Thank you for the reminder that I should see about getting glasses.

Which according to thermo, is about as much as we got out of burning them, assuming 100% efficiency. I think there's a little bit of wiggle room if you can find a low energy compound to turn it into, but it's still going to be a lot. And it can't be a neutralized acid like formate or bicarbonate. Maybe add H2 and do some electrochem to make oxalic acid? It's a powder, which would be a bonus for disposal.

Unfortunately, without knowing any of the details of the process, we can know that this route will not fix the CO2 issue. There literally isn't enough base available on earth to turn the excess CO2 into bicarbonate. We'd turn the oceans as acidic as lemon juice first.

I wish there was a video out there putting into perspective just how much CO2 is under discussion, and what practical limitations that imposes on what routes may and may not work when trying to fix the issue.

Update: I checked. The actual population doesn't die off that quickly when going west of the river. Companies appear to be lazy, and are apparently passing up many west bank hungry people.

I know it nearly overlays with population distribution, but the north south line of what I presume is the Mississippi River seems really stark (damnyouautocorrect). I haven't checked a map but I wonder if companies assumed east of Mississippi River for population rather than consulting the actual population distributions.

You have good answers above, but one thing I didn't see is a mention that how much something will dissolve in hot water and how fast it dissolves in hot water are two different things. They usually go together, but not always.

Most, but not all, things will dissolve more in hot water than cold. It's tough to explain why that is in li5, but has to do with the universe liking it when things can move around more (we call this higher entropy), and that's what happens when most things dissolve in water- they get to float around and mix. When things are hotter the universe apparently likes it even more when things can move around more, so more stuff dissolves. There are some things that dissolve even less in hot water because the water has to organize or be shaped a certain way to get the thing to dissolve (the water is inconvenienced and can't move around as much), but that doesn't happen too often. I don't know why the universe likes it when things move around more, and likes it even more at higher temperature, but that's what a math equation called the Gibbs Free Energy equation tells us, and it seems to work.

But with washing hands what may be more important is that anything that's going to happen in water will happen faster when it's hot. I think this is always true- apparently water even freezes faster when it's warmer, as long as it's still cold enough to freeze. As others have explained above this is because the water (is "water molecules" acceptable for ELI5?) is moving around faster when it's hot, and a hotter temperature is very much like having a fast forward setting on, and cold water like being in slow motion. Your hands would probably wash ok in cold water, but it'd take longer (unless youre using one of those soaps that's made to work best in colder or room temperature water).

Another effect is that hot water is a little bit thinner and sticks to itself less than cold water, but that's probably not the main reason it cleans better. It should help dirt and germs get "wet" and start to loosen up a little bit faster though.