Most leading climatologists have told us that we need to do more than just evolve all processes that currently emit greenhouse gasses (GHG) to no longer emit these, but also directly remove GHG from the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide (CO2). I agree with this for two big reasons: (1) evolving energy production to 100% renewables and zero carbon processes will require several decades, and (2) evolving all of our mobility to processes that do not burn carbon-emitting fuel will take even longer. Also, I’m not even considering the many industrial processes that need to be so converted. As long as we are still emitting substantial GHGs, climate change / global warming will worsen, and in order to prevent this we need to directly pull GHGs from the atmosphere to get to net-zero (removing GHG from the atmosphere at the same rate we are emitting them).
There are many processes for pulling CO2 from the atmosphere, but most are very energy-intensive, and as long as we get most of our energy from GHG-emitting processes, these would not be very productive. There are at least a couple that are not so energy intensive. This post is about one of those.