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Although forests have many more other benefits like animal habitat, soil creation, local climate change, cloud generation, ..., a simpler, quicker and cheaper s
by acvny 7y ago
Although forests have many more other benefits like animal habitat, soil creation, local climate change, cloud generation, ..., a simpler, quicker and cheaper solution would be to invent artificial photosynthesizers (using solar light) or electrosynthesizers (using electricity) - huge installations that would absorb air like big vacuum cleaners, capture the CO2 and decompose the molecule into Carbon products. For example by employing such processes as Reduction of CO2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_reduction_of_carbon_dioxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_reduction_of_c...
The only thing that's needed is to incentivize such research. Let's say creating a global fund of 20-30 Billion dollars and encouraging researchers to apply for grants from this fund.
Next step after basic research is done and something feasible invented would be to commercialize the solutions. However again here we would need incentives. It is really hard to implement the idea without commercial interest.
What would be a good incentive for this? Well, the captured carbon could be sold... Any other ideas?
- rfdave 7y agoOption 1 - Plant trees that have been growing for millennia, with skills that are wide spread across all of humanity Option 2 - Invent technology that is currently unknown, scale it to a world wide scale, facing unknown challenges and problems with technology that is today completely unknown. Hmmmmm
- yishan 7y agoI agree and would say the same thing, but slightly less dismissively. :) The key here is that we're out of time. This coming decade is probably the last one we will have where the problem can be solved at a cost less than 10% of world GDP. If we wait another 10 years, I suspect all solutions will require a significant fraction of global GDP and authoritarian-style interventions. As a technologist, I'd love a magical new technology. But I'm also an engineer, and I want to execute the most efficient and low-risk solution in the smallest possible timeframe. After taking all factors into account, that's massive reforestation. If new technologies are developed in the meantime, that's GOOD. Every bit of help that's put into play helps us. It's not a competition, it's a collective race against time, and we can all contribute.