It is possible to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it in a place where it can't do us any harm.

This is one reason some carbon credit operations put a lot of new trees in the ground.

But as excellent as plants are at sequestering carbon for us,

we are still pumping more into the atmosphere faster than all the flora on the planet can handle.

If human-made machines and the fuel they require are largely responsible for generating greenhouse gases, could we make

different machines to remove those gases? From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd.

Amazingly, the technology already exists, and the chemistry that enables what is called direct

air capture of excess CO2 is actually not all that complicated. Its biggest champions

think these systems could be deployed to at least slow the pace of global warming or even

to possibly help pull global temperatures down within our lifetimes. It's a very hopeful idea,

but it is not yet a sure thing and the reasons why are worth looking into.

Alec Loon is a climate journalist. His article, can pulling carbon from thin air slow climate change appears in Scientific American?

Alec, welcome to think.

Hey, great to be here.

This is pretty remarkable. The chemistry required to do this is simple enough

that an 11-year-old, who happens to have a parent who was a nuclear physicist, but a kid worked

out the basics in 1997? That's right. I mean, the caveat, I guess, is this was in Los Alamos,

near Los Alamos natural laboratories.

So the school science fairs there, you know, everyone was a scientist kid.

The school science fairs there were very intense, I was told.

But nonetheless, yeah, this is simple science.

Basically, this daughter of a scientist put some sodium carbonate into a test tube and

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