I haven't read this, but do people forget basic chemistry? We burn fossil fuels because the process is exothermic -- we extract usable energy from it.
Lithification of CO2 (to make up a word?) is, as far as I know, endothermic. It takes energy to accomplish. On the surface, tending towards counter-productive. Burn fossil fuels to lithify CO2 from burning fossil fuels. Or ramp up nuclear, with all its problems, for the same.
Fusion, sure -- but we are not there, yet.
Unless we look at the sun -- solar and wind. (The largest fusion reactor we are going to have -- up in the sky.)
"Alternative", next-generation, "renewable" energy might allow us to divert part of its potential excess supply to lithification of CO2. At the "tailpipe/smokestack" of conventional production, or even, if we can figure out effective capture, out of the sky.
You want CO2 dealt with, you're going to need to find a way to package it into a stable solid state.
By the way, we already have one worldwide, extant system for lithification of CO2. Based upon solar energy. Photosynthesizing flora.
Trouble is, we are outracing its natural counterbalance while simultaneously reducing and eliminating the flora required for it.
This process of trapping CO2 in stone is very, very different from converting CO2 to artificial coal and does not require the same magnitudes of energy (or anywhere near them).
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I wasn't referring to trapping CO2. I don't regard it as long term capture, whereas "stonification" -- actually making the stuff part of a mineral we know has long-term persistence -- is.
Lithification of CO2 (to make up a word?) is, as far as I know, endothermic. It takes energy to accomplish. On the surface, tending towards counter-productive. Burn fossil fuels to lithify CO2 from burning fossil fuels. Or ramp up nuclear, with all its problems, for the same.
Fusion, sure -- but we are not there, yet.
Unless we look at the sun -- solar and wind. (The largest fusion reactor we are going to have -- up in the sky.)
"Alternative", next-generation, "renewable" energy might allow us to divert part of its potential excess supply to lithification of CO2. At the "tailpipe/smokestack" of conventional production, or even, if we can figure out effective capture, out of the sky.
You want CO2 dealt with, you're going to need to find a way to package it into a stable solid state.
By the way, we already have one worldwide, extant system for lithification of CO2. Based upon solar energy. Photosynthesizing flora.
Trouble is, we are outracing its natural counterbalance while simultaneously reducing and eliminating the flora required for it.