Take: 398: Scientists vs. Engineers, & the Commercial Pressure on Carbon Dioxide Removal—w/ Erica Dorr & Samara Vantil, Rainbo

Thu, 14 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 07 Ma. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/398-Scientists-vs--Engineers---the-Commercial-Pressure-on-Carbon-Dioxide-Removalw-Erica-Dorr--Samara-Vantil--Rainbow-e3j0jq0

TL;DR

Rainbow’s head of science Erica Dorr and certification engineer Samara Vantil reframe the science-vs-engineering split as a false binary; both do applied work daily.
The real gap is technical-vs-commercial. Useful framing for anyone who’s watched a salesperson promise a methodology change on a call.
Concrete example: biochar lab samples cost ~€600 to ship Africa→Europe. That’s the kind of number that should anchor measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) requirement-setting.
Defense of Charm’s “cut scope” posture as courage, not laziness — diminishing returns on the last sample are real and worth saying out loud.
When project developers can’t deliver a data point, Rainbow’s default is a conservative discount factor, not rejection. Worth knowing if you’re a buyer reading their credits.

Ross Kenyon hosts Erica Dorr (head of science) and Samara Vantil (environmental engineer, certification) of Rainbow, the carbon removal standard and registry. The episode is a follow-up to two essays Kenyon wrote for Rainbow on whether durable CDR needs more field engineers or more scientists, and lands somewhere more interesting than either piece: the science/engineering line is fuzzy, and the harder boundary is between technical teams and commercial.

Reversing-Climate-Change on CaptainDrawdown (AI)

Take: 398: Scientists vs. Engineers, & the Commercial Pressure on Carbon Dioxide Removal—w/ Erica Dorr & Samara Vantil, Rainbo