If we stopped all CO2 emissions RIGHT NOW, we would still be seriously screwed. We actually need to go net negative in CO2.

Had we SERIOUSLY started 20 years ago- around the time TB and- other right wing lying whores like him -started arguing it was all a big liberal hoax- We MIGHT be in a position today where we could see a way out of this... instead the problem looks insurmountable. This has nothing to do with being Pessimistic, or lacking innovation... it has to do with the reality of the situation...

Since 2000 we have added- very roughly 700 BILLION tons of CO2 to our atmosphere. Keep in mind, it is FAR easier to put CO2 into the atmosphere than to take it out- you will need IMMENSE sources of carbon neutral power to do this if you want to make a dent... Lets say we go the EASY route... we 'simply' capture a mass of CO2 equal to the CO2 we produce per year- right now the world would need to capture 40 BILLION tons of CO2 a year to hold CO2 steady where it is now. (This is NOT even factoring in the effects of the OTHER greenhouse gasses we are releasing that would also need to be offset, nor is it taking into account the rapid destruction of all the natural carbon sinks via deforestation, or the additional heating we will get from reduction in ice coverage or the heating from the permafrost melt releasing carbon dioxide and methane in vast quantities over the coming decades).

As an aside- 40 billion tons is not just some number you can throw around... it is important to really appreciate the scale of that amount of material- the amount of concrete produced per year, GLOBALLY, is ~30 billion tons. Think about the VAST infrastructure required to produce that amount of concrete, to transport it... and now consider just how much more power hungry the facilities for extracting %133 MORE mass of CO2 from the atmosphere will be, how much more challenging it will be to transport it all in a way that does not require releasing even more CO2 that will have to offset... and the facilities and processes for making and transporting concrete have been built and refined over a VERY long period of time. We need to build and power the facilities to remove 40 billion tons of CO2 IMMEDIATELY for this thought experiment about what it would take simply to hold CO2 constant.

So lets just assume the world come together tomorrow to build the vast arrays of nuclear, solar and wind power needed to power the truly monumental facilities required to remove 40 billion tons of CO2 per year from the atmosphere. Right now the cost to remove a ton of of CO2 from the atmosphere is $400-$1000 (THIS ASSUMES THE FACILITIES TO DO IT ARE ALREADY BUILT- THAT THE INITIAL IMMENSE CAPITAL INVESTMENT IN THE POWER SUPPLY AND CO2 EXTRACTION FACILITIES HAS ALREADY BEEN MADE)- So removing 40 Gt of CO2 a year would be a recurring cost of 16 trillion dollars.... a bit more than %10 of the GLOBAL GDP-assuming the LOW end of the cost per ton for direct capture.

But what would the cost of building the facilities and the power plants to power them be? How many orders of magnitude more would that global endeavor cost? Certainly the facilities and power plants to remove 40Gt of CO2 would be vastly greater expense than the measly 16Trillion dollars per year it costs to run them...

But lets assume the world comes together to spend all of its GDP and then some to build these facilities and power plants ( Direct air capture requires between 500 to 900 kWh of energy per ton of CO2 captured so capturing 40 Gt will require at least 20,000-36,000 TWh - This is a significant fraction of ALL global energy production. Again, this would all have to be built in a VERY short period of time we do NOT have decades to do this).

And to ER's point you so insultingly dismissed- Lets say we somehow do all this in the coming 10 years- the World comes together, humanity reorganizes itself to devote ~half or more of our global GDP to making this happen over the next decade. WHAT will we do with all that CO2? We need to find a way to dispose of it IN A WAY THAT WILL NOT BE A TIME BOMB FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS. How do you ensure that it will be locked away permanently? Remember - we are talking about disposing of a mass of CO2 greater than all the concrete produced in the world each year, and a VOLUME FAR FAR GREATER. Do we inject it deep in the ground? If we do that, can we be sure that we are not going to see it released in a catastrophic way in a few hundred thousand years? Can we bury it safely in a way that will not come back to bite us?

Many of the proposed ideas involve chemically combining the CO2 with other elements to make a solid compound that will hold onto it and stably lock it away- maybe that can be done in a way that is safe over geologic time scales- but now you are talking about needing to bury far FAR MORE than the 40Gt we have been discussing so far...

There are other approaches to sequestering carbon, or transforming it- but they all fall apart when you look at the scale of the problem, or remember the pesky fact that energy is conserved. Don't forget that what I talk about above is nowhere NEAR enough to avert terrible suffering and disaster - THAT would require a FAR greater and far more immediate effort. If we wait til 2050 to just get to net zero carbon emissions we are still talking about death on a scale humanity has never seen, and still a likely collapse of global civilization, in my opinion.

We are NOT being pessimists, Buck- we are being realists. You seem to have a pathological NEED to look at this through rose colored glasses... you seem to think that somehow the billionaire entrepreneurs will swoop in to save us because it will magically be profitable for them to do so... ignoring the fact that it was their mindset that largely created this problem... Buck, it will be far cheaper for the noble multi-billionaires you worship to play with their dreams of leaving us all behind to burn while they drive Teslas on Mars. Our mega-billionaires are far too busy platforming anti-semites and conspiracy theorists, busting unions and playing politics. They will simply do what they need to do to make sure THEY are well off, and to hell with the rest of humanity... heck, a desperate population frantically trying to survive simply means cheap labor!

Buck, if you think Elon Musk and his ilk will swoop in like superman to save you, you are in for a VERY rude awakening... this is a problem that is likely too big to be solved even if all the world governments come together immediately to solve it- all the man-baby-billionaire-bros can't do a damn thing to fix it- hell, they (and the system they created to maximize their profits) are really a large part of the reason we find ourselves here.

You can call people pointing out the brick wall we are accelerating towards 'pessimists' all you want- it won't change the fact that we are all going to meet a very messy end...

Don't worry, though,those billionaires will be the last to get splattered.