How accurate is this? And are there hopes not mentioned?

Question

I've posted a lot of questions about climate change here. But really the more I try to find out about climate change, the more confused I get. Most recently, there are these points in hand. . .

Has anyone read the book six degrees? Here is a link to the story about it http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/.

How accurate is the science on this?

I also have a lurking question that I want to spill out here. Is there a chance we could remove excess carbon from the atmosphere that is already there? I've heard recently of the Virgin Earth Challenge, awarding 25 million to someone to event a device removing carbon from the atmosphere over a period of years. This may seem unbelievable, but in the final analysis something such as this may go a lot farther than simply trying to halt emissions.

Thank you all for your help! I appreciate sound scientific answers. This will help to clear some of my confusion.

Answer 1

The book "Six Degrees", is reasonably accurate when it's discussing what one or two degrees of warming would cause.  As the temperature increase goes up, both the likelihood of that rise in the next 100 years, and the consequences, become more speculative.

Carbon removal from the air is very difficult because it's been diluted so much.  There's gold in sea water, but the concentration is so small, you can't recover it economically.  While it's an approach worth considering, removal at the source is MUCH easier.

If you're confused, this is an excellent site:

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...

Answer 2

First off there is only one practical way to remove carbon from the air, plant a tree. Any other method of doing this like some have mentioned sequestering will remove twice as much oxygen from the air as it does carbon. Remember the Co2 molecule consists of ONE carbon atom and TWO oxygen atoms. Sequestering Co2 through any other process than growing vegetation will steal oxygen from the air eventually leading to oxygen depletion of the atmosphere.