Some Thought, Including my own calculations
۰ Re climate denial or optimistic projections, world starting to cool when net zero (‘carbon neutrality’) reached:
If a new plane is lighter, cheaper, and more fuel efficient, some engineers being enthusiastic about it, but others considering it very dangerous – too many corners cut; would any prudent airline buy a fleet of these new planes?
۰ Re relevance of CO2: (my math) – if atmosphere that weighs as much as 10m of water would be compressed to the density of water, it would be about 6.5m deep (80% N2, atomic weight 28, 20% O2, atomic weight 32 → air 29; H2O atomic weight 18).
The layer of CO2 would have fluctuated during the ice ages between 1 and 2mm and would be today about 3mm.
The greenhouse effect has been important, without CO2 and H2O in the atmosphere, the world would be much colder.
We can imagine the CO2 layer like loose fabric of plastic threads, 1mm thick, with 1 sheet during coldest times within the last million years, 2 sheets in the warm periods, now 3 sheets – is this likely to be significant?
۰ Re storing organic material for sequestration:
Re carbon sequestration I found the following:
https://phys.org/news/2025-02-climate-plantations-strategy-hurdles-reveals.html
Planting fast-growing crops, burning them, capturing the released CO2 and storing it: this is being discussed as a way to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere
With all due respect, I still wonder: How stupid is that?
Why not just store the dead wood and dead plants: cold, in the bottom of lakes, dry, in with stagnant water soaked earth, creating bog-like conditions, without oxygen, acidic with lactic acid; maybe with adequate salt added to prevent rotting -salt is plentiful and very cheap)
Re. carbon sequestration – feasibility consideration:
1. From internet: Since 1850, the world has emitted over 2,600 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere – United States having contributed around 21% / 2.a ton of dry wood contains roughly half a ton of carbon
A ton of carbon is equivalent of 0.5 x 3.3 CO2 (CO2 has a molecular weight of 16×2 + 14 = 42, C, atomic weight 14, C is <1/3 of the molecule).
My educated guess: m3 of wood (700kg wood, 350kg C) contains about the equivalent of a little more than 1 t of CO2 (350 x 3.3) → a km3 of wood should contain the equivalent of > 1,000,000,000 or 1 billion t of CO2;
a few thousand cubic km of stored would wood sequester all CO2 humans put into the atmosphere since 1850 – and/or dead plants grown for sequestration
Some data on bodies of water where some or of that organic material could be sunk:
Caspian Sea contains approximately 78,200 cubic kilometers of water.
Lake Tanganyika is approximately 18,750 km3 (African rift valley)
Lake Nyasa (also known as Lake Malawi) is approximately 7,775 km3 (African rift valley)
Lake Superior contains approximately 12,100 km3s
Lake Michigan 4.918 km3, lake Huron 3.543 km3,
Lake Victoria holds approximately 2,760 km3