Heatmap declares grimly that Anthropic is buying into carbon removal. Grimly because the company, they explain, was “built on pirated model training material”, and because the carbon removal enterprise runs the risk of taking away the need to ration everybody’s carbon budgets: “Scientists largely agree that carbon removal is an important solution for down the line, but only if the world also dramatically reduces the amount of carbon it emits in the first place – not least because doing so is less expensive and less resource-intensive than removing emissions in the future.” There is no guarantee the contraptions will work, but if they do at least it means humanity could continue enjoying the benefits of cheap and reliable fossil fuels without worrying about adding CO2 to the air. To Heatmap it’s apparently a downside.
Still, hope springs eternal. See, this fund is the brainchild of “Frontier Climate, a corporate initiative to drive advances in carbon removal”. Not to engage in it, since nobody has found a way other than accounting jiggery-pokery or pipe dreams. But now, whoop de doo:
“Frontier supports projects that are capable of sucking large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere, a solution scientists say is a critical supplement to reducing emissions in order to curb climate change. With the new fund, Frontier is shifting its focus from supporting early innovation to taking bigger swings on fewer, larger projects. Anthropic, alongside Google, Stripe, Shopify, and others, has committed to co-sign offtake agreements to buy the resulting carbon removal.”
Once again with the scientists who say. Who are they? Which scientists call carbon removal a “critical supplement to reducing emissions in order to curb climate change”? Which scientists believe that climate did not change until Henry Ford invented carbon, or James Watt did, or Satan did, and that in particular if we somehow got atmospheric CO2 back down to Little Ice Age levels the weather instead of being both foul and variable as in the, well, Little Ice Age, will suddenly become benign and stable?
Which scientists believe that reducing emissions is not by itself sufficient? Which scientists do not believe in the carbon cycle having self-stabilizing properties so extra CO2 will be absorbed by plants, oceans and so forth? Which scientists believe carbon can be sucked out of the atmosphere in large amounts? But never mind. Because the PR department seems to think it’s pretty keen:
“The news throws into relief Anthropic’s nearly complete absence from the clean energy development picture. The company’s primary contribution to climate change is its energy consumption, which is driving up coal and natural gas-fired power generation. According to data shared with Heatmap by the market intelligence company Cleanview, the average carbon intensity of Anthropic’s data centers is among the highest of its competitors, second only to xAI. Yet unlike many of peers, the company has not announced a single clean power purchase agreement to date.”
Well, now it has. So never mind the headless robot cheetahs with laser beams, programmed to believe plant food is poison and humans are guilty of creating it and it must be stopped somehow. That stuff is all fine because the guy who founded Anthropic did so because AI scared him so much and now it has green paint.
P.S. We must enter a caution about reading a story like Bloomberg Green’s “The green economy — the business lines of global listed companies that generate revenue from climate solutions — now boasts a record high market value of $10 trillion. The increase occurred as revenue tied to environmental products and services climbed to $5.5 trillion last year, expanding at its fastest pace since 2022, according to a report published Wednesday by London Stock Exchange Group Plc.” Namely that it is well to recall that not everything labeled “new and improved” actually is. Or “climate friendly”. Or “carbon sink”. Or “true”.
