Indisputable proof of global warming -- in three sentences :-O

Earth’s atmospheric temperature is already high enough to melt the permafrost (part of year freezing, part melting, more melting than freezing). The permafrost (I’m not exactly sure what that is) reportedly contains twice as much carbon as there is in the atmosphere now (may not be all in gas form but believe will all end up in gas form eventually: one and a half trillion tons to add to 750 billion tons now). The more it melts, the more carbon dioxide is released, the hotter it gets, the more it melts, etc.: more than enough to eventually turn the earth into a pole to pole swamp — the normal condition of the earth for the majority of the last 500 million years (see video).  Indisputable — without any additional human help.
https://www.pbs.org/video/polar-extremes-mfaum5/
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At first (last year) I thought the only way out was for all electric output to go nuclear — that was the physics of course; not the politics, good luck. My reasoning was that in 100 years the human population would need 10X more electricity — and I couldn’t see doing all that with windmills and photovoltaic).

I’m figuring thermonuclear to come along in about 50 years — for however that feeds into all of this. The technological way is well charted but it will take tremendous R&D working out. (see The Future of Fusion Energy by Ian Kershaw — must be good; I could only read about half of it).
https://www.amazon.com/Future-Fusion-Energy-Popular-Science-ebook-dp-B07MYTCRNS/dp/B07MYTCRNS/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

Then, I came upon carbon capture technology.

[cut-and-paste]
Carbon capture technology: practicably end global warming – even reverse it — for 5% of GDP with a reasonably lo-tech process – once the price to gets down to $100 a ton?

According to a Businessweek article, worldwide we add 34 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year. Said article says Squamish Engineering, in B.C., Canada expects to launch a plant that will remove a million tons a year, located somewhere in the Permian Basin in Texas. Squamish says it can do this for $200 a ton.

My back-of-the-envelope calculates that, when the price reaches $100 a ton, then, worldwide we can keep cool for $3.4 trillion a year – less than 5% of world GDP. US kick-in about one trillion – out of $20 trillion GDP. That figure would grow as US economy grows – but: for every trillion of growth only additional $50 billion would go for removal, leaving us $950 billion ahead: set for the life of the planet.  

https://www.magzter.com/article/Business/Bloomberg-Businessweek/A-Big-Step-for-the-Sky-Vacuums 

https://reasonstobecheerful.world/carbon-capture-iceland-climate-change-two-degrees/
[snip]

Snag: where to put all the carbon we capture.

If we are putting 34 billion tons or carbon in the air now — could we be doing 340 billion tons a year 100 years from now — if we don’t replace carbon with thermonuclear. 100 years from now hopefully the earth will be rich enough to go completely thermonuclear. And then comes 1.5 trillion tons from the permafrost.

Better get busy finding room to hide lots of carbon. Did somebody say: The Green New Deal … is not remotely sufficient to stabilize global warming at a non-catastrophic level?
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Where to find or create storage space for many trillion of tons of dry ice (captured CO2) while the world awaits totally nuclear, thermonuclear and renewable energy:

At 100 pounds per cubic foot of dry ice (frozen CO2), a 100 foot X 100 foot X 100 foot block would contain a 100 million pounds, or 50,000 tons. At a cost of $100 a ton to capture CO2 from the atmosphere, it would cost 5 million dollars to capture enough to fill one cube.

(Dry ice can be more practicable then liquid CO2.  It is two changes of state away for gas.  I know it takes average 100 times as many calories to raise water one degree centigrade in a change of state.)

15 trillion tons of dry ice would take up the volume of 300,000,000 such cubes (15,000,000,000,000/50,000).  At 50 blocks per mile -- both width and length -- that would come to 120,000 square miles of frozen CO2 (300,000,000/2500).  That would fit into a space 3000 miles long and 40 miles wide.

5% of GDP to capture, 5% of GDP to contain = 10% of GDP to keep C02 from turning our world from turning into Venus -- while awaiting a completely non-carbon fueled civilization.  May have to contain the stuff forever, but shouldn't cost much.
Possible design feature: storing dry ice containers at the bottom of the oceans could utilize the massive pressures at that level to hold the containers intact.
 

AT THIS POINT I WAS PUT WISE THAT "CARBON FIXATION IN BASALT FORMATIONS IS PROBABLY A LOT CHEAPER THAN MAKING DRY ICE."  HAVEN'T GOTTEN AROUND TO PUTTING OUT ANYTHING WITH THAT YET BUT MY NOTES MAY COME IN HANDY.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-43789527
Turning carbon dioxide into rock – forever

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/underground-injections-turn-carbon-dioxide-stone

 
What happened next startled the team. After about a year and a half, the pump inside a monitoring well kept breaking down. Frustrated, engineers hauled up the pump and found that it was coated with white and green scale. Tests identified it as calcite, bearing the heavy carbon tracer that marked it as a product of carbonation. * * * * * Measurements of dissolved carbon in the groundwater suggested that more than 95% of the injected carbon had already been converted into calcite and other minerals. “It was a huge surprise that the carbonation happened so fast,”

https://www.pnas.org/content/105/29/9920
Among geological storage techniques, CO2 injection into deep saline aquifers, or its reinjection into depleted oil and gas reservoirs, has potentially large storage capacity and geographic ubiquity (6–10).

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/scientists-in-iceland-are-turning-carbon-dioxide-into-rock/
Two years later, almost all of the CO2 had morphed into carbonate minerals. * * * * * The team’s breakthrough, reported in the journal Science in 2016, led to the scaling up of the CarbFix project – fixing CO2 into rock, literally – at the Hellisheidi geothermal power station * * * * * The process does, however, require large amounts of desalinated water – about 25 tonnes of water per tonne of stored CO2 – so they are working on adapting it to saltwater.

https://eos.org/articles/basalts-turn-carbon-into-stone-for-permanent-storage
Climate researchers have long recognized that highly reactive basaltic rocks could be a solution to the carbon storage problem. In addition to being common around the world, basalts contain high concentrations of calcium and magnesium ions that chemically react with CO2 to make calcite, dolomite, and magnesite. Moreover, dissolving the CO2 in water above ground and then injecting it into subsurface basalts bypasses the slower and less secure stages of conventional carbon storage. * * * * * The team found that over 90% of the injected CO2 had been converted into minerals within 2 years of injection. * * * * * “But also the way that we inject is that we dissolve the CO2 in water prior to or during injection. This means increased security as well, because by dissolving the CO2 we’re killing the buoyancy of the CO2. The CO2-charged fluid is heavier than the groundwater in the formation where we are injecting, so it has the tendency to sink rather than to rise up. This increased storage security.” * * * * * Mineral carbonation has been gaining interest in recent years, Snæbjörnsdóttir said. “People often believe that this can only be done if you have geothermal [heat], but that’s not the case,” she said. “The things that you need for this to work are just a source of CO2, [water], and reactive rocks.” * * * * * “We know that basalts like we have here in Iceland are perfect for this method,” she said, “but there might be rock types that are less reactive but still reactive enough. If some of those rock types are feasible to use for this method, we could broaden the applicability even more.” * * * * * The team is also looking into how well offshore injections using seawater might work.

https://www.bgs.ac.uk/discoveringGeology/climateChange/CCS/howCanCo2BeStored.html#ocean
We need to understand more about saline aquifer storage, but current research shows that several trapping mechanisms immobilise the CO2 underground, reducing the risk of leakage. The IPCC says that for well-selected, designed and managed geological storage sites, CO2 could be trapped for millions of years, retaining over 99 per cent of the injected CO2 over 1000 years.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6291/1312
The scaling up of this basaltic carbon storage method requires substantial quantities of water and porous basaltic rocks (9). Both are widely available on the continental margins, such as off the coast of the Pacific Northwest of the United States (12).

https://phys.org/news/2019-05-iceland-carbon-dioxide-cleaner-air.html
Around 25 tonnes of water are needed for each tonne of carbon dioxide injected. * * * * * “That is the Achilles’ heel of this method,” says Snaebjornsdottir. * * * * * “I agree that the process uses a lot of water, but we gain a lot by permanently getting rid of CO2 that otherwise would be floating around the atmosphere,” says Aradottir. * * * * * Experiments are currently under way to adapt the method to saltwater.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/26/climate/oman-rocks.html

https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/11/27/carbon-dioxide-removal-climate-change/

OH, OH; ONE MORE CAVEAT
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/10/21/21515461/renewable-energy-geothermal-egs-ags-supercritical
Geothermal energy is poised for a big breakout
“An engineering problem that, when solved, solves energy.”
By David Roberts @drvox