Can Thermal Depolymerization Slow Global Warming?
If the thermal depolymerization process WORKS AS Claimed, it will clean up waste and generate new sources of energy. But its backers contend it could also stem global warming, which sounds iffy. After all, burning oil creates global warming, doesn’t it? Carbon is the major chemical constituent of most organic matterplants take it in; animals eat plants, die, and decompose; and plants take it back in, ad infinitum. Since the industrial revolution, human beings burning fossil fuels have boosted concentrations of atmospheric carbon more than 30 percent, disrupting the ancient cycle. According to global-warming theory, as carbon in the form of carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, it traps solar radiation, which warms the atmosphereand, some say, disrupts the planet’s ecosystems. But if there were a global shift to thermal depolymerization technologies, belowground carbon would remain there. The accoutrements of the civilized worlddomestic animals and plants, buildings, artificial
