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Re:Direct conversion of CO2 to solid carbon by Gallium-based... by 300bps on Wednesday January 19, 2022 @09:33AM (#29994011)
At first I ignored the entire HN submission because I've been taught that carbon sequestration will never be a solution to atmospheric carbon.

On a whim I clicked on the comments though expecting the first comment to be, "This will never work, because..." So I was happy to see that the top comment was actually positive! Then I saw your response.

Re:Direct conversion of CO2 to solid carbon by Gallium-based... by midjji on Wednesday January 19, 2022 @10:30AM (#29994867)
I get that pain -_-'

One of the things which I've seen but feel is rarely talked about is that the planet is sequestering a large amount of CO2 and this increases positively proportionally to CO2 concentration. Over longer periods of time, the CO2 levels drop, and sudden shocks such as volcanos and cataclysmic massive forest fires, are parried by the increase, quickly returning to previous levels. This proves that sequestration does work which is nice. There are many problems with this. At historic CO2 levels on human timelines the natural sequestration is effectively in balance with CO2 production. So its not enough to sequester the additional modern human production, and the prop increase is less than 1, so it wont be. Two, at least some of the systems which are sequestering are doing so as a side effect of severe to catastrophic ecological damage. For rare events this isn't a problem, but our current production is not one year in a century.

It does mean that if we stop using fossile, CO2 levels will revert on their own. Though it will take a long time.

Re:Direct conversion of CO2 to solid carbon by Gallium-based... by ummonk on Wednesday January 19, 2022 @01:40PM (#29998043)
Exactly. If we go carbon neutral and stop the CO2 production shock to the system, nature will take care of what we've already put out (though it may take a few centuries, depending on which of the IPCC atmospheric CO2 level half-life estimates you go by).
Re:Direct conversion of CO2 to solid carbon by Gallium-based... by tedivm on Wednesday January 19, 2022 @09:38AM (#29994078)
This still is pretty positive- it seems like it can be used as carbon capture inside of existing plants that produce CO2 as a byproduct. It isn't going to solve climate change but it could give us another tool to use.