Fixes for Global Warming?

Most recent answer: 10/28/2013

Q:
If the rate of global warming is being increased by the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, to descrease the amounts of CO2 we need to plant more plants and use less fossil feuls, but is there another option? for example could we somehow expel the CO2 gasses from the Earths atmosphere?
- Isaac (age 14)
Queensland
A:

There are many ideas for trying to reduce global warming. Some involve capturing CO2 and injecting it into some rock formations to trap it underground, called "sequestering". Right now that plan seems unlikely to solve much of the problem. It's much harder to gather CO2 from the atmosphere than it is to trap it right at the biggest sources, coal-burning power plants. Yet it's been very hard to get anybody to build a power plant to sequester the CO2 emitted, mainly because the cost is high.

So ideas like this may play some role, but the biggest changes will require other energy sources (nuclear, solar, wind, tides,...) energy efficiency (insulation, efficient appliances, small efficient cars, public transport,..), reductions in luxury uses (smaller houses, more compact neighborhoods) and a stable population, not growing exponentially.

Mike W.


(published on 10/28/2013)