Even if you don’t believe in Climate Change you’ll love this next idea. For scientists from Harvard University have figured out a way to extract gasoline from thin air! That’s right. Soon we’ll be able to create a perpetual source of energy, by turning our waste, carbon dioxide, into the actual fuel source that we’ll be using to create even more carbon dioxide. A vicious cycle but one that will help to clean up the environment, or at least not make it any worse.
As the Atlantic puts it, “Their research seems almost to smuggle technologies out of the realm of science fiction and into the real. It suggests that people will soon be able to produce gasoline and jet fuel from little more than limestone, hydrogen, and air. It hints at the eventual construction of a vast, industrial-scale network of carbon scrubbers, capable of removing greenhouse gases directly from the atmosphere.
Above all, the new technique is noteworthy because it promises to remove carbon dioxide cheaply. As recently as 2011, a panel of experts estimated that it would cost at least $600 to remove a metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The new paper says it can remove the same ton for as little as $94, and for no more than $232. At those rates, it would cost between $1 and $2.50 to remove the carbon dioxide released by burning a gallon of gasoline in a modern car.
‘If these costs are real, it is an important result,’ said Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science. ‘This opens up the possibility that we could stabilize the climate for affordable amounts of money without changing the entire energy system or changing everyone’s behavior.’”
That last sentiment is a very important one. For all the talk we do about wanting to reverse Climate Change and save the environment very few us actually change our lifestyles. A-list celebrities still take private jets to weekend getaways and we still drive everywhere we go, rarely walking or carpooling. A solution that saves the environment without asking anybody to do anything differently is the best of both worlds. Hopefully it’s enough to get us to save the one and only world we know.
Is fuel made from water and carbon dioxide the Greatest Idea Ever?
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