This artist’s rendering at left suggests a device that its proponents say will, one day, capture CO2 from the Earth’s atmosphere, and mitigate the growing threat of climate change. But let’s think about this for a moment.
The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere is fairly consistent from the planet’s surface up to about 60 miles in elevation.
Given that the radius of the Earth is ~4000 miles, and that the volume of a sphere is 4/3 πr3, this means the volume of this section of our atmosphere is 4060 4/3 πr3 – 4000 4/3 πr3, = 2.9 trillion cubic miles.
How many of these devices will be required to make a significant dent in the overall CO2 concentration, given that they need to process almost 3 trillion cubic miles of our atmosphere? What’s the cost per each one? How will they be powered, given that our grid-mix is largely fossil fuels? Won’t this only make matters worse?
This is a sad joke, but even sadder, it’s not the only one out there.
Is our civilization’s dependence on oil “not going to change?”
Obviously, Big Oil wants to keep the status quo in place, regardless of the environmental damage it’s doing to every living creature on this planet. And the Trump administration is doing everything in its power to make sure this assault against all life forms endures in perpetuity.
But this won’t work. It may be true that the United States is rapidly transforming itself into a dictatorship like Russia, China, North Korea, and the other 50+ sovereign nations on this planet. But the rest of the developed world is working hard to decarbonize its energy and transportation sectors so as to prevent environmental collapse.
Hillsdale “College” writes:Do you suppose, for a minute, that I want some ultra-right-wing “college” to tell me how I should regard the Constitution? What a sick joke.
I don’t want to hear from the John Birch Society, nor the Heartland Institute, nor the KKK, to lecture me on the meaning of the Constitution.
White Nationalists Want to Tell You What the Constitution Means
Jim Meskimen, the fellow quoted at left, is among the brightest and most talented people I’ve ever met, but I take issue with what he says here.
When one’s native country has become beset by a criminal sociopath in the position of leadership, responsible, high-integrity people become politically active, and do anything in their power to remove this cancer before it destroys us.
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