Anon04/27/26, 06:40No.16965928
The main reason we can’t just separate the CO2 out of the air to alleviate global warming is due to entropy, a literal fundamental law of the universe is in the way. The concept of entropy boils down to the universe energetically favoring systems with more micro-states (I have no idea why).If you have two molecules of CO2 in a room there is only one configuration or “microstate” since the two molecules in each room are identical. If instead of two identical molecules one is a molecule of CO2 and another is an N2 molecule, the number of available microstates is two, as they can swap places with eachother (the math gets fucked when you take into account the configurations of 3D space, there is a reason ludwig boltzman who quantified and sort of discovered entropy killed himself)This is why the explanation you get of entropy in high school chemistry class and pop culture is thought of as being “chaos” or “mixing” as the force manifests in this effect.The “energetic” aspect describes how you can reduce the number of microstates and go against the force of entropy through the input of energy. This is part of (ignoring enthalpy) why it is easy to dissolve salt into water as you are increasing entropy, but in order to separate the water and the salt and decrease entropy you have to boil the water which costs energy.This is all to say that except in very specific circumstances, directly capturing the excess CO2 from the atmosphere costs a shit ton of energy. and that is just a minimum based on thermodynamics, there will always be engineering limitations that keep any direct air capture system from 100% energy efficiency.So unless the CO2 is captured from a concentrated source (like a powerplant) or the CO2 is being captured in a place with crazy cheap clean energy (maybe iceland, geothermal needs to be nerfed) anyone saying they are doing direct air capture is bullshitting and just wasting energy.