When
airborne molecules bind to the coating (each attracts a
different kind of
molecule), the surface tension changes, making the cantilever curl up like a piece of paper that's been wet on one side.
The reality is that the author of the head post of this thread foolishly conflated two very
different things — the length of time that an average CO2
molecule stays in the air (
airborne residence time), and the length of time it takes the elevated CO2 concentration after an injected pulse of CO2 to decay to the pre-pulse concentration (pulse decay time, or e-folding time).