[dmorg]

Yes, but these scrubbers need vast amounts of energy. Most of which emit carbon. We simply need to curb emissions. With the possible exception of basaltic rock weathering, DAC is not practical. Large DAC projects fail to reach forecasts, even when these forecasts for plants costing tens of millions of dollars only aim to extract global emissions of two or three seconds.

[api]

That same money could replace a lot more emissions with other sources of energy. How much solar and batteries does it buy? It’s always struck me as a moonshot project for people who don’t understand thermodynamics.

You could probably unstir the cream from the coffee with an elaborate chemical processing system costing more than what thousands of coffee makers and dairy cows cost.

The only CO2 removal project I’ve seen that seems like it might be viable is ocean fertilization. That’s not a thermodynamic free lunch. You’re letting solar powered microorganisms do it. But it needs to be studied and monitored to make sure it doesn’t ruin ocean ecosystems and that enough of the carbon actually does get sequestered to make it actually worthwhile.