Can Turning Air into Gasoline Really Reverse Climate Change?

[Judi Lynn]

By Rafi Letzter, Staff Writer | June 11, 2018 02:22 pm ET

- click for image -

https://img.purch.com/h/1400/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saXZlc2NpZW5jZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzEwMC8xNjUvb3JpZ2luYWwvQ2FyYm9uLXJlbW92YWxzLmpwZw==

A conceptual drawing of the carbon-capture system. This unit would be one of many that would capture 1
million tonnes of carbon per year.

Credit: Carbon Engineering

Scientists say they've developed a new technological solution to the climate crisis: an affordable method for sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to turn it into gasoline. But how does this process even work? And is it really a magic-bullet solution to climate change?

According to the researchers, the new technique would cost between $94 and $232 per metric ton. As Robinson Meyer, who first reported the story over at The Atlantic, reported, that figure is between 16 and 39 percent of what researchers expected this technology would cost back in 2011. It's cheap enough, he wrote, that it would cost just $1 to $2.50 to remove from the atmosphere the carbon dioxide released by burning a gallon of gasoline in a car. [The Craziest Climate Change Fixes]

Carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas and a key driver of climate change (though not the only one). So the prospect of sucking CO2 right out has potential to help abate climate change. Even if that CO2 gets released again when the gasoline is burned, no new greenhouse gas gets pumped into the sky; the researchers pitch it as a kind of recycling for greenhouse gas emissions.

The researchers were a team from Harvard University and a new company set up for this project called Carbon Engineering. They wrote in their paper, published Thursday (June 8) in the journal Cell, that their innovation isn't the development of any brand-new system for carbon capture, or pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere. Rather, they said they're figuring out how to build and power an industrial-scale plant affordably. Meyer gave his article on the paper, which went viral, an eye-catching headline: "Climate Change Can Be Stopped by Turning Air Into Gasoline."

More:
https://www.livescience.com/62784-co2-suck-climate-gasoline-air.html

[lapfog_1]

1. at this point we need to turn CO2 into limestone and bury it

get back to 380 ppm and then think about CO2 into gasoline (or bio diesel).

But I think that is too much to hope for at this point. So we are going to have to think of some other climate modification to do... and I hope we model the hell out of it before deciding on what to do. One think we CAN do right away is plant more trees.

[caraher]

2. Liquid fuels are hard to replace for some uses

Especially in aviation... so there could be a role for this kind of process. But without sequestration, it can't reverse changes to the carbon balance and thus long-term climate change - we'd just be cycling that carbon right back into the atmosphere. And unless the whole thing is itself powered by a carbon-neutral energy source, it's not a break-even proposition with respect to climate - though it could be better than using fossil fuels directly depending on the details.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Yeah, nice try...

but sucking carbon out of the air and then burning it back into the air won't lower the numbers.

[Cicada]

4. Would cost 25 cents to 75 cents per gallon to counteract damage from cars