Are humans able to reduce the amount of CO2 that is already captured in the earth’s atmosphere?

Carbon dioxide is removable from the atmosphere both naturally and artificially.

CO2 cycles between the air and the earth, being exchanged by the atmosphere and the “carbon sinks” of lands and oceans. Human-caused emissions have disturbed this equilibrium. Yale Climate Connections cites estimates that if those CO2 emissions ceased today, about 50% of the emissions since the Industrial Revolution “would be absorbed in the first 50 years,” about 80% “after 300 years,” with the remaining 20% “lasting tens or hundreds of thousands of years.”

There are also ways to remove CO2 artificially, including by planting more trees, chemically filtering CO2 from the air and storing it underground, and using minerals to absorb CO2 into a solid material. In a 2018 review, researchers concluded that avoiding future climate risks “requires the large-scale deployment of negative emissions technologies.”