Some Thoughts on CO2

Climate change, global warming, whatever, seems to be an ever growing concern. I am not a denier but merely one who says that if it is a problem then take care of it, by reduction and extraction. Not by taxing. You can't tax your way out of a brain tumor. Likewise you cannot tax your way out of excess CO2.

But one can extract CO2. In a Science paper the authors note:

The restoration of forested land at a global scale could help capture atmospheric carbon and mitigate climate change. Bastin et al. used direct measurements of forest cover to generate a model of forest restoration potential across the globe. Their spatially explicit maps show how much additional tree cover could exist outside of existing forests and agricultural and urban land. Ecosystems could support an additional 0.9 billion hectares of continuous forest. This would represent a greater than 25% increase in forested area, including more than 200 gigatonnes of additional carbon at maturity.Such a change has the potential to store an equivalent of 25% of the current atmospheric carbon pool.

Basically photosynthesis extracts CO2 and turns it into what we call biomass, plants. That is the simplest way. Now there are those who object to this analysis but it seems that this is all too common in this area. Dealing with mega effects of a global nature cannot really be handled in simple ways. Each time another investigator would say; you forgot about effect X etc.

In a similar vein a Nature paper extends this construct to examine a collection of natural CO2 extractions. Their proposed extractions are:

In this Perspective, we consider a non-exhaustive selection of ten CO₂ utilization pathways and provide a transparent assessment of the potential scale and cost for each one. The ten pathways are as follows: (1) CO₂-based chemical products, including polymers; (2) CO₂-based fuels; (3) microalgae fuels and other microalgae products; (4) concrete building materials; (5) CO₂ enhanced oil recovery (CO₂-EOR); (6) bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS); (7) enhanced weathering; (8) forestry techniques, including afforestation/reforestation, forest management and wood products; (9) land management via soil carbon sequestration techniques; and (10) biochar.

Now all of these are natural except for the BECCS method.

The bottom line is that there are a multiplicity of means to meet the demand. The question is; what next?