Global Warming: Instead of reducing CO2 emissions, why not just use CO2 smartly?

Question

I'd like the answers of experts in chemistry for this one.

How feasable is it to synthesize something useful from CO2?

If we look at nature, plants convert CO2 into something else using sunlight and air right? why not mimic the process and make it way more efficient.

This could probably be great part of the solution, we live in an oil/coal/gas economy that's not just going to go away, even if we found the holy grail of green energy tomorrow morning. However, if you create a solution for CO2 emissions, then all the big oil companies would pour billions into scaling it for mass use, and they'd still sell their oil for many years to come.

Answer 1

it is easier said than done

the sources of release of carbon dioxide is so varied that it is just not practical, in fact it is impossible, to collect this and use it.

so the solution is reduce the generation of co2 as much as possible

Answer 2

If CO2 actually were causing us to heat up, then I would wholeheartedly say yes.  The Gore alliance will not put their millions and millions into doing this because without the facade that their CO2 provides, there simply wouldn't be any hoax and no crisis for them to manipulate as a scare tactic into making you pay money.  

Now with some common sense, figure this one out.  CO2 is UP TO 385 parts per million, right?  So that's 1,000,000 divided by 385 which makes CO2 about 1 2500th of our atmosphere.  So, how in the world is this stuff so powerful?  It just can't be that all deviant and destructive force that they claim that it is.  It is plant food and it cools fires, otherwise, we would be packaging CO2 heat packs, energy packs, microscopes, magnifying glasses and telescopes out of that all powerful, light magnification source called CO2.  It just don't do what they claim it does.  It gets cold every single night when the sun goes down, thus cooling off the CO2.

I have asked them to show that when CO2 was low in the 30's where the night and day temperatures were far more different, because it is those greenhouse gases that prevent it from getting cool at night.  Then compare those temperatures between night and day to the temperatures of today.  They just won't do it!  It just isn't what they claim it is.  Othwise CO2 wouldn't let us get as cold and the temperatures between day and night would be far closer together and the past day and night temperatures would deviate a larger amount due to the lack of greenhouse gases.

Their alarmist theories simply don't meet the common sense guidelines.

Answer 3

instead of reducing co2 gas we can reduce emission other gases like No2,So2,cfc  .....

because if we reduce all these gases the Co2 automatically reduced by plant photosynthsis

Answer 4

There are experiments/development work into using the CO2 rich effluent from power stations to grow algae in large plastic tubes exposed to sunlight from which an oil is extracted to be converted into biodiesel.

CO2 can be converted into hydrocarbons but it takes too much energy other than by photosynthesis.

Answer 5

you could in theory make oil (hydrocarbons) out of it.

if you heat CO2 enough it will break into CO (carbon monoxide). you can then react it with hydrogen (which you can easily get from water) to get hydrocarbons.

the problem is it costs way to much power to be economical and  all that power you use will most likely be from coal causing more CO2 emissions.

artificial photosynthesis is still far beond us but it could provide large ammounts of power easaly and at low cost.

as Robert A said we could use CO2 to feed Alga which can be used to provide bio fuels but thats about all.

edit

fitting turbines to the exort of cars will make the engine run slower using more fuel so you wont get any energy from it.

Answer 6

I think you've mostly answered your own question: it takes energy to turn CO2 into something useful.  I don't know if there's a more efficient way to do it than photosynthesis.

So while we are still looking for a way to deal with CO2 like that, cutting down on present emissions is something that we can do right away.  We know lots of ways to do that.

(And please ignore the responder further below who is obviously an oil company or political shill.)