this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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Forests, algae... There is no need for carbon capture. It doesn't do anything on scale. There is need of transformation co2, which can be done by plants and algae
Humans burnt 100’s of millions of years of plant growth within 100 years. There is no way we can significantly reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere with plants alone in a timeframe that is necessary for humanity to see a difference. There is just not enough land to plant that many trees and plants. We need all the solutions and that includes human tech.
But it is not a solution. Carbon capture is the perfect thermodynamic example of sweeping the dirt under the rug. Best case scenario it would alleviate the problem now to make the problem worse in the mid term. Most realistic scenario it will do nothing at all.
We currently do not have a human tech to support the process. The only thermodynamically meaningful process is transformation of CO2 in safe and useful organic compounds. But all our technology is too expansive, and requires a lot of energy, production of which is currently one of the main responsible for emission of CO2
Think of biochar like humans helping plants keep the carbon out of the atmosphere. Plants are good at capturing carbon, but what happens when they die? Hell, what about all the leaves they shed? When something rots, it releases a mix of CO2 and methane (which decomposes into CO2). The idea of biochar is that it's a way of sequestering the carbon that plants captured. For an example, you make an algae pond, harvest the algae, dry it, char it, bury it. That's carbon that's not going back into the atmosphere anytime soon, whereas if it was left to rot, it'd eventually wind back up in the atmosphere. You're taking the carbon the plants captured, and processing it in a way that makes it easier to sequester.
The problem is purely thermodynamic. Plants transform co2 in useful compounds that do not contribute to greenhouse effect.
Any capture system is a temporary storage of co2 that has anyway to be transformed, because co2 is loosely trapped. Scientifically is literally sweeping dirt under the rug. There is no long term benefit (as at some point in the future you'll have too transform more co2 than what in the atmosphere), it costs a lot, and gives a fake sense of "trying to solve the problem", while it's doing nothing