Sustainable financing of permanent CO2 disposal through a Carbon Takeback Obligation

Unless there is immediate, unprecedented, reduction in global demand for carbon-intensive energy and products, then capture and permanent storage of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually will be needed before mid-century to meet Paris Agreement goals. Yet competition from cheaper, temporary, carbon storage means that permanent disposal remains starved of investment, currently representing about 0.1% of Energy and Industrial Process (EIP) emissions. This stored fraction must reach 100% to stop EIPs causing global warming. Here we show that a cost-effective transition can occur by mandating an increasing stored fraction through a progressive Carbon Takeback Obligation (CTO) on fossil fuel producers and importers. Projected costs of storage to the consumer are lower than pricing carbon emissions in conventional 1.5{\deg}C scenarios until the 2040s, and comparable or lower thereafter. A CTO combined with measures to reduce CO2 production would deliver the lowest-risk pathway to achieving net zero.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, SI available on reques

Upstream decarbonization through a carbon takeback obligation: An affordable backstop climate policy

In the absence of immediate, rapid, and unprecedented reduction in global demand for carbon-intensive energy and products, the capture and permanent storage of billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually will be needed before mid-century to meet Paris Agreement goals. Yet the focus on absolute emission reductions and cheaper, more temporary forms of carbon storage means that permanent CO2 disposal remains starved of investment, currently deployed to capture only about 0.1% of global Energy and Industrial Process (EIP) emissions. This stored fraction, the percentage of fossil EIP emissions that are captured and permanently stored, must reach 100% to stop EIP emissions causing further global warming. Here, we show that a cost-effective transition can occur by mandating an increasing stored fraction through a progressive carbon takeback obligation (CTBO) on fossil carbon producers and importers. By emulating the behavior of an integrated assessment model (IAM) and employing conservative assumptions for the costs of permanent carbon storage, we show that projected economy-wide costs of a CTBO policy are comparable to the costs associated with achieving similarly ambitious climate goals in IAMs employing a global carbon price, or potentially lower if the perceived policy risk cost associated with a CTBO is lower than that associated with a politically determined carbon price. Compared with a global carbon price, an upstream CTBO has advantages of simple governance, speed, and controllability: equivalent carbon prices under a CTBO are reliably capped by the cost of direct air capture and storage, by ensuring deployment keeps pace with continued fossil fuel use, reducing the risk of punitive carbon prices or more draconian measures being needed to drive out the final tranche of emissions. When combined with measures to reduce CO2 production in the near-term, a CTBO could deliver a viable pathway to achieving net-zero emissions consistent with 1.5°C by mid-century

Analysis of shared heritability in common disorders of the brain

ience, this issue p. eaap8757 Structured Abstract INTRODUCTION Brain disorders may exhibit shared symptoms and substantial epidemiological comorbidity, inciting debate about their etiologic overlap. However, detailed study of phenotypes with different ages of onset, severity, and presentation poses a considerable challenge. Recently developed heritability methods allow us to accurately measure correlation of genome-wide common variant risk between two phenotypes from pools of different individuals and assess how connected they, or at least their genetic risks, are on the genomic level. We used genome-wide association data for 265,218 patients and 784,643 control participants, as well as 17 phenotypes from a total of 1,191,588 individuals, to quantify the degree of overlap for genetic risk factors of 25 common brain disorders. RATIONALE Over the past century, the classification of brain disorders has evolved to reflect the medical and scientific communities' assessments of the presumed root causes of clinical phenomena such as behavioral change, loss of motor function, or alterations of consciousness. Directly observable phenomena (such as the presence of emboli, protein tangles, or unusual electrical activity patterns) generally define and separate neurological disorders from psychiatric disorders. Understanding the genetic underpinnings and categorical distinctions for brain disorders and related phenotypes may inform the search for their biological mechanisms. RESULTS Common variant risk for psychiatric disorders was shown to correlate significantly, especially among attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder (MDD), and schizophrenia. By contrast, neurological disorders appear more distinct from one another and from the psychiatric disorders, except for migraine, which was significantly correlated to ADHD, MDD, and Tourette syndrome. We demonstrate that, in the general population, the personality trait neuroticism is significantly correlated with almost every psychiatric disorder and migraine. We also identify significant genetic sharing between disorders and early life cognitive measures (e.g., years of education and college attainment) in the general population, demonstrating positive correlation with several psychiatric disorders (e.g., anorexia nervosa and bipolar disorder) and negative correlation with several neurological phenotypes (e.g., Alzheimer's disease and ischemic stroke), even though the latter are considered to result from specific processes that occur later in life. Extensive simulations were also performed to inform how statistical power, diagnostic misclassification, and phenotypic heterogeneity influence genetic correlations. CONCLUSION The high degree of genetic correlation among many of the psychiatric disorders adds further evidence that their current clinical boundaries do not reflect distinct underlying pathogenic processes, at least on the genetic level. This suggests a deeply interconnected nature for psychiatric disorders, in contrast to neurological disorders, and underscores the need to refine psychiatric diagnostics. Genetically informed analyses may provide important "scaffolding" to support such restructuring of psychiatric nosology, which likely requires incorporating many levels of information. By contrast, we find limited evidence for widespread common genetic risk sharing among neurological disorders or across neurological and psychiatric disorders. We show that both psychiatric and neurological disorders have robust correlations with cognitive and personality measures. Further study is needed to evaluate whether overlapping genetic contributions to psychiatric pathology may influence treatment choices. Ultimately, such developments may pave the way toward reduced heterogeneity and improved diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Cold waves are getting milder in the northern midlatitudes

International audienc

Net zero: science, origins, and implications

This review explains the science behind the drive for global net zero emissions and why this is needed to halt the ongoing rise in global temperatures. We document how the concept of net zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions emerged from an earlier focus on stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Using simple conceptual models of the coupled climate–carbon cycle system, we explain why approximately net zero CO2 emissions and declining net energy imbalance due to other climate drivers are required to halt global warming on multidecadal timescales, introducing important concepts, including the rate of adjustment to constant forcing and the rate of adjustment to zero emissions. The concept of net zero was taken up through the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Structured Expert Dialogue, culminating in Article 4 of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Increasing numbers of net zero targets have since been adopted by countries, cities, corporations, and investors. The degree to which any entity can claim to have achieved net zero while continuing to rely on distinct removals to compensate for ongoing emissions is at the heart of current debates over carbon markets and offsetting both inside and outside the UNFCCC. We argue that what matters here is not the precise makeup of a basket of emissions and removals at any given point in time, but the sustainability of a net zero strategy as a whole and its implications for global temperature over multidecadal timescales. Durable, climate-neutral net zero strategies require like-for-like balancing of anthropogenic greenhouse gases sources and sinks in terms of both origin (biogenic versus geological) and gas lifetime

Analysis of Shared Heritability in Common Disorders of the Brain

Disorders of the brain can exhibit considerable epidemiological comorbidity and often share symptoms, provoking debate about their etiologic overlap. We quantified the genetic sharing of 25 brain disorders from genome-wide association studies of 265,218 patients and 784,643 control participants and assessed their relationship to 17 phenotypes from 1,191,588 individuals. Psychiatric disorders share common variant risk, whereas neurological disorders appear more distinct from one another and from the psychiatric disorders. We also identified significant sharing between disorders and a number of brain phenotypes, including cognitive measures. Further, we conducted simulations to explore how statistical power, diagnostic misclassification, and phenotypic heterogeneity affect genetic correlations. These results highlight the importance of common genetic variation as a risk factor for brain disorders and the value of heritability-based methods in understanding their etiology