From: Eugene Salamin <gene_salamin@yahoo.com>

...

A stairway to heaven? May 31st 2007 | ACAPULCO From The Economist print edition

If implemented, this would be another taxpayer sponsored boondoggle.

1. Even if this concept works, why will it launch into space CO2 rather than N2 or O2? There exists far more of these in the atmosphere.

My reading was that the 17 Hz frequency is what selects CO2 ions rather than another ion.

2. Atmospheric CO2 is part of the biosphere. If we throw away atmospheric CO2, the atmosphere will re-equilibrate by taking away carbon from life. There will be fewer plants and animals. Conversely, burning fossil fuels returns to the biosphere carbon that has been locked up for a hundred million years.

The whole global-warming-by-manmade-CO2 hypothesis is that the current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is unnaturally high and caused by the rate of burning of fossil fuels, and that the natural correction mechanisms either can't reabsorb it at the current production rate, or will do so by processes catastrophic to us. It's true that this method throws away carbon. To call it "sequestration" stretches the term. I can't tell whether throwing out carbon is a bad or good thing. You might say that fossil fuel is spare carbon. But then, what else are we going to build all those diamond cities and buckycable elevators out of?

3. This expenditure is entirely unnecessary. There already exists a facility called HAARP that can transmit 3.6 MW of RF power from the Arctic into the ionosphere. http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/

I believe what doesn't exist is the specific combination of radio transmitters (at 17 Hz) and lasers. The article mentions starting with another existing facility:

The site of the conveyor Dr Wong is proposing to build is the Arctic. More specifically, he is suggesting it be over one of his workplaces, the High Power Auroral Stimulation facility near Fairbanks in Alaska that he set up 20 years ago to stimulate and study artificial auroras.

http://www.hipas.alaska.edu/hipasweb/hipas.htm That page says HIPAS has "8 - 150 kW transmitters," which possibly means 1.2 MW (but it continues, "capable of modulation at an amplitude of 100 Hz - 20 kHz and Phase of 0 -20 kHz," which is so incoherent it leaves the whole sentence in doubt). This map shows both HIPAS and HAARP: http://www.hipas.alaska.edu/hipasweb/alaska_map.htm The article says that ...his lasers and radio transmitters, even if powered by fossil-fuel generated electricity, should cause far less CO2 to be put into the atmosphere than they ship out of it. but it doesn't say what percentage of the world's power production would be needed to make a dent in the CO2 concentration any decade soon. --Steve