From Eric Kvaalen, Les Essarts-le-Roi, France
David Flint says biomass carbon capture would require too much land area. He favours using chemical plants to capture carbon dioxide from the air. I would like to point out that, every year, about 440 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide enter the atmosphere from rotting vegetation, whereas we have about 1100 gigatonnes more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than in pre-industrial times. In other words, if we could store all the biomass that rots, we could solve global warming in a couple of years. The problem isn’t land area, it is how to collect and store vast quantities of biomass, and how to incentivise this (Letters, 22 November).
