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Absorbing carbon to manage climate change
One of the thorniest issues of climate change is how to get some of the carbon out of the atmosphere before widespread catastrophe makes earth uninhabitable for millions of people. Green plants depend on CO2 in the air to perform photosynthesis which gives us food and oxygen. But pre-industrial levels of about 275 parts per million (ppm) significantly contrast with today’s 412 ppm and its associated changes to climate. Carbon can hang around in the atmosphere for hundreds of years or longer so finding a solution is paramount.
Suggestions for climate solutions include limiting emissions and actively removing carbon from the air. But slowing emissions, which is what limiting means, doesn’t solve the problem. It just slows down the rate of addition, so that’s not a solution by itself.
Others have recommended shading the planet to keep it cool but that also has problems like limiting food production. Natural experiments caused by volcanic eruptions in the middle ages and up to the present show that shading the planet due to volcanic ash in the upper atmosphere caused food shortages and wide-spread starvation in the middle ages and earlier.
Still others advocate mechanical processes to extract CO2 from the air which is not a difficult process. The challenge comes from what to do with the CO2 we capture. Carbon dioxide is a gas…
