If you make a mess, clean it up...don't make a bigger one

Photo:  Skyonic

I am not a fan of geoengineering, the proposals to modify the planet and/or atmosphere to counteract the negative impacts of climate change.  It has always seemed to me a dangerous "sit-com like" response to a problem caused by our own actions.  Instead of just changing our behaviors away from damaging ones to beneficial ones, we instead seek to continue doing damaging behaviors, then try to engineer nature to mitigate the bad response...kinda like eating all the fat and sugar one wants, then taking a pill to keep us thin.

Through this lens of skepticism for geoengineering solutions, I must look interestedly at a solution that has gained momentum, and just recently received support from the UN: extracting gases that cause climate change from the atmosphere.  Unlike solutions that seek to add particles or chemicals to the atmosphere, or install infrastructure to prevent some of the worst flooding and damage from sea-level rise, this one has it's roots in nature.  

Prior to significant human interaction, plants and animals lived in a delicate balance relative to the combined needs of water, air, and fertile soil.  Animals breathed air and exhaled carbon dioxide, and at the same time ate plants (and other animals) and drank water, producing waste products.  Plants absorbed the carbon dioxide, and using water, produced oxygen and the sugars animals (including us) need.  In the process, some of these plants, inconjunction with microbes and small animals, processed the animal and plant waste products into useful form.  This balance developed over billions of years to an efficient albeit not perfect method of sustaining life.

Among the otherwise prideful suggestions of how we as humans can solve the problem, the idea of extracting CO2 (and potentially other damaging gases) from the air has promise.  First, the natural mechanisms for removing CO2, the action of plants, would require a significant expansion of planted areas and targeted implementation.  Once carbon dioxide levels decline, it would leave us with more plants than needed for the balance, and the natural decay would release methane into the atmosphere...an even more potent driver of climate change.  If we can find a way to mimic the processes that extract CO2, restore a reasonable balance in the atmosphere, then shutdown these systems, we can address the problem without creating unforeseen ones.