> Are we really supposed to expend as much energy as we expended in the entire industrial age just to remove the excess CO2 in the atmosphere? I'm not sure tha

> Are we really supposed to expend as much energy as we expended in the entire industrial age just to remove the excess CO2 in the atmosphere? I'm not sure that's the correct argument. We only really need to expend as much energy to convert stuff into coal as was needed to turn it into coal in the first place. If we can do it more efficiently than Nature™ then we are energy positive since all the effort to extract it is already expended and (reading the terms & conditions) nonrefundable. It seems to me... could be wrong.