This is how much we can cool the planet by burying carbon underground | Carbon storage is becoming a more mainstream climate solution. A new study says that we won’t have enough room to bury all our CO2.

12 comments

1. The paper is[here](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09423-y)

2. A cube of graphite that weighs 1 trillion tonnes would be about 7.5km on the edge.

   Carbon storage will eventually look very similar to the exact opposite of coal mining: Using electricity to convert CO2 back into solid carbon, then trucking it to a hole and dumping it in until there is a mountain there.

3. Ofcourse there’s not enough room

4. Does it need to be buried?  Can it not be stored in different forms?  

   Sure, as of now, that might appear to be the most viable method of removing carbon from the atmosphere.

   But, for example, trees suck carbon out of the air and turn it into a relatively stable solid (wood).  Yes, wood will decompose over time.  

   But surely, there has got to be a yet-undiscovered method for us to take carbon out of the air and convert it into a synthetic wood-like solid material that doesn’t need to be buried in order to keep it out of the atmosphere 

5. No need for expensive holes to throw it in. Cube it and stack it up like Wall-E.

6. ANYTHING but turning off the tap

7. It is of course a scam from big Oil to stay relevant for another decade until we are fried.

8. A simple analogy: the boat is leaking but we don’t want to drown. Captain Capitalism says we should scoop up the water and put it in buckets in the boat. First Mate says why don’t we just plug the hole? Captain explains how many jobs are involved with keeping the hole open. Everyone works hard to maintain buoyancy instead of fixing the root problem.

   This is carbon storage in a nutshell

9. Oh wait I have an idea, we can then reuse that block of carbon for cheap energy!

10. There is literally no way for any carbon sequestration mechanism to scale up to the levels we need it to. Our current global political/economic systems wouldn’t allow for it.

11. How about embedding the carbon in lush forests full of beautiful green trees?

12. I’d be all for fossil fuel companies being ordered to capture all the carbon they have emitted over the 50+ years that they have been lying to the public at their own expense.

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