A way to help explain this to people is that it's the equivalent of rapidly growing trees and burning those for fuel instead of burning fossil fuels. You do th

A way to help explain this to people is that it's the equivalent of rapidly growing trees and burning those for fuel instead of burning fossil fuels. You do the same with limestone, rapidly creating it by capturing atmospheric CO2 (indirectly, via the ocean) so it can then be burned in cement production instead of the naturally occurring kind. In both cases, CO2 is released into the air at the end when the product is burned, but because the released CO2 had just now been sucked out of the air anyway (instead of having previously been sequestered in natural limestone) you're not adding to the total amount of CO2 in circulation in the system, making the process neutral.