What is the future of capturing carbon emissions from the atmosphere?

>>7966720
It is extremely unlikely. The problem is CO2 is like fuck all percent of the atmosphere. 850 ppm is still like fuck all of the atmosphere, which means to even get a bunch of CO2 at reasonable timeframes you need a fuckload of area or to move a fuckload of CO2 through filtering shit.

Steven goddamn Chu thinks we can extract CO2 from the atmosphere and turn that shit into hydrocarbon fuels so that we can even out seasonal variations in energy generation with fuck tons of renewable.(Chu likes nuclear too)

Steven Chu is fucking badass.

>>7966720
>What is the future of capturing carbon emissions from the atmosphere?
There is none, yet.

>Can such a technology exhibit the rapid increase in efficiency that computing power experienced from the 50's-present
No.

>or is it intrinsically impossible to make economical or feasible in a large application, similar to seawater desalination?
Yes, but more-so.

>>7966720
If you want to take CO2 out of air your best bet is to trap it at its source, such as capturing the effluent at the smokestacks that produce it. Even doing this is insanely expensive and not very productive.

If you're worried about global warming, this may not be the solution. We're better off limiting out production of greenhouse gasses as much as possible. Also, the planet is a massive living biosphere that can sometimes cope with stress and regulate itself, hopefully.

>>7966790
>We're better off limiting out production of greenhouse gasses as much as possible.

A delusional pipe-dream. The most feasible method of curtailing emissions must come, involuntarily, from a population correction. With modern medicine I don't forsee any diseases having an effect that the Spanish Flu had; the future will and must be dystopian..

>>7966720
Bound by thermodynamics. It'll probably cost about the same amount of energy to capture the carbon as was extracted when we first put it there.

Google the lime and basalt method for the best large-scale method that I know to remove CO2 from the air / water. It seems to be doable, if 1% of GDP spending, approx, is part of "doable".

>>7966796
Or, just massive build-out of nuclear, improve standard of living, and that will change population growth rates to be negative, like it is in most western countries.