this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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So they take CO2 from the atmosphere and chemically transform it into solid materials that reduce greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere?
Congratulations you have invented plants.
The plants then die and release that CO2
Turning it into a mineral means it won’t just be released
I think microbes are probably a lot easier, faster, and more cost effective to produce compared to plants. It can survive in harsh conditions and create rock from the C02 at a fast rate according to the article.
Yeah, one of the issues with plants is that they don't remove the CO2 from the cycle. It's only a temporary storage, unless you bury them in airtight containers, or do something else to process them. Coal was effectively permanently sequestered. A tree, when it decomposes or burns (also decomposition), the carbon is right back into the environment. Turning it into rock is effectively permanent, unless we decide to release it.
Not only that, but they believe the active enzymes in the microbe can be optimized and engineered, then mixed into a liquid substrate. Becomes an enzyme-based CO2 filter with the byproduct of Calcium Carbonate, which can be used in concrete. The article talks about filling trucks with these and passing the emissions of coal-fired power plants through them.
That would be an incredible innovation. You don't have to stop at coal either, it's just the dirtiest. Nat gas, trash, oil, wood and anything else burned on a huge scale could be curbed.
Yep, you could even pepper the interstate highways of America with them and just let them passively eat the CO2 particles that cars are putting out.
What about all the farting that cows do?
That's methane. And it's mostly from their poop, not farting.
It's a disaster. And that industru is also a major cause of deforestation.
We have to stop buying meat.
IIRC, most of its from their mouth actually. They're ruminants, meaning they're fermenting their food in their multiple stomachs. This is where most of the Methane is produced, and the pressure is released through their mouths.
No, it's mostly their poop.
The "cow farts" and "cow burps" phrasing is used to downplay the seriousness of the issue.
Global animal agriculture produces enormous quantities of cow poop, which produces enormous quantities of methane, which is one of the biggest causes of the climate catastrophe.
This says otherwise.
Anyway, yeah, I agree. It's all a distraction. I don't know how sayings it's poop helps. The problem is cattle farming produces a ton of methane. The details don't really matter.
The trouble with cow farts is the methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas that eventually turns back into CO2 in the atmosphere anyway. Concentrated methane sources tend to either be captured for use as fuel, or flared with a burning flame to reduce the greenhouse effect (at which point carbon sequestering might work). Less concentrated sources, like livestock farts, can't really be dealr with in the same way.
Well that would be a disaster
A bigger disaster than dumping it into the atmosphere?
A bigger disaster than shutting down all fossil fuel based power plants yesterday
Weeks instead of years. Could be big for assisting in the fight against climate change.
I had figured space flight. Either way, I guess.
Being able to teraform is huge on earth and abroad. Cool stuff either way.
I actually don't think this would be that useful for space flight or terraforming really. CO2 is still two parts oxygen. Assuming the atmosphere isn't already full of O2 and we want it to be, we want to convert it from CO2 into O2 (like plants do), not into this form. I guess it could be useful if we want to decrease atmospheric pressure too maybe?
It could be useful for a short-term solution, where we don't need to recover CO2 for breathing, and just want to remove it and store it. I don't think it'd likely ever be more efficient than existing technology for this though.
The downside of that kind of stuff is that you need a balance. Scrub too much CO2 and it's trouble again.
Great, in 50 years we'll be desperately switching back to fossil fuels to prevent an ice age.
That's one part the movie for Project Hail Mary missed from the book, that's disappointing. Sunlight is decreasing, so they bring in a climate scientist to figure out how to produce as much greenhouse gasses as possible. He's really disturbed by it obviously, but sees it needs to be done. They end up melting the ice caps to release Methane, because it's more potent and decay into less potent CO2 in a reasonable time frame, so they can stop when things are solved.
I forgot that from the book
If we can get atmospheric CO2 back down to where it was 100 years ago that would be an amazing problem to have.
Look up the Oxygen Catastropy, also called Oxygen Holocaust.
That's what happens if too much carbon is removed from the atmosphere and thus there's too much oxygen in it.
It sounds like you have no idea the magnitudes involved, or the timelines. You're talking about something that took place over a period of 400 million years and whose effects (the presence of oxygen in our atmosphere and our oceans) remain. There's no chance that geoengineering would change the oxygen levels to anything we can't handle, and if it starts to head down that direction we can easily handle it (just stop the processes that would sequester carbon).
It's like being worried that your air conditioning is going to freeze your pipes in the house, in the middle of summer.
I mean, we are currently doing geoengineering on a planetary scale that change CO2 levels to something we can't handle.
You're probably right, but bioengineering this to self-propogate quickly in the environment would be exponential. I'm sure that isn't the plan, but it could be done, and it could make this an issue. We shouldn't let that stop us because we're currently in an exponential fuck up in the opposite direction, but it is something to think about.
The article talks about mass producing the enzymes themselves, not the life forms that produce the enzymes. It's a key distinction.
Plus these organisms already live on this earth. They can't outcompete other life on the surface, in less harsh conditions.
Read the article. They're hoping to mass manufacture the enzymes involved, which have the following advantages over carbon capture through plant life:
Sounds like you want a peat bog
It takes approximately a thousand years to form a meter of a peat bog. We don't have this much time unfortunately.
Right. Destroy all the coal plants yesterday and ban burning carbon
Plants eventually decompose, releasing the CO2. Rock generally doesn't have that problem
On the scale of hundreds of years, thousands for some trees, tens of thousands plus if you sink fast growing trees deep in a cold sea. It is a thoroughly proven technology. If deployed at scale likely good enough to get us over the the hump to a renewables based technology without frying the Earth.
The problem is it's not actually profitable (pretty cheap though) like the tech in OP's article with patents and income streams (but only for fossil fuel energy generation). You'd think survival would be adequate motivation, but no.
More power to the people making this tech, everything is welcome, but if they're going to lock it behind patents for 20 years it's unlikely to be what is needed now.
If they could create a plant that fits on a truck and can remove a ton of carbon a day then they’d have another crazy invention on their hands, this just does it and creates rock … damn.
Plants solid material is only temporary.
It reminds me of Prototaxites.