Sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky is moving from science fiction to reality
Sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky is moving from science fiction to reality
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There's no way this will ever be economical at the scale we need to fix what we've done.
Obviously there's more to it than just saying go, but honestly the economics of it should not matter whatsoever.
It could cost every penny on the planet and still be worth it, the alternative is the end.
If it's less effective than simply planting more plants, then it would be pointless. It'll take a massive amount of renewable energy to have any impact. That renewable energy might be better used to help burn less fossil fuels.
Oh don't get me wrong, we should be doing all that too.
Unfortunately though, it will not be enough. As of the past year or so, all remaining models to avoid hitting a climate breaking point require carbon removal and we're nowhere close to what is required (including natural capture methods).
We need to be throwing everything at this problem starting yesterday. All possible approaches should be put into play.
This is a nice sentiment that I agree with as a sentiment, but it's not realistic.
If it takes the equivalent of 1ton of carbon emissions to capture 1ton of carbon emissions, you are literally going nowhere compared to just replacing fossil fuels.
So this technology needs to be extremely efficient, otherwise the amount of extra energy generation we need - on top of what we already have, renewable or not - becomes astronomical. So far it does not look anywhere close to being sufficiently efficient.
It doesn't need to be