Land Use and Geo-Engineering - Introduction to Carbon Capture and Sequestration - page 521

the indications for “plan A” (cessation or mitigation of all CO 2 emissions)
are not all that positive. The idea of doing some research into a plan B is
important. There is more than a little irony in the fact that all research
funding aimed at mitigating CO 2 emissions, including fi nding renewable
energy sources, is a negligible fraction of the costs of current energy pro-
duction. As the authors of this text do research on energy, you may have
correctly sensed some frustration in these words. Completely unrelated to
the present topics, but to put energy research in perspective, consider the
US Department of Energy's Solar Energy Hub. It is one of the largest con-
certed DOE renewable energy projects, and it seeks to develop devices
that convert sunlight into fuel, one of the holy grails in energy research.
The scientifi c challenges that need to be solved are enormous. The total
budget for fi ve years of research is about 125 million dollars, about the
same amount that Hollywood typically invests in the making of a single
movie, such as Angels and Demons . (In Angels and Demons the source of
energy was, admittedly, much more spectacular!)
Section 2
Land use
Introduction
In our introductory section we noted that of the 10 Gt of annual global
anthropogenic carbon emissions, 15%, or 1.5 Gt, results from land use
change. In the 19 th century land use changes in Europe and North America
contributed signifi cantly to CO 2 emissions, only to be swamped by fossil
fuel use in the 20 th century (see Figure 11.2.1 ). Before 1850, wood was
the most common energy source; turning forest into agricultural land
served two purposes: energy production and increased cropland for farm-
ing. Agricultural techniques improved enormously, allowing Europeans
and North Americans to make more intelligent use of the land and thereby
increase its productivity. Indeed, we see that in these continents changes