Science Snippets: No Space to Store Carbon

Draft script:

I am frequently informed that humans need only reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn. Doing so will immediately solve the ongoing loss of habitat for humans and other organisms. Unfortunately, as pointed out by the designed-to-fail Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Earth is amid the most rapid change in planetary history. The IPCC also concluded that this change is irreversible. Adding to our misery, there is no known way to capture and store carbon. Even worse, as I will point out today, there is no space in which to store that carbon that we cannot capture.

From the Associated Press comes a story titled Study: There is less room to store carbon dioxide, driver of climate change, than previously thought. The article was published 3 September 2025. As suggested by the title, it includes reference to a peer-reviewed paper.

Here’s the lede: “The world has far fewer places to securely store carbon dioxide deep underground than previously thought, steeply lowering its potential to help stem global warming, according to a new study that challenges long-held industry claims about the practice.”

The next paragraph includes a reference to the peer-reviewed paper: “The study, published … in the journal Nature, found that global carbon storage capacity was 10 times less than previous estimates after ruling out geological formations where the gas could leak, trigger earthquakes or contaminate groundwater, or had other limitations. That means carbon capture and storage would only have the potential to reduce human-caused warming by 0.7 degrees Celsius … — far less than previous estimates of around 5-6 degrees Celsius …, researchers said.”

I’ll have more shortly from the peer-reviewed paper in the renowned Nature series. The article at the Associated Press continues: “The study is the latest knock on a technology, for years promoted by oil and gas industry, that has often been touted as a climate solution. Today, carbon capture is far from being deployed at scale, despite billions of dollars in investments around the world, and the amount of carbon currently captured is just a tiny fraction of the billions of tons of carbon dioxide emitted every year.”

That’s inconvenient. Humans tend to believe we can wiggle our way out of any situation. However, there seems to be no solution to the predicament of abrupt, irreversible climate change.

Beneath a subsection titled “Challenging assumptions,” the Associated Press story continues with many details. I’ll present a few. “The 2015 Paris Agreement called for limiting average global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius …, but ideally below 1.5C …, compared to the early 1800s.

Many scenarios for achieving that have relied on carbon removal and storage. … That’s not to say that carbon capture and storage isn’t important to keep global temperatures in check — but countries must prioritize how they use the limited storage and do so in conjunction with fast and deep emissions reductions, researchers said.”

As you undoubtedly know, the designed-to-fail Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Earth is amid the most abrupt change in planetary history. It also concluded this human-induced change is irreversible. The IPCC was designed to fail when it was created during the Ronald Reagan administration.

Back to the Associated Press article, we read that carbon capture and storage is not optional. We must capture and store carbon as one of many means of addressing the disaster humans have collectively created.

Some scholars believe there are other reasons we will fail to employ carbon capture and storage. Rob Jackson directs the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who monitor greenhouse gas emissions. He praised the peer-reviewed study for its cautionary perspective. Furthermore, he is optimistic that carbon capture technology itself will work. However, he believes very little carbon will ever be stored “because I don’t think we’re willing to pay for it.”

Again, it comes down to money. Everyone wants to be a millionaire or a billionaire. Nobody wants to pay the cost of admission into either club. And very few wealthy people are willing to spend a few dollars to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions, much less pay for carbon capture and storage. That leaves the issues in the hands of the masses, few of whom are able—much less willing—to make a dent in society’s greenhouse gas emissions and the ensuing consequences.

The story at the Associated Press concludes with a quote from the first author of the peer-reviewed paper: “If we prolong our dependence on fossil fuels for too long with the expectation that we will offset that by simply storing carbon underground, we’re likely saddling future generations with a nearly impossible task of dealing with not only our mess, but limited ways of cleaning it up.”

I would argue the situation is far worse than that. There is no known way to clean up the mess, much less turn back the clock on negative consequences already under way. These include, for example, the worst Mass Extinction Event in planetary history.

The peer-reviewed paper was created by 11 scholars and titled A prudent planetary limit for geologic carbon storage. Published on 3 September 2025, the open-access paper was published in the renowned journal, Nature.

The Abstract quotes additional peer-reviewed literature in telling the tale: “Geologically storing carbon is a key strategy for abating emissions from fossil fuels and durably removing carbon dioxide … from the atmosphere. However, the storage potential is not unlimited. Here we establish a prudent planetary limit of around 1,460 … Gt of [carbon dioxide] … storage through a risk-based, spatially explicit analysis of carbon storage in sedimentary basins. We show that only stringent near-term gross emissions reductions can lower the risk of breaching this limit before the year 2200. Fully using geologic storage for carbon removal caps the possible global temperature reduction to 0.7 °C ... The countries most robust to our risk assessment are current large-scale extractors of fossil resources. Treating carbon storage as a limited intergenerational resource has deep implications for national mitigation strategies and policy and requires making explicit decisions on priorities for storage use.”

This sounds great. I doubt reality matches this optimistic perspective.