Basalts Turn Carbon into Stone for Permanent Storage

[Warpy]

5. Of course, blue green algae

When they evolved photosynthesis, they caused the first biologic catastrophe on the earth, depleting the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and replacing it with oxygen, a poorer insulator. That ushered in a global ice age, one in which glaciers met at and covered the equator.

We're not the first species to foul up the planet's ecology and will not be the last. Will we erase ourselves? Not likely, blue green algae are still with us, after all. We will be different as the planet changes.

However, scaling up an industrial carbon sequestration process enough to make a difference in global warming is both extremely unlikely and might even be a bad idea.