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The world pumped more than 36.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions into the air in 2022—and it’s not slowing down any time soon. At any given moment, industries and people all over the world are only adding to the cataclysmic levels of greenhouse gasses polluting our atmosphere. This has resulted in toxic air quality, warming ocean temperatures, and exacerbated weather crises the likes of which we’ve never seen.
That’s why world leaders and researchers are starting to take ideas like geoengineering a little more seriously. This describes all the technologies involved in artificially manipulating the Earth’s climate. One of the more common ideas is solar radiation management, which involves reflecting sunlight away from the Earth to cool it down by injecting aerosols in the atmosphere. There’s also direct air capture (DAC)—essentially vacuuming out all of the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to “clean” it and storing it in an absorbent material.
There are a few hurdles in the way of carbon capture, however. For one, once it’s captured, it needs to be safely stored or disposed of in some manner—which can be a big problem since many people take issue with burying containers with toxic carbon dioxide in their communities. Also, it’s incredibly difficult to capture a meaningful amount of carbon out of the atmosphere due to how diluted it becomes once released into the air.
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