Microsoft signs $200 CO2 removal deal with Heirloom Carbon

I understand it’s a politics motivated move but regarding the effectivity and climate impact, I argue money spending on planting trees in many places in the world will be a better spend. And significantly cheaper. A tree will absorb from 210 to 300 kg CO2 in 10 years. For 315000 tons, one will need 1.5 millions living trees. Spending 50-100$ per tree (a reasonable cost for a developing country), the total cost would be 75-150 millions dollars only; much cheaper than the 200 millions estimate from the article. And the environment impact will be much bigger, ways beyond capturing CO2 alone (anti-desertification, reducing land-slide, keeping the soil productive for generations and so social coherence and even helping maintain peace etc…)

So many things that are likely to fail. I am so skeptical that the CO2 extracted by heating will be sequestered in an energy-efficient fashion for more than a generation. And generating the necessary heat carbon-efficiently would be better spent replacing the heat generated from carbon itself. Packing the CO2 is concrete? What's the environmental inpact of generating that concrete? Concrete production itself is a major CO2 emitter.

Plus, the actual auditing of the efficacy is a huge problem. One ton of CO2 scrubbing is easily sold multiple times. Unlike coins and bits that can be counted, these carbon offsetting businesses are enormously easy to grift in.

Some more discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37435454

$200 million ?!