How carbon dioxide removal lost its way: tracing the origin and transformation of the 10-Gt durable CDR target

Durably removing ~10 Gt CO₂ yr⁻¹ by 2050 is widely treated as necessary to meet Paris temperature goals. Tracing CDR magnitude claims across ~50 sources spanning five sectors, I found this benchmark derives from IPCC scenario ensembles in which CDR magnitude correlated with near-term mitigation ambition rather than temperature targets. When targets relaxed, scenarios continued emitting rather than reducing CDR. While both IPCC ensembles and independent studies included scenarios with substantially less CDR, these pathways received little downstream attention. Instead, a single number above the IPCC ensemble median was extracted and, as it propagated into NGO and industry contexts, stripped of its conditionality. Framing became prescriptive, risk discussion diminished, and CDR type narrowed to exclude approaches the scenarios themselves relied upon. The result is a CDR discourse stripped of the context needed for informed decision-making — context connecting removal to mitigation, characterizing costs, risks, and feasibility, and encompassing all available approaches.