A recent study published in Nature analyzes the public sentiment toward carbon dioxide removal (CDR) expressed in social media over the past decade.
The team of experts, including Dr. Tim Repke, Dr. Finn Müller-Hansen, Dr. Emily Cox, and Dr. Jan C. Minx, ventured into this research, acknowledging the power and importance of public opinion for scaling the climate-crucial sector of CDR.
Using data gathered from Twitter in the period between 2010 and 2022, the team accessed nearly 570,000 tweets in the English language related to 10 different CDR methods.
The technologies covered in the research include soil carbon sequestration, ecosystem restoration, afforestation/reforestation, blue carbon, direct air capture (DAC, including DACCS), enhanced weathering, ocean fertilization, ocean alkalinization, biochar, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
Results from this elaborate work show that the mention and support for CDR have grown in the past decade, highlighting a 32% average annual increase rate in carbon dioxide removal discussions.
In general, conventional CDR methods dominate the social media conversation, representing 55% of all discussions, while novel and emerging technologies represent only 17%.
As the most talked-about segment of CDR, the conventional technologies that receive the most attention are reforestation and ecosystem restoration, with the majority of commentary being positive.
During the research, Twitter users were divided into three groups based on how many CDR tweets they had in the studied material: infrequent users (one or two CDR tweets), moderate users (up to 50 CDR tweets), and frequent users (more than 50 CDR tweets).
With this categorization in place, the team of researchers was able to identify certain patterns, including that infrequent users tend to focus on conventional methods like reforestation, while frequent users talk more about novel CDR technologies like direct air capture (DAC).
As one of the key takeaways, this study sheds light on the growing public acceptance of most CDR approaches, with varying levels of support across different methods and user groups.
Additionally, analysis showed that the share of positive tweets increases over time for most CDR methods, except for BECCS.
Read more: New Study Finds Protecting And Restoring EU Forests Is Key To Meeting CO2 Removal Goals
