No discussion on the ratio of the watts of electricity [used to "Create" the Ethanol] to the Equivalent watts of energy available in the Ethanol. A typical "Moonbeams and Unicorns" science story.

Hmmm... I remember reading in one of those science books that the earth's atmosphere was at one time primarily Methane and CO2... and during photosynthesis that was converted to a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere.

Here's this kid's question - Is the Venusian atmosphere a product of runaway greenhouse gas emissions, or is it a primordial atmosphere waiting for the infusion of a durable conversion medium (Chlorophyll precursors, maybe?) to do what those same precursors did to Earth?

Mind you I am not a college trained scientist, but I also don't forget something I learned back in High School, even if it WAS pre-Communist-Corps...

" Last month, we hit the highest levels of atmospheric CO2 in 4 million years, and it’s now permanent, meaning we’ll never be able to drop to 'safe' levels again."

Hmmm...

Interesting that she's got CO2 readings that go back 4 million years; I didn't know that the IPCC kept data that long.

And since she claims the CO2 levels are permanent, I guess that means that every plant on earth is saturated, and can't absorb any more, and also that no new plants would ever be able to absorb CO2 from the air.

Would have been nice if she'd at least tried to back one of those two statements up.

Don't you just love it when something marvelous is discovered and is presented in such a completely biased way ?
Start with the photo at the top. Completely biased rubbish that has NOTHING to do with the article topic.
Then the author relates scientifically unsupportable claptrap rubbish again and again.

AJA, maybe you should look at this article to post instead of the one you posted:
It one has a nice explanatory video embedded:
http://newatlas.com/co2-ethanol-nanop...

thanks for bringing this technology to our attention, AJA;^)

Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
It is food for vegetation, all other forms of live on earth depend on vegetation.
This idea can be yet another excuse to increase taxation on all and subsidies to looters.

It is interesting separate from AGW. Sounds like the nanoscale electrical fields affect the chemical process in a way not achievable in a macro reaction. That is cool if accurate. May end up being used elsewhere. Seems a little like bandgap in semiconductors.

Problem is...as I understand it...ethanol as fuel is a worse polluter than straight gasoline. I don't know that making more of it does us any good, other than reducing the price of corn (which would be a good thing).

I dont listen anymore to people hawking various "crises". They all have hidden agendas. If there is a real crisis, there would be lots of evidence that it is really there and its something that we can affect.

Climate has changed a LOT over thousands of years and it wont stop now. Its part of the way things are.

Next it will be lead into gold.

Hmmm...maybe using the carbon from coal plant emissions but using any other carbon source might just put life in danger...in many cases around large crop plantings the present carbon level is low for what the plants need...it's really not nice to screw with mother nature.

Thanks for the heads-up. A professor down the hall and two of his students are developing a competing process for turning CO2 into ethanol.

Even though there is conflicting evidence I believe that planting trees is the best way of sequestering CO2. Every house I have moved to my wife and I planted trees. Where we live in Az for the past 26 yrs. we have planted about dozen trees on our property. Some were replacements for about three that had to come down due to beetle infestation. I even let some of the germinated evergreens just grow randomly also. If there was a public push for planting for moderately fast growing trees I would think there wouldn't such an propaganda war about climate change.

Where are they getting the energy for this endothermic reaction? Where are the getting the hydrogen? I have heard it is aqueous process so that would sort of explain that except for the question of the energy to separate out the hydrogen.

One thing we don't need is more ethanol unless it comes in a Wild Turkey bottle. ;)

When you burn ethanol you get carbon dioxide, water and energy. To make ethanol out of carbon dioxide you combine it with water and consume AT LEAST that same amount of energy. TANSTAAFL.

So can we get rid of ethanol subsidies now and go back to letting farmers grow corn for FOOD? If CO2 is so dangerous, put up a couple of plants running these catalytic converters and run yourself some ethanol!

There's been an easy way to convert water and air into ammonia for some time. Ammonia is a near perfect fuel, since the formula (NH3) contains no carbon. None of the alternate fuels create more energy than what it takes to produce them, so they're really an energy storage medium. Anhydrous ammonia contains more hydrogen by volume than the liquefied gas itself, and becomes a room temperature liquid under modest pressures similar to those used to liquefy propane, easily transported by pipeline.

Actually this is a great reaction on Mars. If you add hydrogen to the CO2 atmosphere, you get Ethanol and energy. It's an exothermic reaction. On Earth, the oxygen in the atmosphere combines with your hydrogen and you get expensive water.

This is history changing! It is more important than Trump's sex life and Hillary's crimes. No one will hear much about it, however, and it being applied on a grand scale will be iffy indeed. Especially if the sickly crooked woman becomes president.

Seems a discovery with super implications. That it produces ethanol seems not necessarily a good thing, tho.
The mention of tying this in with "wind and solar", I doubt that. They are only good as far as they go, which is a very long distance empty so far.

This could be very useful IF (big IF) it could be scaled up. Ethanol is useful because you can get the energy out really fast by burning it O2. I could envision this scaled up to be a better alternative to batteries for applications where you have energy but not at the time and place it's needed, e.g. solar or nuclear.

I really think the authors are just exploiting the fact that CO2 happens to be a main cause of global warming and also happens to be one of the reagents in the reaction. It's hard to envision this every being deployed on such a large scale that it puts a dent in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 more than just planting trees. It's one of those battery-like redox reactions, where electrons move from an electrode to an electrolyte bath. But even if we imagine it on a huge scale, you still release the CO2 when you burn it. It's not undoing the effects of extracting huge amounts of oil and coal and burning it. It's just moving Cs, Os, Hs, and electrons around in way that stores energy in a place you have to a place where you need it.