Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim? - by James Hansen et al.

[mackdaddy]

3. Problem is we can burn fossil fuels cheaper and faster than any CO2 sequestration.

My home is all electric. I use about 15 megawatt-hours of electricity per year which is about 15 thousand pounds of coal or 7.5 tons. When burnt it is about 20 tons of CO2. The coal is less than $40 per ton, and Carbon dioxide sequestration if it were available would cost about $300 to $1000 per ton to treat. My electricity should probably cost 3 to 10 times what I pay to cover the cost of just the new carbon to be sequestrated. There are thousands of coal fired plants burning coal daily, and just a couple of prototype co2 sequestration plants.

So multiply this times just the few hundred million people in just this country and the amount of CO2 generated is astounding. This does not include another few tons from running my car.

So how would you ever convince people that they should stop using fossil fuels and pay of the CO2 sequestration? I mean I believe it, but Trump voters mostly think CO2 is going to make their garden grow better. People will have to suffer personally before they will believe it, like when we were suffering from smog, much like what Asia is going through right now. Problem is Climate change is a lot more indirect.

By the way I did design and install a 10kw solar array for my property and generate about 12 megawatt-hours of the 15 I use. If I heated with wood I could reduce that.