We have proposed that other planetary forces and phenomena, such as albedo, play a much larger role than CO2 in global warming or temperature variations.

The basic laws of physics and thermodynamics are not in support of efficient processing of CO2 using DAC. This is because dilute molecules of CO2 in air prefer to randomly mix and achieve maximum disorder or entropy per The Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Per Sherwood, trace amounts of CO2 molecules in an air mixture are difficult and costly to separate.

Capturing CO2 by DAC takes at least as much energy as that is contained in the fossil fuels that produced the carbon dioxide in the first place, per Keynumbers. //

Extra Thoughts: What Might Happen if CO₂ is Removed from the Air ?

1. If CO₂ is removed from the air in some significant quantity, CO₂ may outgas from the other sinks (land, oceans, lakes) to replace the removed CO₂. The reverse is true as well: when CO₂ is increased in the air, land/oceans/lakes) will uptake more CO₂ until a new quasi-equilibrium state is possibly reached over time.

2. A recent Nature Climate Change paper discusses the possible effect of CO₂ removal on the global carbon cycle. The paper notes that removing tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere might not be effective, because the shifting atmospheric chemistry could, in turn, affect how readily land and oceans release their CO₂, aka Le Chatelier’s principle. Another reference discusses the same concepts, and it is noted that both rely on synthetic models, like most climate change theory.

3. Handwaving synthetic climate models: a general rule that has been propagated is that for every tonne that ends up being emitted from fossil fuels or “land use changes”, a quarter gets absorbed by trees, another quarter by the ocean and the remaining half gets left in the atmosphere. I have not seen any hard data that backs this up. It basically says half the CO₂ emitted by man is left over and can’t be absorbed or re-equilibrated.