A Downhill Racing Strategy to Stop Climate Change

"Seventeen years is all it would take subatomic nanocarbon wavesurfing to arrest glacial melting"

A.I. Image by Dzine

If you go back to the previous set of IPCC reports, Assessment Report Five, “Net Zero” wasn't mentioned in there at all. … In its Sixth Assessment Report, it's there several thousand times. It's almost every page. And so let's be clear. Net Zero is not a phrase that we've been using for a long time. It's a phrase that has come up almost overnight. And the media use it, the academics use it, the funding agencies use it, so everyone there, every company, uses it. Everyone talks about Net Zero. And overnight, we've adopted that language as if it's always been there. It hasn’t.

So, at a purely scientific level, all we're talking about with Net Zero is balancing inputs and outputs in the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, but that's not what we're doing when we're talking about it in our normal day-to-day speech. What we're talking about there are all sorts of scams and ruses that we're using to avoid making difficult decisions today. And, you know, we can think about this as an accountancy scam. It allows us to do all sorts of things.

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Sort of like the cherry on top of the scam cake are these things called negative emission technologies that sound like they exist — “oh let's just use negative emissions,” we say. It doesn't sound odd to us anymore because we’ve used that language for so long—the last three, four, five, six years, if not a little bit longer now—that it’s almost like, “well of course we can just use negative emissions,” but there are no negative emission technologies out there at scale.

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Rather than having to do something early in the spreadsheet in the years 2024, 2025, 2026, you can say, “oh we'll apply some negative emissions in 2035 or 2040….” So at every level you can you can scam this Net Zero. And this is why you find BP, Shell, Exxon, Saudi Aramco—they've all got Net Zero targets. The UK, Canada, the US, the Saudis—they’ve got Net Zero targets. We all have Net Zero targets, yet we're all seeking more fossil fuels right?

Right! So we’re all in. We’re all in Net Zero. Everyone's bought into the Net Zero scam. [And not] surprisingly, the emissions keep going up and the temperature keeps going up. So, somewhere in it, the physics said, “we can see through that scam” but the rest of us, we love it because it deludes us and it allows us to avoid those deeply political difficult questions we do not want to have to ask or at worse we don't want to have to answer.

—Climate scientist Kevin Anderson, Climate Chat, March 11, 2024

A few weeks ago, Elisa Caffont and Maurizio Bormolini were the Italian one-two in the mixed team snowboard parallel slalom event at the 2025 Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Championships. They beat Italian compatriots Gabriel Messner and Jasmin Coratti in the big final to claim the gold. Bormolini took home the overall 2024-25 Alpine Snowboarding World Cup. It might be unremarkable except that the entire Italian team accomplished these feats by nanocarbon wavesurfing through the subatomic landscape.

Their polymer glass boards were doped with biochar.

 

As they carved their graceful speed arcs in the downhill slalom, easily outdistancing rivals after each cut, Caffont and Bormolini stole carbon from the atmosphere (selectively fireproofing alpine forests), locked carbon molecules into a durable crystal form called inertinite and then dropped, ever so slightly, the odds that the snow will vanish from their favorite slopes forever, in their lifetime.

But there was another magical force at work. Caffont and Bormolini won the gold with quantum physics.

 

Hans Peter Schmidt—the Emmit Brown of Climate science—has been tinkering with biochar for as long as I have known him. He was the first to plaster his alpine wine cellar with biochar gypsum, proving that its microbial scavenging and air filtration qualities can preserve and enhance the terroir in favorite vintages. The snowboard idea traces back to that work. In an April 2025 article in the Biochar Journal, he explains:

Some effects can be easily understood with traditional physics we learned at school. One of these effects is the reduction of electrostatic charging due to the friction of the snowboard with the more or less dry snow due to the electric conductivity and electron buffering of the biochar. Other effects need quantum physics for their explanation, and here, we are probably not the best to explain it comprehensively. We will, however, try it.

The electron cloud of biochar's aromatic clusters is capable of capturing phonons that are transmitted in a solid material when it is put under mechanical stress. Typically, vibrations in skis or snowboards produce phonons that mostly dissipate as heat, resulting in energy loss and, therefore, reduced speed potential. However, when the aromatic biochar lattice captures and accumulates those phonons, the energy can be reinjected into the materials as soon as the material tension releases, for instance, at the end of a turn.

The aromatic carbon clusters of high-temperature biochar possess extremely low electrical resistance, and their electron clouds, containing persistent free radicals, can readily capture and release phonon energy. Phonons are quantum particles analogous to photons, but not as quantized light but as quantized sound waves propagating through materials. Phonons can be described as quantized modes of vibrations in elastic structures of interacting particles. In NanoC materials, they interact with the diverse aromatic structures such as graphene, fullerenes, and carbon nanotubes that are found in high-temperature biochar.

Additionally, wave-like excitation of the electron clouds of the aromatic structure of biochar can be set up by targeted electromagnetic waves. These frequencies are then stored within the NanoC particles and can induce resonance in specific components of snowboard materials, effectively mitigating unwanted oscillations under mechanical stress.

Adding those biochar nanoparticles to the polymer glass deck improved the board's ability to absorb energy during hard carving turns, which is then released on rebounding at the end of the turn, boosting acceleration. The biochar improved the board's ability to store energy when it bends and shed it when released. Vibration is transformed from speed loss (energy loss to heat and noise) to speed gain as the nano-sized biochar particles work like a capacitor within the composite material, capturing and returning the energy according to the bending stage of the board.

You can think of it as a flux capacitor.

If quantum physics is not your thing, then consider that Bormoloni and other boarders can win more than trophies—they can earn carbon credits. Each board can be certified and registered as a temporary C-sink to offset warming and draw down greenhouse gas emissions. So can the same materials when used in wind turbine blades, F1 racing tires, Tour d’France bikes, pro-tour golf clubs, and tennis rackets.

The same week Schmidt’s article was published, Zhe Han Weng and Annette Cowie published an article in Nature Communications: “Estimates vary but credible evidence points to gigaton-scale climate change mitigation potential of biochar.”

The nine-page review gathered and summarized the potential of biochar to return Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse to pre-industrial balance within a time frame that humans can survive.

This essay now describes the best current calculations for how quickly biochar can bring humans back from the brink of climate collapse. You can afford $7 to support a good cause, right? What follows is the best part.

 

Weng and Cowie took a deep dive into 19 published studies estimating the climate change mitigation potential of biochar, reconciling reference metrics and individual study limitations. The upper-bound, most rosy scenario for drawdown was 11 PgCO2e yr-1, or 11 petagrams or gigatons—billion metric tons—of greenhouse gas removal per year. One would need to contrast that with present-day, human-added emissions, which are approximately 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide or 50 billion tons of “carbon dioxide equivalent” when including trace gases like methane, fluorocarbons, and soot, as well as changes to land use, the water cycle, and various carbon sink losses.

If, through some yet-to-be-discovered magic, or perhaps the same sort of Facebook algorithms that elected Trump, supercharged Covid’s R-naught, and gave Nazi tech billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk control of the world, we could suddenly reverse course and attain zero emissions—humanity’s Brigadoon—then 11 billion tons per year drawdown would arrest the melting at Earth’s poles in a mere 50 years, or by 2075.

To estimate how long it would take for atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to return to 350 ppm under the scenario described—zero emissions plus carbon dioxide removal (CDR) of 11 PgCO₂e/year—we consider the current atmospheric CO₂ level, the total amount of CO₂ that needs to be removed, and the annual removal rate.

Current CO₂ Levels: Atmospheric CO₂ is “officially” ~420 ppm as of 2025. It may effectively be 526-567 ppm CO2e when accounting for the McPherson Paradox (aerosol masking). We’ll use the lower number.

Target Reduction: To return to 350 ppm, approximately 70 ppm of CO₂ must be removed. Each ppm corresponds to roughly 7.8 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO₂, meaning a total removal of about 546 GtCO₂ is required.

Removal Rate: The proposed CDR rate is 11 PgCO₂/year (11 GtCO₂/year).

Calculation:

The time required can be calculated by dividing the total amount of CO₂ to be removed by the annual removal rate:

Time = Total CO2 to remove / Annual removal rate

Time = 546 PgCO2 / 11 GtCO2/y = 49.6 years.

Unfortunately, it is not that simple. The ocean is our carbon piggy bank, absorbing excess CO2 (becoming more acidic in the process) and slowly—very slowly—depositing the excess carbon through corals, whale poop, and sedimentation. Approximately 15–25% of atmospheric CO₂ removed will be compensated by ocean outgassing over decadal timescales, based on studies of air-sea CO₂ flux dynamics. Over century timescales, the rebound effect of ocean outgassing approaches 50%, meaning you have to remove twice as much CO2 from the air to reach an equilibrium concentration between atmosphere and ocean.

But let’s assume a 20% compensation rate as a reasonable goal for our 21st-century drawdown. Accounting for 20% ocean outgassing, the effective removal rate becomes 8.8 PgCO2/y (11 Pg less 20%).

Time = 546 PgCO2 / 8.8 GtCO2/y = 62 years.

So, instead of 2075 (if Elon Musk and the Trump Tariffs attain Net Zero between now and December), and would scale biochar on top of that, instantaneously, we would be looking at 2087 before the ice melt stops, polar vortices calm, extreme weather abates, and the Atlantic overturning circulation returns to its prior poleward heat transfer pattern.

Maybe.

It might take that long were it not for Elisa Caffont and Maurizio Bormolini’s breathtaking slalom runs.

You see, Weng and Cowie, like nearly all hallowed researchers gone before, limited their research to crop residues and agricultural applications for biochar. As Kathleen Draper (who co-authored Hans Peter Schmidt’s snowboarding article for the Biochar Journal) and I described in our 2019 book, Burn: Igniting a New Carbon Drawdown Economy to End the Climate Crisis, the non-agricultural uses for biochar (cement, asphalt, batteries, water filtration and desalination, steelmaking, alloy refining, data center geothermal cooling pumps, kitty litter, etc.):

• Will remove 5 times more carbon from the atmosphere annually once commercial potential is realized;
• Can use feedstocks (marine algae, municipal solid wastes, plastics, medically contaminated biowastes) unsuited or too dangerous for soil applications; and
• Will have “inertinite” durabilities measured in the hundreds of millions of years, in some cases.

Schmidt concludes his article by saying:

Sports gear is just the beginning. Under the name of C-Thinx, as we call the NanoC containing C-Sink materials, we work on reducing vibrations of wind turbine rotor blades and, thus, increasing their energy efficiency. It will further be employed in carbon concrete, extending the lifespan of constructions such as bridges and tunnels. When integrated into asphalt for roads, it will significantly reduce tire vibration, thereby lowering noise pollution, fuel consumption, and gum abrasion while increasing the longevity of the asphalt. There are many more advanced biocarbon materials on the list, poised to replace conventional petrochemical products.

Now let’s assume that industries like biochar snowboards and bioasphalt were scaled to their maximum. How many years would we need to return the atmosphere to 350 ppmv CO2e?

Seventeen years.

It takes about the same time to train a world-class snowboarder.

 

References

Bates, Albert, and Kathleen Draper. Burn: Igniting a New Carbon Drawdown Economy to End the Climate Crisis. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019.

Carbon Brief Explainer (2025). Will global warming 'stop' as soon as net-zero emissions ...

Climate Equity Reference Project (2025). A 350 ppm Emergency Pathway

climate.gov (2025). Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

Fay, Amanda R., Luke Gregor, Peter Landschützer, Galen A. McKinley, Nicolas Gruber, Marion Gehlen, Yosuke Iida et al. "SeaFlux: harmonization of air–sea CO 2 fluxes from surface p CO 2 data products using a standardized approach." Earth System Science Data 13, no. 10 (2021): 4693-4710.

M.I.T. (2025). How long will it take temperatures to stop rising, or return to ‘normal?

Open Global Rights (2025). Replacing the 1.5°C target with what science demands: The 350 ppm limit

Schmidt HP: Biochar wins World Cup, the Biochar Journal (2025), Arbaz, Switzerland. ISSN 2297-1114 Version of 02 April 2025

Watson, Andrew J., Ute Schuster, Jamie D. Shutler, Thomas Holding, Ian GC Ashton, Peter Landschützer, David K. Woolf, and Lonneke Goddijn-Murphy. "Revised estimates of ocean-atmosphere CO2 flux are consistent with ocean carbon inventory." Nature communications 11, no. 1 (2020): 4422.

Weng, Zhe Han, and Annette L. Cowie. "Estimates vary but credible evidence points to gigaton-scale climate change mitigation potential of biochar." Communications Earth & Environment 6, no. 1 (2025): 259.

Yale360 (2025). How the World Passed a Carbon Threshold and Why It Matters

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13 y.o. Ukrainian Karolina Protsenko and 14 y.o Swedish Oscar Stembridge street concert. Her first time busking.

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When humans are locked in a cage, the Earth continues to be beautiful. Therefore, the lesson for us is that human beings are not necessary. The air, soil, sky and water are still beautiful without you. So, when you step out of the cage, please remember that you are guests of the Earth, not its hosts.

We have a complete solution. We can restore whales to the ocean and bison to the plains. We can recover all the tremendous old-growth forests. We possess the knowledge and tools to rebuild savannah and wetland ecosystems. Coral reefs rebuilt with biorock build beaches faster than the seas are rising. It is not too late. All of these great works of nature are recoverable. We can have a human population sized to harmonize, not destabilize. We can have an atmosphere that heats and cools just the right amount, is easy on our lungs and sweet to our nostrils with the scent of ten thousand flowers. All of that beckons. All of that is within reach.