Why is it so difficult to invent or develop scalable technology to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere?

[Tammuz]

Probably a stupid question (I'm not an inventor, technologist, or engineer by any means), but here we go:

In addition to getting off our collective addiction to fossil fuels, we would ideally need technology that can suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. Such technology does exist, it is just not scaleable.

However, for literally billions of years, plants have mastered the art of sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere. Shouldn't it be pretty easy for a human invention to mimic that product of natural selection, but making it more efficient? Plants weren't explicitly designed (because they weren't designed at all) to do it and they do other things besides, but we can design something for that very purpose, I would assume.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's too energy intensive. There's little point so long as we keep burning fossil fuels and putting more in.

 

[Jayjay]

Also cost.

 

[Bomb#20]

It's too energy intensive. There's little point so long as we keep burning fossil fuels and putting more in.

Not exactly, and yes, exactly. It's not that it's too energy intensive technically; it's just that thermodynamics guarantees it can't be done with 100% efficiency. That's a deal-breaker if we get the energy to remove the carbon by burning carbon. So there's little point as long as the public remains paranoid about the nuclear reactors sucking out CO2 takes.

 

[fromderinside]

Now that's the bomb.