I hope that President Obama will take a broad look at climate fixes, not just assign DOE to clean up energy and DOT to clean up transportation. While fossil fuel emissions are what has gotten us into climate trouble, it does not follow that fixing them will get us out. Reducing emissions does nothing to reverse either ocean acidification or our present climate problems. Until we create enough new carbon sinks to begin reducing the excess CO2 in the air, our problems will only get worse.
While there are many good reasons to plant more forests, they are too vulnerable to drought. We cannot count on trees that could easily burn or rot. Anoxic sinks for biomass would be far more secure. Photo¬synthesis already removes large amounts of CO2 and, at the other end of the carbon cycle, CO2 is released by respiration and cell decomposition (combustion, rotting). It would suffice to keep atmosphere-bound carbon from reaching its destination.
Biomass—corn stalks, sewage, sawdust, switchgrass, and such—can be buried to effectively take CO2 out of the air. But, except for capturing the CO2 from coal burning, all of the climate talk in DC seems to ignore carbon sinks. When actually removing CO2 from the air is mentioned, it gets relegated to something to do after we clean up emissions. And since that is something that will take a century to accomplish, we are in serious "too little, too late" territory.
In short, we cannot start small and ramp up in the manner once proposed for "emissions wedges." We must think big about new carbon sinks as the world needs to sink about 25 billion tonnes each year, half to counter current emissions and commitments and half for drawing down CO2 concentrations within decades.
For a safety factor, we must front-load our climate response, much as a course of antibiotics may include a double dose the first day. That’s what it takes to back out of the danger zones for climate change and ocean acidification that we have blundered into, despite 50 years of serious scientific alerts.