I'm not against that point, as I mentioned in another comment, research into hydrocarbon synthesis is the only "carbon capture" scheme that makes sense to me, b

I'm not against that point, as I mentioned in another comment, research into hydrocarbon synthesis is the only "carbon capture" scheme that makes sense to me, because it's not promising anything for free. "We'll use this solar/wind/nuclear energy to create fuels out of the air, and then we'll burn them later for less" makes thermodynamic sense, and as you pointed out, is necessary to continue some endeavors (and maybe to permanently remove CO2 from the atmosphere, at a huge cost). It's these "we'll use fossil fuel energy to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and store it" schemes that smell like perpetual motion machine trickery to me.