There are a wide range of natural processes that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. In almost every case, some scientist or other has suggested scaling up the natural process as a way to counteract global warming. However, there is one important natural process that removes CO2 from the atmosphere that has not yet been considered as a possible planetary geoengineering mechanism. I'm talking, of course, about the recent discovery that ants play a big role in removing CO2 from Earth's atmosphere.
After 25 years of studying ant nests, scientists have determined that while they are digging tunnels and building nests, ants also break down various silicate minerals and help produce carbonate minerals which utilize CO2 from the atmosphere. Its difficult to determine precisely how much CO2 ants are removing from the global atmosphere, but since ants are widely distributed across all the continents except Antarctica, the total amount of CO2 pumped down from the atmosphere by ants may be significant.
Obviously, there is an opportunity here for a new geoengineering method. If every home, every classroom, every military barracks, every ship at sea began to keep ant farms, then the amount of ant activity could be greatly increased, and the amount of CO2 ants remove from the atmosphere would be commensurately increased.
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Of course I'm joking, but there is a serious point here. The huge amounts of CO2 released into the atmosphere by human use of fossil fuels has completely overwhelmed all the natural Earth processes that kept atmospheric CO2 levels at ca. 285 ppm for the last 10,000 years. Even ants haven't been able to keep up with the additional 26 gigatons (i.e. 26 billion metric tons) of CO2 humans release into the atmosphere each year.
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