an idea

Well... an idea I have is that if we could put a carbon dioxide filter in the muffler like they use in the power plants then it would reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. just a thought?

Barry's Response - Might work. If you can get a big enough filter. More than half the weight of each tank of gas is pure carbon, and when it combines with oxygen to make CO2, its weight more than triples.

Kinda poses a problem. Is it really practical to extract CO2 from effluent streams to prevent it from entering the atmosphere? Research has taken place into the usefulness of carbon capture and storage (CCS) on many scales.

You would want something, fitting under the hood, perhaps, like a catalytic converter. Maybe service stations in the future could be equipped for cars to dump the collected carbondioxide in liquid form while reloading with fresh fuel. That would provide the needed infrastructure for it to be properly sequestered and disposed of, likely by injection.

There are many ideas and chemical process under examination towards this end, and a solution is likely to appear. Let's hope so.

We all wish this group of solutions could be as easy and automatic as the sequestration offered for free by the forests we have been demolishing. Maybe we can gain that back, somehow.

Maybe incentives like the prize offered by Richard Branson will help carry this idea forward into reality.

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