Potential large-scale CO2 removal via enhanced rock weathering with croplands

CO2 is an oxide. I barely remember my chemistry classes, but i think than without solvent, oxides need energy to be broken. And even with 70% of our planet covered with a solvent (the sea that absorb CO2), our emissions are still going through the roof.

If fusion happens in less than 20 years, we may be able to absorb CO2. I'm not high on this, but with supraconductors, you never know when the next breakthrough is.

However, if we manage to hit +3°C average (we are already at ~+.9°C average), the living conditions will become hotter than the Sahara for 1/2 to 2 billion people. And that's without counting wetbulb temperature that will be reached in Florida more than a dozen day a year. I know that +3° average is hard to understand but consider this. Between the last ice age, where France was basically Siberia, Scandinavia was under 3km of ice and you could make Calais/London by foot, and 1850, there was a 5°C average temperature difference. The change was over 20 000 years.

Also CO2 emissions today will have an impact in 20 year (CO2 in low atmosphere does not seems to have more than marginal greenhouse effect, its high-altitude CO2 that cause our troubles).

That's the political challenge:

- Are the predictions for +3° around 2070 right? And i'm not talking about RPC 8.5, i'm talking about the one with constant CO2 emission btw. If they are at least right on magnitude order, will we be able capture CO2 before 2050?

- Will technology be able to grab CO2 out of low atmosphere? It seems we need incredible amount of energy for that (compared to our production). So fusion it is then. Is fusion before 2080 possible? At least China is advancing faster than France so maybe? I'm not high on this, and i'm a supraconductor optimist since 2009.

- Will we be able to capture increasing amount of CO2 out of our electric centrals, cars and trucks? This is what i think is the more likely. But this technology still don't exist, and we need it right now.

- Are we hoping that either fusion or CO2 captation will come soon enough to limit the CO2 emissions, and... That's all? Or are we vastly investing in research? Or investing in energy/consumption economies? Do people understand what does it mean for a country to reduce its CO2 emission by 4% a year? Do politicians and economist understand, or are we still stuck with "green growth" for another decade?

I will order my research once i quit my job, try to order my sources (or find more precise ones), clean my code and write a long, long post on what it really means to stop using fossile fuel, even "only" -4% a year (what we need to do to respect the 2°C Paris agreement). From what i've read in the last GIEC report, if we don't find a new technological ace right now (ten years ago even), the win solution might be hard to swallow for the western world, and even harder for those living in tropical areas.

The only thing i'm really sure is that if we don't take care of the problem, the problem will take care of us.

Big previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403570

Not really a silver bullet. We are at the point where this is something we have to do in addition to reducing carbon emissions. This is more like an extra household duty.

Even if we completely stop all manmade CO2 emissions right now, there still is too much CO2 in the atmosphere already. Actually removing the CO2 from the air in some way will be necessary if we want to stop global warming from getting even worse.

>Then let's raise the cost of adding a ton of CO2 to the atmosphere.

>If the cost to remove it is $80-$100 USD, then that should be the cost of adding it. We should start demanding they either pay the costs associated with someone else having to deal with it, or reduce how much they dump into the air in the first place.

This works until all the people who have enough trouble achieving a decent standard of living vote you out of office or revolt (depending on the system of government of the country in-question). Few things universally piss people off quite as well as standards of living going backwards.

The cost of removing CO2 needs to be cheaper. The cost of emitting less CO2 for a given standard of living needs to be cheaper. Carbon taxes that reflect the current price of removing carbon from the atmosphere are socially and politically unsustainable.