Twenty years ago, on this day, September 23rd, 2005,
IPCC report on Carbon Capture and Storage 22-24 September 2005
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 380ppm. As of 2025, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that from the late 1990s CCS had come onto the radar of policymakers, since if the Kyoto Protocol were to come into force, then rich nations would have to reduce emissions. CCS might, they thought, be a convenient (if not cheap) way of meeting these obligations.
The specific context was that pro-CCS scientists and technologists had lobbied successfully for the IPCC to produce one of its “Special Reports.”
What I think we can learn from this – every new technology, even (especially the Unicorntech) needs big fat reports with hundreds of footnotes to make it seem real and safe.
What happened next – CCS has been through repeated hype cycles. God help us all.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
