Its so easy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere why is it not being done? Is there something else going on?

Question

Its so easy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere why is it not being done? Is there something else going on?

Answer 1

Because that would be stupid. CO2 is a necessary gas for our survival. Plants thrive on CO2. CO2 is good.

Answer 2

There are membrane systems that allow us to take CO2 out of the air. They at the current time require an energy expenditure close to 1/4 of the energy we get when we burn coal to produce that much CO2.

Nobody really wants to pay out that much to clean up someone else's CO2. They would prefer the persons burning that coal clean it up themselves.

If we have cap and trade, in place we may be able to sell that service to those who wish to burn fossil fuels.

Answer 3

its expensive.

i like the alga idea.

http://www.oilgae.com/

Answer 4

It isn't easy to get Carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere..

Answer 5

That is what trees do right? I see a problem with giving grants to someone just to appease the enviro weekies about something that can not be done with out causing more problems than it is worth. CO2 is not the problem it is not a pollutant and is generally referred to as plant food.

Answer 6

It's not easy, where do you get that?

There are ideas floating around, but that’s the stage we’re at.

In fact, Richard Branson has taken a serious initiative to explore more ideas (which he plans to finance personally, wouldn't it be nice to have more people like that around)..

"Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is the subject of a prize announced earlier in 2007 by British entrepreneur Richard Branson. Branson pledged to award $25 million to anyone who can develop a scheme for removing at least one billion tonnes of the gas from the atmosphere every year, for a decade."

Taken from the same report…

"Sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere could provide a last-ditch solution to climate change, according to calculations performed by a US scientist."…

but then it goes on to say...

..."But because these dispersed emissions get diluted with other gases in the atmosphere, isolating them is thought to require much more energy than extracting them from flue gasses where they are more concentrated."

In particular, artificial trees could be part of the solution, and perhaps that’s what you are talking about, but it’s not easy for logistical reasons, cost and for this to really work, we still need to change how we get energy today.  That’s still the biggest problem for all alternative energy solutions, meaning, still having to use fossil fuels, in order to create alternative energy.

Ultimately however, and here's where I'm with you (other than the 'its so easy' comment)...

Fact is, there are many things big and little that we can do.  But the greatest problem of all that we still face is the world is still dragging its heals instead of recognizing how major this problem is and worse, how much worse it will be, if we don't do all we can today.

This requires an approach not unlike that of mobilizing our efforts to the degree we had to, in order to go the moon or stop the n***s from taken over Europe...

That is why it is still important that "We the people" stress the point any way we can and make big government and corporations (all of them) hear us until they realize, there's no way to ignore the problem any longer.