youth is very different. Because the climate is now in acute danger, they are aware that we are connected to our surroundings, that how we live influences Nature. I do hope that they will take over soon enough, most likely repeating many mistakes we made, but at least starting to live more in equilibrium with the Earth as a whole.

Frightening news is that the Earth is dimming due to climate change; less energy is reflected back into space. Naturally, the energy the Sun gives us remained the same, meaning that the Earth stores more energy and becomes even warmer. At the same time there the solution becomes even more obvious: we evolved because of the Sun’s energy, and we should return to that state; every form of energy production other than sunlight uses Earth systems and is capable of disrupting them. We have to use solar power to live a life in balance with Nature, and stop all other forms of energy production wherever and whenever we can.

Something strange is that searching for how to store CO2, in itself a useful product but not as garbage above our heads, I was looking again at frozen CO2 on the Moon. In an article mentioning that, frozen CO2 was compared to “dry ice you can get in a supermarket.” It indeed is called dry ice and I knew it from physics experiments, but I had never thought it would be sold in a supermarket; it appears that it can be put in drinks.So now there are bubbles of CO2 in drinks, and extra chunks of CO2. Very strange indeed. In any case, it means recycling CO2 is becoming even more attractive for businesses, and therefore we can use it to start up large scale direct air capture more easily. Because the starting up on a large scale is still a problem; people will not largely support it if they do not see its usefulness. That was, for me, a reason to suggest my university to build or buy such a direct air capturing machine, and then teach the public what it does and how it works, while preferrable standing next to the machine (solar powered of course). As a useful implementation of valorisation.

Totally unnecessary news is that at the German Oktoberfest, held in September 2022, there will not be enough beer: because there is not enough CO2. Apparently, the CO2 is taken from fertilizer producers, and because of the high prices of fossil gas less fertilizer is produced.
Organisers of the Oktoberfest: there is an enormous surplus of CO2 above your heads: free to use and at no costs. Why would you neatly recycle your plastics and glass, but not the bubbles in your beer? Make a good investment and buy some machines. The bubbles will never be your problem again, and there will be enough beer at every Oktoberfest.

Very scary news in September 2022. While a third of Pakistan is flooded with devastating consquences, further dangers, and clearly caused by climate change, a German documentary called ‘The Great Draught’, states that the Rhine is drying up, every year losing an amount of water comparable with the yearly use of the city of Frankfurt. Of course, with sluices and dams the water can be kept from streaming into the sea too fast, but that does not alter the source of the problem, that less rainwater and snow feed the Rhine. And if we do not start now to clean up our mess, it will become ever worse; more countries will drown, and more countries will dry up.

In August 2022 a short but terrifying article was placed on the website of the KNMI, the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute: the broadest glacier in the world, the Thwaites glacier in Western Antarctica, shows cracks. The melting Thwaites glacier already contributes ten percent of global mean sea level rise, and if it melts the mean sea level along the Dutch coast will rise by two metres. It is stated by the ENW, the Network of Expertise of Water security (translated by Google to ‘the Science’ ??) that one metre is within the boundaries of what our dikes and dunes can withstand, and also two metres is still possible, but with great consequences for nature and how we use the land. The advice speaks about an accelerated sea level rise in 2050, and about costs and choices, but it was written without taking the melting of the glacier into account. If a rise of two metres will happen in only a few years, as has become a real possibility, we are in very serious trouble.
I do realise that I had to see warm Norway for myself before becoming very worried, and I also realise that that holds for most of us; what we do not see does not exist. If CO2 had smelled badly or had had an ugly colour, or if the plastics had heaped up in our meadows instead of in the oceans, everything would have been different. Yet it still is terrifying to read articles containing reassurances as, “it will not become that bad, although perhaps we do have to relocate some low lying and densely populated areas.” Or even, “the people of Tuvalu know they have to relocate because their island will disappear, but they are strong people and they can start a new life in New-Zealand.” Many people seem to think there will be a new equilibrium, somewhat hotter, with a somewhat higher sea level, and then after some relocations, within our own countries of course, we live happily ever after.
But that is not what will happen, unless we take action and start to clean up the atmosphere. The technology to do it is ready and growing, but we have to start on very large scales; buy and distribute many machines and set them to work.
And yes, it is a very good idea to force Big Oil to paying substantial parts of their enormous profits to finance these clean ups; we do not have time any more to develop nice finance plans. Big Oil aggravated their mess even after they already knew what they were doing, but they withheld the information from us, and even hired the best, and most unscrupulous, PR people to delude us. It was, and still is, criminal behaviour, as simple as that.

Summer 2022: Energy storage in sand as the way to reach net-zero CO2 emissions worldwide.
Marvellous supernews is that in Finland people came up with a revolutionary simple idea: Store Wind and Solar Power as Heat in Sand. What an idea. We all know how hot sand can become on a sunny day, and if this technology can work in the Finnish winter, it certainly can in our nights. Within our limits and time frame it truly feels like the ultimate solution; it stores clean energy, which unavoidably comes in fluctuating amounts, in a clean way, sand is abundant, and then compare the CO2 emitted during construction with building nuclear power plants!
Because also solar panels are becoming ever more effective and less toxic, this certainly seems to be the most feasible solution for storing clean energy in the dark hours, and frees us from having to rely on enormous chemical accus, as seemed to be the only way to provide a stable level of energy supply.
Storing energy in sand might allow us all to stop using fossil and nuclear energy, and become CO2 zero-emitters. And then we can devote all our strength to cleaning up the planet. Extract the largest surplus of CO2 in non-toxic ways and store it in non-intrusive ways, and find effective ways to extract the other surpluses of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Yet of all the greenhouse gases CO2 is the most problematic one because it stays in the atmosphere for so long, so if we finally begin to extract it on a very large scale, we might in any case survive our dirty years.
Remarkable, my panic started in Norway, and the best solution until now comes from Finland. It is a nice touch that we might be saved by the people who know best what it is to live for weeks without seeing any sun, by a company called Polar Night Energy. I would say, spread the word, and release the world from money consuming and toxic fake solutions.

Very good news is that in May 2022 the world reached the predicted first terawatt of installed solar energy generation capacity. Zonnepanelendelen.nl (Sharing solar panels) comments: "The global annual production of all those panels is comparable to what 500 nuclear power stations as the one in Borssele would yield during the same period."
At the moment there are 439 nuclear power plants in the world. Using the Wikipedia data about 435 units, the total capacity is roughly 388,000 MW; with Borssele having a capacity of 482 MW, 500 times Borssele is 241,000 MW, or 62% of the total nuclear capacity. Because the solar capacity grew with 21% in 2021, it can be expected that very soon solar capacity will surpass nuclear capacity.
At some earlier times nuclear energy may have looked promising, yet the transition which should have gone hand-in-hand with it was impaired by the people earning staggering amounts of money in the fossil industries. The folly of still believing that nuclear energy can solve any of our current, pressing problems becomes apparent if the costs of an 21% increase of nuclear capacity, as was the increase of solar capacity in 2021, is considered. Such an increase would mean building 91 new plants; building one plant takes at least five years and costs at least five billion dollars, and therefore 91 plants would cost half a trillion; about one and a half times the total expenditure of the Dutch government. If in five years that amount of money would be used to solve the energy and distribution problems of solar energy we are far more likely to succeed in staying alive than if we spend it on nuclear capacity, which would even cost a lot more if the enormous and still unsolved nuclear waste problem is taken into account.
Something else might be nuclear fusion which reached a small but major breakthrough. Yet it would not become available on a large scale before 2025, and it is obviously preferred that by then we already achieved a completely adequate and sustainable energy supply.
The by far most simple way seems to be to just catch and transport sunlight itself using solar fiber optic systems. At the moment they are used for indoor sunlight, but the optical fiber cables can be as long as we need them to be. So simplifying and vastly extending these systems, they can be built wherever sunlight is plenty, and having enough plants around the world, sunlight will always be available from somewhere. If we can transport oil all over the world, and send data around all the time, we certainly can transport light all over the world. Countries which can sell sunlight will become as important as oil producing countries were and we will close contracts with them; every night we buy sunlight from places at the other side of the world for our night systems, which are built in such a way that no light leaks out while using it to generate solar energy locally. There would hardly be need for accus to store solar energy; we would have access to solar energy all the time, with the advantage that we can also use it for illumination of buildings where people work in night shifts. The advantages would be that it can be a fair trade, no water or chemicals are used, and there is no toxic waste.
And even though I think satellites sending bundles of sunlight to the Earth’s surface is an exciting idea (yet also a bit frightning), transporting light around the world seems to be far more easy to accomplish on a very large scale.

Totally insane news is that at the moment, Summer 2021, there is, again, a CO2 shortage. According to the article CO2 is used for hundreds of products: to carbonate water, soft drinks and alcoholic drinks; to dispense drinks and beers in pubs; to promote the growth of plants - such as cucumbers - in greenhouses; to stun pigs and chickens before slaughter; for packaging meats, baby foods, fresh foods and baked products (CO2 extends shelf life by preventing bacteria); to keep food fresh in transport (CO2 is used in the form of dry ice and snow).
In September 2021 the BBC wrote, “The UK’s food industry has been told it must pay five times more for carbon dioxide in future.” They explain that CO2 is used for farming, drinks, and packaging. Would this then finally lead to the very positive side-effect that it will be cheaper to buy some direct capture machines from ClimeWorks, place them on the factory premises, and be over with this ridiculousness? The businesses using the CO2 are recyclers, which is good for the climate, and capturing it on their own premises means they do not have to buy it, and it does not have to be transported. Moreover, the stockpile is infinite, because they recycle it; the blanket abouve our heads cannot become too thin by recycling. The direct-captured CO2 from the waste gases of the chemical industry, which is used now, can be stored on their premises, until someone builds a neighbouring factory for baking CO2 bricks, for instance. Doubtless, the chemical industry will come up with more clever solutions for using it, helped by the “nascent CCU industry.”
If we then remove unavoidable and fossil CO2 from the air in a safe and permanent way by clever ways of using it, and we start doing that now, we might just make it after all.

Very very very good news is that Scotland is preparing for CO2 removal.

Good news, or for me it was news, is that urban farming is finally off the starting blocks. Farming on rooftops without using soil and much less water will be one of the ways to make room for nature again. If many of us live in high-rise buildings, and do not use land for farming wherever that is possible, nature can again recuperate. Forms of this kind of farming are hydroponics and aeroponics, either on rooftops or in indoor vertical farms. The differences between hydroponics and aeroponics are for instance described here and here.
The beauty in the video about indoor farming is at 6:40, namely when using optical fiber cables to channel sunlight directly indoors is mentioned. One of the problems of all greenhouse farming is of course that it seems that in these conditions all plants can grow throughout the year no matter what the weather conditions, but people in colder climates profit from eating the vegetables of the season. Moreover, plants need their rest. So if you use real sunlight, through cables to prevent illnesses and therefore chemicals, we have the best of both worlds.
The dangers of misusing new technologies and trying to force nature are as old as the world, or, actually, humanity. Especially when money comes in, as in the palm oil industry and biomass plants, but even when all is meant well; quick fixes are very often harming nature.

Again very bad news is that Earth’s declining ice is “without doubt one of the biggest casualties of climate change.” In June 2021 ESA stated that new research shows that sea ice in key Arctic coastal regions is thinning almost twice as fast than previously thought.

Alarming news is that the oceans, lakes, and rivers are losing oxygen. “The open oceans are losing oxygen because of climate change, whereas dead zones in coastal waters and seas are caused by excessive nutrients, which promote excessive growth of algae and eventually oxygen depletion.”
There are in fact two messages in these devastating observations. For the oceans it is imperative that we clean out the World Wide Waste-bin above our heads by removing the CO2 surplus, while for the lakes and the rivers we have to change the way we eat and farm. One of the reasons that actively taking out CO2 from the atmosphere is not supported by many environmental organisations, is that they fear it will hamper the efforts to reduce our emissions because people will believe everything is easily solved when we take out the CO2 surplus.
The reason why therefore this dramatic overview of dying water is at the same time amazingly positive is that it shows that actively removing the CO2 surplus does not mean we can go back to our former lifestyles; to bring the rivers and the lakes back to life we have to change our farming and our diets. Therewith it is the most vivid, dramatic, urgent call to do both, without delay. To save the waters, we need to clean up and change, and that change is precisely the change we need to reduce our emissions.
We have to start to live with nature again instead of above it, while at the same time cleaning up the mess we made.
What we did with the atmosphere, and what we would do without extracting CO2 on a large scale, can be compared with a home. Suppose that one way way or another, your household ran out of your control and you live in an ever messier and dirtier home. Some day you suddenly realise what you have been doing; the graduality meant you did not really notice until you were hindered in your movements. You make yourself a promise: from now on I will tidy up again after having used something. A month later you find to your amazement that your house did not become dirtier, but also not cleaner. Then you realise that changing your behaviour was not enough, somehow you also have to clean up the mess you made earlier.
And if the mess in your home was a result of a good plan to build something, like an extra room, and you used cars to bring it to your house but you never executed your plan, you have to use cars again to bring it to the garbage dump or recycling center.
This is of course exactly how we have to deal with Nature. We are mess makers, which is no problem if we realise that we have to clean up regularly. And that in times when it gets a bit out of hand, as it did now because Shell and the other big oil companies fooled us and polluted gradually so we did not notice in time, we have to have a big clean-up, with all technical methods we can think of. Especially the fossil mess was made with machines which became ever larger, so we also have to clean it up with machines, whether we like it or not. It took the Earth millions of years to bury all that CO2, and we blew it back into the atmosphere in less than two hundred years.
The Earth is our home, and taking care of it is exactly the same as taking care of our domestic homes. Big polluters have to clean the bulk, or if necessary pay people to do it for them, but everyone helps to keep it clean.
(I was tempted to say, without the cleaning products, but that is not even true. No one would use a cleaning product which bites into the furniture, or kills the fish in the aquarium. So we should make the same decisions when cleaning up the mess we made in Nature.)

Very bad news is that large scale shoreline retreat is happening already; as ESA writes in March 2021, “A substantial proportion of the world’s sandy coastlines are already eroding owing to increased storm surges, flooding and sea level rise.”

Very good news is that ClimeWork’s technology is modular and therefore scalable, so the machines can be placed almost everywhere.

Really bad news is that we in the Netherlands, as the result of having been governed for many years now by mammon-worshipping political parties, cause the largest area of deforestation of all European countries; a staggering 18 m2 per year per capita. But of course not in our own backyard.

Very good news is that, early in 2020, Microsoft has declared that the company will be carbon negative by 2030, and will have cleaned up their contribution to the waste mountain in 2050. Also very good news is that they see ClimeWorks' direct air capture technology as a key component of their carbon removal efforts.
Not so happy is the way they will store it; large-scale storage will do more harm than good. These plans show that the new methods of non-intrusive recycling and storage as supported and advocated by CO2value must be developed as quickly as possible; to recycle and store CO2 emissions yielding useful products such as chemicals and synthetic fuels (recycling) and building materials (storage). As well as every other very good idea such as for instance storage by using olivine. We must at least prevent the melting of the permafrost, and we therefore are in a hurry.

Why nuclear energy is not one of the good ideas

Even though nuclear energy is CO2 neutral, using it is not a good thing to do. In an attempt to ease the public, in 2021 it was written on the website of the World Nuclear Association, “Only a small volume of nuclear waste (~3% of the total) is long-lived and highly radioactive and requires isolation from the environment for many thousands of years.” Also from this website, “About 400,000 tonnes of used fuel has been discharged from reactors worldwide, with about one-third having been reprocessed.” That means that 266 million kilos have not been reprocessed, of which 8 million kilos have to be stored for many thousands of years, and that is what we produced until now, in a mere seventy years (since 1954). If to fight climate change we will build more plants there will be more waste, even when the reprocessing becomes more effective. And who thinks that is not a problem should contemplate for a moment the state of human kind in say -10.000 years; about the time of the Neolithic Revolution, or the building of the Göbekli Tepe. We usually think that Stonehenge was built a long time ago.

Apparently, many people have problems with the idea of using technology to extract CO2 from the air, afraid that it will soothe (other) (rich and powerful) people so much that they will not aim to reduce emitting greenhouse gases any more. Until some years ago that seemed to be a valid argument, but unfortunately the surplus of CO2 is now so large that we do not have any choice left.
For any last person still in doubt despite the fires, storms and floods, and otherwise because of its vivid instructiveness, this is how fast we did it: xkcd’s Earth Temperature Timeline.

Turn the rich and famous into major cleaners

The rich and famous people of this Earth are and have always been the major polluters, yet we can turn them into major cleaners in very simple ways. The 99% has, after all, more members than the 1%; the famous need followers, the rich need consumers.

What we should do first is convince the good people amongst them to start cleaning up their own mess. Taking into account the possibility that these people still do not realise what they are doing to the rest of us, perhaps thinking that ‘Nature’ is changing its climate instead of humanity, and still believe they can escape our common fate, we have to educate them. That should suffice to convince the good people amongst them to take action and, who knows, help clean up more than just their own mess.

Then it is time that we acknowledge that there are many very selfish people living amongst us, and that some of them are amongst the richest people on Earth. Some of them are known as persons, but many hide themselves behind big companies. We therefore have to realise even better that companies cannot think and decide, people do that. The state of the Earth has now clearly shown us that trying to convince these people to start caring for others, and wait with drastic measures until they will come into action themselves, will cost most of us our lives. The 1% way-too-rich people will be able to survive much longer than the average person, so waiting for them will be our death sentence. What we can do is criminalise their actions because they play with our lives, and force them to invest in cleaning up: we simply demand that all their plans and ways of living have to be extended with clean-up plans. The famous can be shamed into action, the rich can simply lose all cooperation if they do not present cleanup programs with their ventures.

So all the insanely rich people would be forced to have any plan for space or cars or whatever be accompanied by a cleaning up program: if you want to place 100 satellites in orbit, you have to take out the complete CO2 emissions of the production processes, together with an equal amount of pieces of space junk; ESA, NASA, JAXA, UAESA, Roscosmos, CSNA, ISRO etc. can easily make that a part of the permission processes and cooperation plans. And if the riches want to make electric cars, however useful in our transition, next to boasting about the CO2 not emitted while driving the cars they have to have a CO2 extraction plan for the production process, just as for the recycling processes of used materials. Countries for instance can simply make it a part of the permissions for new factories.

And generally, if they for instance fly in their (private) jets they have to take out as much CO2 out of the atmosphere than they spilt into it. That should not be regulated by ‘fair taxes’ because such taxes always hit the poorer people harder than the rich, and the honest people harder than the deceivers; we have to target the rich directly and make it a simple rule: we know who are the major polluters, and we know their plans. They may continue to play but they have to learn that, as every child knows, cleaning up is part of their playtime.

The reason to start with the insanely rich is simply because they are the big polluters, and they have the means to start cleaning up on a very large scale; a process that otherwise will take much time to evolve, time we do not have any more. So let us not squabble about details, it is completely obvious who have to be the first to come into action. Needless to say that also the rest of us has to adapt; only if we all do what we can we will survive. Yet we also have to acknowledge that emissions will not stop any time soon; many poorer people do not have any choice, and there are too many nasty persons amongst the riches and powerful of this world. The time is taken from us, by, yes, the rich people of the Shell companies of this world, to be able to wait until everyone agrees on what to do. We have to start as soon as possible on immensely large scales, before we reach, in the very near future, one of the tipping points.

What to do with the extracted CO2

Suppose that we succeed, and CO2 is taken from the atmosphere in large quantities, then despite all good intentions, mineralising it all may not be able to be done fast enough. Recycling and using the extracted CO2 for for instance building materials are sound ideas, but when the amounts of CO2 taken from the atmosphere really begin to be of some sensible amount we have to do something more drastic, and it is no problem that then a solution is only temporary. When we have cut emissions, and have brought the CO2 levels back to sustainable ones, we can focus again on recycling.

It is widely known that our huge amounts of toxic or radioactive waste cannot be disposed of by shooting it into space because any accident during launch could cause the very wide environment to become inhabitable. But that does not hold for CO2. If we send it to space in manageable amounts, packed in for instance canisters of recycled plastic, and something goes wrong, we just did not reduce CO2 levels.

An idea would be, using solar power, to catapult the packages into the Sun. The Sun can easily take on the whole Earth, therefore, whatever we shoot into it will be destroyed nicely. Yet it is difficult to really shoot something into the Sun because it will rather end up in orbit around the Sun, although for canisters containing CO2 that is not really a big problem. Still, we can make use of the CO2 itself, by using it as its own rocket fuel having applied exhaustion valves to the canisters; there is again not any problem with losing CO2 in space, it is neither toxic nor dangerous. I do not know how to prevent or control unexpected rotations of the canisters, but that can undoubtedly be solved.

What we can also do is catapult or shoot the canisters to the Moon. It appears that there is solid CO2 on the Moon, which together with the water ice at the poles can be used for future Moon colonies. But instead of the future Moon colonists having to collect the ‘dry ice’, it may be much simpler if CO2 is already there. Again, there is not any problem, if we send too much they can simply let it evaporate again, space will not care much for our relatively tiny bit of CO2. It would be nice to see if canisters can be shot to the Moon; it would be fun to try, and not a problem if every once in a while something goes wrong. We could learn a lot from it, especially if it was found that shooting goods to the colonists would be easier than bring everything by using rockets. And if we then collect water from the rings of Saturn, we are finally growing towards Asimov’s future. Or the past of Jules Verne.

In the middle of the nineteenth century it was discovered that the intensity of the sun’s radiation, directly linked to the number of sunspots, varies in cycles of eleven years. In the 1960s the idea dawned that sunspot cycles were correlated to variations of the Earth’s temperature, and in the 1970s such a correlation was found between periods of lower activity of the sun or even near absence of sunspots, and periods of colder temperatures in Europe, called the Little Ice Age, lasting from the early 14th century to the middle of the 19th century and shown in many famous paintings. Also for longer periods in the past correlations between weather and sunspots were found.

But at about the same time that it was discovered, in the 1960s, the correlation disappeared because the CO2 effect took over. As can be seen in the figure below, from about 1900 the number of sunspots had increased on average, and from about the 1960s it decreased again. But as can be seen in the second figure, instead of decreasing with it the temperature rose further, as we now know because of the greenhouse gases.

Solar cycle sunspot numbers, from 1700 until 2020

Earth temperature versus solar activity

If the sun is quiet and only a few sunspots can be seen, the intensity of its radiation is relatively low; when there are many sunspots the intensity is higher. As can be seen below in the left figure, these cycles can easily be recognized in photos from the SOHO satellite, here showing 1996 to 2020, solar cycles number 23 and 24. In these photos the sunspots, and places of high activity, are brighter than the surface; as seen from the Earth sunspots look like spots indeed, and darker than their surroundings.

This means that for now the sun gave us a little respite, because of the cooling effect. But if in the near future the sunspot maxima will raise again we have a real problem, we thus have to solve the CO2 problem before the sun will become more active again.

The CO2 problem

There are several greenhouse gases; next to CO2 there are for instance methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and larger molecules such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). All these gases contribute to the warming of the Earth in different ways; what varies is mainly their ability to absorb energy and, once emitted to the atmosphere, the time they remain there. There are very many details to tell about all the greenhouse gases, but some stand out.

All the other greenhouse gases can absorb more energy than CO2, and their effect on warming the Earth is therewith stronger than that of CO2. Because of these large effects on the climate it is very important to reduce their emissions as much as possible, or capture the greenhouse gases at the sources, preventing them to escape to the atmosphere.

But what sets CO2 apart is its lifetime and abundance. While the other greenhouse gases stay in the atmospere for roughly a hundred years, once emitted CO2 will remain there for between 300 and 1000 years. The other problem is that we already emitted it in abundance by using fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels are the remains of plants which died millions of years ago, taking all that time to transform into coals or oil. All organisms or lifeforms, including plants, are full of so-called carbohydrates, organic molecules such as sugar, which are used to store energy in the organisms, hence the name organic molecules. Carbohydrates are mainly built from carbon (C), hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O).

Burning means, generally, reacting with atmospheric oxygen, O2. When the remains of the plants, the fossil fuels, are burnt deliberately to be able to use them as energy sources, O2 combines with the hydrogen, H, to form water, H2O, and with the carbon, C, to form CO2. These reactions take place while releasing much heat, and that is the enery we use, and have used, in abundance. The water entering the atmosphere is pure and thus poses no probem at all. But the CO2 produced is also emitted into the atmosphere; because no one could see it or smell it, until the 1970s hardly anyone realized that something was wrong.

The climate is changing very rapidly now, we are running from record to record. Reducing CO2 emissions, and measures such as re- and afforestation, are needed badly but it will not be enough. The atmosphere behaves as a blanket around the Earth; a blanket which is necessary because without it we would freeze. But because not any large scale action was taken in the last decennia of the previous century, and the detrimental effects of the surplus of CO2 in the atmosphere started to be generally recognized only slowly early in this century, we now are living under an atmospheric blanket which has grown far too thick, and makes the ice on the poles melt. We therefore have no choice if we want to prevent the rising of the sea levels; we have to clean out this world wide waste-bin. What we brought into the atmosphere in the last fifty years could also be cleaned up again in fifty years. But we have to start now, or countries will have disappeared already, engulfed by the oceans.

Reduction and a bit of history

Reducing CO2 is an intricate problem. Changes of lifestyles are necessary, but if people have the feeling they almost have to stop living while big industries can simply continue polluting, motivation to change comfortable and familiar lifestyles is very hard to maintain.

Especially the large oil and gas companies have had a damaging impact, because they have inhibited and forestalled much-needed changes. We now know that already in 1959 also Shell knew, and in in 1991 was fully aware of what was happening, and also, that the seemingly well-founded doubts about climate change were orchestrated by the oil companies. Fortunately, in 2020 Shell has been brought to trial, yet the fact that they could continue for such a long time has caused an enormous delay in cleaning up the atmosphere. And looking at Shell’s own website, it can easily be seen that there is not any hope they will take responsbility for what they did, not even after trials.

The magnitude of the problem only became known to the general public when the atmosheric CO2 levels started to run out of hand; 2020 was again one of the warmest years on record, and disasters are happening already, even in the Netherlands.

About positive, non-intrusive ways to capture, recycle and store CO2

To keep people motivated and hopeful it is important that ways are found to work on the energy transition in a non-harmful way, for both the people and the Earth. Changing lifestyles is important, but the emphasis should not just be on changing them so drastically that people feel they will lose their self-determination. More emphasis should be given to making publicly known, and developing further, ways of capturing CO2 from the air, recycling the CO2 which is emitted now, and storing the CO2 that was emitted in previous years.

Capturing
To store and recycle CO2 it must first be captured. One way to do that is called “direct capture”; the CO2 is simply extracted from the open air, see for instance Climeworks and how it works. The beauty of this method is that it does not need water or chemicals, and the energy can come from solar panels. The technology is modular and scalable, and it does not matter where the CO2 is captured because it rapidly diffuses throughout the whole atmosphere. That also means that not everyone has to cooperate; it is as if you bought a dirty house and have to clean up, but the previous owner is not there any more. Of course, spreading false information in the ways the oil companies did should be punished, and emitting CO2 now has to be disencouraged strongly in order to prevent further excessive emissions, but anyone can start with cleaning up today. If we delay it until trails are won we will be too late.

Storage
In the meantime, the CO2 as a by-product of industrial processes can be captured and stored. There are many ideas about how to store CO2; put it in empty gas fields, salt caverns, or let it be absorbed by rock in the Earth’s mantle to form calcium carbonates. But most of these techniques are very intrusive; they have huge impacts on the Earth and may have harmful side effects. Forcing the Earth is, just like forcing people, hardly ever a sustainable idea. When I started to search for less harmful ways to store CO2, I recalled reading on the Climework’s website about storage in bricks, and adding that to my search words I found a little pdf on the web, CO2 mineralisation, which to my amazement was exactly what I had been looking for. It appeared to be a folder written by the above-mentioned group called CO2Value, a “think-and-do-tank, dedicated to Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU).” They discuss many ways of recycling and storage, and I think one of the best ideas is to use it in the building industries. People build very very much, and absorbing the CO2 surplus into bricks and concrete means permanent storage in a non-harmful way. If all around the world these methods would be used we could be quick enough to prevent catastrophes. A really encouraging news item was about the building of a footpath in Ghent, made from industrial waste and captured CO2; “1 m3 of carbstone bricks stores a net 350 kg of CO2.” If such ideas, including the making of furniture or even shoes, would catch on very quickly, we really have a chance. As we know by now humankind can deplete anything; there thus is no reason to assume that we cannot deplete the surplus of CO2 and thin the blanket around the Earth. It would be the first time that our tendency to deplete everything would save us.

Sharing solar panels is marvellous for people who want to buy solar panels, but who do not have their own roof, or a lot of money. I joined this Dutch initiative in May 2019 because solar energy is the only really sustainable energy.

This is how much solar energy is produced within the project until December 2023. Called ‘Zonnepanelendelen’, literally ‘Sharesolarpanels’, in this project anyone can ‘buy’ ‘parts-of-panels’; 34 parts equal one solar panel. Although Google translate is getting better by the year, what it says in Dutch is that in the past year, in total, sufficient electricity was produced for 169,828 households. For previous achievements, see June 2020, June 2022.

In the last days of 2019 and the first weeks of 2020 my brother and I visited north Norway. We drove there in my brother’s Tesla, model 3, going from supercharger to supercharger. There were enough Tesla chargers to enable us to go north, from Malmö via Skellefteå in Sweden to the Lofoten in Norway where we visited the Polarlightcenter in Straumnes, Laukvik, on the island of Austvågøya, then to the most northern Tesla supercharger in the world, which is in Sørkjosen. We chose our route in such a way that there was never more than a 2.5h drive between two Tesla superchargers, only once we had to charge at a compatible charger, which took a bit longer to charge but not that much (yet it disconnected us after 0.5h of charging).

Still, our experience was not by any means what we had expected; we had taken very warm clothing with us, but hardly needed it. Visiting a relative in Setermoen we heard that it often is around -25°C in January (with an average in January of -8°C)*, now it was +2°C. The same thing in Ulvsvåg; someone told us that normally around this time the weather is quiet, cold and dry, but now it was raining and snowing for weeks already. And in Levanger; where it usually is around -4°C in January, at 09h in the morning it was +7°C. We were obviously not the only ones becoming concerned. In Skibotn someone made the remark that the Norwegian government does not want to give up on its petrol, and in Levanger that the government is still in denial about the human impact on the climate.**

The almost permanent cloud cover sadly meant that we did not see much of the Northern Lights. Yet we did see it, which was already marvellous in itself, and learning more about it at the Polarlightcenter made it absolutely worthwile. It was explained why the polar lights are also visible when the sun is very quiet, as she is now, at the beginning of the 25th sunspot cycle, and we saw the marvellous setup of solely analogue instruments, measuring and showing fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetosphere which are induced by variations in the magnetic fields from the Sun, and may precede displays of northern lights. Sadly, due to cloud cover we missed the exceptional display on the 6th of January although we knew it had to come due to the highly fluctuating magnetic currents, as shown by the measuring instruments. It was an impressive moment, standing before the paper and seeing the needle move so fast.

Some of Therese’s impressive recordings of Northern lights, 12 Nov 2012, 14 Oct 2012, 6 Jan 2012, 2 Apr 2012, the latter also showing Venus and the Pleiades in a beautiful conjunction.

Because of the cloudy weather which lasted for our entire journey, despite being for almost three weeks in the darkest places I had ever been I hardly saw any stars except on the Lofoten, where there were some patches of clear sky. Once, further south again, I could see Andromeda, but only because I knew it had to be there, and again only between clouds. It is a good thing that my dream was to experience a day without sun, and my brother’s to charge his car at the most northern Tesla supercharger; two goals which had nothing to do with the local weather. Perhaps we are Dutch enough, knowing very well that rain and clouds may spoil the view.

About driving north in a Tesla, it could easily be argued that we would not have been able to make this trip if the temperatures had been much lower. Still we think we would have been able to; in this relatively warm weather we never arrived at the next supercharger with less than 140 km left. For certainty, we always slept in hotels close to superchargers, so we would have been able to warm the inside of the car (the lowest setting is 16°C) at the cost of about 300 km a day (two times 140 km or more), and if at night the car would have to take care that its batteries would not freeze over at the cost of again many kilometres, in the morning we could have charged it again. We also could have taken more time to drive this far than we did now.

In any case, whether or not due to these very high temperatures my dream of experiencing a day without sun succeeded, and to my surprise it even became five days. I had understood that the sun would rise at Straumness on the 5th of January, but it turned out to be on the 6th, which means that, leaving Bognes early in the morning of the 3rd to go by boat to Lødingen and drive to the Polarlightcenter on the Lofoten, we had one day without sun before we arrived there, and two during our stay at the Polarlightcenter. After the Lofoten, where we did try to see the first sunlight of the winter in Svolvær on the 6th but it was too cloudy to see it, we drove further north, via Setermoen and Skibotn to Sørkjosen, back into the polar night; I had not realised that in Setermoen the sun had not risen yet. The fifth day was when we drove back to the south and stayed in Bardufoss where the sun also had not risen yet, it would rise there on 12 January. That was our last day without sun; going further south, we drove out of the polar night again.***

My brother’s dream of charging at the most northern Tesla supercharger in the world also succeeded, despite the heavy snowstorms on especially the last part of our journey up. Three times we could not see anything any more in front of us, and for large parts we drove with 35 km/h, on a motorway. But we safely reached the remarkable supercharger.

There still is a lot for Tesla to develop, next to some minor issues which they hopefully will be able to solve quickly. But what I really hope is that Tesla will soon have all their superchargers deliver only solar power. How I do not know in practice,**** but using only solar power such a trip as we made would really be clean.

I wanted to experience a day without sun, so I wanted to visit Norway in winter. I also wanted it to be as clean as could be, and that was made possible by my brother and his Tesla.

On 4 Jan 2020, at the Polarlightcenter on the Lofoten, Therese van Nieuwenhoven made this photo of the Tesla and the Northern Lights.

My brother wanted to charge his Tesla at this supercharger, at that time the most northern Tesla supercharger in the world.

On 9 Jan 2020, after a heavy snow storm, we arrived in Sørkjosen, to charge the car at especially that supercharger.

This is my brother standing before the charging Tesla in the snow. The sun did not rise that day in Sørkjosen, so at 18h37 it was dark indeed.