This paper makes the assumption that carbon mineralisation will never happen. you can mineralise carbon in ophiolites which are abundant to the point that all carbon ever produced by humans could be stored in them. To be fair, they do mention carbfix but only in passing and almost to dismiss the effort. Furthermore, only accounting for storage in sedimentary basins their bounds of 1290 to 2710 Gt would accommodate ALL human CO2 emissions at current rates (ca 40 to 50 Gt/yr) for more than 25 to 50 years. The problem is not that carbon will run out of places to store it. The problem is that capturing carbon is not happening at the scale necessary to make a difference.
The other problems are other gasses and processes that can release trapped CO² and CH⁴ methane, and that the extra heat in the system and H²O melting
may disrupt ocean currents, now, rather than century's into the future, leading to sudden climate changes world wide, which could also trigger sudden ocean rise.
They are not called tipping points for nothing, and it is established fact that those points have been reached numerous times before, and that we are pushing the climate closer, through our own actions.....we roll a 2 and a 5 and some natural fluctuation might push it all back, snake eyes and
we get a civilisation level challenge to survive with our technological base intact, if we can.
We need to be able to turn it into a building material. Currently growing trees are the most efficient path to do this, but imagine being about to suck down c02, asking a ton of energy (let’s say from a nuclear source) and produce bricks.
This paper makes the assumption that carbon mineralisation will never happen. you can mineralise carbon in ophiolites which are abundant to the point that all carbon ever produced by humans could be stored in them. To be fair, they do mention carbfix but only in passing and almost to dismiss the effort. Furthermore, only accounting for storage in sedimentary basins their bounds of 1290 to 2710 Gt would accommodate ALL human CO2 emissions at current rates (ca 40 to 50 Gt/yr) for more than 25 to 50 years. The problem is not that carbon will run out of places to store it. The problem is that capturing carbon is not happening at the scale necessary to make a difference.
The other problems are other gasses and processes that can release trapped CO² and CH⁴ methane, and that the extra heat in the system and H²O melting may disrupt ocean currents, now, rather than century's into the future, leading to sudden climate changes world wide, which could also trigger sudden ocean rise. They are not called tipping points for nothing, and it is established fact that those points have been reached numerous times before, and that we are pushing the climate closer, through our own actions.....we roll a 2 and a 5 and some natural fluctuation might push it all back, snake eyes and we get a civilisation level challenge to survive with our technological base intact, if we can.
We need to be able to turn it into a building material. Currently growing trees are the most efficient path to do this, but imagine being about to suck down c02, asking a ton of energy (let’s say from a nuclear source) and produce bricks.