⚠️ Work in Progress — First Shot on Goal
“Commitment” is calculated as CDR papers / total papers. This is a crude proxy — someone might spend 80% of their time on CDR but publish mostly in specialized journals we didn’t capture. Treat the categories as directional, not definitive. Help me refine this. Bluesky · X
This is Part 4 of the CDR Researcher Census series.
Here’s a number that worried me when I first saw it:
86,133 of our 129,637 CDR researchers — that’s 66% — have CDR-related work as less than 10% of their total publications.
I call them “dabblers.” A soil scientist who published one paper that mentioned carbon sequestration. An atmospheric chemist who co-authored a DAC study once. A policy researcher who reviewed negative emissions technologies for a single report.
At first glance, this looks bad. If two-thirds of your research workforce is barely engaged, how do you build a field?
But then I looked at the trajectories.
Following the Dabblers Over Time
I didn’t just count papers — I tracked whether each researcher’s CDR output is growing, stable, declining, or exiting (stopped publishing CDR work entirely). Here’s what the 86,133 dabblers actually look like:
| Trajectory | Dabblers | % |
|---|---|---|
| Growing — increasing CDR output | 29,194 | 33.9% |
| Exiting — stopped publishing CDR | 31,956 | 37.1% |
| Stable — consistent low output | 23,829 | 27.7% |
| Declining — reducing CDR output | 809 | 0.9% |
Almost 34% of dabblers are increasing their CDR work. They haven’t committed yet, but they’re heading that direction. Today’s dabbler might be tomorrow’s focused CDR researcher. The entry ramp into CDR goes through dabbling — nobody wakes up one morning and decides to devote their career to enhanced weathering. They write one paper, then two, then five.
Meanwhile, 37% are exiting — they tried CDR and moved on. That’s a leaky pipeline, and it’s worth understanding why. But the growing share is slightly smaller than the exiting share, which means the field is barely net positive in its talent pipeline. Barely.
The Commitment Pyramid
When I look at CDR commitment across ALL researchers (not just dabblers):
| Commitment Level | Count | % of Total | Definition |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pure CDR | 13,674 | 10.5% | >50% of publications are CDR |
| Focused | 10,027 | 7.7% | 25-50% CDR |
| Part-time | 19,039 | 14.7% | 10-25% CDR |
| Dedicated | 763 | 0.6% | Very high commitment, smaller portfolio |
| Dabbler | 86,133 | 66.4% | <10% CDR |
The core workforce — people for whom CDR is a significant part of their career — is about 24,464 researchers (Pure CDR + Focused + Dedicated). That’s roughly 19% of the total.
For context: our CDR Directory lists 820 companies. That’s about 30 core researchers per company. But many of those researchers are in academia, not industry. The actual researcher-to-company pipeline is thinner than it looks.
Who’s Actually Growing?
Among ALL researchers with a “growing” trajectory (37,638 total), the commitment distribution is:
| Commitment | Growing Researchers | % of Growing |
|---|---|---|
| Dabbler | 29,194 | 77.6% |
| Part-time | 6,446 | 17.1% |
| Focused | 1,839 | 4.9% |
| Dedicated | 139 | 0.4% |
| Pure CDR | 20 | 0.1% |
78% of the growth is coming from dabblers. The field is widening — more people touching CDR — but it’s not yet deepening. Very few people are committing to CDR; they’re adding CDR to an existing research portfolio.
This isn’t necessarily bad. It could mean CDR is becoming a normal part of many scientific disciplines rather than a niche specialty. When half the soil scientists in the world have at least one carbon sequestration paper, that might matter more than having a small elite of CDR purists.
But it does mean the field lacks a thick bench of deeply experienced CDR specialists. And as CDR scales from lab to deployment, you need people who’ve spent years — not weeks — thinking about the details.
Pathway Differences
The dabbler problem isn’t uniform. Some pathways have more committed researchers than others:
| Pathway | Total | Pure CDR % | Most Common Stage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ocean CDR | 5,395 | Higher | More focused |
| DAC | 14,436 | Mixed | Growing |
| Enhanced Weathering | 14,795 | Mixed | Many dedicated newcomers |
| Biochar | 14,596 | Low | Mostly dabblers |
| BECCS | 3,715 | Very low | Eminent dabblers |
| Soil Carbon | 57,168 | Very low | Massive dabbler base |
Ocean CDR stands out — it’s a small community (5,395 researchers) but with proportionally more committed, focused researchers. BECCS is the opposite: dominated by eminent scientists who’ve published one or two BECCS papers alongside massive careers in energy systems or climate modeling.
What This Means for CDR
The talent pipeline exists, but it’s shallow. ~24,500 core researchers is not nothing, but gigaton-scale CDR will need many more, especially in deployment, engineering, and MRV.
Dabblers are the farm team. 29,194 researchers are growing their CDR work. Converting even a fraction of these to “focused” or “dedicated” would significantly strengthen the field. This is a policy lever — targeted funding, CDR-specific career tracks, interdisciplinary programs.
The exiting researchers are a signal. 43,528 people published CDR work and stopped. Understanding why could be as important as understanding why others stay. Is it funding? Career incentives? Lack of applied opportunities? This deserves study.
CDR companies need to engage academia earlier. With only ~30 core researchers per company, the industry cannot afford to wait for talent to appear. Partnerships, internships, industry-funded PhD positions — the path from dabbler to employee runs through engagement.
Final post in the series: CDR Science as Early Signal — is the research explosion fast enough for what climate needs?
Data from the CDR Researcher Census. Corrections and feedback on Bluesky or X.