Capturing Carbon Dioxide

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The capture of atmospheric carbon dioxide is becoming one of the great technological challenges of the moment. The current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is around 410 parts per million, which already means a greenhouse effect capable of raise the temperature of the planet 1ºC above the pre-industrial levels. This implies a much greater incidence of prolonged droughts, forest fires and natural disasters.

As that concentration increases, these effects become more frequent. The latest report of the IPCC, with total scientific consensus, affirms that there is no possibility of containing that warming at 1.5ºC if not removed from the atmosphere between one hundred billion and one billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere before the end of the century. The natural way to capture carbon dioxide is through the use of trees and plants that fix it in the soil, but that is a problem of efficiency because it requires dedicating large tracts of land to it that today are dedicated to crops. Hence, there are approaches to genetically enhance the ability of plants to fix carbon dioxide in the soil enhancing its root development, which could contribute to a reduction of between 20% and 46% of the carbon dioxide that these plants emit, but even so, although it is an important improvement, it is still insufficient.

Hence, a large part of the focus is being placed on the development of technologies capable of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere artificially , either by reverting it to solid carbon particles , using it to obtain electricity or hydrogen , or by incorporating it into the production of carbon dioxide. various types of goods, from polymers capable of “self-fix” by fixing atmospheric carbon dioxide , to objects such as clothing, animal feed, mattresses, toothpaste, jet fuel, vehicles, cement, plastics or shoes, proposed by a wide variety of companies fed, among others, by funds to finance projects created in incubators such as Y Combinator. Capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is not easy, fundamentally because it only accounts for 0.04% of the molecules in it, but it is absolutely fundamental given its effects, and we have to do it, too, in very high volumes. The problem, of course, is the cost of those technologies.

The good news? That at least, we began to move in this direction, and that without the development and application of this type of technology, nothing we did in terms of decarbonization and reduction of emissions would be sufficient. The bad? Exactly the same: that removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, even if we were able to do it very efficiently, is not enough either, and that, therefore, the aggressive decarbonization of the economy at a much faster rate than the marked for the economy and politics it remains peremptorily necessary. To continue ignoring this and not doing anything or raising it in terms of several decades is equivalent to absolute negligence. As George Monbiot says, “Perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental catastrophe.”

Ideas, research, technology, development and a lot of gray matter dedicated to the most important challenge in the history of humanity. No, do not get confused: we are not talking about theories or hypotheses. We talk about science, technology and how the hell to avoid the damn end of the world in a few decades. Or rather, not of the world, but of humanity. That something, even a little, should matter to you.

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This post was previously published on www.enriquedans.com and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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