Rajendra Pachauri, head of the "policy neutral" IPCC, has come out in support of air capture of carbon dioxide:
Since the IPCC did not discuss air capture, I wonder where this view comes from. Maybe he has been reading the latest issue of Nature Geoscience.Drastic cuts in carbon emissions may not be sufficient to avoid the worst ravages of global warming and the world will need to suck carbon from the atmosphere to avert permanent damage to the climate, according to a leading world authority on climate science.
In an interview with The Times, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), proposed that new techniques should be applied to help to mop up atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide that have been pumped into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.
“There are enough technologies in existence to allow for mitigation,” he said. “At some point we will have to cross over and start sucking some of those gases out of the atmosphere.”
Speaking days before the start of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, Dr Pachauri, who collected the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC with Al Gore, said that such a strategy needed to be pursued as a matter of urgency.