Climate restoration

As stated in "The Economist" in November 2017, "in any realistic scenario, emissions cannot be cut fast enough to keep the total stock of greenhouse gases sufficiently small to limit the rise in temperature successfully.

One key finding of the study is that it would be possible to restore the CO2 atmospheric concentrations to preindustrial levels at an acceptable cost under two scenarios, where greenhouse gas reductions and direct air capture (DAC) technologies prove to be economically efficient.

One key recommendation of the Rand Corporation study is that an ambitious climate restoration goal may seek to achieve preindustrial concentration by 2075, or by the end of the century.

It concludes that "The best we can do is pursue climate restoration with a passion while embedding it in a process of testing, experimentation, correction, and discovery."

On November 13, 2020, an open letter, put together by the youth organisation Worldward, calling for climate restoration was published in the Guardian newspaper.

[19] It then describes four solutions that appear to fit the criteria: a) ocean fertilization; b) synthetic limestone; c) seaweed; d) enhanced atmospheric methane oxidation using iron chloride.

Scale-up now requires that the restoration goal be endorsed by the UN and large NGOs so that investors and governments can justify funding the projects.

Conversely, there are certain aspects of the Earth System that need to be improved with respect to the recent past: notably food productivity, considering an increased global population by 2050 or 2100.

Today's CO 2 is roughly 120 ppm higher than the highest levels humans have actually survived long-term. Nature has removed similar massive amounts of CO 2 preceding ice ages, ten times in the last 800,000 years. The CO 2 that reduces levels by 120 ppm is mostly converted to biocarbon by phytoplankton and stored in the deep ocean, and released when the ice-age ends. The phytoplankton growth corresponds with ocean iron concentration. [ 1 ]
A visualization of phytoplankton bloom populations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans from March 2003 to October 2006. The blue areas are nutrient deficient. Green to yellow show blooms fed by dust blown from nearby landmasses.
The committee's logo, showing a silhouette of the Capitol dome before a warming stripes graphic depicting annual global temperature rise. [ 9 ]