Climate scientists have breakthrough on ‘scrubber’ to remove carbon in atmosphere

(Photo of coal-fired power plant from Flickr and photographer d1v1d/David S.)
News Update 3: A team of scientists have made a breakthrough in developing a device that would suck carbon out of the air. They expect to have the carbon “scrubber” operational within 2 years, at an initial cost of less than $200,000 a year, said Klaus Lackner of Columbia U., lead scientist on the project. Each device would be able to absorb about 1 ton of CO2 per day. To put that in perspective, that’s the amount of CO2 emitted for each passenger on a London-New York flight. So millions of these devices would be needed to suck up a substantial amount of carbon. And then disposal of the CO2 would be an issue. But Lachner thinks this discovery is important because he doesn’t believe people will stop using fossil fuels, and maybe the scrubbers could help keep global warming from reaching dangerous levels. (Source: The Guardian)